Business

Viral jacket potato brand SpudBros has come under fire after being accused of “bullying” a small business owner over a name dispute. The Preston-based duo, Jacob and Harley Nelson, who became social media sensations for serving up gourmet potatoes from a tram and have since expanded to London and Liverpool, were accused of threatening legal action against a Portsmouth trader, …

British businesses are wasting more than £13 billion a year in lost productivity as middle managers spend weeks dealing with avoidable, low-value work, according to new research by YouGov. The findings — published in the fifth annual Feedback from the Field report by workplace operations platform SafetyCulture — reveal that middle managers lose an average of 7.3 weeks a year …

Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt has hit back at suggestions that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and past Tory tax cuts are to blame for Labour’s worsening fiscal position, calling the claim “ridiculous” and accusing Chancellor Rachel Reeves of presiding over a self-inflicted economic squeeze. The rebuke comes amid reports of mounting anger inside Downing Street after the OBR signalled …

Aston Martin has reported a dramatic escalation in losses as Donald Trump’s new tariffs on UK car imports and weakening demand from China batter the luxury carmaker’s finances. The company posted a £112 million pre-tax loss in the three months to September, compared with just £12 million during the same period last year — an increase of more than 800 …

The new home secretary Shabana Mahmood has admitted that the Home Office is “not yet fit for purpose” and has repeatedly failed to rise to the scale of multiple crises — from illegal migration to asylum accommodation and internal leadership churn. In an interview with the BBC during a police operation in south London targeting illegal workers, Mahmood acknowledged deep-rooted …

Three of Ireland’s best-known businessmen — JP McManus, John Magnier and Dermot Desmond — have sold Barchester Healthcare, the UK’s largest private care home operator, to US real estate giant Welltower in a landmark £5.2 billion deal. The transaction represents one of the largest healthcare acquisitions in British history and underscores the growing appeal of the UK’s social care market …

Entrepreneurs with ambitions to build the next big dating platform are being offered a fast-track route from concept to creation, thanks to a new incubator programme launched by dating industry pioneer Nicky Wake. The initiative promises to help founders transform their dating app ideas into live products in as little as three months, providing an end-to-end framework covering audience strategy, …

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has completed a sweeping corporate overhaul that values the company at $500 billion, paving the way for it to become a fully fledged for-profit enterprise and one of the world’s most valuable technology companies. The Silicon Valley group, founded as a non-profit research lab in 2015, has agreed a new structure with its long-time partner …

In today’s fast-paced digital world, data is everything. Organizations are constantly looking for ways to manage, analyze, and make decisions based on data efficiently. Microsoft has been at the forefront of providing innovative tools for this purpose, and one such tool is Microsoft Fabric. In this blog post, we will dive into what Microsoft Fabric is, how it works, and …

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, insurers must embrace innovation to stay competitive. One of the most transformative tools available today is a comprehensive insurance platform designed to streamline operations, enhance customer experience, and support scalable growth. Seamless insurance operations A cloud-native insurance platform offers a powerful solution by enabling organisations to manage core processes with exceptional flexibility and responsiveness. …