Holiday delivery failures threaten to have a big impact on UK retailers’ bottom lines and tarnish reputations December 21, 2016 Delivery failures over the Christmas period are set to impact UK retailers' bottom lines as they could be missing out on more than £3bn, new research today revealed. In the UK, 16m consumers faced delivery delays over the 2015 holiday season, and 73 per cent of them still refuse to shop with the offending retailer this [...]
Christmas with JPMorgan: the bank picks books, sites and music for the holiday season December 16, 2016 There's still time to get a last minute gift for the banker in your life! JPMorgan's annual holiday reading list has been given an upgrade for 2016, and to mark the 10-year anniversary of the reading list, the US bank added on a few cultural and musical recommendations. The bank is actually calling the list #nextlist2017, and [...]
British Gas owner Centrica’s share price lights up after raising full-year earnings forecast December 15, 2016 Centrica's share price lit up this morning after better-than-expected costing savings and a strong savings performance lifted its full-year earnings. The British Gas owner's stock rose more than five per cent in morning trading to 230p, after announcing its full-year adjusted earnings per share will come in at around 16.5p. The FTSE 100 utility's cash flow [...]
Football’s new arms race: leading clubs looking to sell shirt sleeve sponsorship for £10m a year ahead of Premier League rule change December 14, 2016 They routinely adorn the biceps of Lionel Messi and Neymar and flutter on the jerseys of Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, yet until now they have been forbidden in the Premier League. Sponsors’ logos on football clubs’ shirt sleeves are on their way to England’s top division from next season, however, as teams look to [...]
Watch: UK claims Amazon’s first ever drone delivery December 14, 2016 Amazon’s dream of drone deliveries just became a reality – and it happened first in the UK. A fully automated drone with no human input delivered a package to a customer in Cambridgeshire, taking just 13 minutes to get it from depot to door. The first flight of its kind is a major step forward [...]
Putting the “art” in startup: UK art marketplace Artfinder raises $2.2m December 14, 2016 UK art startup Artfinder said today it has raised $2.2m (£1.7m) – some of which came from the man behind the Amazon Echo. The company, which bills itself as an art marketplace, said it had brought on a new VC investor, Oxford Capital – and the round was also backed by William Tunstall-Pedoe, the Cambridge AI [...]
There may be trouble ahead: Dixons Carphone shares fall as it prepares for “uncertain times” December 14, 2016 Shares in Dixons Carphone fell 4.6 per cent in early trading after it said it was steeling itself for "uncertain times" in the months ahead. The figures Revenues in the six months to the end of October increased four per cent on a like-for-like basis to £4.9bn, it said in a statement today. Profit before tax [...]
British Gas is blaming ultra high definition 4K TVs for adding £82m to energy bills by 2019 December 13, 2016 They may be turning into a must-have item, but energy inefficient 4K TVs are set to add £82m to UK consumers’ electricity bills by 2019, British Gas has warned. The ultra high definition (HD) TV sets have this year single-handedly caused the first rise in household energy bills from watching TV since 2011, preliminary findings [...]
Bill Gates and top investors want to fight climate change with $1bn cleantech fund December 12, 2016 Bill Gates and several other top investors are planning to launch a billion dollar fund to plough into companies innovating in the energy space in the fight against climate change. The Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) fund is also backed by venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures, respectively. Read more: [...]
Top tech firms have formed a virtual reality supergroup December 8, 2016 Several of the biggest names in technology are joining forces to push forward innovation in the burgeoning world of virtual reality. Facebook, Google and Samsung are among the top tech companies to form the Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA), tasked with promoting the global growth of the industry, which is expected to be worth $162bn by [...]