Wall St The Week Ahead: Biotech stocks slide likely to hit US earnings April 14, 2014 THE wrenching selloff in US high-growth technology and biotech shares could leave investors braced for more than a minor pullback when earnings pick up speed this week. First-quarter earnings estimates have fallen sharply as many companies have blamed the brutal winter for weak outlooks. With high-valuation stocks under pressure, earnings could be subjected to even [...]
City Moves for 28 April 2014 | Who’s switching jobs April 28, 2014 Octopus Investments The fund management company has appointed Alex Miller as chief operating officer. He was most recently at Lloyds Bank, where he was director of strategy and operational performance. Prior to that, Miller held senior roles at BT Group and Orange UK. HSBC The bank has announced the appointment of Ian Stuart as head [...]
Artificial intelligence is on the rise – and humans must adapt June 9, 2014 FOR the first time ever, a computer programme has managed to dupe experts into thinking that it was a 13-year old boy. This is a major milestone in the progress of artificial intelligence, and thus a hugely important development for labour markets, for the global economy and for all of us. The Russian computer programme [...]
What you need to know before the open April 17, 2014 European markets are expected to open flat this morning as poorer than expected results from both Google and IBM offset the well-received dovish comments of Federal Reserve chair Jane Yellen. Google shares dipped as much as five per cent in after hours trading last night, after it reported revenues for the first quarter of the [...]
Google sells off Motorola unit to Lenovo for $3bn January 29, 2014 LENOVO Group said last night it agreed to buy Google’s Motorola handset division for $2.91bn, less than two years after Google paid $12.5bn to buy the firm. The deal ends Google’s short-lived foray into making consumer mobile devices and marks a pullback from its largest-ever acquisition. However, Google will keep several lucrative patents, including the [...]
How smaller business can use big data to help drive growth May 28, 2014 Your company may be sitting on an unused information goldmine BUSINESSES are in the middle of an information explosion. In 2012, IBM estimated that 90 per cent of the data in existence had been created in just the two prior years. The International Data Centre, meanwhile, forecasts that the market for big data will reach [...]
Fatal attachment: Dotmailer’s Tink Taylor talks automation, dinner parties and kitesurfing August 3, 2014 How long could you survive without email? Estimates of how many are sent globally every year range from 100bn to 200bn. And every year, dotmailer’s founder Tink Taylor gets asked the same thing: is the death of email just around the corner? It’s a question he finds laughable. Recent research by Gigaom found that 86 [...]
IBM raises its full-year outlook on cost-cutting and strong data July 17, 2013 IBM, the world’s largest technology services company, raised its full-year outlook as it cut costs and reported second-quarter earnings that beat estimates. International Business Machines said excluding a $1bn (£657m) restructuring charge related to job cuts, non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) earnings per share forecasts were being raised to at least $16.90 from $16.70. Full-year [...]
Media consolidation: Why the agencies will keep getting bigger and bigger April 27, 2014 @LiamWardProud CONSOLIDATION at the top of the media business is nothing new. Publicis and Omnicom’s ongoing $35bn (£21bn) merger, subject to repeated delays by regulators, follows in the footsteps of the former’s acquisition of Saatchi & Saatchi in 2000. Sir Martin Sorrell, meanwhile, has continued busily adding to WPP’s bulging portfolio of companies built throughout [...]
Monitise’s results fail to impress February 19, 2014 MOBILE payments company Monitise yesterday blamed a rise in operating costs as it unveiled a loss for the second half of the year. The company reported a loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £10.2m for the six months to the end of December, compared with a £14.7m loss a year earlier. However, revenue [...]