Five FinTech startups to watch: RBS, Lloyds and American Express back finance innovation June 17, 2015 Five tech startups seeking to disrupt the financial industry have caught the eye of some of the world's leading firms in the sector. A savings app, a company using visual cryptography to create secure passwords and a real-time sales platform for local businesses are just three of the winners in the search for startups creating [...]
A third of pensions don’t qualify for George Osborne’s “pensions revolution” June 17, 2015 A third of pensions don't qualify for new rules which allow savers to withdraw their entire pension pots, it's been reported. The investigation by the Daily Mail found as many as six million policies could be "hard to cash in", including 2.29m final salary pensions. More than half that figure is public sector pensions, while insurance [...]
Bob Diamond’s Atlas Mara sells stake in Zimbabwe private equity firm Brainworks Capital Management June 17, 2015 Atlas Mara, the Africa-focused financial services group owned by former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond, has sold its 10.1 per cent stake in Brainworks Capital Management, which describes itself as "Zimbabwe's pre-eminent private equity investment and advisory firm". Read more: Why would Bob Diamond want to buy a bank in Rwanda anyway? The deal netted [...]
London Technology Week: Britain’s brilliant at FinTech – now it must realise its global ambitions June 17, 2015 Anyone who’s seen Love Actually will remember the speech by Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister when he stands up to the US President and explains some of the unique things about Great Britain that make our nation truly great. “We may be a small country, but we're a great one, too. The country of [...]
Private equity firm TPG to move offices to Mayfair’s Park House June 16, 2015 Private equity firm TPG has signed a deal to relocate its European headquarters to a new development opposite Selfridges department store on Oxford Street. The US-based firm, which is currently based at 5-7 Carlton Gardens in London’s St James, has agreed to take the entire fifth floor of Park House on a 15-year lease, the [...]
Our verdict June 16, 2015 Since the Eurozone crisis began unfolding back in 2009, investors have been cautious about the region. This was understandable, given that it lurched from crisis to crisis every week, and Portugal’s, Greece’s and Ireland’s economies all had to be propped up with multi-billion euro rescue plans. Italy, Spain and France have also been a cause [...]
Simple ways to save your heirs from an inheritance tax headache June 16, 2015 Nearly 10 per cent of deaths will be subject to inheritance tax (IHT) by 2018-19, up from 4.8 per cent in 2013-14, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Originally designed to only be levied on the very richest, a combination of rising house prices and successive governments’ failure to substantially lift the threshold at [...]
London’s getting an insurance tech accelerator as Startupbootcamp expands FinTech startup search June 16, 2015 A new global tech accelerator has been launched London which will search for tech companies around the world which can bring new innovation to the traditional world of insurance and its well-established companies. As FinTech takes off in the capital like never before, tech accelerator Startupbootcamp has added the new sector to its roster to [...]
London Technology Week: Tech City is an awesome success story combining the best of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, New York and DC June 16, 2015 I emigrated from Silicon Valley a little more than ten years ago to work at a very young startup at the time, Skype. It was so new then that I spent months correcting friends’ pronunciation of the company name from Skype-ee to Skype. At that time I was exasperated at the dearth of candidates for [...]
Forget the doom-mongers: Investing in infrastructure is as safe as it sounds June 15, 2015 Received wisdom says that infrastructure is a safe and boring haven for long-term investors looking for yield in a low interest rate environment. Recently, however, the asset class has come under attack for being more risky than the low-yielding government bonds for which it is touted as an alternative home for investors’ cash. Even the [...]
