Next shares rise after Christmas shopping frenzy January 6, 2026 Next shares jumped on Tuesday after the high street staple toasted another frenzied Christmas shopping period. The FTSE 100 group’s stock soared as much as 5 per cent to 14,265 pence, with shares now up by almost a fifth over the past six months after it hailed a 10.6 per cent jump in fourth-quarter full [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Next gets Christmas boost; JLR sales crash after cyber attack January 6, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City AM liveblog. British defence stocks were taken for a ride on Monday after rising geopolitical tensions put heightened investor appetite. It was the City’s defence giants Babcock and BAE leading the FTSE 100 to start the week, alongside gold miners who were benefiting from the surging price [...]
Employers brace for more layoffs as headcount expectations drop January 6, 2026 Employers are preparing to lay off more staff as higher payroll costs from taxes and red tape are hitting headcount expectations, an industry survey has found. The Institute of Directors’ monthly business confidence survey showed that headcount expectations dropped in December after Rachel Reeves’ Budget unveiled a salary sacrifice cap and higher taxes on airports [...]
Labour pencils £210m cyber plan to curb escalating attacks January 6, 2026 The UK government has unveiled a £210m cyber action plan aimed at shoring up the public services, as ministers face mounting pressure to respond to a sharp rise in attacks on major British businesses. The plan, published on Tuesday, comes amid a backdrop of high-profile cyber incidents that hit retailers including M&S, Co-op and Jaguar [...]
Starmer promised to ‘rewire the state’ so why is the civil service bigger? January 6, 2026 Civil service headcount has reached a 20-year high, bigger than it was during Brexit or Covid. Yet more proof that this Prime Minister’s only belief is in bigger government, says Eliot Wilson When Sir Keir Starmer appointed a new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service at the end of 2024, he made a [...]
2025 was set to be the year of AI agents. It was not. January 6, 2026 At the end of 2024, just over a year ago today, tech behemoth and OpenAI boss Sam Altman predicted that AI agents would completely upturn the workplace before year end. AI agents are software programmes which break down any given task into smaller, more manageable steps, allowing them to devise and execute them with little [...]
I’m an AI expert, so how did I get gaslit by ChatGPT? January 6, 2026 If Lewis Liu, AI founder and safety expert, was left questioning himself then we’re all at risk of losing our sense of reality and the diversity of thought to convincing, lowest-common-denominator Generative AI output Last month on Jimmy Fallon’s show, Sam Altman said he asks ChatGPT about every minor detail for raising his baby: “I [...]
Interpath and beyond: The surge of private equity investment in professional services January 5, 2026 It was revealed this morning that Big Four giant KPMG’s former restructuring division, Interpath Advisory, was in exclusive negotiations with Bridgepoint to acquire a majority stake in its business, the latest in a string of private equity deals in the professional services sector. KPMG sold the arm to private equity group HIG Capital in 2021 for £400m. [...]
WP Engine Appoints Google Veteran Thierry Muller as Vice President of AI Products January 5, 2026 Accomplished leader brings extensive technical acumen, artificial intelligence experience and a strong track record of driving innovation
TII Launches Falcon Reasoning: Best 7B AI Model Globally, Also Outperforms Larger Models January 5, 2026 Falcon H1R 7B Packs Advanced Reasoning into a Compact 7 Billion Parameter Model Optimized for Speed and Efficiency TII’s Latest AI Model Outperforms Larger Rivals from Microsoft, Alibaba, and NVIDIA on Key Benchmarks