UK North Sea explorer First Oil Expro goes into administration due to decline in brent crude price February 22, 2016 First Oil Expro, an Aberdeen-based UK North Sea oil explorer, has gone into administration. Two other oil companies, Enquest and Cairn Energy, have taken on the company's 15 per cent stake in the Kraken North Sea oil field. Enquest will now have a 70.5 per cent holding and Cairan 29.5 per cent. Parent company First [...]
Ladies who don’t lunch: Maike Currie talks to financial services entrepreneur Joanne Smith about dry January and why compliance is the “new rock ‘n roll” February 18, 2016 My lunch date with Joanne Smith, financial services veteran turned entrepreneur, is long overdue. I have been using stalling tactics and to be honest it’s due to her area of expertise: compliance. (Read: boring box-ticker.) But it’s a New Year and, cloaked in noble resolutions, I finally make the time to meet her at a [...]
Online alternative finance doubles in 2015 to £3.2bn as institutions buy into the idea February 17, 2016 The online alternative finance market almost doubled in 2015 to £3.2bn according to a report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance and innovation foundation Nesta. The market's 84 per cent growth slowed from the year before however when it increased a whopping 161 per cent. “Although the absolute year-on-year growth rate is slowing down,” the report [...]
City Moves for 16 February 2016 | Who’s switching jobs February 16, 2016 Graydon Business information specialist Graydon has announced the appointment of Rob Veneboer as its new group chief operating officer. Rob is an experienced business leader in the online information industry. In his previous role, Rob was managing director business information solutions for LexisNexis International. For 10 years, he worked for LexisNexis as managing director in [...]
Audit watchdog’s new powers signal shift February 15, 2016 The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is still dealing with the fallout from the financial crisis. The accountancy regulator has attracted criticism recently for its decision not to investigate KPMG over its role in the collapse of banking giant HBOS in 2008. Chief executive Stephen Haddrill is in the middle of drafting a response to the chairman [...]
Fraudsters are taking advantage of lonely singles on Valentine’s Day February 12, 2016 Haven't completely lost your faith in humanity yet? We suggest you sit down… Research by KPMG has found dastardly fraudsters are using dating sites to target lonely singles on Valentine's Day. In fact, according to its fraud barometer, people lost £3.2m to dating scams in 2015. One fraudster conned five women out of £180,000 – and used [...]
City Moves for 10 February 2016 | Who’s switching jobs February 10, 2016 Peel Hunt Corporate broking, trading and advisory house Peel Hunt has appointed Amy Walker and Michal Cabadaj as equity research analysts in its healthcare and life sciences team. Amy has joined from Morgan Stanley where she worked for over five years, most recently as a director of EU pharmaceuticals research. Prior to this, she led [...]
The UK’s trade deficit has widened again and London has to face up to the fact that competition for exports is getting harder February 9, 2016 As an island nation, international trade has historically been at the heart of the UK’s national identity. However, over recent decades we have been losing ground and our share of world exports. Figures released this morning by the ONS found that the UK trade deficit for goods widened yet again in 2015. While there was [...]
UK retail sales climbed in January, according to data from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG February 9, 2016 British retailers enjoyed some therapy last month as shoppers cast off the January blues and returned to the high street, according to new figures out today. UK retail sales rose by 2.6 per cent on a like-for-like basis from January 2015, when they had increased 0.2 per cent from the preceding year, according to figures from the [...]
Consulting giants, including PwC, Accenture and IBM, club together to figure out why so many women are fleeing the profession and not returning February 8, 2016 Some of the biggest names in consulting have today joined together to figure out how they can prevent high-flying women from quitting their profession. The firms – PwC, Accenture, IBM, KPMG and PA Consulting – are collaborating with the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) and She’s Back to identify why experienced women are leaving the workplace and not [...]