By: Harriet Green

I am City A.M.'s deputy business features editor. I look after the Entrepreneurs page, Alternative Finance and our Office Politics section. I also help out with the Forum, running our daily debate. I have a special interest in distributed ledger technology. Prior to working at City A.M., I ran a social enterprise.

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Alternative finance in 2016: Why the latest industry report tells us it’s now too big to ignore

February 18, 2016

The growth of the alternative finance market is slowing. In 2015, it grew by 84 per cent compared to the 2013-14 rate of 161 per cent. This is the headline finding from Pushing Boundaries, the annual alternative finance report from Judge Business School’s Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) and Nesta, which was released yesterday. But [...]
Consumer’s guide to blockchain: How the cryptocurrency will revolutionise life for the consumer

February 18, 2016

When I spoke to Peter Kirby, chief executive of blockchain startup Factom, he laughed when I described myself as a “blockchain traditionalist”. I meant that I still think of blockchain as the technology that made bitcoin credible – a peer-to-peer distributed ledger which immutably logs all transactions. This all sounds like jargon, so what does [...]
Innovative Finance Isa: A guide to the new product and what it means for investors

February 18, 2016

In less than two months, the Innovative Finance Isa will be launched, enabling savers to hold peer-to-peer (P2P) loans within the tax efficient wrapper. Hailed as the moment the P2P industry will chassé into the mainstream, research suggests it’ll also be popular with savers. According to research by P2P lending platform ThinCats, one in four [...]
Falanx Group’s John Blamire talks listing a shell company, intelligent fridges and going from army officer to entrepeneur

February 15, 2016

I think I’d just been given one too many orders,” laughs John Blamire, founder of Falanx Group. The entrepreneur spent the first chunk of his career as an officer in the British Army, serving in Northern Ireland, Iraq and the Falklands. In 2001, he was responsible for creating a strategic-level intelligence unit in a high-risk [...]
How blockchain will save us from the perils of central bank price fixing

February 12, 2016

Many countries have experimented with price fixing and central planning over the last century. Right now, Venezuela’s government is fixing the prices of many products. This has resulted in widespread shortages of goods which we, as the lucky inhabitants of semi-free economies, take for granted. Price fixing has failed in every area of the economy [...]
Google tax row: It’s high time MPs grew up

February 12, 2016

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has become a vehicle for grandstanding, showboating and political profile-building over recent years. It was perhaps unsurprising, then, to see the latest cohort of MPs on the much-feared PAC sink to a new low during yesterday’s questioning of Matt Brittin and Tom Hutchinson, Google’s EMEA president and vice president responsible [...]
Don’t dump upfront pensions tax relief: Why a Pensions Isa won’t drive people to save

February 12, 2016

A pensions revolution may truly be upon us. Hats off then to City A.M. whose reporting has led the way in publicising the Treasury’s activities in advance of potential changes to how Britain incentivises pension saving. The lurid comparison with Gordon Brown and his 1997 abolition of dividend tax credits made by former pensions minister Steve [...]
Why P2P lending is getting ever more robust – and why Adair Turner is wrong about the industry

February 11, 2016

Former Financial Services Authority chairman Adair Turner took a potshot at the P2P lending industry yesterday, stating that “the losses which will emerge from peer-to-peer lending over the next five to 10 years will make the bankers look like lending geniuses”. More specifically, he expressed his concern at the credit checking P2P and debt-base crowdfunding platforms [...]
Online security risks: Here are three you’re probably taking

February 10, 2016

Despite the ongoing business focus on investing in strong cyber security, one of the greatest causes of data breaches is often ignored – employees themselves. According to a 2014 report by IBM, 95 per cent of IT security breaches are caused by human error. There is a lot to be learnt about security, and it’s [...]
Why modern managers need these five vital old-school skills

February 9, 2016

Managers have been around for millennia. But even with this much collective experience, the Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) research shows that four in five are still “accidental managers” – those that find themselves in the role without proper practice or training. Some insight into why is provided by the finalists of CMI’s Management Book of [...]

High Court to hear Reform’s challenge on cancelled council elections

Premier League boom ‘masking’ English football’s financial woes, says BDO

Cirque du Soleil OVO, Royal Albert Hall review: Amazing tricks, okay clowns

By: Harriet Green

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