Business and Economics

Another day, another Brexit horror story, this time the OECD (The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) has cut the UK’s growth target in half, by a whole percentage point. These forecasts have been reduced due to the impact of Brexit and a wider weakness in the broader global outlook. The report states: “While markets have since stabilised, sterling has depreciated by around 10% in trade-weighted terms since the referendum. For 2016, GDP growth has been supported by a strong performance...

"V for Vendetta" (CC BY 2.0) by hawken king Cybercrime is everywhere, it targets everyone and its threat is ever present. The only surprise is that we hear so little about it, but that is changing. The regularity with which high-profile websites and organisations are being hacked should be concerning, but often these hacks and the hackers are viewed as little more than an embarrassing inconvenience for the organisation targeted. Yet hacker networks such as Anonymous have the power to...

Can your business keep up with the speed of customer demands in the 21st Century?  Today's customers expect everything from their internet connection to their product delivery to be faster than yesterday. And nowhere more so than in London. Customer expectations have always evolved over time, and part of maintaining a successful business has always been to understand and meet these expectations better than the competition. However, the sheer rate at which those expectations are changing in the new millennium...

Construction trends continue to rise, while Health and Safety incidents decline.  The London skyline evolves year by year. While construction will always be a high-risk profession, Health and Safety in the UK’s Capital is second to none. Statistics released by the Health and Safety Executive have confirmed what the construction industry has intuitively known for some time – that London is leading the world in the implementation of Health and Safety practices. On the eve of London Build 2016, the...

Manage and market your content to compete and thrive in the 21st Century.  Content marketing is hailed as the future of marketing strategy. Make the right marketing choices to avoid drowning in the rising ocean of content on the internet.  Traditional marketing is dead. Long live content marketing! So says the Content Marketing Institute, but can we really believe that or is it just – well, clever marketing? Online opinions are divided as to whether content marketing is the next...

Business confidence has dropped to a four-year low following Britain's vote to leave the EU, with the outlook for demand, employment and investment weaker across all sectors of the economy. The service sector saw the biggest fall, down by a sizeable 30 points  across hospitality and leisure, retail and wholesale, business and other services. The Lloyds' Business in Britain report found more than a quarter of companies said the main threat to growth in the next six months was economic...

A new study that spoke to 2,000 people has charted the habits of the average British office worker. With Brits working for an estimated 47 years’ employees have been found to arrive to the office late 1,026 times, take 98 days off sick and endure 1,174 meetings. It may come as no surprise that offices are not the most harmonious environment with the average worker falling out with colleagues 479 times. The biggest cause of conflict at work is the...

To be honest we thought the figure might be higher, but a new Australian study has found that one out of every five CEOs are actually psychopaths. Quite worrying and kind of makes you kind of glad you’re not one. I’m happy to be broke and a little bit weird rather than rich and possibly capable of murder, and possibly even enjoying it. Although journalist comes sixth in one table of careers with the most psychopaths, and even more worryingly,...

Nearly five years since the last note launched, the Bank of England will today release its first ever polymer fiver. The so-called 'plastic fiver' is longer lasting, harder to destroy and smaller than other bank notes, with the first notes leaving distribution centres shortly after midnight tonight. From there they will be taken to ATMs in six major cities in England and Wales, with members of the public being able to withdraw them from around 9am onwards. A new five pound note...