Mastercard and Visa lose battle with supermarkets over debit and credit card charges July 4, 2018 Mastercard and Visa have lost the latest round of an ongoing legal battle with a conglomerate of supermarkets after a court found their card charges were too high and had breached competition rules. The two credit card giants had been accused by a number of retailers of charging overly high fees – known as interchange [...]
China vows to ‘fight back’ after US threatens $200bn tariffs on goods July 11, 2018 Beijing has vowed to “fight back as usual” after Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat trade war with China escalated once again last night. Washington threatened to slap a further $200bn (£150.8bn) worth of tariffs on a wide range of Chinese goods such as coal, tobacco and consumer electronics after talks between the two superpowers to ease tensions [...]
A guide for video meeting etiquette August 6, 2018 It's an obvious thing to say, but the technological revolution in business over the past 30 years has been extraordinary. While the benefits of technology are numerous, the speed of the arrival and development can highlight gaps between employees in terms of their motivation and likelihood of adopting and using new models. Generational divide For [...]
Seven of Brewdog’s weirdest publicity stunts as it pledges to end ‘shock tactics’ August 30, 2018 Brewdog may have made its name off the back of a bizarre series of publicity stunts, but the indie brewer has pledged to “focus more on beer” and drop the “high octane shock tactics”. Following backlash to its parody porn website earlier this week, Brewdog posted a message to fans and shareholders on its website [...]
It’s Google versus Facebook in the fight for video dominance October 15, 2018 There’s a battle brewing online. In search of more views, users, and lucrative ad money, Facebook wants to take on Google and steal YouTube’s crown as the dominant video platform. The social media giant is fighting on two fronts. It launched its first assault last year with Facebook Watch, a platform effectively identical to [...]
More and more pets are taking to the skies to join us abroad, but what happens to our four-legged friends when they fly? January 25, 2018 Air travel, it’s easy to forget, is arcane magic. We strap ourselves into big metal tubes to be voluntarily catapulted thousands of feet into the sky, a place where there’s free sour cream and onion flavoured pretzels and tiny bottles of vodka, and where we’re furious when the wifi doesn’t work. It is only the [...]
Liuwa Plains in northwest Zambia is one of the most remote safari parks in the world, here’s what we found there April 6, 2018 Linda Evangelista infamously said that she wouldn’t get out of bed for less than $10,000. And after 11 hours travelling along Zambian roads, I’d have quoted a similar price to get back in a 4×4. But the prospect of a cheetah sighting was dangled in front of me, and that was enough to sweeten the [...]
Craft beer brand Brewdog is trying to mature after a tough year of marketing disasters October 22, 2018 It’s been a tough year for Brewdog, much of it the brand’s own fault. Tone-deaf advertising campaigns and PR mishaps have frustrated its fans and “equity punk” investors (I speak from personal experience – I’ve been a shareholder since 2015). The Scottish craft beer brewer, founded in 2007, is as well known for its marketing stunts as [...]
Six months into Open Banking, how is it going? July 11, 2018 For the superstitious among us, this Friday 13 will be a day for avoiding ladders and black cats. For the hyper-political, it will be a day to keep an eye on Donald Trump’s first visit to the UK as US President. But arguably more excitingly, Friday marks six months since the go-live date of the [...]
Forget bitcoin and dogecoin, there’s joke cryptocurrency based on Theresa May, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron January 16, 2018 Bitcoin might be on a downward turn (for now at least), but Theresa May coin is on the up. Yes, the Prime Minister has been minted into the cryptocurrency world in another example of the craze. Who wouldn’t approve of going to all that effort just for a pun about being strong and stable? Read [...]