One in three British firms to restructure business to cope with post-Brexit environment August 23, 2021 Almost one in three medium-sized businesses are going to have to drastically change their operations to cope with the new post-Brexit UK-EU trading relationship, according to new figures published today. Research by accountancy firm BDO reveals 32 per cent of mid-sized businesses think they need to alter their business model to remain viable amid the [...]
Happy investors: M&S shares jump after lifting full-year profit forecast August 20, 2021 British high street staple Marks & Spencer has lifted its profit guidance to around £350m for the year as its sales have begun to recover, inching towards its pre-pandemic recordings. The upbeat trading update seemingly left investors with a fresh bout of confidence in the retail heavyweight, as M&S shares jumped by 11.14 per [...]
Veolia lures HGV drivers with £1,500 sign-on bonus as shortage swells to 100,000 August 19, 2021 French multinational Veolia told City A.M. this afternoon it is offering a £1,500 bonus for HGV drivers to join its waste collection operations across London. The move comes as businesses across the country are experiencing a drop in trained HGV drivers due to a combination of factors from Brexit, Covid-19 and a testing backlog. The [...]
City figures warn London’s financial crown at risk if UK does not roll out digital Sterling August 18, 2021 City figures have warned that London’s status as Europe’s financial capital will be in serious jeopardy if the Treasury and Bank of England are slow to introduce digital Sterling. Rishi Sunak said last month that the Treasury was looking into one day releasing a so-called “Britcoin”, but that no decision had been made. Sunak said [...]
Editorial: America First vs Global Britain August 18, 2021 On Tuesday night Joe Biden shirked the blame from the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. The speed of the Taliban’s takeover was unexpected, the President said – a sole admission of any miscalculation. Biden took the reins of a Trump-era decision and mangled it into a foreign policy catastrophe for the US and [...]
Wealthy City bankers ‘ditched the UK for the EU ahead of Brexit,’ survey finds August 18, 2021 Almost a hundred highly paid bankers left the UK ahead of its formal exit from the EU, the bloc’s banking watchdog said today, in a sign of how Brexit has impacted the Square Mile. The European Banking Authority (EBA) said in its annual survey of bankers earning more than €1m (£850,000) that the UK’s total [...]
Post-Brexit trade: Irish exports to Britain jump by 70 per cent August 17, 2021 Irish goods exports to Great Britain increased by nearly 70 per cent in the last year, according to new figures published in Ireland today. The figures, released by the Irish Central Statistics Office, also show that goods imports from Great Britain to Ireland dropped by 32 per cent in the first half of 2021 – [...]
Exclusive: Brexit and Covid spark UK workforce rethink as war on talent heats up August 17, 2021 Nearly half of British business leaders fear losing the UK’s best talent abroad following the pandemic and Brexit, according to new research shared exclusively with City A.M. this morning. The complexity of the decisions facing leadership as they define the next era of the workplace is illustrated in the research’s findings. For a starter, 29 [...]
Paradise at National Theatre: Kae Tempest play a partial success August 13, 2021 Everything old is new again. The National Theatre is back with its first full-capacity show since lockdown, and like the Young Vic it has decided to run with a modern reimagining of a work from antiquity. Directed by Ian Rickson, with a script by the Ted Hughes Award-winning and Mercury Prize-nominated spoken word artist Kae [...]
Datasite executive Merlin Piscitelli on the UK’s fintech funding boom and the future of M&A August 13, 2021 British fintech investment across M&A deals, private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) has boomed as the country emerges from the pandemic, soaring in the first six months of 2021 to four times the $5.9bn invested during the whole of 2020. Investment in UK fintech has reached an all-time high as firms in the industry [...]