Tesco fraud fiasco leaves new SFO boss with serious questions to answer December 6, 2018 The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has had more ups and downs than Thomas Cook’s share price. When it scores a big success, like the near £500m deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with Rolls-Royce, it gets cheered to the rafters, while failures such as the Tchenguiz brothers debacle sees it dubbed the Serious Farce Office by critics. [...]
Zopa to launch digital banking service, becoming latest group to take the fight to traditional high street banks December 4, 2018 Peer-to-peer lender Zopa is to follow through on continued hints that it would launch a bank, this morning announcing that it had acquired a license to do so. The company said it will roll out a range of new banking products next year, including fixed term savings accounts, credit cards and a money management app, [...]
The activist investor revolution has begun November 30, 2018 A year ago, anyone attempting to name a FTSE 100 stock that was likely to chart a double-digit share price rise would have been unlikely to name Whitbread. With a big exposure to the British consumer, the owner of Costa Coffee and Premier Inns seemed to have too many chips stacked on the wrong part [...]
Welcome to the revolution November 29, 2018 London has the UK’s highest proportion of workers in full-time employment, each working an average of 38 hours per week. According to the Office for National Statistics, Londoners spend three more weeks at work each year than the rest of the UK. In light of these findings, City A.M. is partnering with Dropbox to collaborate [...]
Kiss goodbye to the 9 to 5 November 29, 2018 More people than ever are moving away from the 9 to 5 in favour of jobs that allow flexible working. According to conference call firm Powwownow, 75 per cent of UK employees would rather take a job that gives them the option to choose their own work schedule. This is a staggering 70 per cent [...]
Major UK banks pass ‘worst case scenario’ no-deal Brexit stress tests November 28, 2018 All of the UK’s major banks passed a beefed-up stress test as the Bank of England heralded the resilience of the UK financial system, it was revealed today. The seven banks – Nationwide, Santander UK, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Lloyds, Barclays, and RBS – had three and half times the capital ratio than before the global [...]
Tech outages at financial firms double as watchdog warns of data breach risk November 27, 2018 IT failures at financial institutions have more than doubled in the last year, the Financial Conduct Authority has revealed, as firms fight to update their legacy technology to keep apace with fintech startups. In the 12 months to October, the UK's financial firms reported a 138 per cent increase in technology outages to the FCA, as [...]
Barclays fights off cyber attack attempts every day, says digital defence head November 26, 2018 Barclays fights off attacks from cyber criminals every single day, according to the head of the bank’s cyber security operations centre. Former Europol cybercrime centre head of operations Paul Gillen told City A.M. that the number of attempts against the lender each day was “substantial”. However, the attacks vary in degree with the most common [...]
Stress in the City: How the UK’s top law firms manage employee wellbeing November 26, 2018 The legal world has been rocked by the recent suicide of a US partner which has led to an examination of the high-stress, long-hours culture prevalent in elite law firms. The widow of Sidley Austin partner Gabe MacConaill, who killed himself last month, wrote a heartbreaking open letter in the American Lawyer magazine detailing the [...]
City Moves for 22 November – who’s switching jobs at Carter Jonas, Rathbones and RBC? November 22, 2018 Who’s making moves? Carter Jonas Carter Jonas, the national property consultancy, has recruited education specialist Carolyn Puddicombe as a partner in its commercial team. Puddicombe will lead Carter Jonas’ Education business and be based predominately in the firm’s UK headquarters in London, One Chapel Place, and its regional hub office in Oxford. Carolyn will work [...]