Groupon’s share price rises as it reveals plans to cut 1,100 jobs as part of global restructure September 22, 2015 Groupon is planning to cut 1,100 jobs as part of a global restructure of the vouchers company. The restructure, which has been approved by Groupon's board, will cost up to $35m, of which between $22m and $24m will come into play in the third quarter of the current financial year. “Substantially all of [...]
Interest-only loans are going out of fashion, as number of current loans drop 16 per cent September 22, 2015 Repeated warnings that interest-only mortgages are a "ticking time bomb" appear to be filtering through to the market, with figures out this morning showing a 16 per cent drop in the number of such loans outstanding. A quarter of the reduction is the result of loans reaching maturity and being redeemed while a further 40 [...]
Sainsbury’s beats Tesco, Asda and Morrisons as only top supermarket in growth while Kantar warns of impact Amazon Fresh will have on sector September 22, 2015 Yet more bad data for the Big Four was released today – plus a hint that there could be a fresh problem facing the UK's supermarket sector, in the form of Amazon Fresh. Sainsbury was the only supermarket among the Big Four to keep pace with the sector's growth over the last quarter, with Asda's [...]
Yanis Varoufakis to Matteo Renzi: Europe bullied and blackmailed Alexis Tsipras, but you still haven’t got rid of me September 22, 2015 Greece's former finance minister and one-time golden boy Yanis Varoufakis has hit back at his critics, claiming Europe's leaders 'bullied' Alexis Tsipras into agreeing the final terms of the bailout this summer. In an open letter to Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the game theorist claims Tsipras was subject to "unbearable bullying, to naked blackmail, [...]
Volkswagen’s emissions scandal spreads to South Korea as experts warn “millions” of European cars could be affected September 22, 2015 There was no let up from the scandal engulfing the world's largest car manufacturer Volkswagen this morning as it emerged that the emissions-rigged cars could have been sold around the world. Experts have warned that "millions" of cars on British roads could be recalled on the back of the claims that it had installed a [...]
Morrisons hires former supplier Express Dairies and Arla Foods boss Neil Davidson as non-executive director September 22, 2015 Morrisons' chair of the corporate compliance and responsibility committee Penny Hughes is stepping down after six years, to be replaced by former supplier Neil Davidson. Hughes will leave the board at the end of the calendar year "as a natural part of planned board succession", the supermarket said this morning. Davidson will join the board [...]
Treasury Select Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie MPs demands proof that taxpayer is getting value for money in RBS sale September 21, 2015 Treasury Select Committee (TSC) chairman Andrew Tyrie is demanding to see what advice the government received from UK Financial Investments – the agency that manages the public stake in bailed-out banks – before it started to sell off shares in Royal Bank of Scotland last month. Tyrie has written to James Leigh-Pemberton, executive chairman of [...]
House of Fraser poaches John Lewis’ chief technology officer Julian Burnett September 21, 2015 House of Fraser has poached John Lewis' technology boss as its new chief information officer. Julian Burnett will join the business from its rival department store, where he had been chief technology officer for the past three years, on 5 October, taking on the reins from interim Peter Marsden. He will join the executive [...]
Skype down: Global outage, chat issues and status problems hit Microsoft’s video calling platform across UK, Europe and US September 21, 2015 Video calling platform Skype has been hit by a global outage that has locked users out for several hours. The problems first surfaced just before 9:30am on Monday morning (21 September) but were still affecting the Microsoft-owned system internationally well into the afternoon. According to user site Down Detector, there have been thousands of reported [...]
UK skills gap: Our lack of “interpersonal skills” such as empathy is turning us into robots September 21, 2015 By now we all know that our jobs could be taken by robots – but a new report claims that we are already acting like automatons, and it's hurting our business life. A study of 1,000 people found that while "almost 100 per cent" had technical and computer skills, very few were able to pass [...]
