Capita wins £145m congestion charge contract ahead of toll-hike January 14, 2014 Capita, which helped set up the congestion charge for London in 2003, has won back the contract to run the scheme, five years after losing it to IBM. The outsourcing group reckons the contract is worth £145m in revenues over five years – meaning it’s likely to make up just 0.9 per cent of Capita’s annual [...]
MPs stand up for British institutions after French Embassy slurs January 14, 2014 Last week, City A.M. editor Allister Heath wrote this piece: France’s failed socialist experiment is turning into a tragedy In response, the French Embassy has launched something of an (un)diplomatic rejoinder: 10 accounts on which City A.M. has got it wrong on France The embassy has levelled that France has a better health service, roads, [...]
Capita wins back congestion charge contract January 14, 2014 Outsourcing giant Capita is to take over running the London congestion charge scheme. The five-year deal with Transport for London is expected to make the company £145m in revenue. Capita ran the initial congestion charge scheme from 2003 but lost the contract to IBM in 2009. According to a statement this morning, the firm [...]
HS2 firm spent £300m on rail link since 2011 January 12, 2014 THE COST of building HS2, the new high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, could spiral out of control, a campaign group has warned. The Taxpayers’ Alliance has published figures showing that HS2 Ltd, the publically-funded company set up to develop the rail link, has spent £300m since January 2011. Of this figure, over £1m [...]
Activist to pitch breakup plan to First’s investors January 12, 2014 AN INVESTOR pushing for change at FirstGroup will try to sell his break-up plan to other shareholders this week, paving the way for a heated capital markets day later in the month. Thomas Sandell, whose hedge fund revealed a three per cent stake in FirstGroup in November, will this week be in London to set [...]
Gimme 5 January 12, 2014 …FREE APPS FOR ENTREPRENEURS Asana asana.com/apps WHAT: Task management app offering real-time interaction across a company. WHY: “I can get more done with less effort. It keeps me on the pulse of what’s going on back at the office,” says Will Swannell, founder of venue booking service Hire Space. Citymapper citymapper.com WHAT: A transport app [...]
Serco awarded extension to run Boris Bikes January 9, 2014 SERCO, the beleaguered outsourcing firm under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), yesterday said it has won a £38m two-year contract extension with Transport for London (TfL) to manage and operate the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme. The original contract to design, build and operate the service – commonly known as Boris Bikes, named after [...]
Why geography matters when selecting an MBA course January 8, 2014 Business has gone global and business schools have followed, with most now claiming to offer international reach IN GREATER numbers, business school applicants are looking beyond the UK and US to study their Masters of Business Administration (MBA). QS Top MBA research has found that, while the UK and US remain the most popular study [...]
Gatwick says sorry for chaos after biblical Christmas floods January 7, 2014 GATWICK has made a fresh apology to passengers left stranded on Christmas Eve, after it emerged that the airport’s chief executive was on holiday in Newcastle as staff struggled to find enough bus drivers to move passengers. Chief executive Stewart Wingate said the airport had just half an hour’s warning of the “biblical” flooding that [...]
Letters to the Editor – 08/01 – France failing, Congestion charge, Best of Twitter January 7, 2014 France failing [Re: France’s failed socialist experiment is turning into a tragedy, yesterday] The impending triple-dip recession in France should be the ultimate humiliation for Labour’s Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. French President Francois Hollande’s strategy seems to have delivered precisely what Labour predicted would happen in the UK as a result of austerity. That’s [...]