Retail tech startup behind Tesco and Argos valued at almost £70m, after scoring additional funding | City A.M. July 31, 2018 Virtualstock, a London tech startup which provides cloud-based inventory solutions for retailers like Tesco, Argos and John Lewis, today announced a further £3.4m in funding which has valued the business at almost £70m. Rene Schuster, the former chief executive of telecoms giant Telefonica in Germany, is also joining the firm as its chairman. The funds, [...]
Argos has accidentally leaked DJI’s new Mavic 2, as new drone laws come into force in the UK July 30, 2018 Fresh details about DJI's unannounced Mavic 2 drone have been printed inside an Argos catalogue, revealed as new UK drone laws today come into force. The latest version of the store's product catalogue, which went into stores last Saturday, lists details and photos of the DJI Mavic 2, as well as the Mavic 2 Pro [...]
Mastercard and Visa lose battle with supermarkets over debit and credit card charges July 4, 2018 Mastercard and Visa have lost the latest round of an ongoing legal battle with a conglomerate of supermarkets after a court found their card charges were too high and had breached competition rules. The two credit card giants had been accused by a number of retailers of charging overly high fees – known as interchange [...]
Research suggests that women are now leading the market for crypto investment June 9, 2018 New research shows that the number of women considering to invest in cryptocurrencies has doubled in the last six months. Although demand among men is starting to level out, one in eight women, almost 13 per cent, would potentially invest in the digital currencies compared to six per cent at the end of last year. [...]
Argo aims to become first main market-listed crypto-miner as it launches new mining subscription service June 9, 2018 Argo has announced that it intends to become the first crypto-miner listed on the London Stock Exchange and will launch a service which makes mining easier for clients. The originally Canada-based company, which has now launched in the UK, seeks to capitalise on the recent surge in demand for crypto-mining by launching the subscription-based service [...]
Livingstone Holdings, a software business which actually manages other businesses’ software usage, has just been bought by Carlyle for £50m June 4, 2018 Private equity giant Carlyle has today scooped up software company Livingstone Holdings, in a deal worth around £50m. Livingstone, whose customers include the likes of BT, Argos and UBS, focuses on managing how businesses purchase and use software. It covers all major vendors of software, and works with companies to find whether they are over- [...]
Police seize bitcoins from criminal hacker in first case of its kind May 25, 2018 Police have seized around half a million pounds worth of bitcoin from a “prolific” hacker in the first case of its kind for the Met. Grant West was responsible for attacks on more than 100 companies worldwide, obtaining the financial data of tens of thousands of people though phishing scams, which he would then sell [...]
Another Sainsbury’s shareholder says Asda deal “makes a lot of sense” May 3, 2018 Another Sainsbury’s shareholder has said that the proposed merger with Asda “makes a lot of sense”. Jason Doctor at Pzena Investment Management, which owns around three per cent of the supermarket’s issued shares, told City A.M. it could benefit the Sainsbury’s, Asda, and Argos brands. “The deal itself really makes a lot of sense, it’s [...]
Committee chairs Neil Parish and Rachel Reeves to ask competition watchdog to include suppliers in Sainsbury’s Asda probe May 2, 2018 Two select committee chairs have joined forces to ask the competition watchdog to include suppliers in any probe of the Sainsbury’s Asda merger. Neil Parish, the Conservative chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee, told City A.M. that he and Labour MP Rachel Reeves will ask the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) [...]
DEBATE: Would the Sainsbury’s-Asda merger be good for consumers? May 1, 2018 Would the Sainsbury’s-Asda merger be good for consumers? Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, says YES. Large deals such as these will always result in winners and losers, with suppliers and some of the competition potentially falling into the losers camp. However, it is difficult to see that consumers would be anything other [...]