Competition watchdog kills Sainsbury’s £7.3bn Asda merger: What went wrong? April 25, 2019 Almost a year to the day since Sainsbury’s first revealed that it was in merger talks with Asda, it has all come crashing down. In late April 2018 the two retail giants were losing market share to German discounters Aldi and Lidl, and the threat of Amazon moving into the grocery sector was very real. [...]
Amazon to close its online store in China after failing to gain a foothold April 18, 2019 Amazon is set to close its online in store in China after failing to gain a real foothold in the country where JD.com and Alibaba reign supreme. The e-commerce giant will shut its operations in China down from 18 July, it announced today. Read more: Unilever shares rise on first quarter sales growth Rivals JD.com [...]
Amazon hit with thousands of fake five-star reviews, research finds April 16, 2019 Thousands of suspicious and unverified reviews have cropped up on Amazon for five-star rated tech products from unheard of brands. The reviews were often posted on the same day or in the same short period of time, according to consumer magazine Which, with identical reviews left for the same product on Amazon and in some [...]
Microsoft Outlook and Hotmail accounts accessed by hackers April 15, 2019 Microsoft has admitted that hackers had access to some of its Outlook, Hotmail and MSN email accounts for at least three months. The software company would not say how many accounts were compromised in the breach that lasted from 1 January to 28 March. Hackers stole login credentials for a Microsoft customer support agent and [...]
What do we know about Disney’s streaming service? April 12, 2019 Disney is set to take on the might of Netflix and Amazon with a new streaming service – Disney Plus – which it announced last night at its California headquarters in Burbank. Here are six things we know about the new offering from the mouse-branded entertainment behemoth. 1) It launches in North America in November [...]
Tesco turnaround marks the milestone for Drastic Dave April 10, 2019 In the never-ending debate about executive pay, examples of failure are cited more frequently than cases of good value for money. Recently the likes of WPP, Persimmon and Ted Baker have all demonstrated how the actions of the top boss can dent the fortunes of a company and frustrate shareholders. But despairing investors now have [...]
Crowdsourcing platform Limitless secures £5m in series A funding April 10, 2019 Brand ambassador platform Limitless Technology has secured £5m in funding as it looks to develop its machine learning technology. The company, which uses crowdsourcing to help businesses turn their customers into brand ambassadors, said it has bagged the funds in a series A round led by Albion VC. Read more: Grab looks to raise further $2bn [...]
Music rights firm One Media IP sees profits soar as it cashes in on streaming April 9, 2019 Shares in music rights company One Media IP jumped as much as 15 per cent this morning after it reported a huge rise in profits for the full year. One Media posted a 16 per cent rise in revenue to £2.7m in the year to the end of October, while pre-tax profit soared 63 per [...]
Europe must lead the way with digital tax, says EU competition commissioner April 8, 2019 Europe must agree on plans for a new digital tax and should be the trailblazer if there is no global consensus, the EU’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has said. The EU last month scrapped initial plans to roll out a digital tax on tech giants after opposition from several member states. Read more: EU drops [...]