Business and Economics

By Marcus Hunt Peer-to-peer lending is a highly innovative means of businesses acquiring capital; crowdsourcing loans from dozens of small investors is a way for both parties to secure better interest rates by cutting out the cumbersome middle-men at the banks. From humble beginnings, sites like Zopa, Ratesetter and Funding Circle have now facilitated loans of over £1 billion to small and medium-sized British businesses. However, I think that there is good reason to believe that over the medium-term the...

By Joe Mellor Deputy Editor Last week a group of MPs and peers have called for an overhaul of the way the rental industry is run to provide better protection for families who do not own their own home. Well until that is sorted out (don’t hold your breath) www.rentalraters.com are the TripAdvisor of the rental market, to alert you to dodgy landlords. It is an on-line community that praises the best and (literally) rubbishes the worst. We have compiled...

By Jack Peat  In an information economy where our personal data is wilfully publicised, recorded and used for political and corporate gain, the question of whether we are living the prophesied dystopian theories of Nineteen Eighty-Four is more poignant than ever. George Orwell’s timeless work paints a frightening picture of official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of history by a totalitarian, authoritarian state. A world where language is a heretic tool that be controlled and used. Words with negative meanings...

  By Valentina Magri “Money doesn’t make you happy” is the typical saying that you state when you want to raise the spirit of people dissatisfied with their personal finances. But if you live in the UK, you should forget it, cash is king. Money and happiness Basically, there are two main views over the link between money and happiness. According to Easterlin, happiness comes from money until a saturation point (Easterlin paradox). Once you overcome this boundary, the correlation...

By Toby James The Illusion Of Choice And Big Business’s Position In Food And Drink There is a lot of money in necessities. The food and drink industry commands vast amounts of capital, yet much of this is under the control of a surprisingly small number of brands. Coca-Cola claims ownership of at least 13 other brands, each the king of its respective sector of the soft drinks industry. Fanta, Sprite, Dr Pepper, Schweppes. Many of these brands have ‘diet’ or...

By Sally Waterston, director of Business and IT Consultancy Waterstons Limited Everything goes in cycles; fashion, the weather, Information Technology and even manufacturing. It feels sometimes as if we are like a pendulum as a country, racing after the next new thing and piling all our hopes on it in the name of strategy and forward thinking. When we started this business in 1994 we had a few customers who offshored their production and seemed to be very successful at...

By Guy Dorrell @GuyDorrellEsq Pfizer’s abortive bid to take control of Astra Zenica in May 2014 was widely commented to have been motivated, at least in part, by Research and Development issues. More specifically, Pfizer has for some time relied upon the cash-cows of its existing products; bolstering its share price through attempting to increase sales, while driving out back-office costs. R&D is an expensive pursuit whatever the industry, though pharmaceutical companies seem to have an especially tough time. Around...

By Rachel Wilson Political Reporter The current cuts to the public sector look set to impact on women the hardest. Women make up the majority of public sector workers and cuts to the sector has pushed women’s unemployment up over the past few years. Women make up 65% of the public sector workforce in the UK and the latest figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate that 929,000 jobs will be lost in the public sector by 2018. Over...

By Valentina Magri The decision of the European Council to propose Jean-Claude Juncker as the next President of the European Commission was “one step closer to quitting Europe” for Britain. The move made David Cameron feel very angry. Indeed, the PM has promised a referendum in 2017 over EU membership if the Conservative party win the 2015 general election. Opinion polls show that Brits are split on the issue. But what would be the economic consequences of Brexit? The five economic consequences...