How SMEs can boost growth with unified communications June 5, 2014 Total communications strategies can unleash productivity and boost collaboration Managing communications technology is no longer a matter of just maintaining and troubleshooting back-office systems. Powered by technological improvements, including the proliferation of laptops, smartphones, tablets and cloud computing, even small businesses today face a sprawling network of communication channels. And unifying these systems is increasingly [...]
How SMEs can boost growth with unified communications June 4, 2014 Total communications strategies can unleash productivity and boost collaboration Managing communications technology is no longer a matter of just maintaining and troubleshooting back-office systems. Powered by technological improvements, including the proliferation of laptops, smartphones, tablets and cloud computing, even small businesses today face a sprawling network of communication channels. And unifying these systems is increasingly [...]
Relief for banks as regulator eases debt rule January 12, 2014 BANKS won a welcome reprieve yesterday after regulators agreed to ease the way a new rule, meant to rein in risky balance sheets from 2018, is compiled to try to avoid crimping financing for the world’s economy. The decisions, by the Basel Committee’s oversight body, were the latest sign of how regulators have become more [...]
UK economy continues to accelerate – but dangers loom large September 3, 2013 ECONOMISTS can be divided into two groups: the overly optimistic, and the overly pessimistic. Even less helpfully, they keep changing category, in tandem with the economic cycle. Few saw the recession coming and were subsequently forced to slash their forecasts; most underestimated the depth and duration of the crisis; and today most are being caught [...]
London Report: UK’s corporate calendar packed in results season July 28, 2013 THE CORPORATE calendar is packed this week, as businesses including ITV, BP, Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland update the market amid a swathe of other results. The week begins with figures from Fidessa Group, Hammerson, InterContinental Hotels Group, Intertek Group, JKX Oil & Gas, Keller Group, Senior, Vernalis, Reckitt Benckiser Group, National Grid, [...]
The British productivity disease: How to cure it April 16, 2014 THIS week has brought more bright economic news – with falling inflation and unemployment paving the way for rising real wages. Yet while the UK is now the fastest growing developed economy, the productivity of its workforce languishes a fifth below the G7 average. What can be done to cure this British disease? US economist [...]
Debenhams finance chief Simon Herrick quits January 2, 2014 Debenhams is on the hunt for a new chief financial officer (CFO), after it issued a second profit warning in under a year earlier in the week, on the back of poor Christmas sales. Britain's second-largest department store said this morning that Simon Herrick will resign with immediate effect, leaving the company on 7 February. [...]
Luxury holidays… to the moon May 23, 2014 The Virgin Galactic zero gravity holiday plane As the global super-rich multiply, their travel demands get more and more extravagant. These days, a stay in a five star hotel fails to impress… Meet the companies who say the next frontier in luxury tourism is above the clouds. The rise of the global super-rich [...]
Regulators beware: Why capitalism needs crisis March 25, 2014 WE LIVE in a world riddled with black swan fatigue, and this piece does not propose to add to it. Still, the recent financial crisis and its continuing implications have invited hyperbolic comparisons, most notably with the 1930s. That decade is seared in cultural memory as the Great Depression – a traumatic time of economic [...]
How Osborne could resurrect our lost savings culture February 26, 2014 CAST your mind back to 1978. The mighty Boney M had two number one hits, I was sheepishly starting big school in Cambridge, and Britain had a household savings rate of 12 per cent – more than double the current level. As a schoolboy, even I was bitten by the savings bug sweeping the land. [...]