CEOs, take note: Hygiene is now a boardroom issue November 3, 2020 The history of business is full of inflection points. Some are instantly easy to recognise, and fatal for non-innovators: the iPhone surpassed and killed the once ubiquitous Blackberry, while digital streaming rendered Blockbuster obsolete. Others are more gradual and harder to see. Entertainment venues, for example, took anti-smoking legislation in their stride and transformed, while [...]
AJ Bell launches first sustainable fund of ETFs November 2, 2020 Investment platform AJ Bell has launched its first sustainable fund investing in “responsibly screened” ETFs . The AJ Bell Responsible Growth Fund will invest in ETFs which remove stocks from controversial companies such as tobacco or alcohol. Any firm that breaches the UN Global Compact, which implements sustainable principles, will also be excluded. “Once these [...]
How to trade your way through the 2020 US presidential election November 2, 2020 The US election is tomorrow, and while the world waits to see whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will emerge victorious, traders are planning how to respond as these events unfold. There are no easy decisions, especially when the final outcome and the impact on the markets are this uncertain. However, if you are hoping [...]
Private equity is not the enemy — it’s what powers businesses to be a force for good November 2, 2020 It should come as no surprise that 280 characters are not enough to form a well thought-out and nuanced argument. And yet, this doesn’t seem to deter the swathes of Twitterati sensationalists from jumping on the bandwagon of “outrage culture”, calling for boycotts of companies that appear to make the slightest error — such as [...]
It’s easy being green, but our entrepreneurs need the government to step up November 2, 2020 Going into 2020, this was supposed to be a year of environmental action. The pandemic might have disrupted the set schedule, but while tackling Covid-19 has dominated the headlines, the appetite and ambition to fix the way we do things has not gone away. Today, we are publishing a major study from The Enterprise Trust [...]
Augmentum Fintech raises £28m in oversubscribed placing October 30, 2020 Listed venture capital firm Augmentum Fintech hit its £28m fundraising target through an oversubscribed share placing launched this week. The firm said demand from both existing and new investors exceeded the maximum issue and applications have been scaled back accordingly. Augmentum Fintech raised £28m through the issue of 23.37m shares at 120 pence each. The [...]
Negative rates explained: should UK investors prepare? October 30, 2020 | City Talk The UK’s banks received a letter from the Bank of England (BoE) this week which has brought negative interest rates back into the headlines. The letter, published here, asked banks how ready they would be if the Bank of England base rate – which currently sits at 0.10% – moved into negative territory. The letter, signed [...]
Exclusive: These are the top 50 London startups to work for October 29, 2020 An insurtech startup that has raised just £13m to date is the best startup to work for in London, according to new research. The incentive-based life insurance platform Yulife is the best London-based startup to work for, according to research by recruitment platform Tempo. The startup, which employs just 61 people, has been recognised for [...]
Human rights must be included in sustainable investment strategies, says financial agency October 29, 2020 Human rights must form a core part of financial institutions’ sustainable investment strategies, a leading financial body has said. With climate change protests across the globe, there has been a concerted push by various parties for firms to incorporate sustainability considerations into their business models. Sustainable finance is moving into the mainstream with the government [...]
Has Jack Ma made IPOs a weapon of corporate warfare? October 29, 2020 Ant Group is not a household name. An affiliate of Chinese tech wizard Jack Ma’s Alibaba, it operates the digital payment platform Alipay, which serves more than a billion users and is China’s largest such enterprise. This week, Ant Group announced the pricing of its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star [...]
