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Freetrade: IG Group swoops for trading app in pivot to UK market

January 15, 2025

IG Group has acquired stock trading app Freetrade for £160m, as the FTSE 250 firm looks to target a new UK audience of traders. The trading platform, along with its 720,000 customers and £2.5bn in assets, will move to IG Group in mid-2025, subject to regulatory approval, the firm said in a stock exchange notice [...]

Taylor Wimpey: Housebuilder holds guidance but warns of cost pressures

January 15, 2025

Taylor Wimpey has said it’s on track to meet its profit target for the year, but echoing a similar warning from rivals Persimmon and Vistry, said rising costs could be a headwind to growth in 2025. The FTSE 100 firm expects an operating profit of £416m for 2024, down from £470.2m the year prior, according [...]

Dunelm profit ticks up with no plans to raise prices

January 15, 2025

Homewares retailer Dunelm has reported solid trading results which were ahead of the wider retail market for the golden quarter. Sales at the Leicester-headquartered business grew 1.6 per cent to £490m in the 13 weeks to December 28 in a “challenging market”, Dunelm said. Sales in the first half of the year were at 2.4 [...]

Rathbones: Outflows subside as Investec merger progresses

January 15, 2025

Rathbones has managed to turn the tide on the wave of outflows that followed its merger with Investec’s wealth arm. In a trading update published today, the wealth manager said investors pulled £200m from its platform in the final quarter of the year, down from £600m the quarter before. Despite having “particularly strong discretionary inflows”, [...]

Poundland adds more items to its offering – but do customers see the value?

January 15, 2025

Yougov’s chief executive Steve Hatch takes a closer look at the data behind the biggest stories in business. Here, he searches for value in Poundland. Poundland announced an increase in the number of £1 products it offers from 1,500 to 2,400 on 6 January 2025, having cut the price of basics such as milk, bread, [...]

The Capitalist: Traitors, Tories and death to the robots

January 15, 2025

Traitors, the Trump inauguration and broken robots in this week’s edition of City AM’s gossip column The Capitalist ROSES ARE RED, TULIP IS THROUGH At around about the same time that Tulip Siddiq was drafting her resignation statement, Labour MP Callum Anderson was hosting former London Stock Exchange colleagues for a chat in Westminster about [...]

Former BBC Dragons’ Den star backs UK AI action plan

January 15, 2025

Former Dragon’s Den investor Piers Linney has backed the UK’s recently announced ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, calling it a necessary step to position Britain as a global hub for the technology. The government’s plan, announced by Keir Starmer on Monday but developed under the leadership of tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, set out a strategy to [...]

Mark Kleinman: Regulators’ D-Day is crucial for Starmer agenda

January 15, 2025

Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and is the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column. This week, he looks at D-Day for regulators, Ebury’s IPO knife-edge and Badenoch’s Reform nightmare Regulators’ D-Day is crucial for Starmer agenda It’s D-Day for Britain’s regulators. Barely three weeks after a dozen economic watchdogs were [...]

Nissan supplier to create almost 200 jobs with new £50m EV factory

January 15, 2025

A major supplier of Nissan has invested nearly £50m to open a new factory in Sunderland, creating 183 high-skilled jobs for the local region. Jatco, a Japanese firm which makes gearboxes for global automakers, will build electrified powertrains for Nissan’s nearby gigafactory. Situated in Sunderland’s International Advanced Manufacturing Park, the 138,840 sq ft plant is [...]

UK ‘lacks understanding’ on tech procurement as taxpayer foots bill

January 15, 2025

The UK’s approach to technology procurement ‘lacks understanding’, resulting in costly setbacks whilst leaving its public services on outdated systems. The government has accumulated 29 years of delays across major IT projects and £3bn in cost overruns, according to a recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO). This comes as Keir Starmer recently launched [...]

Gatwick hopes for China travel boom with second runway

January 15, 2025

The government is expected to make a decision on Gatwick's second runway proposals at the tail-end of February.

Barclays analysts: Lloyds and Natwest are ‘too good to ignore’

January 15, 2025

"A repricing higher in UK rates expectations sees us lift our NII estimates," Aman Rakkar and Grace Dargan wrote in a note published today.

‘The Silicon Beach dream was a lie’: Onbuy quits home with parting shot

January 15, 2025

Technology company Onbuy has quit its home town of Bournemouth and hit out at the local council saying there is no support for the industry. Chief executive Cas Paton took to LinkedIn to announce the news that the business will now mainly operate from London and New York. He added that while Onbuy “will always” [...]

Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft: The £30bn legal headache for Big Tech

January 15, 2025

Headlines have been popping about class actions in the UK with the main target on the other side, Big Tech firms. But why them?

Hargreaves Lansdown founder: Labour has ‘worst cabinet of all time’

January 15, 2025

The billionaire founder of Hargreaves Lansdown has said that the current Labour administration has the worst cabinet of all time and will “wreck the economy” over the course of a full term. Peter Hargreaves, who set up the investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown from his bedroom in 1986, slammed the Labour government’s first six months in [...]