Live: The spring of shareholder discontent – Weir Group sees renumeration policy struck out, with only 27.6 voting in favour April 28, 2016 It's springtime, but executives may have felt a chill in the air as they headed off to their companies' AGMs this morning. Hermes Investment Management has said that it opposes the appointment of former chief executive Michael Dobson to the role of chairman at Schroders, remarking that such a move would undermine corporate governance. Although the measure [...]
Picking up the Slack: CMO Bill Macaitis on why word-of-mouth is central to the unicorn’s success June 6, 2016 "We're selling organisational transformation," says Bill Macaitis, chief marketing officer of Slack – Silicon Valley darling and contender for the fastest growing B2B software-as-a-service company in history. Slack is more than a workplace messenger. It is a communication and collaboration tool which facilitates meetings, provides access to shared documents, and breaks down silos between apps by integrating Twitter, [...]
Confront women with the true horror of the old age poverty they face to tackle our pensions saving crisis April 22, 2016 Women are facing poverty in retirement as they cut back on pension contributions to fund childcare. A report released by The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for women’s rights, found many women are funding childcare out of their own pay packets (not their partners’) – which means stopping pension contributions. It partly responsible for a doubling of [...]
G7 leaders must recognise that monetary policy alone won’t solve the world’s ills May 26, 2016 Hosting a successful family get-together is a stressful business. Just ask Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. With the leaders of the world’s major economies arriving in Ise-Shima for a G7 summit, Abe has promised “candid” and “fruitful” discussions to tackle the challenges to global growth. But against the backdrop of sluggish activity, doubts about the [...]
National Living Wage may motivate employees but here’s what it will do to productivity March 30, 2016 While the majority of businesses support the sentiment of National Living Wage (NLW), many are doubting it will boost productivity in the office, despite employees saying the pay rise will make them more motivated. According to a study released today by Close Brothers, 50 per cent of SME owners and managers it surveyed have their doubts that [...]
CBI: UK factory output falls at fastest rate since 2009 March 21, 2016 Manufacturing output fell sharply over the past three months, but demand remains robust, according to a new survey data. Of the 471 manufacturers surveyed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), 18 per cent said output had gone up over the last three months compared with 33 per cent that reported a fall. The difference, [...]
Social mobility in the City: Almost one in ten Deloitte staff members received free school meals, as Big Four firm reveals the socio-economic and educational background of its staff March 7, 2016 Big Four accountancy firm Deloitte has today published the socio-economic and educational background information for its staff in a bid to improve social mobility. Findings from the data include that almost one in ten (nine per cent) staff members received free meals while at school and more than half (51 per cent) were the first in [...]
How Brexit would affect the UK’s pharma, auto, financial services, digital, professional, steel and aerospace sectors, according to the Treasury April 18, 2016 The Treasury's 200-page report on the impact of a Brexit on the UK economy looks at exactly how bad things could get for certain sectors. You might not agree with it, but this is what the government's bean counters estimate will happen to some of the country's biggest and most important industries. Pharma The sector, [...]
Steel crisis: Protectionism is a disastrous policy – but don’t thank the EU for banning Parliament from even considering it April 8, 2016 Protectionism is bad for you. It stifles the free exchange of goods and services, it pushes up prices, and it kills jobs – not just in the competitor nation whose trade is blocked, but in the nation which believes it is protecting itself by raising trade barriers. Take steel, the latest fashionable focus for those [...]
Property sales kicked off the year with a rise, HMRC property transaction figures show February 23, 2016 The number of properties sold at the start of 2016 across the UK was 7.7 per cent higher than in 2015, new figures reveal. Nearly 105,400 residential properties were sold in January and just over 9,600 non-residential, compared to 97,000 and 9,740 a year earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis. “Even as the housing market builds a head of [...]