Invest in a loan to a small business, but with a manager to assess the risk

Pension funds need to spend less time on ESG and get back to basics

Move means hard-hit industries face another year of high bills

Shares in security software maker dropped sharply after revelations of data harvesting

Investor group led by the CofE launches database to track tailings dams after Brazil disaster

One of Latin America’s top real estate developers puts some of his triumphs down to luck

SoftBank-funded fintech challenger Ualá expands rapidly amid the pandemic

US job gains since financial crisis wiped out. Switzerland faces sharpest economic contraction since 1974. UK and eurozone business activity hit by historic collapse this month as lockdowns choked Europe’s biggest economies.

The number of US deaths attributed to Covid-19 surpassed 45,000 on Friday, while the rate of new cases remained flat

In today’s news: UK warns it would be ‘irresponsible’ to discuss easing lockdown. Spain sets out plan to lift its own tough measures. Donald Trump signals a halt to his daily media briefings as US death toll accelerates.

US flavouring group seeks first-mover advantage with purchase of nutrition venture

Countingup, the business current account that “automates” your accounting, has raised £4 million in self-described bridge funding. Leading the round is ING Ventures, with co-investment from Triple Point, CVentures, and BiG Start Ventures. Founded by Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, and now boasting 20,000 business customers, Countingup’s long term vision […]

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]

Your guide to the investment and business revolution you can’t afford to ignore

No gym? No problem. This series from FT Globetrotter has tips, workout routines and reflections on staying active during the coronavirus crisis, including the best moves for small spaces, to indoor cycling and much more

As US health workers suffer from inadequate protection, there are signs of a shifting world order

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]

The anti-Brexit movement wasted energy on negative campaigning and parliamentary wrecking tactics

The new president should ensure governments grasp the interaction of fiscal and monetary policy

Investment strategies have failed to prepare the country for the technology shock

But statistics that show how many days one country is behind another are humbug

Another on-demand transport app is making a move into payments to expand the existing relationship with its customers (and subsequent margins that it makes from serving them). Bird today announced the launch of Bird Pay, a service that will let people use its app to purchase items from local participating businesses alongside renting scooters. The service […]

No surprise, really, that 5G smartphone sales are on the way up. Frankly, there’s really no other way to go, according to the latest numbers from NPD’s Mobile Phone Tracking. The firm noted that 5G handsets accounted for less than 1% of total sales in the U.S. The hurdles are also what you’d expect: namely, […]

M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP, […]

Volkswagen and Daimler report billions of dollars in lost profits due to impact of coronavirus

Mike Mackenzie’s daily analysis of what’s moving global markets

Record usage of grocery delivery services amid the COVID-19 pandemic has led to delayed orders, fewer open delivery windows and, on occasion, an inability to even book a delivery time slot. Walmart now hopes to capitalize on the increased demand for speedier delivery with the introduction of a new service that allows consumers to pay […]

Cutting the cord with cable or satellite TV used to mean a cost savings. But with the growing number of streaming services on the market, many consumers are finding that becoming a cord cutter is just as expensive, if not more so, as being a pay TV customer. As a result, many consumers continue to […]

A rebranded and expanded version of the CBS All Access streaming service will arrive this summer, ViacomCBS announced this morning. The service, now run by ViacomCBS following the merger, today offers a mix of live TV, on-demand video, original programming, streaming news, local broadcast stations and sports. Now the company is accelerating its plan to […]

I employ 10 people and also own a couple of buy-to-let properties

My mother has early onset dementia and her health is deteriorating rapidly

The UK prime minister’s brush with death has deepened his ties with voters

In poker, complacency is a quiet killer. It can steal your forward momentum bit by bit, using the warm glow of a winning hand or two to cover the bets you’re not making until it’s too late and you’re out of leverage.  Over the past few years, Apple’s MacBook game had begun to suffer from […]

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]

Costs are falling — but it still looks far more expensive than it should

One third of over-55s don’t even have a will — but they can get one for free in October

The chancellor need beware that policies introduced in a crisis are hard to end later

The hum of the helicopters needs to start getting louder

Pandemic's economic impact compared with historic crises of 1930s and 2008

The rich will benefit if we create sustainable demand with less household borrowing

If you're building a large-scale technology startup, sooner or later, you should be having a conversation about the Indian market.

“I want to build a business which profiles every single researcher and healthcare professional in the world and I want to sell it to industry,” says Ariel Katz, the co-founder and chief executive of H1 Insights.  With the healthcare industry on a mission to digitize and analyze every conceivable data point it can to wring […]

The internet has, for better or worse, become the default platform for people seeking information, and today one of the companies leveraging that to deliver educational content has raised some funding to fuel its next stage of growth. Udemy, which provides a marketplace offering some 150,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to ukulele […]

Just months after graduating from Y Combinator, H1 Insights, the LinkedIn for the healthcare industry, has raised $12.9 million in a new round of funding. “It’s a better way to connect the ecosystem,” says co-founder Ariel Katz. The company already has more than 8 million profiles for healthcare professionals in its database and is generating […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the manufacture of the Coventor ventilator, a new hardware design first developed by the University of Minnesota. The project sought to create a ventilator that could provide the same level of life-saving care as existing ventilator models, but with a much lower cost to help ramp […]

Samsung Electronics announced today that its blood pressure monitoring app for Galaxy Watches has been approved by South Korean regulators. Called the Samsung Health Monitor, the app will be available for the Galaxy Watch Active2 during the third quarter, at least in South Korea, and added to upcoming Galaxy Watch devices. TechCrunch has contacted Samsung […]

Sound industry leader Rode has done an amazing job keeping up with the needs of the fast-moving creator industry, supporting YouTubers, podcasters and Instagram and Tik Tok media mavens with a host of new products at impressive price points. The Rode Wireless GO mic system might be the most impressive of these, taking the quality […]

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]

Apple is providing a data set derived from aggregated, anonymized information taken from users of its Maps navigational app, the company announced today. The data is collected as a set of “Mobility Trends Reports,” which are updated daily and provide a look at the change in the number of routing requests made within the Maps […]

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]