News
Harrods, London’s famous luxury department store, is planning the biggest revamp in its 180-year history as part of a £200 million investment which is aimed partly at attracting more Hong Kong and Chinese customers, managing director Michael Ward told the South China Morning Post on Thursday.
The three-year capital plan includes ploughing more money into its e-commerce offering to ensure the store remains popular for customers from around the world, especially from affluent Asian destinations, led by Hong Kong and China, said Ward.
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The projects are being backed as part of the NHS Innovation Accelerator (NIA) programme which is designed to encourage innovative technologies in the NHS.
One of them is RespiraSense, a wireless device which measures breathing and abdomen movements to help detect early signs of sepsis, pneumonia and cardiac arrest.
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Almost every sixth car sold in the world will be electric by 2025, according to a UBS global autos survey released Tuesday. And if things go the way they have in 2017, those cars are more likely to be emblazoned with a Tesla Inc. logo than BMW AG’s.
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StrideUp, a U.K. startup founded last year by Sakeeb Zaman and Rohan Trivedi, both formerly of Deutsche Bank, wants to make shared home ownership more readily available within the private housing sector.
The company, which launched in the summer, lets you buy a portion of your home while you continue to rent the remainder. The idea, Trivedi tells me, is to provide an alternative to a mortgage, a form of financing that is increasingly out of reach for many.
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If you thought the shops were looking quiet last Friday then you were right.
A whopping £1.4bn was spent on online sales in the UK on Black Friday - up some 11.7% on last year, according to online retailers trade body IMRG. But on High Streets, shopping centres and retail parks it was a different story with footfall figures down 3.6%, analysis firm Springboard said.
Online's shopping growth is already an established trend, but IMRG says it works particularly well for sales. To read more on this, click here.
Department store group Fenwick has appointed the first non-Fenwick family member to the position of chief executive. Robbie Feather, currently commercial director at Argos, will join the business in February.
Feather’s appointment comes after former Co-op chief Richard Pennycook joined the historic retailer as chairman last year (again as the first non-family member to take the role). Pennycook’s arrival was precipitated by the decision of Mark Fenwick to step down from the role of chairman, after which group trading director Hugo Fenwick and managing director Adam Fenwick both stepped down from their roles. The Fenwick family has headed up the business since 1882.
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Since its HBR debut in 1995, the concept of disruptive innovation—the process by which a smaller company with limited resources is able to launch a product or service that displaces established competitors—has been extensively incorporated into startup vernacular. Entrepreneurs often use a version of the phrase when launching products, raising funds, unveiling strategies, hiring teams, and engaging partners.
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More VC money sloshing around Europe: In what was probably one of the worst kept secrets in European VC, London-based Balderton Capital is announcing a new $375 million fund. I understand that it actually closed earlier this year, however, and I’m told has already been used to make ten investments.
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Bitcoin. Blockchain. Cryptocurrencies. Initial coin offerings.
Everyone’s talking about them, but what do these terms really mean?
As of this writing in mid-November 2017, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies hovers around $220B (with a single bitcoin trading for upwards of $8,000). Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have exploded in popularity, closing on $3B+ in funding in 2017 alone. Huge corporations — like Walmart and Pfizer — have completed successful blockchain pilots.
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The UK government is looking to introduce a draft bill to regulate the use of drones.
As a result, individuals flying the devices will have to pass a series of safety tests and comply with a mandatory register.
The new rules could also ban drones from being flown near airports and above 400 feet.
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