Former SSE boss Ian Marchant invests in London smart home startup January 21, 2019 A London-based smart home technology startup, backed by the former chief of SSE Ian Marchant, today announced that it has raised £2m in a new funding round. Den, which has now raised a total of £5m, is also backed by Mark Davies, a founder of Betfair. Read more: Stay on top of your resolutions with the [...]
Hacking Wall Street: Are tech unicorns about to disrupt stock market flotations? January 21, 2019 Tech companies have changed the way we chat, bank, travel and date. Are they about to disrupt capital markets too? “In [Silicon] Valley there’s always been that mentality: how do we hack Wall Street?” says Rob Kniaz, a founder of tech-focused venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures. Two weeks ago reports broke that Slack, the workplace [...]
EU digital tax could be agreed by March, says French finance minister Bruno Le Maire January 20, 2019 The European Union could reach an agreement on details of a digital tax by the end of March, the French finance minister has said. Talks among EU ministers aimed at aligning the taxation of online businesses broke down in December. A number of smaller member states, including Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, opposed the plan and [...]
Chinese tech firm Tencent is considering a bid for Nexon’s holding company January 19, 2019 Chinese tech firm Tencent is weighing up a bid for the holding company that controls South Korean gaming company Nexon. Tencent is looking to enlist co-investors as it considers making a move to acquire the company, according to Reuters. Private equity firms are looking at options for a potential deal, including taking the company private. [...]
Tech giants accused of data protection breaches by Austrian activist January 19, 2019 Tech giants Apple and Amazon have been named in a complaint filed by Noyb, claiming they are still failing to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The company, chaired by data privacy activist and lawyer Max Schrems, filed a complaint in Austria also naming Netflix, Spotify and Youtube after it tested the [...]
Lloyds Bank suffers IT outage as customers struggle to send and receive money January 18, 2019 Thousands of Lloyds Bank customers were unable to make payments this afternoon after the bank experienced an IT outage. Customers complained of difficulties transferring money from their accounts due to issues related to the lender's Faster Payments system, which allows customers to send and receive payments by internet or phone. "We are aware that some customers [...]
Don’t hand control to the machines just yet January 18, 2019 Bad news: the robots are destroying jobs. The good news, however, is that the jobs they are destroying are their own. This week, a hotel in Japan was forced to lay off its 243 robots, after they ended up creating more work for their human colleagues. The Siri-like virtual assistants couldn’t answer the guests’ questions, [...]
Concerns over Sophos as shares tank in early trading after ‘subdued performance’ warning January 18, 2019 Sophos Group shares were down 23 per cent in early morning trading after reporting “subdued performance” in its third quarter trading update. The IT security company said a “challenging” previous year was context for the disappointing results, which saw the company earnings decline eight per cent year-on-year for the nine months to 31 December to [...]
IBM links up with Vodafone for $550m cloud computing contract January 17, 2019 IBM and Vodafone have entered into a joint venture to provide businesses with support for linking up cloud systems, which can support next-generation technology such as machine learning or 5G networks. Vodafone will pay IBM $550m (£423.4m) under an eight-year contract as part of the deal, the firms said today, enabling it to offer tools [...]
Netflix shares slide as it misses revenue estimates despite profits bump January 17, 2019 Shares in Netflix fell as much as five per cent in after-hours trading last night, after the streaming giant missed analyst estimates on revenue and paid subscriber growth. Netflix reported $4.19bn in revenue for the three months to the end of December last year, narrowly missing the $4.21bn predicted by consensus estimates, as collated by S&P [...]