Business

By David Dumeresque of executive search experts, Tyzack Peter Whitehead, former editor of the FT Non-Executive Directors’ Club, wrote in a Financial Times article titled Non-executive director: a task for which no one is qualified: “The list of attributes required of a non-executive director is so long, precise and contradictory that there cannot be a single board member in the world who fully fits the bill.” There is no doubt that the role of the non-executive director (NED) has changed...

By Mark Mason, Chairman enterprise app consultancy and developer, Mubaloo According to the latest budget, the UK is growing faster than any other major country (UK, 2.6%, USA 2.4%, Canada 2.4%, Japan 0.1%, France 0.4%, Germany 1.5% and Italy which shrank by 0.4%). The UK is also borrowing less and is more focused on long term sustainable growth than it was five years ago. Indeed, we are now at the end of the longest continuous rise in public debt since 17th...

By Jane Ollis, MD of Rift Accounting Micro businesses and entrepreneurship are getting some great press lately and it’s fully deserved. There are now over five million firms in the UK with between 0-9 employees, a huge rise of 1.5 million since the turn of the century. The growth in micro businesses has helped drive the economic recovery and put entrepreneurs at the heart of British business. A new report from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Second quarter figures released today have revealed notions of a 'Northern Powerhouse' could soon become reality with job growth rates in many of the UK’s northern cities soaring ahead of the south. Whilst London still held a 17.02 per cent share of the nation's 391,811 jobs last quarter, active job growth across the UK's top cities paints a very different picture. Despite Edinburgh only attributing a 0.62 per cent share of the UK's jobs, it ranks...

By Shahin Shamsabadi, Head of Business Intelligence MENA at The Risk Advisory Group We are perhaps only days away from a deal that could open up a country that has been shunned for nearly four decades.  This is a country that in spite of crippling sanctions boasts an established banking sector, infrastructural foundations in the transport, aviation and energy industries and a sophisticated consumer market.  A large, well-educated workforce, an abundance of natural resources, as well as more than 20 free...

By Roy Russell, Founder and CEO, Ascertus Limited The motivation for entrepreneurs to sell their businesses can be many. Mine was to grow my already successful, 12 year old document management solutions firm by being a part of a larger corporation. The notion of leveraging the support of the parent company to improve the offering and catapult the prospects – not simply of the business, but also of the staff – was appealing. At the time, the sale had all...

So Sir Howard’s Commission has returned its recommendation. After two and a half years of deliberation, pie-in-the-sky proposals, costly marketing campaigns and self-centred political lobbying we have come to the conclusion that you simply can’t move a hub with deliverable expansion proposals. It is the worst recommendation, except for all the others. The economic benefits for Heathrow expansion are obvious. Generating up to £147 billion for the economy over 60 years and 70,000 new jobs by 2050 it separates the...

By Jamie Viggiano, VP of marketing at TaskRabbit Over the last few years, there has been a surge of app-based services that enable people to share anything from their homes, to their cars to their time. These companies are part of the “Sharing Economy,” which is poised to become a nine billion pound industry by 2025. According to research by PwC, young adults (aged 18 to 24) are now more interested in “experiencing” things versus owning things - in other...

By Andy Thompson, Director of Operational Policy and Research Wealth Management Association On 10 June 2015 the Government raised another £750 million from the sale of half of its remaining 30 per cent stake in Royal Mail. But why were private investors not given the opportunity to participate as they had been in the Initial Public Offering in 2013? Ultimately it is for the Government and its advisers to answer that question but in the absence of anything definitive perhaps...