Octopus Ventures leads seed funding round in pet-tech firm Katkin October 28, 2020 London-based pet food company Katkin has secured £4.5m of funding in a seed round led by venture capital firm Octopus Ventures. Katkin was set up by siblings Brett and Nikki O’Farrell to produce healthy cat food after realising the options available didn’t provide cats with the nutrition they needed. The wet food contains 95 per [...]
Guinness brews up strong brand performance with alcohol-free beer October 28, 2020 Global drinks company Diageo recently announced an alcohol-free version of Guinness in Britain and Ireland, with a global rollout set for 2021. “Guinness 0.0” will initially go on sale in supermarkets and off-licences, with pubs and restaurants to follow later in the year. Data from YouGov Plan & Track indicates that the move, in conjunction [...]
Mercedes-Benz to take 20 per cent stake in embattled British icon Aston Martin October 28, 2020 Mercedes-Benz will take a 20 per cent equity stake in beleaguered Aston Martin, the iconic British carmaker announced this afternoon.
Woolworths may not be making a return, but our love of retail is October 28, 2020 Admit it, you did it, I did it, we all did it at least once — pinching from the pick n mix at your local Woolworths. And sadly, all that came to an end in December 2008, when all remaining Woolworths stores were shuttered for good. As a nation we mourned. We mourned the loss [...]
Tough on dirty money? The UK has a way to go October 28, 2020 In 2016, the National Crime Agency estimated that £90bn is laundered via London each year. The UK government’s response was swift, with a commitment to “block dirty money flowing into the City of London”. It unveiled radical plans to “overhaul the approach to tackling economic crime, with greater partnering between the government, law enforcement and [...]
Forget the polls endorsing lockdowns and look at how people actually behave October 28, 2020 Economics is at long last storming the bastions of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). This citadel of epidemiologists and health professionals has for many months resisted the lessons which the so-called gloomy science can bring. In the context of Covid-19, economics is in fact a beacon of hope. This week, news broke of [...]
For the millions in digital poverty, local lockdowns mean utter isolation October 28, 2020 The debate around levelling up and the UK’s North/South divide has been reignited with a vengeance. With Greater Manchester pushed into Tier 3 last week along with Lancashire, and Warrington following yesterday, by the end of this week eight million people will be living under the strictest set of lockdown rules, predominantly in the north [...]
The Trump train hits Pennsylvania: A day in the key US election swing state October 27, 2020 Billy Joel’s 1982 song Allentown tells the tale of disaffected steel industry cities in North East Pennsylvania that were ravaged by deindunstrialisation and globalisation. Joel talks about blue collar workers from places like Allentown and Bethlehem that were left unemployed and pushed to the fringe of American culture in exchange for cheaper labour and products. [...]
Post-furlough job losses hit young and minority workers hardest, study shows October 27, 2020 One in five young people and more than one in five black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) workers who were furloughed during lockdown have since lost their jobs, according to a new report. A survey of more than 6,000 Brits by the Resolution Foundation think tank showed that while the furlough scheme curbed unemployment levels [...]
Microsoft beats revenue forecasts on cloud computing growth October 27, 2020 Microsoft posted a rise in revenue for the first quarter as the ongoing shift to home working helped drive up demand for its cloud computing services. Microsoft reported revenue of $37.2bn (£28.5bn) for the three months to the end of September, up 12 per cent on the same period last year and ahead of analysts’ [...]
