Peter Thiel-backed Shares app raises £33m to attract female retail investors
London-based investment app Shares has raised £33m in funding as more and more women are attracted to retail investing.
The app promises to create a community of investors with its built-in social media features and has attracted 150,000 users since its launch in May.
Benjamin Chemla, CEO of equities, told the Standard, “The surprise we got is the number of women joining the application — 7% of retail investors are women, but about 40% of our investors are women.”
Chemla said the funding round, led by Valar Ventures — owned by billionaire Peter Thiel — would be used to support European expansion.
Naked Wines shares fall on CFO departure
Shawn Tabak, chief financial officer of beleaguered beverage group Naked Wines, has left the company.
Tobacco has left the company with immediate effect as it seeks to re-evaluate its operations.
Already battered stocks fell another 7p to 157p today – they are down 80% in the past year.
The online retailer made a profit of £2.9m compared to a previous loss of £10.7m, but said it would not grow “at any cost” and that it plans to trade against “in or around break even”.
Tobacco will be replaced by British CEO James Crawford, who will add the interim CFO post to his position until June next year.
Crawford previously served as CFO from April 2015 to November 2020. The board position vacant by Tobacco will not be filled “at this time,” the company said.
Premier Foods adds Spice Tailor recipe kit for £43.8 million
Sharwood’s and Loyd Grossman sauce owner Premier Foods has bought Indian and Thai recipe kit maker The Spice Tailor for £43.8 million.
Premier, whose brands also include Mr Kipling and Bisto, said it would acquire 100% of The Spice Tailor’s shares for cash. The meals brand expects to generate sales of £17.3 million this fiscal year.
Premier Foods boss Alex Whitehouse said: “The acquisition is well aligned with our growth strategy and we see a clear opportunity to build on The Spice Tailor’s excellent track record, leveraging elements of our proven brand growth model.”
He added that the purchase represents a “highly complementary geographic fit” to Premier’s current brands and that there was “significant potential” to expand distribution in all of its target markets, including the UK, Australia, Canada and Ireland.
Watchdog gives KPMG record fine
Big-four accounting firm KPMG has been hit with the largest fine it has ever faced in the UK after it deliberately misled its regulator.
The £14 million fine relates to the audits of Carillion, the failed outsourcer, and Regenersis, an IT company. It was ordered by a tribunal that concluded that KPMG had provided false and misleading documents and information when the Financial Reporting Council conducted routine inspections of KPMG’s audit of Carillion’s 2016 accounts and Regenersis’ 2014 books.
An active, separate investigation is underway into how KPMG audited Carillion, which collapsed in 2018 after the books were signed off. The scandal sparked calls to reform UK accounting practices.
KPMG will also pay costs of nearly £4 million. It was “severely reprimanded” by the FRC, which also ordered the office to appoint “an independent reviewer” to assess “the affectivity” of KPMG’s audit quality control procedures.
KPMG also acknowledged that the conduct of five employees – including the audit partner on the Carillon account, Peter Meehan – amounted to misconduct. Their conduct included making meeting minutes and audit working paper which were misleading.
Meehan was fined £250,000 and banned from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales for 10 years.
Three gains soar as supply chain crisis boosts tech jobs
Shares in STEM recruiting firm SThree rose 3% this morning after it reported a rise in earnings as companies turn to recruiting firms to close skills shortages amid ongoing supply chain disruption.
The London-based company reported pre-tax profits of £44.3 million in the first six months of 2022, up 64% from the previous year, while turnover rose 27% to £772 million.
Growth was driven by demand for software engineering jobs as companies automate their supply chains, as well as demand for life sciences skills following a rush of investment in pharmaceutical companies caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
77% of the company’s fees relate to arranging short-term contracts for recruits, up 4% from the previous year as companies reduce their hiring in uncertain economic conditions. Demand for contractors grew 24% in the year to March 2022, according to SThree.
Three in four SMEs plan to bring some of their supply chains back to the UK within five years, according to a NatWest survey, while one in two said they had already switched suppliers in the UK. UK as part of their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
City commentary: Ryanair is brilliant
RYANAIR is not to everyone’s taste. You could almost say it’s nobody’s taste – we’d fly differently if we could.
The fact that it is increasingly the best choice is not only due to tight budgets. While rivals squabble, it sometimes seemed like it was the only airline with real planes in the sky.
It has never been shy about calling it what it sees, and still wins an award on that score today.
“They had only one job,” CFO Neil Sorahan said abruptly when asked about the utter failure of our airports, especially Heathrow, to cope with a surge in demand for air travel amid the Covid outbreak. restrictions have been lifted.
It’s a reasonable point, in short.
Did it take a genius to sense that the demand for foreign vacations would increase after being cooped up at home for about two years?
The bosses of Heathrow and other parts of the air trade would have wanted.
In any case, people book vacations in advance, usually by many months.
So the airlines and airports that are currently in chaos had taken our vacation money long before they realized they didn’t have enough staff to get us there.
Not only could they not predict the future, they couldn’t predict things that had already happened.
The value of Ryanair is that it is a permanent affront to the old-fashioned airlines.
It thinks they are doing it wrong and often shows exactly how.
It’s a brilliant company.
“They only had one job” – Ryanair strikes at airports
RYANAIR today ventured into the fight against travel chaos, accusing airports of not hiring enough staff as it turned out to be the clear post-pandemic winner in the airline industry.
With rivals stumbling and Heathrow in turmoil, Ryanair made a profit of e170 million for the first quarter, compared to a loss of e273 million for the same period a year ago.
That was better than expected and far ahead of rivals who are losing and canceling flights at the same pace.
Chief financial officer Neil Sorahan blamed airport flight cancellations. He said “You have to hold ANSPs [air navigation service providers] and various governments to account for the lack of staff to do so. The airports themselves also had only one task and that was to ensure that there were sufficient handlers and security personnel. They had the schedules months in advance.”
Over the weekend, former BA chief Willie Walsh and former Heathrow chairman Sir Nigel Rudd closed their doors, each blaming the other for ruining thousands of people’s summer travel plans.
Rudd says Walsh has devalued the BA brand with cost cuts, Walsh says Heathrow’s move to limit passenger numbers to 100,000 a day is “insane”.
Ryanair, on the other hand, has received praise for holding on to staff while on leave, which has allowed for a faster recovery than rivals such as Easyjet.
Brent Oil Below $103 A Barrel, FTSE 100 Lower
Brent oil’s pullback to $100 a barrel continued today as fears mounted over the impact of sharply higher interest rates on global energy demand.
The US Federal Reserve will meet on Wednesday, when policymakers will need to raise at least another 75 basis points in a bid to bring inflation back under control.
Monetary policy tightening has heightened fears of a global recession and has helped Brent oil fall below $103 a barrel for four consecutive sessions.
Energy heavyweights BP and Shell fell 1.5% today as the FTSE 100 index lost 14.48 points to 7261.89 in a lukewarm start to the week for European markets.
Interest rate expectations also deflated technology and growth stocks, with online gaming company Entain weaker 30p at 1150p and Ocado from 17.8p to 773.8p.
Consumer health company Haleon was the worst performing top flight stock as trading has been choppy since GSK’s split continued, falling from 9.1p to 307.4p.
The FTSE 250 index fell 62.11 points to 19,762.66, but metal power engineering company Vesuvius rose 7% after bolstering full-year earnings expectations.
The company, which mainly serves the steel and foundry industries, says it has been able to recover the higher costs. Shares rose 23.6p to 346.6p, but analysts at Jefferies have a price target of 535p.
Vesuvius update sends stocks 7% higher
Vesuvius, the molten metal flow engineering firm, is the biggest riser in the FTSE 250 index after it bolstered full-year earnings expectations.
Ahead of Thursday’s interim results, Vesuvius said May and June trading was stronger than expected, despite continued end-market weakness.
It said trading profits will be £127.4m for the first six months of the year, aided by the successful recovery of input costs and market share gains.
Vesuvius, which mainly serves the steel and foundry industries, is gearing up for more difficult conditions in the second half, but believes full-year trading profits will be close to City’s expectations. Shares were up 7% or 23.6p to 346.6p.
FTSE 100 lower, Vodafone turnover up
Vodafone shares opened 0.5% lower today, despite the mobile phone giant reporting a 2.5% growth in service revenues in the first quarter of its fiscal year.
The improvement was driven by a 6.5% sales increase in the UK, offset by a 0.5% decline in Germany.
Chief executive Nick Read said: “We have performed in line with our expectations, delivering another quarter of growth in both Europe and Africa and seeing an acceleration in business growth.”
Vodafone’s downward move reflected a lackluster session for the broader FTSE 100 index, which fell 19.52 points to 7256.58.
Energy giants BP and Shell were among the biggest decliners after the latest Brent oil price drop.