Business

FIVE QUESTIONS TO ASK IN FINDING THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY CONSULTANCY Finding the right consultancy for your business isn’t necessarily straightforward. After all, it’s a competitive market out there and many companies have a great deal to shout about.  On the other hand, some are inept cowboys who use jargon and a fancy website to blind potential clients and capitalise on their knowledge asymmetry. With so much choice available, how do you go about ensuring you engage with the right consultancy...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The huge leak from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca may have dragged in the PMs own late father. 11.5 million documents have been leaked, document work stretching back nearly 40 years and a firm Ian Cameron was director of, has cropped up in the paperwork. It is alleged that Cameron’s dad was embroiled in recruiting what has been dubbed a small army of Bahamas residents, to sign paperwork on behalf of an offshore fund, which...

By Dean Hochlaf As I write, 40,000 workers in the British steel industry face an uncertain future. Tata Steel is on the verge of selling its unprofitable British operations. While attention given to the state of British steel gathers momentum, it is becoming painfully clear that the seeds of the collapse of British steel were sown long ago. There are several reasons as to why we are witnessing this fall, high energy costs among them, however a lot of attention and...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The Chancellor has come out fighting and has defended the Government’s handling of the steel crisis, but his special relationship with China is clouding his judgment, critics have claimed. He said the Tories were doing all that is "practicable and possible" to slap tougher tariffs on cheap steel. The steel crisis has been squarely blamed on China continually dumping cheap steel on European markets and making UK steel far too expensive. Instead on intervening, it...

National news agency SWNS has won funding for a market-leading syndication platform in the first round of grants from Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI). Google is making a total of £118m (Euro 150m) available in the DNI to support innovation in journalism through technology. SWNS is the largest independent press agency in the UK. The Bristol-based content provider is among just 17 successful applicants in the UK who have been offered funding by the tech giant. In February it was announced that 128...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The City of London has more than three times as many multi-millionaire bankers as the rest of the European Union combined. The number of bankers with a take home pay of over one million Euros (£800k) per annum rose to almost 3 thousand in 2014, one of which made an astonishing €25 million. The UK, which houses Europe’s biggest financial district in London, dwarfs the rest of the EU bankers in terms of large salaries,...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The global stock markets have had a tough time of late and the largest corporations in the world dwarf some countries stock market valuation. For example Google and Amazon have a combined worth of $747bn, Netflix is $40bn and McDonald’s is around $109bn. These figures are pretty hard to get your head around, so Bank of America Merrill Lynch has created a map to help illustrate the size of these companies compared to stock markets...

Project manager, administrator, account manager, sales executive, customer service advisor – spend any time on a recruitment site and you’re likely to stumble across most if not all of these job titles. They’re among the most common positions advertised in the UK and while they’re all perfectly worthy ways to earn money, they’re probably unlikely to spark any great passion. If you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to settle for the norm and need a fresh and exciting...

New research has revealed Brits don't panic about debt until they're over £45,000 in the red. A study into the financial behaviour of 2,000 adults found that 37 per cent say if they can’t afford to buy something, they usually find a way of getting it anyway, either by sticking the balance on a credit card, taking out a loan or dipping into the overdraft. Four in 10 people polled admit they rely on their credit cards to see them through the...