News Corp buys London adtech company Unruly Media for up to £114m September 16, 2015 News Corp has bought the video advertising technology company Unruly Media for up to £114m to improve its digital video offering for advertisers. Unruly, one of the most successful startups to emerge from London's Silicon Roundabout, will operate as a separate unit in News Corp's business, under newly returned UK chief Rebekah Brooks. “We have always [...]
UK patent applications dropping as Sweden files 3.5 times more patents than the UK July 17, 2015 Bad news: the UK’s attitude to intellectual property remains dismissive, as new figures show that the number of patents filed were not just below the EU average, but actually falling. In absolute numbers, by far most patent applications come from Germany. With 22,800 filed, the country had over 40 per cent of all European applications. [...]
Universities must work more closely with employers if today’s school leavers are going to flourish August 14, 2015 As another generation of young people receive their A level results, record numbers are expected to head to university next month. This is undoubtedly good news as it’s estimated that people with degrees earn around £200,000 more over their lifetime than those who did not attend university. However, it’s important that people embarking upon [...]
Unilever share price falls as it records lowest growth in five years October 23, 2014 While Dave Lewis is putting out one fire at his new employer Tesco, things back at Unilever are also looking less than rosy. The consumer goods business, where Lewis had worked for 28 years before becoming Tesco chief executive, this morning reported its weakest rate of quarterly sales growth in five years. Underlying [...]
Lloyds, GSK and Vodafone: The 10 shares pension drawdown investors are buying up August 5, 2015 Four months after pension savers were given freedoms allowing them to withdraw their savings and invest it into other areas, they have yet to spend their pension pots on those Ferraris everyone was worried about when the freedoms were first announced. Or that's according to financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown, anyway, which has listed the top [...]
Just one small Cornetto! Unilever’s cheap goods for the cash-strapped October 23, 2014 Unilever yesterday promised investors that new, cheaper products would help it grow profits, even as reticent consumers dragged its sales growth in the third quarter to its weakest in nearly five years. Sales volume rose only 0.3 per cent, well below analysts’ estimate of 1.8 per cent and growth of 1.9 per cent in the [...]
EU referendum: Asda, HSBC, Vodafone and nearly 200 sign letter saying Brexit would threaten jobs – but Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s are not on the list February 23, 2016 The bosses of HSBC, BT, Vodafone and Asda are among those to have put their name to an open letter backing the remain camp and Prime Minister David Cameron's reforms in Europe. More than a third of the UK's biggest companies were represented in the letter, which was published in The Times this morning, saying they represented [...]
Best of the Brokers for 20 April 2015 April 19, 2015 To appear in Best of the Brokers, email your research to notes@cityam.com JUPITER Analysts at Shore Capital have concerns over Jupiter’s ability to resist ongoing fee deflation, adding that its high exposure to the UK retail market sector leaves it vulnerable to a highly competitive online market. The firm has a “sell” recommendation on the [...]
The art of risk aversion: How to know when to swim against the tide September 11, 2015 I got caught in a rip tide on the Portuguese coast last week. The current was aggressive and, despite fighting it, I was pulled away from the shore. As I was struggling in the water, random thoughts came to mind. For example, who is more incompetent: the finance team in my old job, or [...]
Suppliers lose out on over half of supermarket promotions June 17, 2015 Suppliers of everyday products to supermarkets are losing money on 60 per cent of promotions, and the situation has been getting worse, according to data gathered over three years by Nielsen. Around $500bn (£317bn) is spent on trade promotions globally each year, with makers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) such as Unilever often investing 20 [...]