WH Smith: High-flyer divides City April 24, 2019 | City Talk By Graeme Evans from interactive investor. Latest results are fuel for another assault on a record high. Here’s why Smith splits the Square Mile. With £1 billion worth of dividends or buybacks since 2007, WH Smith (LSE:SMWH) shareholders can have few complaints about the retailer’s tried and tested strategy when it comes to selling stationery, [...]
An office romance may be fun, but don’t burn your career on the flames of passion April 24, 2019 Office relationships happen. Given how much time we spend at the office, it doesn’t come as a surprise when some people develop friendships, crushes, or even fall in love – Melinda and Bill Gates being a prime example. Friendships which remain platonic within the office are great and can last for a lifetime. A report [...]
The coming squeeze on US profits April 24, 2019 | City Talk Progress on US-China trade talks has seen investors’ concerns about a trade war fade, and be replaced instead by worries about economic growth and politic risks. The real concern for equity investors, ultimately, is how slower growth will be reflected in company profits. In 2018 markets were driven by stronger corporate earnings, but share prices [...]
A year of two halves? April 23, 2019 | Sponsored Alex Crooke, Fund Manager of the Bankers Investment Trust, explains how the team is preparing for a different investment landscape in the second half of 2019. It’s in our nature as fund managers to continually contemplate about the future, but the level and scope of uncertainty facing investors today is almost unprecedented. What’s disappointing is [...]
Men more likely than women to negotiate big pay rises, study finds April 23, 2019 Men are more likely to negotiate and ask for bigger pay rises than women are, according to a survey released today. Only four in ten women felt comfortable asking for a big pay rise, compared to two-thirds of men, job site CV-Library's survey of 1,200 working professionals found. Read more: UK inflation rate holds steady [...]
Why Vodafone is still backed to hit 250p April 23, 2019 | City Talk By Graeme Evans from interactive investor. Some sense a shift in the balance towards more favourable news at the start of the new financial year. Despite a fruitful start to 2019 for most FTSE 100 index stocks, the mood of many investors will have been tempered by further uncertainty over the prized dividend at Vodafone [...]
A four-day week would boost efficiency, productivity, health and wellbeing April 23, 2019 With the Easter bank holidays behind us and more to come in May, we are enjoying a season of four-day weeks. But walk through any BizSpace business centre on a Friday, and you could be forgiven for thinking that every week is a four-day week. Many of our customers, most of whom work for themselves [...]
Leaving the legacy behind: Meet the tech company that could put a stop to the banks’ IT failures April 23, 2019 IT meltdowns are becoming dangerously common among the big banks. According to Which, at least one British bank suffered an IT failure every day during the last nine months of 2018. TSB’s outage last year, which left 1.9m customers locked out of their accounts and cost the bank £330m, demonstrates how catastrophic these IT issues can [...]
DEBATE: Is Corbyn right that Statutory Assessment Tests (Sats) should be scrapped in primary schools? April 23, 2019 Is Corbyn right that Statutory Assessment Tests (Sats) should be scrapped in primary schools? Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, says YES. In a YouGov survey of primary school leaders last month, 93 per cent agreed that English and maths are prioritised to the detriment of other subjects, such as music, art, [...]
We are at the big data frontier – we’re going to need some rules April 23, 2019 We create data all the time, even if we don’t realise it. Whether from social media use, video-watching habits, satellite images, traffic flows, or location data from smart devices, companies are increasingly able to use this information to extrapolate trends and capitalise on behaviour patterns. This has driven change across many industries, but it’s of [...]
