Amazon is now worth half a trillion dollars as market cap surges past $500bn ahead of earnings July 26, 2017 Amazon is now worth half a trillion dollars… yep, that’s trillion with a T and an R. The retail and technology giant’s market cap shot above the mark ahead of earnings due on Thursday and as stocks across the board on Wall Street were swept higher. Read more: Jeff Bezos is tantalisingly close to becoming [...]
Skype billionaire Niklas Zennstrom and LocalGlobe back UK fintech startup Cleo and its Facebook AI chatbot for finance July 26, 2017 The billionaire co-founder of Skype and one of the UK’s top startup venture capital investors are backing a UK fintech behind a chatbot helping people with their finances that could kill off banking apps. Niklas Zennström along with Robin and Saul Klein’s LocalGlobe have invested £2m in a seed stage funding round of Cleo. Cleo’s [...]
London business is certain: We should stay in the Single Market July 26, 2017 On 8 June, the electorate sent a clear and simple message: a rejection of the government’s misguided plans for an extreme hard Brexit. Before the election, the government was driving at breakneck speed towards a cliff edge – an exit from the European Union that would mean crashing out of the Single Market without either [...]
Why value investors would respect Nelson Mandela but buy Seretse Khama July 10, 2017 This month marks different anniversaries of the births of two of post-colonial Africa’s greatest leaders – Nelson Mandela and Seretse Kharma. Mandela, who was born on 18 July 1918, you will almost inevitably be aware of but perhaps not Kharma, who was born on 1 July 1921. Indeed, if you have heard of him at [...]
Amazon Prime Day 2017: ecommerce giant extends dominance as it courts new members with day of deals July 10, 2017 Amazon Prime Day begins at 6pm today, just as new research reveals that 37 per cent of online spend now goes through Amazon, with the ecommerce giant only set to grow as more consumers turn to online shopping. Nearly three quarters (73 per cent) of people surveyed by ecommerce consultancy Salmon said they plan to [...]
How many of Amazon’s peers from the dotcom boom exist today? July 4, 2017 In March 2000, a US financial magazine listed Amazon among 207 unprofitable listed internet businesses, most of whom had worryingly small cash reserves. More than four-fifths no longer exist. “Investors must never forget that for every tech start-up success story, hundreds of other such businesses will have failed.” So we wrote on our Value Perspective [...]
SoftBank could be about to make Deliveroo a unicorn with talks of investment from Apple and Saudi-backed Vision Fund July 2, 2017 One of the UK’s star tech startups, Deliveroo, is on the verge of becoming a so-called unicorn, with SoftBank in talks over a potential investment. SoftBank’s Vision Fund, a huge new tech investment vehicle which has already backed several British tech companies, is in discussions to take a stake in the food delivery firm that [...]
European regulators have totally missed the point about Google and monopolies June 28, 2017 When is a monopoly not a monopoly? When it’s big – but fragile. That’s why it was such a mistake to go after Microsoft in the 1990s for pre-installing Internet Explorer on Windows machines. Microsoft had a big share of the market, yes, but it has been eclipsed by rivals like Android, iOS, and Linux. [...]
The chart that could keep investors in ‘low-risk’ stocks awake at night June 27, 2017 For years it has been an undisputed fact of investment that people tend to prefer having big-name brands in their kitchens, bathrooms and elsewhere – yet this could now be changing. Ian Kelly, blogger and fund manager, explains the significance. Among the various qualities we look for in an investment, on The Value Perspective blog, [...]
One Dalton Street, a new tower of Four Seasons residences and a hotel, is spearheading a revival in Boston real estate June 27, 2017 Boston’s strong and it’s never been stronger. The historical, academic heart of the USA’s east coast is seeing its biggest boom in residential property since the 1920s. So far, 83 new housing projects are under construction in 19 out of its 23 neighbourhoods. But why now? For years, Boston has been an academic hub, with [...]