News
Amazon has successfully overturned an order to pay $250 million (£214 million) in back taxes after the European Union's second-highest court rejected the European Commission's (EC) case.
The decision is another blow to EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager and her attempts to crackdown on preferential fiscal deals.A judge for the General Court of the European Union found that the commission "did not prove to the requisite legal standard that there was an undue reduction to the tax burden" of Amazon's Luxembourg subsidiary.
The case dates back to 2006 when Amazon established a complex tax structure in Europe that allowed it to take revenue from all EU sales via its Luxembourg operation. This was internally referred to as 'Project Goldcrest' - named after the national bird of Luxembourg.
The EC ruled that the structure was illegal in 2017 and estimated that Amazon had used it to avoid paying around €250 million in taxes. At the time, Vestager said it meant that three-quarters of Amazon's European profits were not taxed and that the company was paying four times less tax than other local companies.
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The UK government has proposed new regulations that could see social media companies fined up to 10% of their annual turnover, or £18 million, for failing to quash online abuse, with criminal charges levied against senior management.
The landmark Online Safety Bill, which aims to clamp down on the spread of unadulterated hate speech on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, will grant Ofcom the powers to enforce a statutory duty of care. This was devised in response to the Online Harms White Paper consultation and has been in development for a couple of years.
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London-based digital freight forwarder, Zencargo, enables organisations to make smarter decisions by providing a real-time overview of their supply chain using AI machine learning. In a recent development, the company has raised £30 million Series B funding.
The investment round in Zencargo was led by Digital+ Partners along with participation from existing investors including HV Capital. The company intends to use this latest round of funding to double its team from 150 to 350 people in two years. Also, Zencargo eyes to expand internationally, establishing its presence in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and the United States.
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SB Management, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group Corp, has announced the acquisition of a stake worth $2.33 billion (approx £1.6 billion) in The Hut Group (THG), an online retailing platform based out of Manchester.
With this deal, SB Management will acquire a 19.9% stake in THG Ingenuity, a yet-to-be-formed tech platform division. Notably, the stake values the subsidiary at $6.3 billion (approx £4.5 billion).
The UK company is also planning to raise a capital of $1 billion (approx £706 million), which includes $730 million (approx £515 million) from SBM and an institutional placing of up to $270 million (approx £190 million).
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Lithuania’s first tech unicorn Vinted is the largest online C2C platform in Europe dedicated to second-hand fashion. Now, the company took to the headlines again as it raised $303 million (nearly £215 million) in a Series F funding round.
The investment round was led by EQT Growth, with participation from each of Vinted’s previous lead investors: Accel, Burda Principal Investments, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Sprints Capital. Also, it takes the pre-money valuation of the company to $4.5 billion (nearly £3 billion).
Vinted will use the funds to help more people participate in the circular economy. This way, it will be able to work on its mission to make second-hand fashion the first choice. The company eyes to expand into new geographies both within Europe and beyond, continue to improve the overall member experience by investing into trust and safety, payments, shipping, infrastructure, and more.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and work-life balance have taken an enormous toll on the well-being of employees globally.
The current crisis has brought the issue of employee mental health firmly into the foreground for employers.
According to the report, 78.5% of employers are reporting an increase in requests for mental health support and 90% are concerned that their employees are experiencing burnout, says another.
Based out of London, Unmind, a B2B mental health platform, fills that need sparked by the pandemic by providing clinically-backed tools and training.
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smol, the UK’s fastest-growing homecare brand, is celebrating its third anniversary. Now, the company bagged $34 million (nearly £24 million) Series B funding led by Eight Roads Ventures alongside Google Ventures, Latitude, and existing investors Balderton Capital and Jam Jar.
The new funds will allow the company to continue investing in new product development and expand into other European markets. smol notes that the pandemic has further increased the demand for its products, driven by their convenient home delivery and sustainable approach.
“The last year has further increased consumers’ awareness of the ecological impact our everyday actions have, and the role younger brands can have in making a positive difference,” said co-founder Nick Green, pointing to a recent Brandbean study that showed over 80% of consumers switching brands or products last year in order to be more eco-friendly, and trusting smaller brands to offer better eco-friendly products.
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An NHS Digital-run vaccine-booking website exposed just how many vaccines individual people had received – and did so with no authentication, according to the Guardian.
The booking page, aimed at English NHS patients wanting to book first and second coronavirus jabs, would tell anyone at all whether a named person had had zero, one or two vaccination doses, the newspaper reported on Thursday.
All you need, it says, are the date of birth and postcode of the person whose vaccination status you wanted to check up on. These details are not difficult to find online with some obvious search terms.
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Fly Now Pay Later, a UK alternative payments provider, raised a further £10m ($14m) in Series A funding, bringing its total to £45m ($62m).
The round was co-led by asset management firms Revenio Capital and Taurus Wealth Advisors.
The company intends to use the funds to launch US and grow UK and German operations.
Founded by CEO Jasper Dykes, Fly Now Pay Later is a fintech company providing an alternative payments solution exclusively for the travel sector. This enables customers to spread the cost of a trip over up to 12 monthly installments by partnering with travel merchants or directly to consumers through its Anywhere app.
Hundreds of travel companies use it to offer finance (from as little as 0% APR) to holidaymakers, who can make repayments in affordable scheduled installments. Its merchant partnerships range from SME travel operators to leading operators like Malaysian Airlines, Lastminute.com and TravelUp.
London-based insurtech Sprout.ai that assures to settle insurance claims process in just 24 hours has now announced to have bagged £8 million in Series A funding.
The investment round was led by Octopus Ventures, one of the largest and most active early-stage investors in Europe. Even existing investors, including Amadeus Capital Partners, Techstars and Playfair Capital, also participated in the round.
Sprout.ai will use the investment to support hiring and plans to recruit top talent into its product, operations, delivery, and technical teams. Also, it intends to grow its enterprise sales and partner networks. Apparently, the insurtech company intends to make sure that customers can receive the solution quickly by accelerating pipeline deployment and customer onboarding. Sprout.ai also announced that it would use the investment in R&D with an increased focus on OCR and NLP. This way, it aims to grab the position of segment leader in claims automation.
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