Greek parliament passes second batch of reforms
The Greek parliament have passed a second package of reforms, meaning negotiations can begin for an €86bn European Union bailout.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras managed to contain a rebellion by members of his left-wing Syriza party, passing the reforms with the backing of 230 votes in the 300-seat chamber.
Tsipras appealed to parliament before the vote:
“We made tough choices, and I personally made difficult, responsible choices. Today we must all redefine the possibilities ahead of us given the new circumstances.
We chose a difficult compromise to avert the most extreme plans by the most extreme circles in Europe.”
Further violence erupted on the streets of Athens as Parliament debated the bill, which was passed at approximately 4:00 local time.
The government has said it hopes negotiations on the bailout deal can start this week and hope to have them wrapped up by Aug. 20.
Aberdeen Asset Management reports 7% drop in assets
Aberdeen Asset Management (LON:ADN), Europe’s largest listed fund manager, reported a 7% fall in assets under management; with total net outflows of £9.9 billion during the quarter as institutional investors continue to reduce exposure to Asia and emerging markets equities.
In the same quarter last year, Aberdeen saw outflows of £8.8 billion, raising concerns at the increasing rate investors are cashing in looking to re-allocate in the strong dollar environment. This brings total assets under management as of the 30th June down to £307.3 billion, from £330.3 billion on 31st March.
Aberdeen Chief Executive Officer Martin Gilbert said:
“Market and FX movements together with low margin outflows from certain fixed income and solutions clients accounted for a large proportion of the decline in assets under management. In addition, macro-economic factors and investor sentiment towards Asia and emerging markets continued to weigh on equity flows.”
ADN has now lost over a quarter of its market cap since peaking at 509 on the 13th April this year. It is trading at 372p per share, down 7% on the day, as market participants digest the news.
DMGT falls due to decline in advertising
DMGT Plc, the owners of Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and The Independent, fell 8% this morning after releasing their third quarter trading report.
The company has been hit by a decline in the print advertising sector, with advertising revenues across DMG media newspapers down 13% compared to last year. However, advertising for companion websites and other forms of digital advertising were up, bringing total advertising revenue down 6% altogether. Due to this tough market, total revenue declined 5%.
However, market share grew for both the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, with 23.4% and 22.1% respectively.
Due to the disappointing third quarter results, the company have directed their outlook for the Group’s Full Year results towards the lower end of market expectations.
Unilever show positive figures for second quarter
Unilever (LON:ULVR) are up 2.2% this morning after delivering their second quarter results.
They reported a 12% increase in turnover, with underlying sales growth up 2.9%. Core earnings per share were also up 16%.
CEO Paul Polman commented:
” [These figures] demonstrate again the progress we have made in the transformation of Unilever to deliver consistent, competitive, profitable and responsible growth, now in the seventh year.
We plan for another year of volume growth ahead of our markets, steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow.”
Strong sales were led by savoury foods, including soup in Europe and Hellman’s mayonnaise in South America, and personal care products including the Dove deodorant line.
Retail sales suffer unexpected dip
British retail sales dipped in the second quarter according to figures released today.
According to the Office of National Statistics consumers bought fewer household goods, pushing the annual rate of spending growth for the quarter to its lowest in more than two years.
Sales volumes dropped by 0.2 percent in June, and retail spending up just 1.3% on a year earlier. Both figures were well below analysts’ forecasts.
The disappointing figures fuel concerns over whether Britain is bouncing back the first quarter’s economic slowdown as quickly as initially thought.
Economists expect consumer spending to be positive in 2015; official data last week showed the fastest wage growth in more than five years.
Suffolk-based Giffords Hall Vineyard starts crowdfunding campaign
With the summer sun having a positive impact on UK-produced alcohol sales, now is the perfect time for Giffords Hall, a small Suffolk-based vineyard, to kick off a crowdfunding campaign.
English produced alcohol is having a great summer season, with UK produced sparkling wine sales doubling over the last four years. English wine production has grown from 1.3 million bottles in 2007 to 6.3 million bottles in 2014. Giffords Hall Vineyard produces award-winning rose, white and sparkling wines and are hoping to capitalise on growth in the UK alcohol market as well as expanding their export market. The company is seeking to raise £58,000 from investors, in return for 5% equity.
As well as a booming vineyard and wine shop, Giffords Hall have a small cellar, open during the summer months and for Christmas, and hold regular open days where they exhibit the work of local artists, sculptors and potters. They also produce their own lavender products, fleeces from our rare breed sheep, juice from our orchard, vinegars and a range of liqueurs. This company
The company’s directors, Linda and Guy Howard, have a wealth of knowledge between them. Linda has a proven track record in running businesses and is responsible for the marketing, advertising and maintaining the wholesale relationships, and
Guy has supervised 9 growing seasons and is responsible for the farming operations and finances of the company.
Gifford Hall wines are stocked by Laytons and Waitrose, as well as several specialist wine merchants around London and the South East, and exports to Asia, Switzerland and the USA account for around 10% of sales.
Giffords Hall are hoping to use the money raised to expand the business. £10,000 will be spent on marketing and increasing the brand’s awareness, with another 15,000 to facilitate the growth in production to 30,000 bottles. The rest of the money will be spent on more storage facilities, additional wine making equipment and upgrading the office and shop.
Head over to Crowd2Fund for more information on Giffords Hall’s investment opportunity,
GoPro launch website selling user videos
GoPro (NASDAQ:GPRO) are planning to expand their business, by launching a website to help users make money by selling home videos recorded on their GoPros.
Following a similar model to copyright photo sites like Shutterstock, the US company have announced that videos will start at $1,000 (£640) for six months’ use. They said they were planning on taking a percentage – but did not disclose how much.
“Some of the clips that are being produced on GoPro devices are almost professional broadcast quality,” Ian Maude from the research firm Enders Analysis told the BBC.
“This new licensing portal creates a platform for creative GoPro users to market their videos and may also encourage a new generation to pick up the firm’s camcorders and get filming.”
The new website will be an effective advertising stunt, proving the quality of GoPro videos and producing a better awareness of the brand – all whilst making money.
A GoPro spokeswoman also told the BBC that: “We have a lot of athlete-generated content and some other very exciting footage, so the ability for marketers and creative professionals to just be able to search for the content that they want and get it that rather than having to shoot it themselves [should be] a no-brainer.”
GoPro make action cameras, popular due to their high quality, durability and fish eye lens option. GoPro recently reported their last quarter earnings, with net income of $35m, compared with a loss of $19.8m year earlier. Revenue rose 71.7% to $419.9m.
Budget airline Flybe soars
Budget airline Flybe is up 12% today, after publishing their trading statement for the last quarter.
The positive start to the year is good news for the company, who are undergoing a three year transformation to keep up with competitors easyJet and Ryanair.
Flybe saw a 9.8% growth in passenger numbers in the last quarter, with a 1.6% decrease in revenue per seat and a 3.4% reduction in cost per seat
Revenue was at £147.7m, up 11% on the year before.
Looking forward to the next quarter, the company are improving their winter timetable in order to keep growth steady with an increased frequency on popular routes.
Saad Hammad, Chief Executive Officer, said:
“As we enter the next phase of our transformation, Flybe has again delivered revenue and passenger growth in the quarter, demonstrating the strength of our core business. We carried significantly more customers than the same time last year and maintained our industry-leading punctuality levels.
We remain focused on tackling the surplus E195 aircraft, our final legacy issue, and are actively pursuing a range of solutions.
Actually, women ARE interested in tech – and they’re good at it, too
According to Milo Yiannopoulos in an article published last week, the “women in tech” movement is ‘tanking’. Apparently, trying to get more women involved in the technology sector makes us sound ‘shrill’. Women just aren’t interested in tech, they never will be and, to top it all off, their brains just aren’t as well suited to programming.
Hmm. Try telling that to Eileen Burbidge, who has just topped CityAM’s Fintech powerlist. Beginning her career as a software engineer, she cut her teeth in Silicon Valley working for some of the world’s most prestigious tech companies, including Apple, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems. She then moved to London in 2004, becoming one of Skype’s earliest employees, and has just been named as the goverment’s special envoy for Fintech. Not bad for someone whose ‘IQ tends to cluster towards mean on the scale’.
However, it is obvious that Burbidge is the exception to the rule; in general, women’s presence is lacking in the technology industry. According to a survey of Tech London Advocate members, a quarter companies within London tech community employ no women at board level. Burbage may have topped CityAM’s powerlist, but only three women feature in the top 10. In fact, only 12 per cent of angel funding and a mere four per cent of venture capital funding goes to women at all.
The figures speak for themselves; there aren’t a high proportion of women in tech. Baroness Lane Fox, founder of Lastminute.com, argues that we should start accepting the scale of this problem; even the House of Lords, with its dismal male-female ratio, has a greater proportion of women than British tech companies.
However I, unlike Yanniopoulos, don’t believe the poor numbers are due to women being ‘stroppy’, better suited to PR and marketing or simply uninterested. I think it’s far more likely that they are intimidated by a industry that has always been male dominated, and find it difficult to find the confidence and conviction to go up against boards full of men. Of course there are stereotypes in the tech industry – it’s been run almost solely by men since it began – and that’s why we need the “women in tech” movement.
I am inclined to agree with Lane-Fox when she says that “mobilising an underutilized pool of talent can only have huge benefits to the industry.” As high-profile female figures show, including Burbidge and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, women are more than capable of bringing big things to the technology sector. There are movements to bring more women into politics, and several of the big city banks run schemes designed to encourage young girls into finance – so why on earth shouldn’t there by a group supporting women in technology?
What won’t help women are articles like the one written by Yanniopoulos; by denying that there is a problem, it discredits any movement that tries to solve it. I scrolled down to the comments at the bottom, hoping to find some with the same sense of disbelief as I felt when I read it; sadly, the majority of what I found were men in agreement, saying that female programmers are “mediocre at best”. When I posted the article on Twitter, I received a baffling amount of replies from trolls, blocking me and telling me to “order a sense of humour from Amazon” (Apparently, it’s free delivery.) I’m sure I shall receive the same backlash for publishing this.
Fortunately, there are plenty of groups out there that support and encourage women in tech. Girls in Tech is an international group, who aim to ‘raise the visibility of women in technology, entrepreneurship and innovation’, and GeekGirl Meetup provides support and advice for all “women and girls interested in all things tech, design, and startups”, as does Ladies in Tech London. Thankfully, the “women in tech” movement doesn’t seem to be ‘tanking’; if anything, it’s growing, and that can only be a good thing for the technology industry as a whole.
Miranda Wadham
FTSE 100 sheds 1% following poor results from Apple and BHP Billiton
The FTSE 100 was down over 1% in early trade after poor results from Apple hit tech stocks and lower commodity prices encouraged the selling of miners and oil and gas companies.
Arm Holdings was the biggest faller at 11.00 am in London, down 3.7%. The move lower followed big falls in Asian stocks that were reliant on the iPhone maker for the lion’s share of their revenue. Although Apple posted strong results, they didn’t live up to analysts’ expectations. Shares in the world’s biggest company are down 8% in the US premarket.
Commodity companies added to this week’s losses after BHP Billiton reported further impairment charges caused by low commodity prices.
The FTSE 350 Mining Sector is down 25% over the last year as diversified miners struggle to find a place to hide as commodities slump across the board.
“The beauty of diversification is that when one commodity is down, one of the others picks up the slack. That’s not happening right now,” said James Wilson, a mining analyst for Morgans Financial.
The FTSE 100 was at 6694, off 1.1% at 11.00am in London.