Kantar appoints former Heineken bigwig as new chief executive October 19, 2020 Market research giant Kantar has tapped a former Heineken boss as its new chief executive, marking the first major appointment by new owner Bain Capital. Alexis Nasard, who currently leads Swiss shoemaker Bata, will take over as chief executive on 30 December. He previously served as global chief marketing officer at Heineken and worked for [...]
BA and Virgin bag £70m of taxpayer money to fly PPE back from China October 16, 2020 British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have been paid more than £70m of taxpayer money to ferry personal protective equipment (PPE) to the UK from China, as the government scrambles to stock up supplies in time for winter. BA, which is the second-largest airline in the UK, was handed £46m between May and July through a [...]
This week’s legal roundup October 7, 2020 Charles Kerrigan, Partner at CMS Law writes today’s legal briefing which is a sports roundup up of progress towards institutional acceptance of digital assets. These stories are unrelated except that they show the range of important constituents working on these questions at the same time. Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, gave [...]
Raab: China and Russia ‘took advantage’ of Covid to break international law October 6, 2020 China and Russia have used the Covid pandemic to carry out cyber attacks and clamp down on human rights, according to foreign secretary Dominic Raab. Raab said today that the “usual suspects” of Iran, Russia and China have tried to “take advantage of the crisis”, with Beijing’s Hong Kong clamp down used as an example. [...]
In full: PM Boris Johnson’s Tory conference speech in full October 6, 2020 Boris Johnson took the stage Tuesday for the Tories’ virtual party conference, announcing policies on 1:1 teaching and low-deposit mortgages, but also promising to unleash the private sector. Here’s the text in full. Good morning conference, I want to begin by thanking you for everything you did at the election, pounding the streets in the [...]
The government is still dragging its feet on gender recognition October 6, 2020 Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel, and for the second group, each passing day must make the thought of retreating to the bunker with the wine and olives increasingly appealing. Still, we are presented now and then with cause for optimism, an example of which presented [...]
Don’t sacrifice company culture on the remote working altar September 25, 2020 The UK recession, like its predecessors, will cause massive shifts in the market: new startups will be born (just as Airbnb, Uber, and Whatsapp were last time); many SMEs will be forced to adapt, refine, and then rebuild; and larger companies, spanning sectors as broad as property, law and finance, will find the pandemic era brings [...]
Swiss regulator starts action against Credit Suisse over spying claims September 2, 2020 Switzerland’s financial supervisor has opened enforcement proceedings against Credit Suisse over a spying scandal that led to the ousting of former chief executive Tidjane Thiam and tarnished its reputation. The move by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) intensifies the regulatory pressure on Credit Suisse and follows the completion of a review of the [...]
Share and share alike: electronically? August 28, 2020 Where – if you’re lucky enough to own shares – do you store the paperwork? A drawer? The attic? Share certificates – possessed by millions of Britons – and dividend cheques seem on a path becoming obsolete. A trend towards digital delivery of shareholder-related communications means that the era of private investors filing away their [...]
Four more years? Trump’s campaign begins at the Republican convention August 27, 2020 Most casual observers will have noticed little from the Republican National Convention beyond the odd social media clip of a screeching Kimberly Guilfoyle or teary-eyed Donald Trump Jr. While many will laugh off the bizarre and sometimes frightening rhetoric – Guilfoyle’s speech in particular would not be out of place at a Pyongyang military parade [...]