London taxi protest: Uber invites black cab drivers to join up before today’s strike September 24, 2014 London cabbies are set to wreak traffic havoc across central London as they prepare to protest against illegal minicabs. The action means up to 4,000 black cabs will drive slowly around Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square. The London Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) which organised the protest, said: TFL’s inability to deal with the growing threat [...]
Uber Germany ban sees signups skyrocket 590pc in 24 hours September 3, 2014 If the German taxi lobby was breathing a sigh of relief yesterday after a Frankfurt court issued a temporary injunction against Uber banning it across the country, it isn't any more. Uber Germany has seen signups in Hamburg alone soar a whopping 590 per cent in the last 24 hours. Rather than shunning the San [...]
Financial challengers Zopa and Metro Bank join forces to bring peer-to-peer lending and high street banking together May 19, 2015 Peer-to-peer lender Zopa has teamed up with challenger bank Metro Bank to lend funds through the latter's marketplace. The deal marks the first of its kind in the UK as Metro Bank, already lending funds to Zopa's consumer borrowers, recognises peer-to-peer (P2P) lending as a new asset class. Zopa's chief executive Giles Andrews described it [...]
Lawmaker who voted to clamp down on Uber arrested for drink-driving August 26, 2014 In a delicious twist of irony, a California state senator was arrested on Saturday for driving under the influence of alcohol only hours after voting for legislation that would subject the taxi app service Uber to a host of burdensome regulations. Ben Hueso was spotted driving the wrong way down a one way street at [...]
Flying cars are coming with the AeroMobil 3.0, and you could buy one in 2017 March 16, 2015 In a couple of years, the super-rich could be travelling above traffic jams and avoiding the hassle of airports in their very own flying cars. For everyone else, the equivalent of a flying Uber is in the pipeline. AeroMobil, the Slovakian company behind the car-cum-aeroplane, hopes to sell its first manually-driven two-seater flying cars to [...]
Airbnb is about to muscle in on the professional property management business May 19, 2015 Flat rental site Airbnb may have built its reputation on the sharing economy – but with a valuation of about $20bn, it was only a matter of time before it got into the professional property management business. Read more: Escape it all – the 21 most deliciously remote Airbnb rentals Now, it's been reported the [...]
Could it happen in London? One chart showing how Uber has impacted San Francisco’s taxi industry September 22, 2014 Beloved by punters, hated by rivals, taxi service app Uber has a knack of dividing opinion. The company has been the subject of an outright ban in Germany (which was later overturned), a gridlock protest from black cabbies in London and vociferous complaining from local taxi drivers in just about every one of the 45 [...]
It’s a great time to be a landlord in Milan as tourists flock to Expo 2015 June 11, 2015 This summer, Italy’s making a comeback. After years struggling under a prolonged economic crisis of its own, it finally seems as though its on the path to recovery. And there’s no greater proof of this than its most fashionable city, Milan, hosting Expo 2015. The world trade fair is underway, uniting innovators from the tech, [...]
Uber’s south east Asian rival looks to make history June 25, 2014 The chief executive and co-founder of Malaysian-based startup Grabtaxi believes his mobile app has the potential to take south east Asia by storm and revolutionise the taxi industry. Speaking to the Financial Times, Anthony Tan said: "We all believe that if we get this right, we can literally go into the history books." The taxi app [...]
The EU risks damaging consumer interests in its push against Google dominance July 22, 2015 Jean Tirole won last year’s Nobel prize for economics for his work on a new type of market – and one that has grown with the meteoric rise of the internet. So-called two-sided markets arise when a company brings together suppliers and consumers. Google is a classic example: it provides browsers with web pages, and [...]