Man Utd’s PR over Van Gaal sacking was as cryptic and obfuscatory as a Panamanian tax return May 23, 2016 Louis van Gaal is said to have heard of his sacking from his wife after she’d seen a breaking news alert. Harsh stuff. Despite the FA Cup win there clearly was no love lost between the Dutchman and Manchester United’s owners, the Glazer family. As the bungled leaking of Van Gaal’s sacking showed – first [...]
Tinder sues threesome-app rival 3nder for stealing its thunder May 23, 2016 Dating app Tinder, which is in no mood of being tender with rivals, has launched a legal battle against threesome-app 3nder alleging trademark infringement. Tinder, which is owned by online dating behemoth Match, wants its smaller competitor to shut down over the similarity in name. 3nder hit back at Tinder through Tinder Sucks My Socks, [...]
William Hill joins Ladbrokes and other major bookmakers on social media sports betting site Betfect May 23, 2016 William Hill has become the latest major bookmaker to join Betfect, a social network for sports betting. The London-based tech startup allows users to compare, make and share sports bets from the UK's leading bookmakers, and the site went live last year with Ladbrokes. Betfect has said it aims to bring the "social element" back [...]
Ryanair pledges to cut fares as it misses profit expectations following the affects of terrorist incidents and union strikes May 23, 2016 Budget airline Ryanair missed expectations in its full-year profits today as the impact of terrorist attacks on bookings and low oil prices began to take their toll. The figures Adjusted net profits came in at €1.24bn (£961m) for the 52 weeks to 31 March, a 43 per cent increase on the previous year, although this missed analysts' estimate of €1.3bn. [...]
Contagious content: Don’t Panic’s Joe Wade on why Jon Snow, GoPro and The LAD Bible hold the secrets to making a video ad go viral May 23, 2016 A number of advertisers have won a Cannes Gold Lion. But few can claim a Bafta on top of it, and say they’ve dug up the lawn of a former frontbench MP. “We wanted to repackage social and political issues in a different way,” says Joe Wade, film-maker and co-founder of Don’t Panic London, speaking of [...]
Plain packaging: The starting gun has been fired on the tobacco industry May 20, 2016 Today the government fired the starting gun on a controversial new policy and a significant market intervention – the introduction of standardised pack designs for tobacco products. After the High Court yesterday ruled against a legal challenge brought forward by big tobacco companies, from today most tobacco products destined for the UK must be in standardised packs. [...]
EU referendum: Why business owes it to its workers to take back the Brexit debate from the political elites May 20, 2016 The most important influence on how Britain will vote on 23 June is unlikely to be President Obama, David Cameron, Jeremy Corbyn, or Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. The unsung persuader in this vote will be a friend or colleague at work. There are 5.4m businesses in the UK and a total of 31m employees. Each [...]
Before the bell: What you need to know before the US market open May 18, 2016 Japan avoids a recession and the oil price could be about to climb over $50 per barrel for the first time this year. Here's what you need to know before the US market open at 2:30pm London time. Markets look flat before the open. S&P futures are dead-centre, not even a point off. The Nasdaq is down by 0.01 [...]
Just eight tweets could be giving away where you work and live May 18, 2016 Just eight tweets could give away where you work and live – and anyone who wanted to, could work it out, not just tech whizzes. Anyone who enables their tweets to be tagged with a location via GPS could be revealing more than they think, as scientists reveal the information can be used to work out these [...]
Recipe for success: BBC backtracks on plan to cull 11,000 recipes and announces plans to migrate content over to Good Food website May 18, 2016 In a good turn for peckish foodies and skint students everywhere, the BBC has backtracked on plans to cull 11,000 free online recipes and promised to migrate many of its popular recipes to the BBC Good Food site. A massive public outcry, including more than 166,000 people signing a petition on the campaigning site Change.org [...]