By Joel Golby Ever tried writing a book? Don’t bother, it’s an endless cycle of self-doubt and recrimination. But do buy my new one, Four Stars, says Joel Golby The idea The best part of a book is right before you write the book, when you have that idea. An idea is a beautiful, powerful magnet: it lives inside of your brain and pulls little strands and threads and sub-ideas towards itself, out of the ether. You keep stopping abruptly in the middle of Liverpool Street station to write down a little thought. You feel magical, amazing. You glimmer with promise. What a masterpiece this will be! Wh...
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By Maria Ward-Brennan EY, one of the Big Four firms, has been warned that profits could fall by 15 per cent this year due to a slowdown in the market. According to Sky News, partners at EY have been warned by Stuart Gregory, a senior figure in EY’s finance and transformation team, that profit per partner may slip by 15 per cent for its financial year. Last year, the firm recorded an average distributable profit per partner of £761,000 , down from a record £803,000 the year before. At the time, the firm stated that it “re-invested profits into the business, rather than just in partner distribut...
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By Chris Dorrell The path for the Bank of England to cut interest rates looks increasingly uncertain, particularly as the US Federal Reserve looks set to wait a while longer before loosening policy. Inflation continued falling in March, but came in ahead of expectations at 3.2 per cent. Annual wage growth also exceeded economists’ predictions, pointing to continuing cost pressure for firms. Combine this with an improving growth outlook, and the case for rate cuts seems much less strong than even a few months ago. Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte said: “A much-diminishing risk of an eco...
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By Ben Lucas The UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has vowed to push ahead with its plan to pay rewards to whistleblowers and develop a new “pilot programme” to thwart fraud, bribery and corruption, according to its new strategy published today. The strategy document, which details its ambitions for the next five years, outlines the agency’s plans to “combat crime effectively through intelligence, enforcement and prevention” and make sure the SFO is “a proactive, authoritative player in the global and domestic justice system”. “This means playing a greater role in the national effort to tackle f...
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By Laura McGuire Almost 450 pubs in London face closure after one of the UK’s biggest hospitality groups Stonegate warned on its profitability, the GMB Union has claimed. It comes after the operator of over 4,000 pubs – including the Slug and Lettuce and All Bar One chains – raised concerns about its £2.2bn debt pile. The Stonegate Pub Company which is owned by private equity group TDR Capital, there is a risk its debt cannot be refinanced by its July 2025 deadline. The group also owns supermarket Asda. “There is an indication that a material uncertainty exists that may cast significant doubt ...
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By Lars Mucklejohn The latest updates on the FTSE 100 and London’s financial markets from City A.M.’s newsroom in the heart of the City of London. Wall Street marked its first four-day losing streak since the start of the year. Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 0.12 per cent to 37,753.31, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.58 per cent to 5,022.21, marking its longest four-session downturn in over four months. Similarly, the Nasdaq Composite declined by 1.15 per cent to 15,683.37. Despite this, in Asia, South Korea’s Kospi surged 1.6 per cent early on, led by Histeel’s 30 per cent ri...
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By Lars Mucklejohn Coventry Building Society has agreed terms to buy the Co-operative Bank for £780m as a wave of consolidation sweeps through the mid-sized banking sector. In a joint statement on Thursday, the firms said they had reached an agreement on the non-binding heads of terms for a potential cash acquisition by Coventry, the UK’s third-largest building society, after they entered exclusive talks in December. If completed, the transaction would effectively remutualise Co-op Bank and create a combined group with around £89bn in assets, roughly the current size of Britain’s sixth-biggest...
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By Jenny Southan From booking flights to creating itineraries, AI (artificial intelligence) is already changing the face of the work trip, says Jenny Southan Towards the end of last year, I spoke at the Dubai Future Forum, an annual gathering of “futurists” from around the world who assembled at the emirate’s space-age Museum of the Future. As you might imagine, there was much discussion around the development and applications of artificial intelligence, as well as potential doomsday scenarios. Experts spoke about things like the emergence of the “non-creative creative class – augmented by AI”...
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By Alex Doak From Japanese anime to Elton John, here are all the latest happenings in the world of watches in the wake of the year’s Watches and Wonders showcase. A longer LonginesA mechanical watch’s petrol gauge is the ‘power reserve’, a linear or radial indication of how urgently you need to wind up its barrel’s ‘mainspring’ via the crown on the right (a particularly satisfying morning ritual for those who continue to eschew the smartwatch). To mark the 70th anniversary of its evergreen Conquest (the first Longines watch line to have its name protected, in 1954, by the Federal Intellectual ...
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By Amber Murray High interest rates have created strong headwinds for the global energy transition, according to a new report by Wood Mackenzie. The report said renewable energy and low-carbon technologies are among the areas “most exposed” to high interest rates. The high capital intensity and low returns on green projects make them particularly vulnerable to high rates. “Interest rates… may not come down as far or as quickly as markets anticipate. This increased cost of capital has profound implications for the energy and natural resource industries, particularly the cost and pace of the tra...
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