How a viral TikTok video about Prosecco helped Lidl record its busiest ever sales day January 9, 2023 Emma D’Arcy’s viral TikTok Negroni Sbagliato fad helped budget supermarket Lidl achieve its busiest day of trading in its 28-year history after sales of booze skyrocketed. The discount retailer recorded its busiest day ever on Friday 23rd December following a surge in customers switching over from more expensive rivals. The record trading came as [...]
UK class-action lawsuits against Google, Apple and Sony see value of competition claims surge to £26bn January 9, 2023 The value of UK competition class-actions surged last year, according to new data published today, following the filing of a series of multi-billion-pound claims against some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Apple, Google and Sony. The value of class-action lawsuits filed in the UK over claims around anti-competitive behaviour surged six-fold over the [...]
UK public procurement reforms could create £4bn ‘accountability gap’, campaigners warn January 8, 2023 Plans to overhaul the UK’s public procurement processes risk creating an “accountability gap” around the use of public funds, anti-corruption campaigners have warned. The plans, which aim to make it easier for small businesses to win contracts from the UK government, seek to simplify the country’s procurement processes and make them easier to navigate. The [...]
EY builds £2bn war chest to fund M&A spree for newly-separated consulting arm January 8, 2023 EY is creating a $2.5bn war chest to finance acquisitions of consulting businesses as it pushes ahead with plans to spin off its advisory arm into an entirely separate firm. The Big Four accounting firm is setting aside a sum of $2.5bn (£2.07bn) to fund an M&A spree for its newly-separated consulting arm, with a [...]
FTSE 350 firms up spending on ‘carbon offsets’ in race to net zero January 8, 2023 The UK’s top listed companies are increasingly using carbon offsets to achieve their net zero goals, new research shows. The vast majority (96 per cent) of Britain’s FTSE 350 companies have already upped expenditure on carbon credits over the past 24 months, while almost half (47 per cent) intend to increase spending dramatically over the [...]
Putin: Raab to host London conference on Russian ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine January 7, 2023 London will host a major international conference led by Dominic Raab on Russia’s alleged war crimes during Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The meeting will see justice secretary Dominic Raab join forces with Dutch justice minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius to co-host the conference in London’s Lancaster House. The conference aims to coordinate efforts to ensure the [...]
Use of AI apps is fuelling plagiarism, as barrister warns more needs to be done to stop online exam cheating January 6, 2023 Artificial intelligence apps, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, could make the UK’s exam cheating problem worse, a top barrister who works on student appeals has warned. Increasingly sophisticated AI models are now able to produce “decent, plagiarism-free answers to a wide range of questions,” Daniel Sokol, a barrister at 12 King’s Bench Walk, said in [...]
Boom in law firm partner hires set to subside in 2023 as recession hits January 5, 2023 The boom in law firm partner hires seen over the previous year is set to subside in 2023 as the UK economy slides into recession, according to a new report. The global economic downturn is set to hit law firm’s revenues, in a shift that is in turn set to cool the partner hiring market, [...]
Data on firms that took UK Covid loans to remain secret, tribunal rules January 5, 2023 Information on thousands of small businesses that received taxpayer-backed loans during Covid-19 will remain confidential, a tribunal has ruled. The decision to keep the names of companies that took support during Covid a secret comes after a tribunal blocked an anti-corruption campaign group’s bid to obtain the data through a Freedom of Information (FoI) request. [...]
Lack of prosecutors threatens to worsen England and Wales’ Crown Court backlogs, Criminal Bar Association warns January 5, 2023 A shortage of prosecutors in the UK’s criminal justice system threatens to worsen the backlogs in the country’s Crown Courts, the head of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has warned. A record number of criminal cases are now being halted due to a lack of prosecutors willing and able to work, CBA chair Kirsty Brimelow [...]
