Annuities heavyweights Just Retirement and Partnership Assurance unveil £670m merger as pension changes bite August 11, 2015 Annuities giant Just Retirement has announced it is buying Partnership Assurance in a £670m all-share merger, after massive changes to the UK's pension regime caused sales of annuities to plummet. Shares in Just Retirement rose 1.66 per cent to 202p in early trading, while Partnership's shares jumped 8.9 per cent to 168p on the announcement [...]
Ignore the snobs: Why crowdfunding is bringing diversity back to business August 10, 2015 Venture investors on competitive deals are used to missing out to other funds. It’s part and parcel of the industry. But last month, tech-focused VCs missed out to the crowd, as the first successful exit of a crowdfunded company returned capital to investors in E-Car Club, which sold to Europcar. E-Car Club raised funding [...]
Making a splash: Orlebar Brown founder talks bagginess, Stateside growth and being laughed at August 9, 2015 Spending two years building a business on your tod can’t be easy. But for Adam Brown, founder of swimwear and fashion brand Orlebar Brown, it turned out pretty well. Back in 2007, Brown decided to set up the company. The story of how, while at a friend’s birthday pool party in Rajasthan, which was [...]
What private client FX offers entrepreneurs – Investec Comment: August 9, 2015 Most businesses with vulnerability to foreign exchange risk – whether they’re exporters or have subsidiaries overseas – will have arrangements in place to mitigate their exposure to sharp currency moves. But what about you as an individual? As business owners and entrepreneurs become more globally-mobile, they are more likely to have overseas investments, or [...]
Pension reforms: Drawdown customers warned over scammers August 7, 2015 George Osborne's reforms to pensions, which mean people can withdraw their savings and buy, say, a Ferrari (or just shares in Lloyds Banking Group), was seen as a revolutionary move by most savers. But it seems scammers were also pretty pleased about it: now Citizens Advice has warned pensioners and pensioners-to-be to be on alert. [...]
What crowdfunding means for mini-bonds August 6, 2015 Harriet Green looks at the developing relationship between platforms and the increasingly popular debt instrument With attractive rates to be had, mini-bonds are proving increasingly popular with investors. Since maverick men’s toiletries firm King of Shaves issued the so-called Shaving Bond via an online platform in 2009, a growing number of SMEs have used [...]
World Economic Forum Tech Pioneers: Transferwise and Mike Lynch’s Darktrace among four UK firms chosen August 5, 2015 Four UK companies have been named among the most pioneering tech companies in the world by the World Economic Forum (WEF), following in the footsteps of Google and Twitter. Billion-dollar FinTech startup Transferwise and Mike Lynch's cybersecurity startup Darktrace are two of the high-profile UK companies selected by a panel of judges identifying the startups [...]
Lloyds, GSK and Vodafone: The 10 shares pension drawdown investors are buying up August 5, 2015 Four months after pension savers were given freedoms allowing them to withdraw their savings and invest it into other areas, they have yet to spend their pension pots on those Ferraris everyone was worried about when the freedoms were first announced. Or that's according to financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, anyway, which has listed the top [...]
Standard Life share price falls on hit from Osborne’s pension shake-up August 4, 2015 The insurance giant's admission that it will be hit by the government's pension shake-up sent shares down three per cent to 440.7p in mid-morning trade today. The figures In results posted this morning, Standard Life said operating profit before tax rose six per cent to £290m in the six months ended 30 June, from £274m during the same period a year earlier. The [...]
Recessions make women turn to well-paid, maths intensive careers August 4, 2015 There's nothing quite like a recession to close the gender pay gap. According to a study published by Germany's Institute for the Study of Labour, economic downturns cause a greater proportion of women to follow maths-intensive, well-paid career paths. Read more: The gender pay gap can't be closed while the Tories have their heads in [...]
