Information Commissioner’s Office delivers damning verdict after RSA personal data loss January 10, 2017 Regulators have fined insurance giant RSA for losing the personal information of almost 60,000 customers. The owners of the More Than brand were handed a £150,000 penalty by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) after the theft of a hard drive device containing thousands of customers' personal data and the credit card details of 20,000 people. The ICO [...]
As the CES tech show closes in Las Vegas, what will be the most exciting consumer development in 2017? January 9, 2017 Alex Wood, founder and editor of The Memo, says Amazon's Alexa. Amazon’s Alexa is about to take over the world, in a good way. The home of the future is filled with internet-connected devices but, until now, no one has figured out how we’ll manage all these bleeping and blooping smart machines. In Las Vegas [...]
A big year, but it won’t Trump 2016’s shocks January 6, 2017 2016's events made fools of most pundits, and looking back at my column exactly a year ago, I fared little better. True, I correctly said that Santander UK would re-engage in an effort to buy Royal Bank of Scotland's Williams & Glyn unit, but I was well wide of the mark arguing that the FTSE-100 [...]
A liberal Brexit means continued EU-UK cooperation – but this time as equals January 6, 2017 Brexit means something remarkably straightforward: at some point before the middle of 2019, the UK will no longer be under the jurisdiction of any EU court or legislature. The fact of our impending departure does not, however, mean cutting ourselves off from Europe. If Brexit is easy to define, the details of what our post-EU relationship [...]
Amazon’s Alexa totally infiltrated CES this year January 5, 2017 Amid gimmicky gadgets that may never make it to the shelves (smart whistle, anyone?) Amazon's Alexa artificial intelligence voice assistant has stealthily become the stand out winner of the Consumer Electronics Show. The technology which first appeared in Amazon's own smart home speaker Echo and Echo Dot made surprise appearances almost everywhere, from fridges and cars to robots and baby monitors. [...]
Pensions Insurance Corporation picks up GKN scheme in £190m deal as engineer offloads liabilities January 5, 2017 Engineering giant GKN has shaken up its pension scheme and offloaded pension liabilities to a specialist insurer in a deal worth £190m. Pension aggregator Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) will take on 20 per cent of the liabilities of the scheme in a pension buyout of specific members. Read more: UK firms to ditch £30bn of pension liabilities in [...]
City Moves for 5 January 2017 | Who’s switching jobs January 5, 2017 Colliers International Global real estate advisor, Colliers International, has recruitedKaty Rogers to its EMEA corporate solutions team. Katy, the newly appointed senior portfolio manager, will be responsible for managing client relationships, maintaining real estate strategies and coordinate day-to-day management of real estate transactions. Katy joins Colliers with five years of account and property management experience [...]
£30bn in the pipeline: This is the year UK firms will cut pension schemes loose January 4, 2017 Britain's companies will shift sky-rocketing pension liabilities from their balance sheets this year, experts have predicted. With defined benefit pension schemes at record year-end levels, 2017 will be year to de-risk and UK plc is keen to take advantage of the improved affordability of shifting scheme risk to the insurance, according to Willis Towers Watson (WTW). Read more: As pension [...]
BGC Partners buys Lloyd’s broker Besso in deal worth £71m January 4, 2017 Lloyd's of London broker Besso has been swallowed up by US broking giant BGC Partners in a deal that values the firm at £71m. The purchase provides an exit for the Besso's owners – its senior management team and private equity house BP Marsh. Read more: Lloyd's insurer Endurance bought by Japanese owner of Canopius The fund's share [...]
Risk-filled 2017 drove gold investor sentiment to its highest level since 2012 last month, according to BullionVault January 4, 2017 Investor sentiment for gold hit its highest year-end level since 2012 at the end of last year, in anticipation of a risk-filled 2017, according to data from BullionVault. The metals trading platform's Gold Investor Index ended 2016 at 55.5, higher than the previous 12 months' average of 54.3 and comfortably above the 53.0 reading of December [...]