Starling banks £75m funding round from Merian Global Investors February 13, 2019 Starling Bank, one of fintech's Big Three digital banking stalwarts, has closed a £75m funding round led by Merian Global Investors. The challenger bank said £60m was provided by Merian, formerly known as Old Mutual, which included a £19m injection from Merian's equity investment firm Chrysalis. The round was closed out with £15m from Starling's sole existing investor [...]
Five charts to gauge the environment for equities February 13, 2019 | City Talk Stock markets wax and wane. The period of time in which they move from a state of expansion (bull market) to one of contraction (bear market), before expanding again is known as the “market cycle”. Last year was an extremely difficult one for stock markets, prompting much commentary as to which ones had “corrected” (falls [...]
Is your office too cold? It may be affecting your productivity February 13, 2019 As Londoners, we like to complain about the weather – it’s one of our favourite pastimes. In fact, office smalltalk has survived on it for decades. But is it productive? With the recent snow and chilly conditions, February has firmly made its frosty presence felt, so complaints from employees about office temperatures will undoubtedly have increased. [...]
We are forgetting the vital art of constructive disagreement February 13, 2019 Disagreement is great. I wouldn’t blame you for disagreeing with me about that, especially right now, when politics is dominated by apparently intractable arguments that spill over into every aspect of our lives. But give me a minute to try and convince you. Without disagreement, nothing would ever change. Dissent from the status quo is a [...]
The UK’s fintech sector hits record level of investment as startups turn into scale-ups February 12, 2019 Investment into the UK's blossoming fintech sector broke records last year, as the country's startups reached a new stage in their growth journey. Venture capital and private equity investment in British fintech rose to an all-time high of $3.3bn (£2.6bn), up 18 per cent compared to 2017's levels, according to data published today by Innovate Finance. [...]
Dads, parenting, and the gender pay gap – equality at home will lead to fixing inequality in the workplace February 12, 2019 We have all seen the uproar caused by gender pay gaps. Transparency has helped bring about change, but discrepancies in pay will never be eliminated and workplace inequality will never end if employers don’t support equality at home. And while women must continue to be supported at work, men are the other half of the [...]
Against the tide of shareholder activism February 12, 2019 You cannot blame boardrooms today for being preoccupied, with everything from Brexit contingency planning to the prospect of a Corbyn government. Yet there is another, more pressing need for every UK listed business to be preparing for: activist investors. Shareholder activism, whereby an investor leverages their stake to put pressure on the management of a [...]
Dwindling cash points spark joint campaign to protect access to physical money February 12, 2019 Small businesses and consumers have teamed up to rail against dwindling access to physical cash, in the wake of a glut of ATM closures last year. Figures from consumer magazine Which show more than 2,500 cash points were lost in the second half of 2018, while 3,000 bank branches have shut since 2015. Read more: [...]
Wisdom of crowds: startup brings crowd funding to litigation finance February 11, 2019 When Cormac Leech, chief executive of new crowd funding litigation platform Axiafunder, is questioned about the potential 20-30 per cent returns offered to investors on its website, he doubles down. “If anything I’d say its conservatively 20-30 per cent, we would aspire to do better than that actually,” he says. Any investment offering such stellar [...]
Asset managers call on index providers to drop controversial weapons firms February 11, 2019 More than 140 asset and wealth management firms have signed an open letter calling on global index providers to remove controversial weapons companies from mainstream benchmarks. Companies including Man Group, Credit Suisse and Pictet Asset Management are among those to sign up to the initiative calling for a boycott of manufacturers of weapons such as [...]
