No more new homes: housebuilding market will not recover before 2026 October 18, 2021 The UK housebuilding market will not recover until 2026, said property agent firm Savills. As reported by the Times, Savills has estimated that the volume of houses being built will not go back to pre-pandemic levels before five years and, even then, will still be 20 per cent less than the UK Government’s targets of [...]
Menopause is still a taboo subject at work, study finds October 18, 2021 Women going through menopause continue to face stigma and a lack of support in the workplace according to a new study. Just 22 per cent of workers have spoken about menopause in the workplace with research by digital health app Peppy revealing that people would rather discuss sex in the office than the symptoms women [...]
Game on: Aristocrat bets £2.7bn on takeover of gambling platform Playtech October 18, 2021 Gaming technology company Aristocrat is acquiring the entire issued and issued ordinary share capital of gambling platform Playtech for 680p in cash per share. The acquisition, made through a subsidiary of Aristocrat – Bidco – has an approximate value of £2.1bn on a fully diluted basis, with £2.7bn value on an enterprise value basis. “This [...]
Long read: Tech firm with big ideas looks set for Shift into higher gear October 18, 2021 PICTURE the scene: a living room full of boxes, two flights of stairs and a hired van parked two streets away. After multiple trips – in both senses of the word – one is inclined to be a bit fed up. It’s the sort of moment that makes you wish somebody invented an easier way [...]
Top finance brass bet on Bank of England rate hike October 18, 2021 The UK’s top finance brass are becoming increasingly confident the Bank of England will hike interest rates. Over half of chief financial officers (CFO) think rates will rise to at least 0.5 per cent by this time next year, research by Deloitte has found. Soaring inflation, driven by supply chains buckling under the weight of [...]
Crackdowns on tech mergers will only serve to deter British entrepreneurs October 18, 2021 What if Facebook had never bought Instagram? This question keeps competition regulators like the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) up at night. In 2012, Instagram had just 30m users, 13 employees, and made no money. The $1bn valuation was mocked and appeared to many to be the sign of a tech bubble ready to burst. [...]
Private equity firms rush to go green as investors dodge climate risky investments October 18, 2021 “Climate risk is investment risk,” the ESG lead at investment heavyweight BlackRock has said, as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) has outlined not only what countries need to do to hold back climate change, but what they are likely to achieve. To meet the Paris Agreement’s goals, countries will need to retire unabated [...]
Global Britain is a good policy – now we need businesses to put it into action October 18, 2021 Our economy is facing many challenges, but there is a huge opportunity too. Both the Government and business must be committed to make a success of our Global Britain mission. Following the G7 summit in Cornwall and with Cop26 just weeks away, the timing is right for business to feed into the development of what [...]
Boris Johnson won because people were tired of Brexit – bringing it back won’t help him October 18, 2021 David Frost, the UK’s Brexit Minister, used a speech last week to threaten to suspend parts of his own Brexit deal with the EU unless changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol could be agreed. The speech has ratcheted up tensions on a debate that had largely dropped off the agenda since the outset of the [...]
Aristocrat to buy Playtech in gaming industry cash acquisition – CityAM : CityAM October 18, 2021 Gaming technology company Aristocrat is acquiring the entire issued and issued ordinary share capital of gambling platform Playtech for 680p in cash per share. The acquisition, made through a subsidiary of Aristocrat – Bidco – has an approximate value of £2.1bn on a fully diluted basis, with £2.7bn value on an enterprise value basis. “This [...]
