In a rush

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.

Habito founder Daniel Hegarty talks fintech mortgages, bigamy and working above a kebab shop

December 19, 2016

Many people have a career change. Before venturing into fintech, Daniel Hegarty, founder of digital mortgage broker Habito, was a professional musician, composing for TV and film and touring internationally. In 2007, he joined a few people trying to work out how to do loans on the internet in real time, in a pre-launch company [...]
Blockchain chief executive Peter Smith talks smart contracts, homelessness and starting the world’s largest bitcoin wallet

December 12, 2016

When I speak to Peter Smith, he is mid-juggling three events in as many days: a board meeting, moving his entire London team to new offices, and the office Christmas party. “We haven’t even had the office opening yet, but it’s all been fine,” he reflects. The first of these requires a day trip to [...]
Risk and reward: Adam French, co-founder of Scalable Capital, left Goldman to develop an algorithm for matching retail investors with the right ETFs

December 5, 2016

For two years, Adam French knew he was leaving Goldman Sachs. “The day I quit was quite liberating – it’s just not that easy to step away from a Goldman job,” says the former trader, and chief executive and co-founder of digital investment management firm Scalable Capital. There was no “eureka moment”, he adds – [...]
Tapdaq co-founder Ted Nash talks Fit or Fugly, app discovery, and why virtual reality is about to change our lives forever

November 28, 2016

Some people go through their whole life without finding what they’re passionate about, or only discover it later in life. I’m very fortunate because I found something I was passionate about at a very early age, and it’s become my career,” says Ted Nash, co-founder and chief executive of Tapdaq, whose platform enables app developers to [...]
Leading the charge: How to invest in the nascent, but lucrative, electric power storage sector

October 27, 2016

One word captures the holy grail for the energy industry: storage. A Carbon Trust report from March found that better energy storage could save £2.4bn a year by 2030 in the UK. If certain regulatory hurdles are overcome, this could rise to £7bn a year. New developments and innovations are coming to market all the [...]
Here’s how to make the most of investing in Apple, Amazon and major overseas players

October 27, 2016

In a globalised world, equity investors need to think big if they want to buy the world’s best companies. “There is no UK equivalent to the likes of Amazon or Facebook. The UK’s own social networking pioneer, Friends Reunited, finally closed its web doors in February this year,” says Michelle McGrade, chief investment officer at [...]
What will it take for the online lending industry to hit profitability?

October 26, 2016

Online lending has been having its Uber moment. “Platforms spend as much as they physically can to dominate, with VCs behind them pushing for that growth. But now, a lot of VCs have left. Platforms will have to go out for funding again, and we’ll see massive down rounds,” says one platform founder, speaking on [...]
CommuterClub’s co-founders talk desk dividers and the future of mobility

October 24, 2016

We sat opposite each other and, although there was a barrier between us (a physical desk divider) we’d work late into the night and bounce ideas around,” says Petko Plachkov, co-founder of travel payment plan firm CommuterClub. He’s describing working at fintech legend Clive Cowdery’s firm, the Resolution Group, with his co-founder, Imran Gulamhuseinwala. “I joined [...]
Meet Ernest: The free financial coach that sits in your Facebook

October 24, 2016

When I was at BlackRock, I spent a lot of time on tech that was designed to improve return on investment for people who already had a lot of money,” says Niall Bellabarba, co-founder of Ernest, the intelligent finance coach. “So my starting point was that the man on the street doesn’t have access to [...]
Meet the founder of Happn – the dating app putting love on the map

October 17, 2016

Nearly one in 10 Londoners use dating app Happn. A colleague who’s more in the know than I am tells me it’s “recently become enormous on Instagram” – users can upload pictures direct from one to the other, with 30 of your most recent appearing automatically on your Happn profile. And once you’ve liked someone, [...]

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