The Long Weekend: There’s more to Geneva than conference centres, including the La Réserve Geneva may be a business capital from Monday to Friday, but there's something for the weekend here too. The weekend: Witness the scrum for hand-luggage space on Friday night flights from Geneva to London City Airport and you’d be forgiven for thinking the city simply kicked its residents out when the international organisations and private [...]
Prodigal Londoners outspend the rest of the country by hundreds of thousands London households can expect to burn through £2.3m over the course of a lifetime, dwarfing the UK’s average expenditure by almost half a million. Investment manager Tilney unveiled the discrepancy in its Cost of Tomorrow Report, which also revealed that the average British household has spent their first million by the age of 50, while [...]
Enterprise Inns becomes Ei as managed pub strategy pays off Enterprise Inns becomes Ei as managed pub strategy pays off Britain’s biggest pub owner Enterprise Inns expects to deliver full-year financial results in line with expectations after like-for-like income growth of 1.6 per cent in the 18 weeks to February 2017. Announcing a name change to Ei Group, the pub owner said its expansion strategy [...]
Blame game over cyber crime leaves listed companies wide open to attacks February 9, 2017 A shocking disconnect between IT heads and their C-suite bosses means both expect each other to take responsibility for information security breaches, aerospace giant BAE Systems has revealed. While 50 per cent of IT decision makers would blame senior executives in the event of a breach, the most popular response amongst business leaders asked the [...]
Self-inflicted sickies and write-off days cost UK economy £73bn February 9, 2017 Workers in the UK forfeit more than a month productivity each year through absence and underperformance caused by illness, according to Vitality. The new analysis of the insurer’s Britain's Healthiest Workplace survey – carried out by researchers from Cambridge University, RAND Europe and Mercer – lays the blame squarely on employees, with half of days off caused by [...]
Retail M&A slowdown as private equity backs away from high street January 30, 2017 The value of UK retail mergers sunk to a three-year low in 2016, with just 36 mergers agreed – down from 47 in 2015 according to law firm RPC. The new figures released today suggest that total deal values have also slumped from £20.7bn down to just £4.7bn, a decline which outpaced a post-Brexit slowdown [...]
Weetabix to invest £30m keeping up with appetite for healthy breakfast January 30, 2017 The UK’s top-selling cereal brand has announced plans to increase production capacity at sites in Burton Latimer and Corby by 2018. The investment will allow Weetabix to boost manufacturing volumes in response to a rise in the brand’s UK cereal and drinks market share from 15.3 to 16.4 per cent in 2016. Rising sales of [...]
How 1.5 per cent of UK businesses created 780,000 jobs last year January 30, 2017 Medium-sized British businesses created 780,000 jobs in 2016 and increased profits by 19 per cent, according to new figures released by accountants BDO in a report into the sector’s growth prospects. The increase was a striking improvement on annual profit growth between 2011 and 2015, which averaged less than one per cent a year while [...]