Investors given second chance to buy a piece of Star Wars May 30, 2019 | City Talk By Rodney Hobson from interactive investor. This iconic brand has rewarded shareholders handsomely, and could do again, argues our overseas expert. Investors could be forgiven for thinking they had missed their chance to buy into The Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) when the shares shot up 10% one April day, and then went on to set new [...]
City fintech Yapily scores $5.4m from Transferwise founders and Localglobe May 30, 2019 London fintech startup Yapily has closed $5.4m (£4.3m) in seed funding from King’s Cross-based venture capital firm Localglobe and HZ Holtzbrinck Ventures. Other investors included Transferwise co-founders Taavet Hinrikus and Ott Kaukver, and C-suite executives from Twilio and Unicredit. Read more: Transferwise is Europe's most valuable fintech at $3.5bn Yapily will use the funding to [...]
Train delays and shoddy rail service are holding back British business May 30, 2019 Trains in the UK are rubbish. Okay, this isn’t really a surprise announcement, but neither is the “we’re sorry to announce that your train is delayed” when it blares over the tannoy on a regular basis. I’m sure this will fill many of you with the same sense of unbridled want-to-drive-a-tractor-through-the-ticket-office rage as it does [...]
Should you really sell in May and go away – What is the truth of the old stock market saying? May 30, 2019 There are many phrases used to try to capture trends or patterns that supposedly appear in the movement of share prices over the years. For example, the concept of a “Santa Rally” suggests that stock prices increase in the run up to Christmas. Yet one of the oldest such phrases is “sell in May and [...]
Cash out: Troubled Ladbrokes boss takes a punt on cutting pay in bid to stop investor revolt May 29, 2019 The chief exec of betting firm Ladbrokes is set to forego around £150,000 as he takes a gamble designed to quell shareholder unrest over his pay. Kenny Alexander, boss of Ladbrokes’ owner GVC Holdings, has agreed give up the majority of a recent pay rise from £750,000 to £950,000 after talks with the company’s board, [...]
Sydney shares cheer Australia’s centre-right election triumph May 29, 2019 | City Talk Australian share prices are on a roll after the shock election victory earlier this month of the ruling Liberal-Nation coalition. The centre-right government returned to power in Canberra despite consistent opinion poll leads for the opposition Labor Party. The ASX 200 index, comprising the shares of the 200 largest companies listed on the Australian Stock [...]
Hiring disabled people is a trillion-dollar business opportunity May 29, 2019 Government figures show that over the past five years, some 930,000 disabled people have found employment – an increase of 7.4 per cent, compared with 3.8 per cent for non-disabled people. That serves a heady shot of optimism for people like me who live and work with a disability, especially when you consider that globally, disabled [...]
UK banks: What to make of Lloyds, RBS and Barclays? May 29, 2019 | City Talk By Graeme Evans from interactive investor. Having underperformed since April's stock market peak, here's what to expect from the domestic lenders. With UK banks making heavy weather of Q1 results and the Brexit shackles still in place, there's a clear lack of momentum behind shares of Lloyds Banking Group (LSE:LLOY), Barclays (LSE:BARC) and The Royal [...]
Bosses, learn the zen power of doing nothing May 29, 2019 Chief executives feel compelled to be constantly “doing”. There’s an underlying urgent mantra of “move quickly” and “make things happen”, high pressure played out against a backdrop of constant and accelerated change. But isn’t that just business as usual? PwC recently reported that chief executives now spend, on average, just 4.8 years in their role, [...]
Coping with our confusing and expensive childcare system May 29, 2019 Childcare is notoriously expensive in the UK. For UK parents with two children, around 46 per cent of household income goes towards childcare – the highest of all OECD countries – while prices have risen three per cent in the past year, according to the UK’s Childcare Survey 2019. “With the cost of full-time childcare [...]
