Air Partner takes home £11.5m from Covid-related services despite travel restrictions February 22, 2021 While most flights were grounded, aviation group Air Partner has enjoyed a profitable year, taking home £11.5m due to its ferrying of PPE throughout the pandemic. The strong profits followed the group’s buy-up of CHS Engineering (CHS) at the end of 2020, which brough new consultancy services and baggage system testing ahead of new rules [...]
Moneysupermarket profit drops as demand for travel insurance and credit products falls February 18, 2021 Moneysupermarket, the financial services price-comparison platform, suffered a fall in profit and revenue last year as lockdown restrictions caused a drop in demand for insurance and credit products. Moneysupermarket, which also owns the advice website Moneysavingexpert, said profit after tax fell 27 per cent from £94.9m in 2019 to £69.3m last year. Group revenue was [...]
LVMH founder and former UniCredit boss launch European-focused SPAC February 15, 2021 Former UniCredit chief Jean Pierre Mustier and LVMH founder Bernard Arnault are the latest to join the SPAC boom, creating a new vehicle to invest in European financial firms. Blank-cheque vehicles have grown in popularity in the past year as IPO activity fell off a cliff at the start of the pandemic. They are created [...]
Lancashire offset Covid losses with strong investment portfolio February 10, 2021 City-based insurer Lancashire left 2020 “relatively unscathed” as its investment portfolio offset nearly $150m in losses linked to the pandemic and natural catastrophes, the company announced this morning. The Group credits the positive fiscal year to its investment portfolio, which ranges from political risk to AV52 markets. Gross premiums written increased by 15.2 per cent [...]
The year the music died? Industry needs an insurance scheme or risks total collapse February 7, 2021 Over the course of the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption and harm to the live music industry. Lockdown affected physical sales. The shutting of public venues, such as restaurants and bars, caused lost revenue from background music services and performance income. Undoubtedly, significant restrictions to our everyday lives have forced the [...]
The rise of TikTok ‘finfluencers’ offers lessons for the investment industry February 2, 2021 No longer just a platform for teenage dance challenges, TikTok is becoming the number one spot for financial advice.
Rishi Sunak’s £2bn Kickstart programme creates 120,000 jobs January 25, 2021 The Treasury’s £2bn Kickstart scheme has so far created 120,000 jobs for young people since being launched last September. Kickstart, which is open for 16 to 24-year-olds, has also been modified to remove the previous threshold that forced companies to create at least 30 openings to be involved in the scheme. The programme sees UK [...]
Has Covid-19 changed the conversation around sustainable investing? January 22, 2021 Sustainable investing is not just about a company’s financial success, but how it achieves that success. The importance of considering all stakeholders is intrinsic to the approach. Those stakeholders range from employees to shareholders to wider society. The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on how companies treat their employees, protect their customers, and help [...]
Welcome to the world of decentralised finance January 19, 2021 Decentralised Finance or “DeFi” for short is an ecosystem of financial tools and services that are built on open-source networks and do not involve any centralised institutions. If you’re someone who takes an interest in the crypto space, you’ve probably heard about DeFi this year, as the space has rapidly grown from just over $600M [...]
Startup Spotlight: The top 50 London tech firms to work for January 2, 2021 From insurtech to fitness and everything in between, recruitment platform Tempo has compiled a list of the best London-based startups to work for. Companies in its “Super Startups” list have been based on the company’s mission, employee reviews and career pages. To be considered for the list the startups must have been launched after 2014, [...]