This crowdfunding platform just raised £2.3m in 10 hours on its own site May 23, 2016 Crowdfunding platform SyndicateRoom has raised £3.1m in a series A funding round. Its initial target of £2.3m was reached 10 hours after the funding round went live on SyndicateRoom’s own website. Last May, the platform completed a £1.2m funding round, which was completed in 33 hours. The latest round was led by Jonathan Milner, an angel investor [...]
Fraud with Problems: Ravelin boss Martin Sweeney talks Hailo, fake credit cards and machine learning May 23, 2016 "There’s a real tension at the heart of fraud detection: if you want to stop online fraud, just switch everything off.” Martin Sweeney is, of course, being facetious. But fraud, he impresses, has become an accepted fact of the on-demand economy. “We as consumers are accepting that most of the things we buy have a premium [...]
Contagious content: Don’t Panic’s Joe Wade on why Jon Snow, GoPro and The LAD Bible hold the secrets to making a video ad go viral May 23, 2016 A number of advertisers have won a Cannes Gold Lion. But few can claim a Bafta on top of it, and say they’ve dug up the lawn of a former frontbench MP. “We wanted to repackage social and political issues in a different way,” says Joe Wade, film-maker and co-founder of Don’t Panic London, speaking of [...]
The key to a good meeting: Why you need to start doing things on the move May 23, 2016 We all know what it’s like. A meeting is called and you can see at least an hour disappear from your day. Unfocused meetings are a drain on productivity, with research estimating that only 44 per cent of meeting time is actually valuable to a business. What’s more, the average office worker spends nine hours each [...]
Traditional banks’ dominance of lending market set to continue despite peer-to-peer growth, report finds May 23, 2016 Banks will fight off competition from non-traditional lenders and continue to dominate the borrowing market over the next decade, a Deloitte report has suggested. The firm’s Marketplace Lending report estimates that by 2025 marketplace lenders (MPLs), previously known as peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders, will account for up to around six per cent, or £35.5bn, of the [...]
UK dividend attraction falls as it lags behind global payout growth May 23, 2016 UK dividends fell by five per cent in the first quarter of 2016, lagging behind global growth, a new report out today has found. Since 2009, UK dividends have grown 44 per cent, behind the global average of 59 per cent, according to Henderson Global Investors. In the first quarter of this year, the report [...]
Investment Association issues stern warning to kitchen sink companies May 22, 2016 The Investment Association late last week fired a warning shot to companies which rejig their profit forecasts as soon as a new management team is appointed, essentially washing the business' value down the drain. The association, which represents unit trust and investment fund managers, has issued a letter to chairmen at FTSE 350 companies, telling them that they [...]
Challenger bank Tandem reopens crowdfunding after smashing £1m target in minutes May 20, 2016 A digital challenger bank today reopened for further investment after smashing its crowdfunding target within minutes yesterday. Tandem raised £850,337 in 10 seconds on Thursday before its host site, Seedrs, crashed. However, it still beat its target of £1m after 15 minutes and investment totalled £1.8m from around 1,000 investors after eight hours. Read more: Digital challenger [...]
Salaries and bonuses at London banks, ranked from best to worst – plus who’s paying their staff most fairly May 20, 2016 One size rarely fits all, especially, as a study out today has discovered, when it comes to bankers' pay. The research by Emolument.com, which crunched the numbers on 1,433 salaries, found that paypackets for associates at 18 of London's well-known banks varied by up to £73,000 while the highest paid managing director (MD) is pocketing around £571,963 more than [...]
Fidgety millennials: How to stop the mid-management exodus May 20, 2016 When you think of a “millennial” worker, do you think of a recent graduate, or somebody who you have worked with for years who is running their own team? The label covers anyone from 21 to 33 years old. While there has been considerable focus on how to attract graduate millennials into the workforce, there [...]
