Business News

Over 100 businesses have now committed to taking steps to cut their emissions and help the West Midlands become net zero by 2041.

Birmingham Botanical Gardens, The National Lottery, Severn Trent Water, and Black Country-based manufacturer AVACE are among the latest cohort to sign the West Midlands Combined Authority’s (WMCA) Net Zero Business Pledge, joining some of the highest profile employers across the region.

Former Leeds Rhinos and England Rugby League legend Jamie Jones-Buchanan has been confirmed as the latest sporting giant on the speaker list of the DIB Business of Sport conference which takes place on Thursday 7th September 2023 at Lancashire County Cricket Clubs Emirates Stadium.

Jones-Buchanan will be in conversation with SEDULO GROUP founder Paul Cheetham, who leads the business advisory firms ‘Be the Standard’ programme for business leaders. Jamie played his entire career with Leeds, winning seven Super League Grand Finals, three World Club challenges, three League Leaders Shields and one Challenge Cup Final with the club. He played for England and Great Britain at international level.

Analysis has revealed that a tax relief introduced to help people get onto the property ladder has resulted in 25,000 extra sales to first-time buyers. First Time Buyers’ Relief (FTBR) increases the threshold at which first time buyers pay Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) and was introduced in November 2017.

Over a third (37%) of workers have admitted to taking steps to ‘prepare to look for another job’.

Career Cushioning – the process of being proactive about your career prospects to ‘soften the blow’ should anything go wrong with your current job – is a phenomenon that recruitment firm Robert Walters believes has grown in prominence as the UK continues to hover around the recessionary danger zone.

According to a poll of 2,000 white-collar workers, the leading reasons causing workers to ‘career cushion’ is a lack of job security from their company (72%), turbulent economic conditions (55%), internal changes within their business (45%), and low job satisfaction (33%).

New research has revealed the UK industries that have had the biggest increase in wages, with Mining and Quarrying coming out on top.

The study by UK Trading platform CMC Markets analysed the latest release from the Office for National Statistics, featuring results from their Wages and Salaries Survey since January 2000.

Anoto Group AB (publ) (“Anoto”) announces that it has sold 1 million shares of common stock of its education subsidiary Knowledge AI Holdings Ltd. (“KAIT”). The transaction was done at USD 12 million on a fully diluted basis. After the sale, Anoto will still own 4.3 million shares of Knowledge AI (47.8% on outstanding number of shares). The 1 million shares were sold to an investment company based in the United Kingdom.  

Leading building societies have said they will increase some of its mortgage rates due to the current economic outlook, saying rates on new fixed deals will rise by up to 0.45 percentage points. It comes amid expectations the Bank of England will have to raise interest rates higher than previously thought.

Darktrace, a global leader in cyber security AI, have announced the appointment of Chris Kozup as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Chris will join the executive management team on June 6^th, 2023, and will report to Chief Executive Officer Poppy Gustafsson.

Based in the U.S., Chris joins Darktrace from Zscaler, where he served as CMO and was responsible for global marketing strategy and execution across a team of hundreds of marketing and sales development professionals. Chris has more than 20 years of experience leading high performing marketing initiatives and teams for enterprise technology companies including Cisco, HPE Aruba Networking, and Nutanix.

Dudley Council is one of the council in the UK who are inviting providers of services for the following broad themes to submit tenders, as part of a Dynamic Purchasing System:

SevenLiving, the lettings platform by SevenCapital Group, has announced the appointment of James Dunn as Senior Head of Lettings.

Launched in 2019, SevenLiving is a full service residential lettings provider specialising in assured short term tenancy (AST) agreements, typically offered to tenants for a minimum of six months. James joins the business from UK property services company, Leaders Romans Group with over 12 years’ experience of the property lettings industry.

Bankim Brahmbhatt, Visionary Founder, President & CEO of Bankai Group, is recognized as Capacity Power 100 for being the frontrunner in driving digital transformation and revolutionizing global connectivity.

Bankai Group is a global leader in the ICT industry, offering futuristic telecom, A2P messaging, fintech, and technology solutions. The prestigious Power 100 recognition is by Capacity Media, a leading global media and events organization in the telecommunications industry. The listing becomes even more special as the Capacity Media platform received more than 250 nominations this year, and to triumph over this stiff competition is phenomenal.

Equiduct, the retail-focused pan-European exchange, have announced that SEB is the newest trading participant to join its commission-free Best Execution service, Apex. SEB will also consume and display Equiduct´s innovative market data services which offers a real-time consolidated view of liquidity from twelve major European markets.

SEB is one of the largest banks in the Nordic financial eco-system in terms of total assets and trading volumes. SEB is also renowned for its market leading equities business and for championing execution quality for investors in Sweden.

The IMEX team has been working hard behind the scenes for nearly 18 months to design and debut a new visual treatment – a brand refresh – set to go live today (Monday 22 May).

The brand review process was conducted by IMEX’s talented inhouse design team led by Design Manager, Anna Gyseman. Gyseman was a seminal member of the team that launched Grazia magazine into the UK market. As ‘honest critics’ she successfully recruited ex-colleagues Tony Chambers, former Editor and Creative Director of Wallpaper magazine; Suzanne Sykes, award-winning Creative Director, Graphic Designer and Brand Innovator; and Jonathan Clayton-Jones, Creative Director at the Telegraph Group.

MODIFI, a global commerce platform for business payments, announced a partnership with leading global payments and financial platform Airwallex to launch a streamlined, innovative, and secure solution for transferring money across multiple regions. Leveraging Airwallex's global payments and financial infrastructure, MODIFI has created Global Account Solutions, a payment tool which facilitates a seamless payment integration for exporters in China and large buyers around the world, by addressing the complexities and high costs of cross-border payments and invoice financing.

New research has revealed the most popular times of the year to start a business. The study by UK financial services provider CMC Markets analysed the latest ONS data on weekly company incorporations found that from Saturday, 4th June to Friday, 10th June 2022, 18,386 new businesses were created at Companies House. This was the fifth highest number of new business incorporations since records of weekly data began at the start of 2019.

The UK’s biggest airline have announced that it will open a base for three of its aircraft at Birmingham Airport (BHX) from March 2024.

This major investment by easyJet will create around 100 direct jobs, including pilots and crew, and will support 1,200* indirect jobs in the West Midlands region. Basing three of its 186-seat A320 aircraft at BHX will significantly enrich the offer for both business and leisure customers flying out of the Midlands travel hub.