Openreach is hiring 1,500 trainee engineers and trialling a new virtual reality experience March 20, 2017 Openreach is set to expand its workforce with 1,500 new trainee engineers hired over eight months who will work to extend the UK's fibre broadband network and improve customer service. The broadband provider will seek recruits from across Britain to fill new, full-time and permanent roles. Openreach will initially take on 119 recruits in April, followed by around 60 new [...]
Mkango and Metalysis team up to develop 3D printed earth magnets to power up electric vehicles in the UK March 20, 2017 Two firms have teamed up to develop 3D printed rare earth magnets, components for electric vehicles, in the UK. Aim-listed Mkango Resources and South Yorkshire-based Metalysis have entered into a memorandum of understanding to jointly research, develop and commercialise rare earth metal alloys for use in 3D printed permanent magnets. Read more: Business Committee launches inquiry [...]
House of Fraser owner Sanpower pulls investment in digital challenger bank Tandem March 20, 2017 Sanpower, the Chinese conglomerate which owns House of Fraser, has been forced to pull back on a multimillion pound investment in digital challenger bank Tandem, Morning Wire can reveal. A £29m tranche of cash due to bolster the startup's capital requirements for launching as a full bank has been halted over concerns that Chinese authorities are [...]
The GDPR Doomsday Clock strikes a minute closer to midnight March 20, 2017 The lugubrious ticking of my internal GDPR Doomsday Clock struck a minute closer to midnight last week. Tick, it chimed: “only 5 per cent of marketers fully understand what the GDPR means for their business.” Tock, it said: “50 per cent say they don’t really understand it at all, or [literally] don’t know.” The Chartered [...]
Riverbed Technology’s Jerry Kennelly on turning over $1bn a year making products named after fish March 20, 2017 When I meet Jerry Kennelly, the least aggravating part of the eight-hour journey he’s just made was on the tube between Westminster and Bond Street. His flight from Stockholm to Gatwick had been fraught with issues, it’d taken him the best part of two hours to get into London from Gatwick and, having stopped off [...]
Snooping around a job applicant’s Facebook? Here’s where you stand legally March 20, 2017 We've all been told at least once in our lives not to “judge a book by its cover”. The reality is that, more often than not, we do precisely the opposite. In today’s technological age, where a Sunday evening isn’t complete without uploading photos from the weekend to Facebook, it’s increasingly rare to come across [...]
Now banks have pulled their Google ad spend as Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Lloyds pile on pressure March 20, 2017 Google is facing growing pressure over claims it's profiting from hate speech as some of Britain's biggest banks are the latest to pull their ads from YouTube. Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Lloyds have suspended their advertising with the tech giant following an investigation which revealed household brand names were appearing next to offensive and extremist [...]
RBS and HSBC remove advertising from Google over extremist content with M&S planning to follow suit March 20, 2017 RBS and HSBC have removed advertising from Google over extremist content, and Marks & Spencer is planning to follow suit, it has been revealed. [custom id="108"]
Britain needs a smart state, not big government, to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution March 20, 2017 In her first party conference speech as Prime Minister, Theresa May declared it was “time to remember the good that government can do”. Setting out a new approach to the role of the state, she rightly acknowledged that Whitehall doesn’t have all the answers but should instead be a proactive “force for good”. That’s certainly the right [...]
Why a red tape bonfire won’t help fintech: The FCA’s Christopher Woolard talks to Morning Wire about regulation testing March 20, 2017 Regulation arguably doesn’t have the best reputation in the cutting-edge tech sector. Critics slam red tape for stifling creativity, while the regulators themselves get stick for failing to keep pace with ever-changing markets. This contempt creates dilemmas in the field of fintech, an industry which melds the fast-paced world of technology with the highly-regulated field [...]