Christmas shoppers shunned the high street, but attacking Amazon won’t help January 11, 2019 Between the fierce renewal of the Brexit saga, parliamentary shenanigans, and a particularly chilling cold front (interpret that literally or metaphorically, as you will), the merriness of Christmas feels like a thing of the past. But for the high street, it feels like Christmas never came at all. Reports of retail sales, released yesterday by [...]
HMRC claims its online tax evasion crackdown has clawed back £200m January 11, 2019 The government claims to have recovered more than £200m of lost VAT from overseas sellers since gaining new powers, saying its crackdown on online tax evasion is paying off. HMRC has issued over 4,600 ‘red flag’ notices to online marketplaces such as Amazon and Ebay since 2016. The flags, called Joint and Several Liability (JSL) [...]
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie announce divorce January 9, 2019 Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos, a novelist, have decided to divorce after a long trial separation. Read more: Apple loses crown as world's most valuable company In a joint statement on Twitter, the pair – who have been married for 25 years – said: “after a long period of loving [...]
Sears set to liquidate assets as it rejects chairman’s $4.6bn takeover bid January 8, 2019 US department store Sears could face liquidation today after failing to reach an agreement over a proposed takeover bid by chairman Edward Lampert. Sears, which also owns low-cost retailer Kmart, will ask a bankruptcy judge today if it can proceed with liquidation, Reuters reported, citing sources close to the matter. The struggling chain, which filed [...]
Apple analysts have let us down yet again January 8, 2019 Apple analysts, huh, what are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again… Yep, that’s right, I just butchered one of the most powerful lyrics of the past 50 years. Lyrics immortalised by Edwin Starr in the 1970 Vietnam protest song, but for me it kind of grabs your attention and makes the point rather [...]
Amazon becomes most valuable company after overtaking Microsoft January 7, 2019 Amazon reclaimed its crown as Wall Street’s stock market darling this evening, passing Microsoft to take the lead in a three-horse race which has seen fellow tech giant Apple fall behind in recent weeks. Microsoft’s six-week run as the largest global company by market value was ended when the bell closed on Wall Street today [...]
Brexit, ad fraud and #MeToo – what does the future year hold for the marketing industry? January 7, 2019 We are out of the cold December of 2018, and have now entered the, well, even colder January of 2019. Last year was a momentous one for the marketing industry – there was the fall and rise again of adland stalwart Martin Sorrell; the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) finally came into force; [...]
Alexa: Tell me why I can’t have a flying car like in Blade Runner January 4, 2019 Bad news: it’s 2019, and that means we are now living through the year in which the original Blade Runner film was set. Released in 1982, Blade Runner has some interesting ideas about 2019. Yes, it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian hellscape where sentient bioengineered robots (“replicants”) must be hunted down against a backdrop of a dying [...]
Record digital sales of The Greatest Showman boost UK home entertainment market January 3, 2019 Hit movie The Greatest Showman helped the UK home entertainment market grow by 10 per cent in 2018, new figures have revealed. The popular musical, which stars Hugh Jackman as the head of a circus troupe, was the best-selling film of the year, with more than 2.7m copies sold. A majority of the film's sales [...]
Amazon HQ2 – “Mr. Bezos, why didn’t you call?” January 2, 2019 | City Talk Amazon’s HQ2 search went live on 7th September 2017 and it selected the winning cities, New York and Washington, in November 2018. The Global Cities databases that we use to quantify our investments comprise exactly the data that Amazon needed to make its decision. It wasn’t just Mr Bezos’ time that was wasted. When Amazon [...]