Brexit threatens London’s world beating tourism industry: Don’t let the capital become a museum May 24, 2016 Tourism is one of our biggest exports – and London is the most-visited city on earth. But the industry is worried that this world-beating ranking could be at risk if Britain cuts itself off from Europe. In fact, Europe is our biggest tourist market, with more than 60 per cent of visitors to the UK [...]
Monarch Airlines considers inbound and outbound bids less than two years after Greybull flew to its rescue April 17, 2016 Monarch Airlines is considering both inbound and outbound bids less than two years after it nearly collapsed. Monarch Group has confirmed it has "generated inbound interest". And it has taken on Deutsche Bank to "evaluate both inbound and outbound opportunities". Easyjet is said to be considering a bid for the airline along with China's HNA. And [...]
Who leaked the Panama papers? April 4, 2016 How do you leak 2.6 terabytes of data? That's 11.5m records, 4.8m emails and 2.1m PDFs – 40 years worth of data, about 214,000 offshore entities and numerous famous names and faces and how they secretly arranged their taxes. The Panama papers leak is the biggest in history – but how did it ever get leaked and who was [...]
The world’s most popular cities for tourist: London comes second to Hong Kong January 28, 2016 London has come second to Hong Kong in a ranking of the world's most popular cities among tourists. Euromonitor International's annual "top city destinations ranking" covers 100 of the world's leading cities in terms of tourist arrivals. London benefited from its iconic stature, the success of the London Olympics in 2012, as well as its cultural [...]
Goldman Sachs leads $45m investment in travel website startup GoEuro December 9, 2015 Goldman Sachs is among several investors to plough millions into a travel website which compares plane, train, bus and car rental across Europe. The $45m (£30m) series B investment round for three-year-old Berlin-founded startup GoEuro was lead by the Goldman's Investment Partners arm, with further cash coming from venture capital firms and entrepreneurs. That includes London headquartered Atomico, Russian billionaire Yuri [...]
London can come out on top in the era of job-killing robots September 23, 2015 Scary, scary robots. If you believe the hype, robots are coming for your job, your society and everything you hold dear. A widely publicised report argued that 35 per cent of jobs in the UK could be destroyed by automation and computerisation (which is what “robots” have come to mean in the shorthand of [...]
Shot on iPhone: How smartphone cameras are changing the world September 14, 2015 If you've travelled on the underground in the last couple of months you might have seen some gorgeous sweeping landscapes, tumbling waterfalls and stunning vistas, all ‘Shot on iPhone 6’. A few years ago if the world’s biggest technology company wanted to do a global marketing campaign it would have hired the best photographers [...]
Why London must retain its lead as the world’s number one retail destination July 16, 2015 One thing underpins Britain’s economic recovery more than anything else: the resilience and potential of London’s economy. While the capital’s financial sector was first to feel the pain nearly a decade ago, London has also led the UK’s economic fightback – attracting global investment, growing employment and pushing up living standards. We are the world’s [...]
Mayoral candidate Ivan Massow plans to raise £400m from a London tourist tax June 16, 2015 London could rein in almost half a billion pounds in public revenue with a tourist tax, a Conservative mayoral candidate has told City A.M.. Ivan Massow, who is in the running to take over from Boris Johnson as mayor of London, believes there should be a charge a rate of £1 per star per [...]
The Eurozone will remain mired in crisis unless it faces up to the facts April 12, 2015 During my years in the trenches in Washington, my staff christened one of my favourite analytical canaries in the coalmine the “we are where we are moment”. That is, you can determine whether a crisis is actually being dealt with simply by looking at the rhetoric of the opposing forces involved. If they hadn’t moved [...]