Business and Economics

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Investors have been warned to expect the unexpected in 2016 with several key events on the horizon that could significantly impact the market environment. The Multi-Asset Research team at Source, who look at the the likelihood of the unexpected happening in 2016, found the economic and market environment for next year should favour equities, particularly in Japan and the Eurozone due to the low interest rate policies being adopted by their central banks. The team’s latest publication also...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Young women are being urged to transfer their social media skills into life skills by Barclays’ Lifeskills project, which aims to improve students' confidence and employability opportunities. A new survey has revealed that although young women have plenty of 'selfie-confidence' on social networks, that doesn't apply to the written word. While they post an average of eight daily social media updates – mostly with pictures – they lack the same assurance when it comes to promoting...

By Steve Taggart A relatively unheard of website called www.CompareYourBusinessCosts.com, a new business price comparison website that appears to have come from nowhere to be crowned the Best Comparison Website of 2015, beating out the much more famous, much more established players in the UK comparison world, including Compare the Market. In a rather unexpected turn of events, CompareYourBusinessCosts was given the ‘Best Website’ title by the MetrixLab-backed Website of the Year awards; an accolade that is presented to businesses...

“There’s no such thing as society”, Margaret Thatcher famously told Woman’s Own in 1987. Today Chancellor George Osborne was showing off how he is still trying his very best to make that happen, outlining his latest austerity measures to dismantle and sell off the state in the Autumn Spending Review statement. And again The London Economic turned to someone who can offer her own exclusive insight into the Conservative party leadership candidate formerly known as Gideon, his former party companion...

By Darragh Roche Sitting in a packed Starbucks across from the Brandenburg Gate a few years ago, a Berlin-based friend pointed out the former Soviet embassy across the street, once the largest in the world. Sipping a frothy cappuccino in a café where the staff spoke English, I didn’t realise we were in the former East Berlin. The old heart of the repressive communist state is now crowded with pricey shops, American coffee chains and oblivious tourists. Starbucks, the shibboleth of...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Charities could be irrelevant by 2030 if business leaders put global prosperity on a par with profit, according to eco-entrepreneur Arthur Kay. The 24-year-old founder of innovative green energy business bio-bean and recent Green Challenge and Guardian Sustainable Business Leader of the Year winner, will call on fellow entrepreneurs to spell out how their future business models will actively create a fair, clean, green and equal world at the UCL Institute of Global Prosperity (IGP) event, Countdown 2030,...

By James Clark The Thatcherite legacy has remained ingrained in the centre right consensus of mainstream political politics for decades. The Winter of Discontent hammered the final nail of stigma into the British Trade Union movement. Whilst a crisis of supply side inflationary pressure eat away at pay packets, strikes were the only reasonable means of maintaining a decent standard of living for the average public sector worker. Thatcher’s response in countering these external supply shocks was to obliterate workers pay,...

By Harold Stone Austerity comes from the Ancient Greek austērós meaning harshness, sourness or bitterness. It roughly translates as “to singe the tongue”. From this idea of discomfort, an austere person came to mean a stern person, someone who treats others harshly. One of the slaves in the Bible for example, says to his master “I feared thee, because thou art an austere man”. Around the time Christians started to denounce the world (“do not love the world nor the...

 By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  British shoppers say they will be avoiding the high street this Black Friday after the events of 2014 which led to police involvement in several major retailers. The research shows ‘Black and Blue Friday’ is now competing with boozy ‘Mad Friday’ as emergency services are pushed to the limit. Indeed, a whopping 82 per cent of those polled say the mayhem of last year’s event has put them off shopping instore because they would feel...