In case you hadn’t heard, Friday night ushered in a new era for London: the Night Tube. Bringing the British capital in line with other European cities who already have 24 hour metro systems, two main lines will now run continuously between Friday morning and Sunday night.
Championed by both Boris Johnson and Sadiq Kahn as vital to “help maintain London’s status as a vibrant and exciting place to live, work and visit,” Friday’s launch was the result of hard work by both mayors, as well as hours of discussion with unhappy trade unions.
Expensive as the project may be, both Kahn and his predecessor Johnson were agreed on the long term economic benefits. Research suggests that the net additional output produced as a result of the service will equate to an additional £360 million over 30 years, and for each £1 spent on delivering the Night Tube, the benefits will be worth £2.70.
Looking at the bigger picture, Sadiq Kahn hopes the Night Tube service will give London’s failing nightlife a much-needed boost. Recent months have seen London nightclubs close at an unprecedented rate, leading Kahn to seek the appointment of a ‘Night Minister’ to nurture and protect the city’s nightlife.
A 24-hour service gives clubs and bars the potential for longer operating hours, and obtain more staff – TfL predicts the Night Tube will lead to the creation of 1,965 permanent jobs, across a range of industries.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Kahn, at Oxford Circus station
The demand for a 24 hour service, especially at weekends, is certainly there: around 560,000 people use the tube after 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays already, equivalent to 8 percent of all trips, according to a report by economic consultant Volterra.
For shift workers, it spells the end of long, tiresome night bus journeys home. Almost half of night bus passengers are commuting to and from work, and demand has risen 170 percent in the past 15 years – far in excess of TfL’s daytime services.
Indirectly, the service has other benefits; it provides a reduced demand for illegal minicabs and less time spent on the streets waiting for Night Buses, thus improving safety at night.
Whether the investment will be as good as it sounds is something only time will tell. For London, however, it represents a new era; for nightlife, for the economy and for everyone who considers themselves a Londoner.
Pfizer and AstraZeneca agree antibiotic deal
Pfizer has agreed to buy a small antibiotics arm of AstraZeneca’s pharmaceutical business, just days after confirming a $14 billion takeover of Medivation.
The deal, worth $1.5 billion, will widen its antibiotic medicine offering and give access to several others still in the development stage.
AstraZeneca said the deal is unlikely to have an effect on this years figures, but pushed shares down 0.30 percent to 5,046 (LON:AZN).
Glencore profits drop 66 percent
Glencore (LON:GLEN) disclosed a 66 percent drop in first half profits on Wednesday, sending shares down nearly 5 percent.
The company said volatile commodity prices had impacted on its performance, which saw first half adjusted EBITDA fall 13 percent.
Glencore also announced a new debt reduction target, raising it to between $16.5 million and $17.5 million.
CEO Ivan Glasenberg commented, “Going forward, we continue to focus on successfully completing the balance sheet repositioning, first announced in September of 2015 and delivering industry-leading shareholder returns into the future.”
Growth slows in Germany
The Germany economy has slowed in the second quarter, with GDP increasing by just 0.4 percent between April and June.
The figure represents a 0.3 percent slowdown from the 0.7 percent growth achieved in the first quarter. The annual growth rate stood at 3.1 percent.
Growth was driven by household and public sector spending, but held back by a fall in investment.
Sirius Minerals Plc drops 21.7% on the London Alternative Investment Market on Tuesday.
UK fertiliser development company has seen a share price increase of 188 percent this year. Com
The company, which focus on extracting polyhalite, a type of potash, is valued just under £1 billion.
However, Tuesday proved a challenging day on the stock market for the company as stock prices tumbled from 51.66pence at 8.15am to a low of 40.75pence at 4pm, down a staggering 21.7%.
The decline, which can likely be attributed to stop-losses, has since been reverted to some extent.
At 4.21pm Sirius Minerals Plc (LON: SXX) was trading at 42.8pence (-5.93%).
The next CrowdTuesday session in London is only a week away.
CrowdTuesday will be held on the rooftop at the BWB London offices next Tuesday, from 6 to 8pm.
Through the networking event the organisers – the European Crowdfunding Network, portfolio manager Lendery and professional services consultancy Bates Wells Braithwaite – aim to connect people in the crowdfunding industry within an informal setting.
The European Crowdfunding Network comments on CrowdTuesday:
“CrowdTuesday is a perfect occasion for anybody interested in crowdfunding to do some networking or to listen to an interesting presentation, while having an after work drink. Participation is free of charge.”
Next week’s event in London will focus on the potential blockchain technologies have to advance alternative financial services. It will feature speeches from Alex Batlin, Senior Innovation Manager at UBS; Steven Garner, Co-Founder of Xsoar.com and Jamie Burke, Co-founder of OutlierVentures.
Volkswagen finally settled a contract dispute, after negotiations with two suppliers began on Monday morning.
After 20 hours of talks with two suppliers, manufacturing seats and cast iron parts needed to make gearboxes, Volkswagen has now confirmed that a resolution has been reached. CarTrim as well as ES Automobilguss will resume supply to the German car manufacturer shortly.
Stoppages will not affected already placed orders
The stop of production affected 27,700 staff members, as well as the production output at four German VW plants, according to Volkswagen. The German car manufacturer has however stated that the dispute and temporary supply cut will not affect delivery of already executed orders.
According to the BBC, production of Golfs in Wolfsburg, as well as production of both Golfs and Passats in Zwickau will resume later this week.
Production of chassis parts and plastic parts in Braunschweig will start again Monday next week.
Volkswagen gave no details of the nature of the settlement.
Due to what the company stated to be an unrelated issue, production of Passats was also temporarily halted in Emden last week, but is set to resume again this Wednesday.
News of a number of production stoppages send Volkswagen (VOW3:GER) shares down 2.3%, to a low of €119.05, on Monday afternoon. After the resolution to the dispute became public, they recovered to €122.6, up 2.12% from market open on Tuesday.
Car maker’s share prices still not recovered since last years emission scandal
The car maker suffered greatly after the emission scandal in the second half of 2015. The company has since only managed a marginal recovery of stock prices and prices once again fell sharply after the UK’s EU referendum.
Although earnings were still depressed by further pay outs and law suits, related to the illegal software installation deactivating pollution controls, Q2 earnings in 2016 exceeded estimates, giving investors some new confidence in the performance of the car manufacturer.
Governor Kuroda spoke at the Bank of Japan’s first FinTech Forum, in a speech discussing the significant role FinTech innovation plays in driving the development of financial services.
Kuroda dedicated a large amount of his speech to the importance of information security. He made no mention of Japan’s current economic situation and the BoJ’s position on monetary policy.
BoJ wants to support country’s developments in FinTech
The BoJ’s first FinTech Forum was designed to promote the development of new, alternative financial services, and attended by business leaders and experts from around the world. Participants included IT enterprises, retailers and start-up companies.
In his speech, Governor Kuroda promoted the FinTech sector as an important driver of economic activity and user-welfare in financial services. He commented: “FinTech has a wide influence on payments, settlements and financial services, and could stimulate various economic activities, including e-commerce and ‘sharing economy’ businesses.” Kuroda signalled that the BoJ is looking to make use of FinTech services in their own operations in the future.
Information security presents a vital issue
A large part of his speech was dedicated to the importance information security. Mentioning the February Bangladesh Bank heist, in which cyber thieves stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s central bank, he also highlighted the opportunities that innovations in FinTech present for hackers and cyber-attacks, which need to be addressed.
Kuroda stated: “FinTech will thrive and grow when users associate it not only with convenience but also with safety and trust.”
Japan is finally catching up in the FinTech innovation race
Japan’s FinTech industry trailed far behind developments in the US and Europe until last year. However, since 2015, investment in start-ups in the FinTech industry more than doubled, to US$141.73 million. This year the industry continues along its exponential growth path.
The Bank of Japan has started to take great interest in the country’s FinTech developments this year. In April, the Bank established its “FinTech Centre”, within the Payment and Settlement Systems Department, to actively take part in the innovation in alternative financial services. The Centre was further complimented by the “FinTech Network”, tasked with distributing and collecting information across the sectors of the Central Bank.
Governor Kuroda said in today’s forum: “The Bank of Japan is ready to lead research and analysis on FinTech, in view of the possibility that the Bank itself may apply FinTech technologies to its operations in the future.”
Kuroda left BoJ’s monetary policy intentions unmentioned
Comments on the wider economic situation of Japan were noticeably missing, despite the failures of Kuroda’s sizeable program of quantitative easing which began in 2013.
In its latest monetary meeting at the end of July, the bank responded to the UK’s Brexit vote with a new record stimulus package. However, many experts worry that the BoJ will soon reach its limit on current expansionary measures as the bank is running out of assets to buy.
The next monetary policy meeting will be held on the 21st and 22nd September, with analysts and economic agents looking for clues as to how the BoJ will proceed in its fight to stimulate the Japanese economy.
Women who take a break in their careers to have children are likely to earn less than men, according to the latest report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.
Over the 12 years after having a baby the hourly pay rate for women is 33 percent lower than men, with men being 40 percent more likely to be promoted into management roles.
Robert Joyce, one of the authors of the report, said the wage slowdown is gradual:
“Women who work half-time lose out on subsequent wage progression, meaning that the hourly wages of men (and of women in full-time work) pull further and further ahead.”
Women on average earn 18 percent less than men, a big improvement on the 28 percent gap in 1993.
Rank Group resilient despite William Hill deal drop
Bookmaker Rank Group said trading is unlikely to be affected by Brexit, with its business largely focused on the UK market.
Performance in the seven weeks to August 15th remained in line with analysts’ expectations, reporting a 2 percent fall in operating profit.
The figures come just days after Rank Group dropped its bid to buy William Hill after the joint takeover proposal was rejected by the high street bookmaker.
Rank Group (LON:RNK) is currently up 3.25 percent at 228.70 (1052GMT).
Euro zone business growth unaffected by Brexit
Euro zone business activity remained stable in August, suggesting any slowdown in economic growth has been limited to the UK.
MarkIt’s Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 53.3, 0.1 up on June’s figure and the highest reading for seven months.
Chris Williamson, Markit’s chief economist, said:
“Policymakers will be quite encouraged that it is moving in a positive direction. It looks cautiously optimistic for the region in the face of the Brexit threat.”
Persimmon up 5 percent, defies Brexit uncertainty
Shares in housebuilder Persimmon have risen nearly 5 percent this morning, after reporting first half-profits buoyed by “robust” customer interest.
Profits jumped 29 percent to £352.3 million in the first half of 2016, with the private sale reservation rate up 17 percent.
Despite the increased economic uncertainty sparked by Brexit, customer interest has remained strong and visitors to its sites were up 20 percent year on year.
Persimmon (LON:PSN) is currently up 4.35 percent at 1,872.00 (1046GMT).
This summer’s good weather has had a positive effect on the troubled UK grocery market, causing the sector to grow by 0.3 percent, according to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel.
The figures, which represent the 12 weeks ending 14 August 2016, showed a the fastest acceleration of sales since March 2016 but a surprising disinterest in customer promotions. Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said:
“Only 37.7 percent of grocery sales were bought on any kind of promotion this period – a significant decrease from highs of over 40 percent we were seeing in 2015.”
In terms of inflation, Brexit seems to have had little effect so far. Grocery price inflation has remained negative, with a representative basket of goods 1.3 percent cheaper than it was last year.
Budget supermarkets have maintained the upper hand in the market over the past 12 weeks, continually beating larger supermarkets with cheaper prices and an increasingly large selection of goods. Lidl was the fastest growing supermarket, with sales up 12.2 percent, followed by Aldi at 10.4 percent.This is in sharp comparison to the falling sales of the traditional ‘Big Four’ supermarkets, with Tesco’s (LON:TSCO) declining by 0.4 percent – albeit its slowest rate of decline in six months, suggesting new strategy may be beginning to pay off.
McKevitt commented: “Current trends suggest the retailer may return to growth this year, which would mark the end of a decline stretching back to March 2015. Tesco’s recent product launches have been making a positive impact on its performance, with its ‘Farm brands’ finding their way into over a quarter of the Tesco baskets this period.”
Waitrose has strong success over the last 12 weeks, with sales rising by 1.4 percent and maintaining its 5.1 percent slice of the market. However, other supermarkets disappointed; Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) saw sales fall by by 0.6% and Morrisons (LON:MRW) by 1.8 percent, despite bringing in a new CEO last year to implement a turnaround plan. Both retailers saw market share fall to 16.1 percent and 10.6 percent respectively. Asda suffered the biggest sales drop of the Big Four, down 5.5 percent.
Microsoft announced today that it has signed an agreement to purchase Genee, an “artificial intelligence-powered scheduling service”.
The Tech start-up was founded in 2014 to simplify the task of scheduling meetings. It acts as a virtual personal assistant, which, thanks to natural language processing and optimised decision-making algorithms, recognises meeting requests in a user’s outgoing email or text. It then sends the included recipients appropriate options, according to the user’s prior calendar engagements.
The new acquisition will add to the growing services of Microsoft’s Office 365, in order to create additional value for users of the popular Microsoft service.
The Microsoft press release stated:
“…I’m confident the Genee team will help us further our ambition to bring intelligence into every digital experience.”
Genee Co-founders, Ben Cheung and Charles Lee said about the deal on their blog:
“We consider Microsoft to be the leader in personal and enterprise productivity, AI, and virtual assistant technologies, so we look forward to bringing our passion and expertise to a team that is committed to delivering cutting-edge language and intelligence services.”
Genee will be fully integrated in Microsoft’s Office 365 service by the 1st of September. The start-ups own service will shut down at this time. However, already scheduled meetings will remain on user’s calendars.
Cheung and Lee thank their current supporters and customers:
“We thank all of you who participated in Genee’s private and public betas. The Genee team will take the valuable experiences and lessons that you taught us to Microsoft, where we’ll continue to build amazing next generation intelligent experiences.”
The Tech start-up was founded in 2014 to simplify the task of scheduling meetings. It acts as a virtual personal assistant, which, thanks to natural language processing and optimised decision-making algorithms, recognises meeting requests in a user’s outgoing email or text. It then sends the included recipients appropriate options, according to the user’s prior calendar engagements.
The new acquisition will add to the growing services of Microsoft’s Office 365, in order to create additional value for users of the popular Microsoft service.