#Selfiemania and the giving season – Editor’s Letter Good news: 2014 has been the year of the selfie, according to Twitter. Ellen DeGeneres’ digital self-portrait on Oscar night proved the most shared message ever on the microblogging platform, where the word has been mentioned more than 92m times – a 500 per cent increase on the year before. I can well believe it, [...]
The going is tough – but so are we – Editor’s Letter The nights may be drawing in, but this time of year is still about hope shining in darkness. The latest Autumn Statement seemed the other way around: thick with uncomfortable truths beneath Osborne’s despatch-box bravado. Yet despite a stubbornly high deficit, warning lights flashing across the global economy, and business getting attacked for the sake [...]
Time to give thanks for Black Friday – Editor’s Letter This week, one American seasonal tradition is on everyone’s lips: Black Friday. Today is the day when US retailers kick off the pre-Christmas rush with a slew of discounts, and their finances are said to move back into the black as a result. This year, Brits are promised our own welter of price cuts. But [...]
The Marvel of success without a plan – Editor’s Letter November 20, 2014 WHAM! Pow! There’s been a comic book intensity to the battle of business this week, with transport app Uber drawn as the villain after unscripted swings at journalists it felt had the disruptive tech firm in their sights. But right now I’m seeing everything in four-colour terms, having just finished Sean Howe’s terrific history of [...]
Remembrance day 2014: Remembering the gift of the fallen – Editor’s Letter November 6, 2014 Around the Tower, the poppies flow, recalling crosses, row on row… In this anniversary year, as the nation recalls the outbreak of the First World War, the City has become a focus of remembrance thanks to the remarkable installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, made up of 888,246 [...]
Business is on the side of open minds – Editor’s Letter October 30, 2014 IT IS great news that Tim Cook has chosen to declare that he is proud to be gay. Unfair discrimination is abhorrent, and such high-profile statements can only help to end any lingering sense that public homosexuality is incompatible with a senior position in business life. At the same time, we should not be surprised [...]
How to change Europe for the better – Editor’s Letter October 23, 2014 Britain wants change in Europe, but we have to think harder about what change is worth having. Polling by YouGov this week showed that if David Cameron could secure a major renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU, 55 per cent would vote to stay in. The trouble is, such change is almost unimaginable, especially [...]
Why we need to talk about business – Editor’s Letter October 16, 2014 Business bashing is in vogue. This week we’ve seen regulators with self-defeating plans to rein in bankers’ pay deals, protesters at the Mipim property conference attacking international investors who buy in London (a protest better aimed at our broken planning system) and a political attack on Lord Freud for using poorly-chosen words to point out [...]
Ukip must show it can scale like Uber – Editor’s Letter October 9, 2014 In Silicon Valley, tiny businesses with big ambitions get a surprising piece of advice: start things that don’t scale. The journey to grow a disruptive giant such as AirBnB begins in a small market, doing things that baffle the outside world, winning customers with strategies that could never work across a whole country. The trick [...]
City A.M. is continuing to innovate to bring you business news with personality October 2, 2014 Who would have thought newspapers worth reading could be free? Yet today they are firmly established as a prominent feature in London’s media landscape. In less than ten years, City A.M. itself has become an essential part of the morning commute for London’s discerning professionals, with more than 100,000 copies ready for you every weekday. [...]
