George Osborne announces £1bn boost for small businesses ahead of the Autumn Statement December 2, 2014 George Osborne has announced a lending package worth nearly £1bn for the UK's small and medium-sized businesses ahead of tomorrow's Autumn Statement. The Treasury will give £400m to expand Enterprise Capital Funds, which invests in fast-growing small and medium size enterprises. It will also guarantee up to £500m of new bank lending to these kind [...]
Twitter unveils a set of new anti-trolling tools making it easier to report internet abuse December 2, 2014 Twitter has introduced a set of new "anti-trolling" tools, meaning it's now harder for its 284m active users to "troll" one another. "Trolling" is a description for when a user's Twitter account or posts are bombarded with insults, provocations or threats. The social network unveiled a set of faster, more mobile friendly tools which will [...]
Stephen Hawking: Artificial intelligence could end the human race December 2, 2014 The robot revolution could bring about the end of humanity as we know it, professor Stephen Hawking has warned. In an interview with the BBC he warned that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race". He was responding to a question about the artificial intelligence technology which he uses [...]
In charts: Why the West is worst than the developed world for making multi-million corporate bribes December 2, 2014 http://www.oecd.org/daf/anti-bribery/scale-of-international-bribery-laid-bare-by-new-oecd-report.htm Bribes are generally paid to win contracts from state-owned or controlled companies in advanced economies, rather than in the developing world. The Paris-based think tank, which examined 400 deals over the past 15 years, found that the average bribe was worth almost $14m (£8.9m) – typically 11 per cent of the value of the [...]
Kensington and Chelsea wins its bid to restrict “billionaire” basement extensions December 2, 2014 Kensington and Chelsea has won its bid to limit the size of multi-storey basement extensions, amid complaints regarding the building projects of a number of rich residents. The London Borough won approval on new rules which will restrict so-called "dig-downs" to just one storey below ground level. The extent to which basements can be spread [...]
Boris Johnson welcomes £141m transformation of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park into “Olympicopolis” December 2, 2014 Boris Johnson has welcomed the government's commitment to create a £141m education and culture hub on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The transformation will include two new campuses for University College London (UCL) and University of the Arts, new locations for the Victoria and Albert Museum and Sadler's Wells. It will create 3,000 jobs, 1.5m additional visitors [...]
Carillion fallout pushes UK M&A deals to all-time lows – but values have risen December 2, 2014 A dry summer for UK mergers and acquisitions, in which Carillion gave up its £2.1bn attempt to to buy Balfour Beatty, has helped to ensure volumes remained at historic lows. The number of deals involving UK companies fell to 67 in the third quarter of 2014, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics released [...]
Uber hires Goldman Sachs to power up its fundraising drive December 1, 2014 Uber has hired Goldman Sachs to help it raise funds from some of the bank's richest clients. It is offering financial products that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars, and help aid Uber's future international expansion plans, Fortune has said. This is separate to a previous report from Bloomberg, which said Uber was in [...]
HSBC says bye-bye to Bitcoin hedge fund Global Advisors December 1, 2014 HSBC will no longer work with the first regulated Bitcoin investment fund amid concerns about "money laundering risk". Hedge fund Global Advisors (GA), which is based on the island of Jersey, told the BBC that the British bank had ended the working relationship. Daniel Masters, founder of GA, said that the move will jeopardise plans to [...]
Hackers are stealing trading tips from publicly traded companies to play the stock market December 1, 2014 A group of hackers are targeting publicly traded companies to obtain insider trading tips and win on the US stock market, according to research by US network security company FireEye. The report, which calls the group FIN4, says that hackers broke into the email accounts of top executives and legal advisors to steal secret information [...]
