Hobbs gets the ladies on board without quotas December 2, 2012 NICKY Dulieu, the boss of fashion retailer Hobbs, has managed to recruit a nearly all-female board since taking up the helm in 2008 but insists that imposing quotas is not the way to increase the number of women in the boardroom. Asked whether she was in favour of quotas, Dulieu told City A.M: “I genuinely [...]
London back on top as best financial city October 11, 2012 LONDON has won back its crown as the best financial city on earth after climbing to the peak of a global ranking of the best places to do business, a heavyweight study showed yesterday. The capital climbed four spots from last year to claim joint first position with New York in a ranking of 27 [...]
London back on top as best financial city October 11, 2012 LONDON has won back its crown as the best financial city on earth after climbing to the peak of a global ranking of the best places to do business, a heavyweight study showed yesterday. The capital climbed four spots from last year to claim joint first position with New York in a ranking of 27 [...]
End of the road for London cab maker October 22, 2012 ICONIC London black cab maker Manganese Bronze yesterday gave up its fight for survival and called in the administrators, after failing to strike a deal with its Chinese partners to keep the cash-strapped business alive. The Coventry-based company, which makes the cabs through its subsidiary the London Taxi Company, intends to appoint PwC in the [...]
Rotisserie chickens hit with VAT rise but pasties get off scot free September 30, 2012 ROTISSERIE chickens are among the products that, from today, will be subject to VAT as chancellor George Osborne rolls out his controversial tax reforms. Though the treasury was forced to U-turn on one aspect of the reform, the so-called pasty tax, it will today extend the 20 per cent tax to food kept hot by [...]
Twosome transforming how we transfer money December 9, 2012 KRISTO Kaarmann and Taavet Hinrikus are the two Estonian founders of TransferWise, the peer-to-peer platform for transferring money. Parallels between TransferWise and Skype abound, not least because Hinrikus was Skype’s first employee. But the likenesses don’t stop there: they want to “make the world smaller, just as Skype has done”; they want to make transfers [...]
Financial services firms hit by shock contraction in business September 30, 2012 ACTIVITY in the financial services sector slumped in the three months to September, according to survey data released today. Forty-nine per cent of respondents to a survey, jointly carried out by PwC and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said that their business volumes fell – compared to just 30 per cent who said they [...]
Mifid II leaves some behind September 18, 2012 ASSET managers are falling behind broker dealers, retail banks and private banks in preparing for the implementation of the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, a survey out today finds. A number of firms will undertake an analysis of the impact before the end of the year but PwC, which conducted the study, found asset [...]
It takes more than publicity to create employee-owners November 1, 2012 IT IS not surprising that the government is trying to encourage more employees to take a significant stake in their company. Firms with employee shareholders tend to have higher productivity, greater levels of innovation and better employee engagement. But while it is good that the government is recognising the benefits of the model, the measures [...]
Three challenges await the new governor of the Bank of England November 26, 2012 WE should be prepared for changes at the Bank of England when the new governor, Canadian Mark Carney, takes over in the middle of next year. George Osborne has chosen to go outside the UK economic policy establishment in his choice of a successor to Sir Mervyn King. And that suggests that he is looking [...]