KPMG scraps summer early Friday finish for staff June 5, 2026 Big Four giant KPMG is revoking its Covid-19 employee benefit of letting staff clock off early on Fridays over the summer in the latest cut at the firm. The firm introduced the policy in 2021, focused on the summer, which is a quieter time in the City, to allow staff to take two and a [...]
Why Richard Harpin sold half of homeServe for half a million pounds — and what he’d do differently June 4, 2026 At SCALE SUMMIT on 23 April, HomeServe founder Sir Richard Harpin joined SCALE Chairman Andrew B Morris for a Chairman’s Chat on the decisions, mistakes and principles behind one of Britain’s most remarkable entrepreneurial journeys. Richard Harpin built HomeServe from nothing into a £4.1 billion business sold to Brookfield in 2023. Over 30 years, he [...]
Fortegra Appoints Mark Rattner as President June 4, 2026 The Fortegra Group, Inc. (“Fortegra” or the “Company”), a global specialty insurer and part of DB Insurance Co., Ltd., today announced the appointment of Mark Rattner as President. Mr. Rattner, who previously served as Executive Vice President and Chief Underwriting Officer, Insurance, brings a decade of Fortegra leadership and long-standing relationships with reliable distribution partners [...]
Martin Sorrell calls WPP ‘catatonic’ as Goldman slaps sell rating on its own client June 4, 2026 Sir Martin Sorrell spent 33 years turning WPP from a small Kent-based wire and plastics manufacturer into the world’s largest ad company. He left in 2018 following a dispute over personal conduct that he has consistently denied, and has been a vocal critic of his successors ever since. “I think they are further gone than [...]
UK Companies Are Leaving Millions of Pounds Exposed and Underperforming June 4, 2026 UK businesses may be losing tens of thousands of pounds annually in missed interest, while also leaving an average of £2 million cash holdings potentially unprotected, according to new research on corporate treasury practices. The findings are based on a survey of 500 UK senior business leaders (CEOs, CFOs, Finance Directors, and Managing Directors) examining [...]
Soho killjoys are the worst kind of Londoners June 4, 2026 The Soho Society has declared a Nimby campaign against all new licensing applications. If they don’t want to live in the party centre of London they should leave, says James Ford What is the collective noun for a bunch of party poopers? A kennel of killjoys? A complaint of curmudgeons, perhaps? Well, if left to [...]
‘Tipping point’: CBI boss slams £345bn business tax burden amid ‘cost of doing business’ crisis June 4, 2026 The boss of the UK’s most influential business group will use a landmark speech to warn that the heavy business tax burden is nudging British firms towards a “tipping point”, directly linking the Labour government’s troubles to cost pressures on firms. At a speech for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)’s business dinner, chief executive [...]
Financial services contributed a tenth of UK economic output in 2025 June 3, 2026 The financial services sector contributed over a tenth of the UK’s economic output in the last year as the industry’s productivity outpaced average momentum. The industry provided a £290bn boost to the UK’s real GDP – a macroeconomic measure that adjusts the value of economic output for inflation – in 2025 marking around 11 per [...]
KBRA Assigns Preliminary Ratings to UK Logistics 2026-2 DAC June 3, 2026 KBRA UK (KBRA) is pleased to announce the assignment of preliminary ratings to five classes of UK Logistics 2026-2 DAC, a CMBS single-borrower transaction. The collateral for the transaction is a £648.8 million limited recourse, first lien mortgage loan originated by Barclays Bank PLC in June 2026. The floating-rate loan has an initial two-year term [...]
Billionaire Labour backer John Caudwell: I was misled by ‘disastrous’ Starmer June 3, 2026 Billionaire John Caudwell has said he was “misled” by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party and revealed that he hopes to once again back the Tories at the next election. The entrepreneur and philanthropist said there is “no chance” of him voting Labour at the next election, which he says the government is bound to lose. Labour [...]