Sky’s the limit: Alibaba Cloud looks to take on Amazon as it talks up a partnership with BT July 9, 2018 Chinese tech giant Alibaba is in talks to provide its cloud services to BT, in an apparent bid to take on Amazon’s dominance of the European market. Alibaba already holds a cloud services deal with Vodafone in Germany, where its first European data centre is located. If the partnership with BT were to look similar, [...]
May’s gamble: Prime Minister faces backlash on Brexit plans July 8, 2018 Prime Minister Theresa May faces a crunch meeting tomorrow as she attempts to keep her party onside amid grumblings of a leadership challenge and a growing backlash over her newly-revealed Brexit negotiating position. May will meet Conservative backbenchers on the party’s powerful 1922 Committee to try to persuade them to back the plan, which would [...]
Big Four firm KPMG has been slammed by Britain’s accountancy watchdog June 18, 2018 Big four accountancy firm KPMG was slammed this afternoon for the “unacceptable deterioration” in the quality of its audit work. The industry’s watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), said the firm, which audited Carillion before its collapse in January, will now face increased scrutiny. Half of KPMG’s FTSE 350 audits are “in need of more [...]
Sport streaming: Will the trickle become a flood after the Premier League’s deal with Amazon? June 12, 2018 If the sports streaming revolution has to date just been a trickle, then deals struck between rights holders and online platforms in recent days suggest signs of a flood to come. Most notable was Amazon’s capture of a package of domestic Premier League rights last week, meaning that from the 2019-20 season English football’s top [...]
BT’s investors lost faith in Gavin Patterson June 11, 2018 When BT announced last month that it would cut 13,000 jobs, many wondered if it would in fact end up as 13,001. Investor patience had been wearing thin, and chief executive Gavin Patterson had been standing on thin ice for a while. From a peak of nearly 500p in November 2015, BT's share price has [...]
FTSE closes lower amid investor fears over impending G7 summit in Canada June 8, 2018 The FTSE closed down today with investors in a cautious mood for most of the day ahead of a G7 meeting this weekend. It ended 0.3 per cent lower at 7,681.07 points. Markets fell as Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin should attend the summit in La Malbaie in Quebec, Canada. Russia was expelled from what [...]
BT chief executive Gavin Patterson will step down this year as chairman says there is ‘a need for a change of leadership’ June 8, 2018 BT Group chief executive Gavin Patterson will step down at the end of the year, with a search now underway to find his successor. The telecoms giant expects to have its next chief executive in place by the second half of the year, with Patterson continuing to serve as chief executive until then. Read more: [...]
Premier League TV rights: Amazon purchases first TV rights package to show 20 live Premier League matches from 2019/2020 season June 7, 2018 Amazon will show 20 Premier League matches a season for three years from 2019, and these will be available to the tech giant’s Prime members in the UK. From the 2019/2020 season, UK Prime members will have access to watch 20 matches a season, and will show one round of midweek games in December, and [...]
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- [...]
FTSE 100 round up: Smurfit Kappa, Kingfisher, Whitbread, BT Group and Mediclinic among biggest risers May 25, 2018 The FTSE 100 closed up 20 points today on 7,737 after a late rally. That marked a slight fall on last week when the market closed on 7,778 points. The biggest risers were paper giant Smurfit Kappa, Telecoms company BT, B&Q owner Kingfisher, hospitality company Whitbread and hospital group Mediclinic, which all added at least [...]