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Govt extends rent discount scheme ‘one final time’
The Gibraltar Government has confirmed that the rent discount scheme operational in April and May 2020 will be extended “one final time” to June 30, 2021.
The scheme applies to prequalifying commercial tenants of private landlords as well as the government’s commercial tenants.
Last April, the government extended the measure to the end of May at the request of the Chamber of Commerce and agreed with them to further review the position for the period to June 30.
That review has now been concluded and a decision has been taken to extend the scheme again.
The government said it was “extremely grateful” to private sector landlords who had helped support local businesses to withstand the “chronic challenge” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This has no doubt been a significant burden to landlords but they have assisted the government and sustained their tenants’ businesses by providing these discounts,” No.6 Convent Place said in a statement.
The rent discount scheme will not be formally extended beyond July 1, the statement added.
However, the government is encouraging private landlords to work closely with their tenants over the coming months and to consider extending varying discounts on a case-by-case basis to further support businesses as Gibraltar works to recover trade to normal levels.
The government also confirmed that the moratorium on rental increases to government commercial tenants would be extended to December 31.
The government had previously extended it to June 30 but said it would now defer rent reviews to its own tenants to no earlier than January 1, 2022.
Any commercial entity that has been invoiced a rent increase as from July 1 will now receive a credit for the equivalent amount.
The additional 25% early rates payment discount that was previously applied to certain business sectors has also been extended to all business sectors for the next quarter, to cover the period July 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021.
This discount does not apply to supermarkets and pharmacies.
“I truly appreciate the huge effort our landlords have made in extending rent discounts to their tenants at this challenging time,” said Chief Minister Fabian Picardo.
“This is a prime example of how our community pulls together and I am confident that given time, we will all emerge stronger.”
“Gibraltar has started to see tourism return and the spending power that these tourists bring with them is warmly welcome.”
“As our businesses recover, the need for Government to legally enforce a rental discount scheme dissipates.”
“This will now be the final period for the rent discount scheme at law.”
“But we do hope that landlords continue to work with their tenants to apply the rent discount scheme on a case-by-case voluntary basis.”


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Freeserve to leave the Footsie
Internet service provider Freeserve is likely to be relegated from the FTSE 100 index of leading firms after the quarterly review of index members next week.
Freeserve was one of the first dot com firms to join the big league in the UK and its fortunes are seen as a litmus test of the new economy. It has remained in the Footsie longer than some of its high tech revivals, many of which were relegated in the last review in June.
But while the slump in the market value of Freeserve, now worth £2.73bn, is set to trigger its decline from the index, other high tech firms are on the up. Dimension Data, Shire Pharmaceuticals and Spirent are all knocking on the door of the Footsie and may be included after the next review.
Old economy stocks such as Blue Circle, Emap, Rolls Royce and Corus may also be relegated after a slump in their market values.
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“These items are a great alternative to traditional tobacco products and can also help users finally kick their habit,” he added. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) look similar to traditional cigarettes, but function differently. Nicotine is heated inside an electronic device that creates a smokeless vapor, which is then inhaled by the user. The nicotine-infused vapor is often flavored and free from the harmful tar, carbon monoxide and chemicals found in traditional cigarettes. For many, e-cigarettes provide a way for users to slowly taper down their tobacco use.
For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/electronic-cigarette-company-launches-new-website-352994.php
FDA faces dilemmas in regulating e-cigarettes
Benowitz, MD, of the University of California San Francisco and Maciej L. Goniewicz, PhD, of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, suggested in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They explained the unknowns, weighed the agency’s options and made several recommendations for how to proceed in a Viewpoint published online. First introduced in 2007, e-cigarettes are the latest form of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The mechanism of action is a battery-powered device that heats a nicotine solution, creating an inhalable vapor without burning tobacco products or other toxins usually found in cigarettes.
For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://www.clinicaladvisor.com/fda-faces-dilemmas-in-regulating-e-cigarettes/article/303113/
Eonsmoke Electronic Cigarettes Reaches 15,000 Retail Locations in USA
Reynolds has announced similar news with their brand, Vuse which is expected to go national later this year. Lorillard already sells an e-cigarette under the Blu Cigs trademark after the acquisition was made in April 2012. “The brand is really starting to expand nationally as we pursue an active growth strategy which involves continuous product development investment and vast marketing expenses,” says Michael Tolmach, the Chief Executive Officer of Eonsmoke, LLC. “Eonsmoke is being introduced by distributors both internal and independent to retailers every single day and our unique rechargeable brand continues to take market share,” says Mr. Tolmach.
For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eonsmoke-electronic-cigarettes-reaches-15-113000020.html


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Dutch retailer Blokker?has once again incurred substantial losses, and turnover almost halved. Still, its CEO sees "improvements" - and important issues with its online and Belgian activities.?
In 2018, Blokker Holding matched its record loss of 344?million euros from the year before. The catastrophic annual figures are no surprise: last week owner Michiel Witteveen had already made it clear that the loss would again run into the hundreds of millions. It is the fifth consecutive year that the holding company occurs losses. The chain struggles in Belgium and has problems with its online activities, which Witteveen equates with losing money.?
However, a small silver lining is that write-offs related to the sale of business units are largely responsible for the huge loss. Blokker Holding sold interior design chain Xenos and toy store chain Maxi Toys; all impairments and restructuring charges together amounted to 184?million euros.
What about Belgium?
However, even without taking into account all one-off costs, there still was a loss of 117?million euros, Dutch newspaper NRC writes. This is slightly better than in 2017, when the company still had a gross deficit of 133?million euros. Meanwhile, the turnover of the group, now called Mirage Retail Group, has halved to 817?million euros. This is, of course, primarily due to the divestment of retail chains and the closure of retail outlets.
Witteveen has already made it clear that there will be no profit this year either, but in 2020 he hopes to reach the break-even point. Incidentally, it cannot be ruled out that the chain in Belgium will close stores again: the CEO has already said that the "Belgian branch is “a problem", whose situation will be evaluated in January.


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By now, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered YouTube Premieres. First announced in 2018, the feature is a way for content creators to hype an upcoming pre-recorded video by creating a landing page where their fans can gather and chat before the new clip comes out. Starting today, YouTube is adding three new enhancements to Premieres to make them more valuable to channels.
The first, Live Redirect, allows creators to livestream a preshow before they release a new video and then automatically redirect viewers to their Premiere right before it starts. YouTube has been testing this feature for a couple of months with artists like BTS and Cardi B, so there’s a chance you may have already seen it in action.
Next, is a feature called Trailers. As the name suggests, they are short clips channels can append to a Premiere before it goes live. They can be anywhere from 15 seconds to 3 minutes in length, and their primary purpose is to encourage people to set a reminder to tune in. Lastly, the company is giving creators the option to set a custom countdown for their Premiere while adding additional theming options so that channels can ensure the countdowns match the style of their new video.
The new features come as more and more channels take advantage of Premiers. According to Google, there’s been an 85 percent increase in the number of daily Premieres since March 1st. And it’s easy to see why. With the pandemic forcing a lot of events online, organizations have turned to YouTube to connect with their audiences. Content creators can access the new Live Redirect and Trailers features starting today. Custom countdowns will be available sometime in the next few months.


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Roseville Patch covered a lot of different stories, topics and events throughout 2012, but there were a few that stood out as the most read by Patch readers.
We are in the midst of sharing the top 20 most read posts of the year from Roseville Patch now and through the end of 2012. Share your thoughts on the stories in comments below.
No. 20 on our Top Read Posts of 2012 (Click on the highlighted link to see the story.)
No. 19 is Twin Cities Winning Powerball Numbers Are....
No. 18 on our list is Prostitution Crackdown in Roseville Has One Adult Escort Thinking Twice.
No. 17 is Roseville Pics & Clips: Wild Rice Festival Recap. (This is a continuous feature.)
No. 16 post was Leonid Meteor Shower 2012 Peaking
No. 15 post was Parents Talk: Should Sex Education Be Taught in School?
No. 14 Roseville High School AD Under Investigation
Meanwhile at No. 13 is Gordmans Department Store in Roseville Opening Thursday, This was among a number of highly read business stories during the year, Here is the complete report as it appeared on March 7:
Gordmans, a niche low-price department store operator, is scheduled to debut its new Roseville store Thursday with a grand opening weekend celebration slated March 16.
The Omaha-based retailer is opening its new 65,000 square-foot store quarters on the lower level of the Crossroads of Roseville shopping center, 1663 County Road B2 West. The Roseville location will be the 75th U.S. store for Gordmans, which is an apparel and home fashions retailer.
“Our mission is to delight our guests (customers) with big savings, big selection and fun, friendly associates,” Jeff Gordman, company president and CEO, said in a press release. “We believe that our fantastic values on name brand apparel, accessories and home decor at up to 60 percent off department and specialty store prices every day has enabled our expansion in Minnesota and across the U.S. Offering such incredible deals on a wide array of fashion-oriented merchandise really seems to resonate with our guests.”
Like other Gordmans stores, the Roseville facility wil have a children’s theater and sports-themed television viewing area.
Meanwhile, Gordmans plans to make a philanthropic donation to the Roseville community in opening its new store. The retailer said it plans to present a $2,500 check to Roseville Area School District 623 on Friday, March 16, to launch Partners in Education fundraising events in conjunction with the weekend’s grand opening festivities.
Partners in Education is a program for businesses, government agencies, civic groups and faith organizations to make additional educational resources available to local public school systems.
Gordmans’ customers at the new store also may participate in this event by purchasing “helping hands” for $1 each from March 8 through March 25, the company said. Every dollar raised will directly benefit the school district.
Since its involvement with Partners in Education starting in 2000, Gordmans has donated more than $976,000 to public school systems in 16 states throughout the nation.
The new Roseville Gordmans store has selected Central Park Elementary as its partner school.
Gordmans' store space previously housed a movie theater and indoor mini-golf park. The Crossroads mall is about 355,000 square feet and its other tenants include Kohl's, Dick's Sporting Goods, Best Buy, Ulta and Noodles & Co.
Twin Cities retail academic Dave Brennan said the arrival of Gordmans into the metro area is part of more value-oriented merchants coming into our market. "This (Gordmans) is a companion to Kohl's and it's a pretty good fit," said Brennan, co-director of the Institute for Retailing Excellence at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. "Once you get this size and cluster of valued-oriented retail, it makes the (Crossroads) center all that stronger."
Brennan added that the Crossroads mall, just north of the regional Rosedale Center, is a "good location. I think it will be a good market for them (Gordmans)."
Gordmans dates back to 1915. Its stores are located primarily Midwestern states situated in a variety of shopping center developments, including regional enclosed shopping malls, lifestyle centers and power centers. For more information, visit www.gordmans.com.


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Jason: Compiling the PlayStation Store sales charts for August 2015, Sony has revealed that Madden NFL 16 was #1 in North America on PlayStation 4, while Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was #1 on PS4 in Europe.
How can Rocket League have charted higher than Until Dawn when Rocket League was free the prior month? Did that many people miss out on it?
Well Rocket League was getting alot of press and I guess alot of word of mouth sales. It is weird thou that that many people missed out on it. I'm thinking reviews and word of mouth with push up Until Dawn for a few sales this month as well
Ru kidding? Rocket League is extremely hot and in August they started selling a DLC expansion. It also had the entire month to garner sales. Until Dawn came out August 25th, it had 1 week to chart sales. It also released in more than just Europe and NA. Until Dawn really picked up towards the end of the first week and onward after all the positive reviews and word of mouth. Until Dawn sells the vast majority through physical retail, most ppl will buy it in the store (ie gamestop). Rocket League is digital only, so all sales will be via PSN. If Until Dawn was a digital-only game i'd be shocked, but it's not.
N4G is a community of gamers posting and discussing the latest game news. It’s part of NewsBoiler, a network of social news sites covering today’s pop culture.


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The UK’s advertising watchdog decided this summer that oil company Shell misled the British public in a recent advertisement highlighting its environmental credentials, in a ruling that could draw a line in the sand regarding the acceptability of green marketing campaigns.
Environmental group WWF complained to the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over an advertisement for Shell in the Financial Times newspaper earlier this year, questioning the energy giant’s assertion that an oil sands project in Canada was ‘sustainable’.
“The challenge of the 21st century is to meet the growing need for energy in ways that are not only profitable but sustainable,” read the advertisement. ASA upheld WWF’s assertion that use of word ‘sustainable’ was “misleading” because the advert “was defined primarily in environmental terms”.
Shell argued that it also used ‘sustainable’ to refer to the social and economic impact of the projects. Accepting ASA’s decision, Shell spokeswoman Sarah Smallhorn said “it was never our intention to be misleading in our advertisement”. But she did not say whether similar claims would be toned down in future adverts.
As the influence of climate change on consumer choices grows, businesses are sensing an opportunity to attract customers by stressing their green credentials. But ASA’s chairman, Lord Chris Smith, warns that industry should take note of “the rise in consumer awareness of environmental and ethical issues alongside confusion and scepticism”.
The ruling implies that companies would be advised to choose their words carefully when planning future adverts. “The ASA does not want to discourage companies from communicating their initiatives but to help them to do so in a credible and responsible way,” Lord Smith said at a recent seminar on the issue.
Consumers, meanwhile, are becoming more sceptical of the business world’s tendency to base advertising campaigns on environmental credentials as their own awareness of climate change issues improves.
“Sustainability-related cases are on the rise in the EU,” Richard Knubben of the European Advertising Standards Alliance told EURACTIV, singling out France and Belgium in particular. Indeed, despite stressing the independence of ASA in the Shell case, France’s advertising standards body ARPP nevertheless said the ruling “once again highlights the importance of providing specific information, including figures if possible, to support environmental claims”.
“We hope that companies will look at [the ASA ruling] and realise they are not going to get away with green spin,” WWF Campaign Director David Norman told the FT. Stressing the significance of the Shell case, he said the decision “sends a strong signal to business and industry that green-wash is unacceptable”. WWF later responded by launching a counter-campaign, hailing the success of their actions.


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In news that might make you feel a touch older, brand new photos of the Swedish royal children have surfaced, and it would be safe to say they're growing up way too quickly.
The Swedish royal family shared two brand new stunning family snaps of Crown Princess Victoria and Crown Prince Daniel, along with their two children, Princess Estelle, seven, and Prince Oscar, three.
The images were released just ahead of the young Princess's eighth birthday, which falls on February 23.
The official royal website first unveiled the new pictures, with Estelle's formal bio page featuring a shiny new photograph.
The young Princess is seen smiling into the camera while wearing a navy blue bow with a matching dress.
Her hair is particularly long now, and it's clear she's growing up to be just as striking as her mum!
Over Christmas, fans were concerned to hear Estelle had broken her leg while skiing in the Alps during a family vacation.
However, it appears the young royal is making a full recovery - we hope it's speedy!
The family has also provided some exciting news of late - Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel have launched a new foundation under the name of their eldest daughter - The Princess Estelle Cultural Foundation.
This will promote and help to set up more cultural-based activities in the Scandinavian country.
The Swedish royals are known for keeping things relatively low-key, but they continue to put their status to good use, with various initiatives to elevate their country on the world stage.
We can't wait to see what more there is to come!
WATCH: See a young Princess Estelle try her hand at baking:


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Ubisoft sent us the announcement trailer of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier, looking more like a Metal Gear game than Modern Warfare, as we first expected.
In case yesterday's barebones announcement of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier left you a little uncertain as what to expect from the latest in the tactical shooter series, publisher Ubisoft has released a teaser trailer whi... Read Post
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier from Ubisoft arrives in stores on May 22nd. Ubisoft has released this official "Documentary" trailer that shows what the life of a Ghost team member looks like from the inside. Take a look: Th... Read Post


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Have you driven a Ford lately? In a few years you may not have to if the new self-driving car venture between Ford and Google is successful.
The car-maker will invest additional $4.5 billion in electric vehicles by 2020, when, it says, some 40% of its vehicles will have EV models.
Ford drives into car-sharing... U.S. government ranked last on app security... Google intros free music streaming... and more tech news.
Oracle shrugs off Salesforce rumors...House OKs plan to stop NSA phone dragnet...why Ford's CEO is wary of Apple and Google
The biggest smartphone companies in the world flocked to Barcelona for the 2015 Mobile World Congress. More than 90,000 people walked through MWC's many halls to experience the next-generation of technology products, ranging from Samsung's Galaxy S6 ...
Beat out of a windfall?
Top speed and volume restrictions can be placed on select 2015 Fords, including the Mustang, with the rolling out of the company’s supervisory MyKey technology.
Good Gear Guide was on the show floor at this year's Computex in Taiwan. We've put together this extensive slide show of interesting, quirky and downright-awesome gear.
Ford will begin offering its AppLink voice control system in additional Asian markets and bring its emergency assistance technology to Taiwan, the company said Monday at the Computex trade show in Taipei.
If you're bad at parking your car, whether it's parallel, perpendicular, backing in or backing out, Ford says its new Focus has technology that can help.
Microsoft's Cloud chief, Satya Nadella, will lead the company as its next chief executive, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Ford is enlisting top U.S. universities to make self-driving cars a reality, announcing Wednesday that it hopes researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology can come up with advanced algorithms to help vehicles learn where pedestrians and...
Ford's new MyKey system, which enables drivers to limit the top speed of selected vehicles using a programmable key, is a "first step in the right direction" when it comes to driver safety limitations, the company says.
Ford's Evos concept car shows how the company is increasingly looking to electronics and entertainment to keep customers hooked on driving its cars, Chief Technical Officer Paul Mascarenas said Thursday.
Microsoft and Toyota Motor will announce a collaboration between the two companies later Wednesday, they said.
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Tesco's Net success
Tesco has become the biggest Internet grocery business in the world, comfortably overtaking US retailers, which tend to operate over very small areas.
The British supermarkets chain, by contrast, has a nationwide service. Homeshopping is available from 100 stores and the figure is rising by five a week. The subsidiary, which opened only last year, is already profitable.
'E-commerce is an increasingly important part of our business,' said the company. The retailer originally tried telephone and fax shopping but found this inefficient and difficult to get right.
Internet shopping has been a sparkling success, however, and 350,000 customers are now using it. The news came as Tesco delivered a reassuring sales message, producing underlying growth well in excess of its arch-rival Sainsbury's.
For the 14 weeks to 20 November, sales in Britain rose 4%, excluding the impact of new space. Sales including newly-opened stores rose 7.3%. Volume growth accelerated from the first half as customers responded positively to price-cutting.
Sainsbury's last week reported a 1.3% decline in first-half underlying sales growth. Tesco's growth in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe has also been good, taking the increase in sales groupwide to 10% for the third quarter of the year.
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Apple, Google reach new deal to end U.S. lawsuit
Apple, Google Reach New Deal to End U.S. Lawsuit. Four Silicon Valley companies, including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have agreed to a new settlement that would resolve an antitrust class action lawsuit by tech workers, who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other\'s employees.
Four Silicon Valley companies, including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have agreed to a new settlement that would resolve an antitrust class action lawsuit by tech workers, who accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other's employees.
Plaintiffs accused Apple, Google, Intel Corp and Adobe Systems Inc in their 2011 lawsuit of limiting job mobility and, as a result, keeping a lid on salaries.
In 2014, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, rejected a $324.5 million settlement of the lawsuit as too low after one of the named plaintiffs objected.
That worker will support the new agreement, his attorney Daniel Girard said. However, Mr. Girard declined to disclose the amount, and it was not included in the court filing.
The case was based largely on emails, in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and some of their rivals detailed plans to avoid poaching each other's prized engineers.
In rejecting the $324.5 million deal, Justice Koh repeatedly referred to a related 2013 settlement involving Disney and Intuit. Apple and Google workers got proportionally less than Disney workers, Justice Koh wrote, even though plaintiff lawyers had "much more leverage" against Apple and Google.
To match the earlier settlement, the deal with Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe "would need to total at least $380 million," Justice Koh wrote.
In the short court filing on Tuesday, the companies said plaintiffs will file a detailed explanation of the new deal "imminently." Justice Koh will then likely decide whether to accept or reject it.


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In Elon Musk’s notable Tweet replying to American author Stephen King about Twitter Blue’s pricing he admitted “Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers'”. With the on going issues of getting Twitter Blue up and going again after the ‘Blue Checkmark’ disaster and with many advertisers leaving, it seems Musk may be charging his toon in hope of getting revenue flowing again to avoid bankruptcy. Musk recently tried to assure advertisers “none of Twitter Policies Have Changed” (though he omitted their COVID Misinformation Policy did change). In his defense though Musk is right, the policies haven’t changed…just the enforcement;’ either because of lack of staffing or for ‘Free Speech’ reasons. However, Musk did slap Ye’s (Kanye West) Twitter account with a 12-hour suspension for “tweeting an antisemitic [sic] image”.
We need to pay the bills somehow! Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about $8?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022
Now Twitter is offering incentives for brands to come back and advertise on Twitter.
In one email sent to advertising agencies, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times, Twitter said that it was launching its “largest advertiser incentive ever” in December, offering additional impressions if brands spent a certain amount.
According to the email, Twitter will match the spending of those who pay at least $500,000 with a cap of $1 million per advertiser. Those spending $350,000 will receive “50 percent value add”—meaning they receive additional impressions worth half of what they spend. A $200,000 investment grants advertisers a “25 percent value add,” or extra impressions worth a quarter of what they spend.
via Ars Technica


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Europe’s privacy watchdog has called on EU member states to create a single mobile application that can be used to help control the spread of coronavirus without infringing privacy rights.
A number of European governments have already launched applications, powered by anonymised location data provided by mobile operators, but the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) fears this fragmented approach is less effective both in execution and its safeguards.
The capabilities and use of such applications is expected to increase in the coming weeks and months as governments seek to contain the outbreak and ease lockdown restrictions.
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EU data tracking
However any expansion in the scale of such tracking will raise raised security and privacy concerns, with some fearing governments could use the data to enable state surveillance. The EPDS has previously said that the use of anonymised data is legal, but wants a pan-European approach in order to ensure that all privacy protections are being enacted.
“The EDPS is aware that a number of EU Member States have or are in the process of developing mobile applications that use different approaches to protect public health, involving the processing of personal data in different ways,” EDPS head Wojciech Wiewiorowski said in a letter to EU governments. “The use of temporary broadcast identifiers and Bluetooth technology for contact tracing seems to be a useful path to achieve privacy and personal data protection effectively.
“Given these divergences, the European Data Protection Supervisor calls for a pan-European model ‘Covid-19 mobile application’, coordinated at EU level. Ideally, coordination with the World Health Organisation should also take place, to ensure data protection by design globally from the start.”
Last month, several major European telecoms groups agreed to share mobile location data with the EU. These included the UK’s Vodafone, which has networks across the continent, along with A1 Telekom Austria, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telenor and Telia.
Meanwhile, UK privacy regulators have said the use of anonymised mobile phone location data to help slow the spread of Covid-19 is legal.
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Steve McCaskill is TechRadar Pro's resident mobile industry expert, covering all aspects of the UK and global news, from operators to service providers and everything in between. He is a former editor of Silicon UK and journalist with over a decade's experience in the technology industry, writing about technology, in particular, telecoms, mobile and sports tech, sports, video games and media.


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Centerprise makes a disaster recovery
Old PC and services firm parries market forces
Centerprise, the veteran British PC manufacturer, has bucked the market decline that has seen its old school rivals Elonex and Granville go bust in the last year, by buying its way into the services market.
Acquiring the Continuity Group for £1.5m in February 2005 gave Centerprise a whopping 180 per cent increase in operating profit, according to the Centerprise International's results to 31 August 2005, due to be published this week.
In the 15 months to the group's 2005 year end, business continuity firm Continuity earned a profit after tax of £923,199. This contributed to £0.4m in operating profits from acquisitions. £0.26m of Continuity sales came from Centerprise itself, presumably to upgrade the HQ's disaster recovery measures.
Centerprise's traditional market has been suffering. Prices are down, goods are in oversupply, and few firms have cash to fund the acquisitions that might bring about much needed consolidation. The collapse of British PC firm Elonex in June was a case in point.
Centerprise's turnover of £85.2m was up 17.6 per cent on the year ended August 2004. The vast majority of this came from its ongoing business, which is PC manufacturing and the supply of associated services.
But operating profits for ongoing business dropped by half in the year ended 2005 (about the time that Britain's biggest PC maker, Granville, went into administration), to £0.08m.
As would be expected, just £1.5m of revenues were contributed by services sales at Continuity, but this bumped gross margins up to 9.3 per cent.
Richard Pursey, who founded Continuity and became Centerprise's managing director in March, said it had spent the last two years turning down low margin business and trying to do more services. The proportion of its profit margin attributable to services had doubled in the last two years, he said.
Centerprise's profit after tax was up 31 per cent, to £0.84m. But after dividends of £1.02m where paid out to shareholders, nearly two thirds of it going to the founder and chairman, Rafi Razzak, the firm was left with an overall loss of £0.22m.
"We're not looking for that business that is causing so many others so much pain," said Pursey.
"We don't want business that is less than the interest rate on our capital. If we can't do better than 4.5 per cent ROI on our trading activities we might as well send everyone home and live off the interest - comfort kills vigilance," he added.
Cash in the bank has grown slightly to £19.6m, and Pursey has said he will look for further acquisitions. Centerprise had put in an undisclosed bid for Elonex, but was not prepared to pay over the odds.
A newcomer to the PC business, Pursey has some outspoken views. Most British PC manufacturers have been blaming poor market conditions on low prices set by the US giant, Dell. They will only say this behind closed doors, however. Their actual response to Dell's incursion into their market has been weak and unimaginative.
Pursey reckoned Dell should be thanked for driving prices down and volumes up because it created more services business for everyone else. But he said local PC makers were silly to try and match Dell on price.
"Because everyone's fighting after the same business, we end up in this circling loop where you end up selling against someone who's selling at less than cost," he said.
"They think if you sell enough volume then our overhead can handle it. But you can't because you have to recruit customer care, then you have to sell more and it's a vicious circle, their customer services standards drop," he added.
Centerprise set up an investment vehicle, Centerprise DR, in February and used it to buy 100 per cent of the share capital of Continuity. Seventy-five per cent of the investment firm is owned by the Centerprise International, the rest spread thin among 36 individual shareholders. ®


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Of course, the fact that a certain brand of product is manufactured in South Africa is a good incentive for South Africans to buy it. Many of them want to support their local economy by helping to keep locally operating job creators (such as SMA Solar’s South African factory) afloat.
“South Africa has strategic importance for SMA,” Chief Executive Officer Pierre-Pascal Urbon said. “The country has good economic growth with a corresponding increase in energy demand.”
SMA Solar is a solar technology company that manufactures inverters for solar power systems, which are devices that convert the DC (direct current) electricity that solar panels generate into AC (alternating current) electricity suitable for the power grid. There is currently less competition within the solar inverter market than within the solar module market.
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Get Ready for Gen Z Workers
Flexibility will be Key to Keeping your Next Cohort of Colleagues Happy
Watch out — Gen Z is about to take over the office. Born between 1997 and 2012, the new generation of employees is entering the workforce. And they’re causing quite a stir. Favouring a better work-life balance over typical priorities, like salary, businesses will need to keep up if they’re to appease their future team members. How best to please generation internet, Gen Z workers, with the right communication technology, as Kristian Torode, Co-Founder of Crystaline explains.
A LinkedIn survey from January 2022, reported by one of LinkedIn’s own recruiters, found that 72 per cent of Gen Z employees left or are considering leaving their jobs due to inflexible work policies. That’s in contrast to 69 per cent of Millennials and half of Gen X. Further research by workplace analytics platform Firstup finds that Gen Z workers favour qualities like brand reputation and a better work-life balance over traditionally common boons such as job stability and having a good income.
Predicted to make up over a quarter of the workforce by 2025, there’s no denying that the next generation will drive a shift in workplace priorities. They’ve grown up with technology, the internet and social media, so how can businesses keep their tech-savvy staff on side?
A Hybrid Future
Gen Z isn’t alone in its wish for flexible working. 80 percent of UK workers who worked remotely during the pandemic now plan to split their time between home and the office, according to ONS figures.
While COVID-19 triggered the ‘virtual age’ of working, we are now entering the ‘personalised age’, where employees can choose where to work and how to split their time to maximise convenience, productivity and wellbeing. To keep employees happy and attract fresh talent, employers must now consider how to incorporate flexibility into how they run their business. That may mean a change in office hours, allowing employees to invest more time into personal hobbies and interests, as well as a change in technology approaches to facilitate more flexible business communication.
No More Phone Calls
The past two years have forced us to communicate in ways we’d have never imagined. There’s been office Christmas parties, company-wide meetings, even weddings, taking place over video call. Research suggests that traditional business technology, such as landlines and desktops, are no longer the core of a worker’s tech kit.
More than three quarters of UK adults own a smartphone, up from 52 percent in a decade ago. But the number of people using their phone to make traditional voice calls is falling fast. In fact, research carried out by Ipsos Mori for Deloitte found that just three quarter of mobile phone owners make at least one call a week — with a quarter rarely making calls on their telephone at all.
That doesn’t mean people aren’t communicating. Instead, younger generations prefer keeping in touch using multiple platforms, be it social media, instant messaging or video call. In parallel, traditional office landlines are ageing. We’ll all be switching to digital ways of making calls by 2025, when the UK’s old analogue lines turn off for good. Businesses need to adopt ways of futureproofing now, while appealing to their workers’ changing preferences.
A Unified Approach
Businesses need a communication system that favours flexibility, enabling employees to communicate over multiple mediums and make the transition seamlessly between the office and home.
Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) integrates all business communications into an easy-to-use unified interface. It is simple to integrate into existing infrastructure and provides a reliable service to boost company productivity, bridging the gap between the office, home and anywhere else in the world.
The future is indefinitely VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. VoIP describes any voice call made over the internet. This could be a single application on a computer or a complex unified communications implementation that works across an entire office’s handsets, desktop and laptop computers and mobile devices. Not only does implementing VoIP help businesses get ahead of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) switch off, but its ability to facilitate multiple communication tools in a unified platform means VoIP can help businesses build a communications strategy to suit all workers.
As businesses cannot ignore that the working landscape is shifting, they cannot close their eyes to the changing priorities of Gen Z workers and their workforce. While the way younger generations prioritise and communicate their work responsibilities changes, what remains constant is that communication is king. Offering the next generation of workers the flexibility and choice they desire will not only boost employee satisfaction, but will also ensure your business is futureproofed for the technology shifts all industries face.
Crystaline is a UK-based telecommunications provider offering business mobile, voice, data, cloud and unified communications services to small and medium sized businesses.
Through partnership with top communications providers, Crystaline supports businesses in keeping up with fast-paced technological developments, with a focus on delivering exceptional customer service and technology without the jargon to help businesses grow.


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(WJW) — If you’re a fan of Satrbucks’ cold drinks, your cup may have a whole new look on your next coffee run.
The company is completing its rollout of lightweight, strawless lids to all North American stores this month. Some customers say the cup resembles a child’s “sippy cup.”
According to Starbucks, the brand designed, developed and manufactured its strawless lid. It was modeled after the lid customers are accustomed to drinking their hot beverages from.
It will now be the standard lid for all iced coffee, tea, espresso and Starbucks Refreshers beverages.
The move was part of an effort by the brand to prevent an estimated one billion straws a year from ending up in landfills.
Unlike straws that cannot be recycled because of their size, the strawless lid meets the Association of Plastic Recyclers design guidelines for recyclability and can be recycled in many markets in the U.S. and Canada, Starbucks reports.
“We developed and trialed several prototypes to arrive at this milestone,” Andy Corlett, director of global packaging solutions and innovations, whose team at Starbucks helped design the lid, said in a press release. “A recyclable, strawless lid becoming the standard for iced drinks is one small way we can give more than we take from the planet. This is a significant moment for Starbucks as we work to reduce waste and safeguard the environment.”
If a straw is needed, customers can still get one at Starbucks upon request. However, the company is testing alternative straw options like compostable straws.
Strawless lids and straws made from alternative materials are expected to be rolled out to more markets in the coming year.
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Genzyme CEO Termeer may net $200M payout
- Julie M. Donnelly, Boston Business Journal
Genzyme Corp. CEO Henri Termeer could get more than $200 million from the sale of his company to French drugmaker Sanofi-aventis SA, according to a U.S. regulatory filing on Monday.
Termeer will get about $146 million in cash from his Genzyme shares, stock options and restricted stock, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also could get another $12.5 million from a change-of-control payment if his employment is terminated when the deal closes.
Termeer has been Genzyme’s (Nasdaq: GENZ) leader since 1985. Sanofi-aventis has agreed to buy the Cambridge company for about $20 billion, or $74 a share.
What’s not set in stone is Termeer’s stake in contingent value rights linked to sales of Genzyme’s multiple sclerosis drug, Lemtrada. If Genzyme meets all of the milestones, the CVR could be worth $14 a share. For Termeer, those potential payments could be $62.8 million, according to the regulatory filing.
That puts Termeer’s total potential payout at about $221 million.
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Concentrix has announced that it will lay off 177 employees at its call center in Longview, Texas, saying it had lost an important client the center was serving.
The layoff will reduce the number of employees at the call center to less than 200, according to local media reports.
Concentrix has gone on cutting workforce, particularly in the United States, ever since its acquired Convergys, a voice-based BPO services giant with operations across the world.
The Longview call center was in fact established by Convergys. Concentrix will try to employ the laid-off staff at other locations nearby, reported the local press citing the company’s spokesperson.
There are no reports on whether the BPO provider has offered severance package or other any benefits to the employees it is handing pink slips.
But the BPO provider’s continued layoffs must have left its employees worried elsewhere in the United States, say analysts.
In February this year, Concentrix, a unit of technology giant Synnex Corp, laid off 117 employees at its call center in Watertown, New York. In October last year, it had similarly removed around 258 employees in Kentucky. A month later, it laid off 200 staff in Southfield, Michigan.
Convergys was bought for US$2.4 billion in July last year. The acquisition made Concentrix the second largest global provider of customer engagement services with approximately 275 locations in more than 40 countries.


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There’s big news for those anticipating the launch of the new Virgin Voyages cruise line. The company has announced an opening date for bookings, plus released renderings and details of a brand new terminal it plans to construct in Miami.
We’ve discussed Virgin Voyages before, and how the cruise line is taking a fresh look at cruising. From no kids being allowed on the ship to scrapping buffets completely to including all of its restaurants in the cruise fare (no extra charges to eat!), Virgin is doing things differently from the cruise lines of old.
Its first ship, Scarlet Lady, is set to sail from Miami in 2020. Subsequent ships (three more in total) will arrive to the market each year thereafter. One thing we didn’t know until now is when bookings would be available for the first cruises.
Virgin just announced that bookings are open February 14, 2019 to the general public and February 5 for those with pre-sale deposits. The pre-sale deposits were $500 and closed to new bookings on Valentine’s Day of 2018. That was earlier than planned, due to high demand. In other words, rides on the first cruises appear to be a hot ticket.
A schedule and routes for the new ship is not yet known, although the cruise line has announced trips to Havana.
Virgin Announces New Terminal at Port Miami
In addition to opening up bookings, the cruise line also announced a plan to build a 100,000 square foot terminal at PortMiami. The bold design will feature a “palm grove” design with a roof resembling a palm tree grove. In addition, lush landscaping will be utilized to provide a “plaza-like feel” according the Virgin.
It appears the terminal will be on the far western edge of Port Miami, giving views of the skyline and causeway to passengers in the terminal or on the ship.


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eReading giants team up for eBooks and eReaders
Rakuten, the Toronto based eCommerce company, has announced that it intends to purchase Kobo - an eReading specialist, in a deal valued at $315m.
Kobo had become an increasingly potent competitor to Rakuten in recent years, launching a range of innovative eReaders and a wide range of eReading apps into the eBook marketplace.
Its acquisition marks a significant upscale in ambition by Rakuten as continues to expand its B2B2C borderless eCommerce system by providing downloadable media products to consumers.
Hiroshi Mikitani, chairman and CEO of Rakuten, said: "Kobo provides one of the world's most communal eBook reading experiences with its innovative integration of social media such as Facebook and Twitter; while Rakuten offers Kobo unparalleled opportunitiews to extend its reach through some of the world's largest regional eCommerce companies."


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Avi Goldstein, a former New York City volunteer paramedic, has a knack for spotting new product ideas. So when he balked at using a stylus to sign for medication at his pharmacy early in the Covid-19 pandemic, inspiration struck.
"Everyone who is sick is literally using that stylus. It's disgusting," says Goldstein. He decided to make a tool that you could bring with you to sign. Then he thought about opening doors and using credit cards, and added a range of functions.
On March 24, Goldstein launched a Kickstarter campaign for his $24.99 tool, "The Hygiene Hand." Within an hour, his $5,000 goal was met, and the campaign raised more than $585,000 by its April 22 close.
It isn't beginner's luck. Goldstein is the founder and CEO of StatGear, a manufacturer and supplier of everyday-carry and survival gear, which made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. private companies in 2019. The Brooklyn-based company earned $2.67 million in 2018 revenue, ranking at No. 1689. The eight-employee expects to book up to $5 million in revenue this year.
Goldstein got his start in generating new product ideas while volunteering as an EMS paramedic when he created a small plastic device that lets doctors clip things to their stethoscopes. He created more medical accessories and other products, sometimes running credit-card balances of up to $100,000 until the business was up and running. Now the company offers emergency preparedness kits, first-aid kits, disaster kits, rescue tools, and accessories.
Goldstein created about 20 of the products on the StatGear website. His process has three parts: Finding the idea, researching it, and lining up financing.
His best ideas come when he's out in the field and spots a need for a new tool or device -- or an improvement on an existing one. The next step is intensive research. Ensuring that nothing like it already exists in the market is crucial, he says.
"Everyone thinks they have a great idea," he says. "Make sure it's a novel idea, know what's out there, then figure out how much you can afford to put into it."
If you're short on cash, crowdfunding can be a good option, says Goldstein, who has done nearly 20 Kickstarter campaigns.
His Covid-19 eureka moment led to what he initially called the "Hygiene Hand Antimicrobial Brass EDC (Every Day Carry) Door Opener & Stylus." The tool, pictured above, is meant to help avoid the spread of germs while performing everyday tasks. It's the size of a keychain, attaches to a belt, and is made from solid brass, which has antimicrobial properties. StatGear so far has shipped about 40 percent of the 32,000 Kickstarter orders, he says. "That is what we're good at," Goldstein says, "getting materials, cutting it down, coming up with a design, and making it as soon as possible for everyone."
As with many compelling new business ideas, knockoffs already abound. When the Hygiene Hand became popular on Kickstarter, Goldstein began noticing ads on Google and Facebook for similar products and copycats, some which he says used The Hygiene Hand name and marketing material. StatGear has succeeded in having ads for dozens of similar products removed, Goldstein says.
"It's difficult to keep up," he adds. He says that some counterfeits have sharp edges, and others are spray-painted gold. The company has filed two patents and a trademark, but approvals could be years away. "I hate to think that people could feel safe using a tool like mine when they're actually not," he says.
While the company's biggest customers are federal agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Border Patrol, according to Goldstein, medical professionals and first responders have been in touch to ask when the Hygiene Hand will be available. But the Kickstarter campaign drew some criticism on social media from consumers for "preying on people's fears," says Goldstein.
If you have a new business idea or a concept for a new product, avoid appearing to exploit consumer anxieties, says Gabrielle Lieberman, director of trends and social media research at Mintel, a market-research firm. Although people are eager to return to normal life, she says, what they want right now is security and support. "Brands that approach this period with a short-term mentality really run a risk of suffering long-term damage to their reputation," Lieberman says.
For Goldstein's company, the Hygiene Hand is on brand. StatGear makes survival and rescue tools, and it's been doing so successfully for 10 years.


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While revealing the Super Follow feature, Twitter gave the reason that it wants to reduce its dependence on ads for revenues. So, it will try to generate that from the service itself. And thus, users will be able to charge their followers to see their content, tweets, video, or to receive any other exclusive deal.
However, most people on social media are not at all happy with the platform’s decision.
Firstly speaking of the platform’s newly announced Super Follow feature, it will provide perks like bonus tweets, video, access to a community group, exclusive deals, newsletter subscription, or a badge of support.
While explaining the subscription-based feature, Twitter shared several screenshots. Giving an example, it said that a $4.99 subscription would provide new rewards to the users. As they pay to follow someone, the other creative individuals will earn directly from followers.
“Exploring audience funding opportunities like Super Follows will allow creators and publishers to be directly supported by their audience and will incentivize them to continue creating content that their audience loves,” Twitter said in a statement.
Another feature to arrive soon is called Communities. Comparatively, it’s similar to Facebook Groups. It will allow people to join a particular group or a community on Twitter. Examples include social justice, cats, plants, and surfing, as per the social media platform.
Meanwhile, it may seem like some reward, but many people are not favoring it. A trend titled #RIPTwitter began trending within hours of Super Follow feature’s news. They are disappointed at the moment.
Here’s what the social media users on the platform are saying about it:
Whatever the reason the social media tech giant may have, it won’t justify its recent decision of charging to follow someone.
The subscription-based format is there on other websites and apps, which is somewhat acceptable.
However, on a social media portal that is supposed to be accessible for all people to express their opinions and thoughts, it doesn’t seem logical.
The latest announcement of Twitter might also result in a negative response from its users. In other words, it may witness a WhatsApp-like situation.
If there comes a situation like that, then one potential alternative will be Tumblr. It might gain a brand new following due to possible mass migration.
Image courtesy of Hahn/YouTube Screenshot
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A talent for IT has taken David Duffy to destinations across Europe and beyond.
But now the director at Huddersfield-based online retailer Stores Direct is happy enough with the daily commute from his home town of Wigan to the company’s headquarters at Bradley.
Says David: “I used to be a technical engineer for a US-based software company designing and installing digital systems for newspaper offices. I worked all over the world from Croatia to Nairobi and Helsinki.
“I don’t fly anything like as much now – and it doesn’t bother me. It got to the stage where it was almost like getting on the bus, it was so much part of my routine.
“I spent a lot of time in Helsinki, which is my favourite European city. I would get home on a Friday night, arrive at my local for a pint and everyone would be asking me where I was off to next. It sounds great, but after a while, everyone stopped asking!
“Travelling on business can be very lonely. I also got married to my wife Lisa, which was another reason for ‘jumping ship’.”
Says David: “When I left college, I was going to go into graphic design. I worked for an advertising agency in Manchester for a short time. They got in a lot of Apple Macs and the programme was one I had used at college. I had a better understanding of it than the person who was training us to use them! That made me wonder whether to be a designer or concentrate on the IT side.”
David joined newspaper group Newsquest as part of a team overseeing its IT systems before being promoted to executive in charge of IT for the group’s Lancashire division.
At the age of 24, he was headhunted by Digital Technology International, a worldwide business specialising in digital publishing. Says David: “They said they’d seen what I could do and how would I like a job working for the company and travelling the world?”
David spent 10 years with DTI, saying: “They were great times. But in my final year with the company I totted it up and discovered I’d made almost 200 flights in a year. I had three months solid working in Zagreb and that took its toll. I came home one Friday night to find airline tickets for a flight to Sweden on Monday morning. That’s when I came to the end of the line!”
David had known Stores Direct founder Mike Birtwhistle for many years. Mike had been a steward with British Airways before founding the firm in 2001 to sell wood-burning stoves – initially from the back of a Vauxhall Corsa.
“Mike and I go back a few years,” says David. “We have the same friends and we socialised a lot. He knew I had a bit of an understanding about Google and so on and asked if I wanted to come and work for his company.”
Stores Direct, based at Pennine Business Park, had two websites at the time. Now it has 24 selling products ranging from stoves, fireplaces, flue systems and associated heating products to bathrooms, furniture and soft furnishings.
The company’s rapid expansion earned it a spot in the annual Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 – ranking the UK’s fastest-growing private companies.
Stores Direct, which also has showrooms at Elland and in Chorley, Lancashire and Darlington, County Durham, won the category for SME of the Year in the 2010 Examiner Business Awards.
It also has impressive “green” credentials. Many of its customers are turning to wood-burning stoves as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to gas or oil – a trend which is increasing in the face of soaring heating costs.
David has played a key part in the company’s success.
He says: “Part of what I did on joining the company was to simplify the workflow. I have a dislike of complicated businesses. Most businesses are generally way too complicated. By making fundamental changes to simplify processes, you will make savings.
“For the first time in my career I was given full rein to do what I wanted to do. For the volumes of products we move, there are very few of us. We reduce paper and we keep our costs down. We have one printer and one fax machine for the entire office. We used to have seven people dealing solely with orders coming in online. We now have one person doing that full-time and two people trained to cover when necessary. Many of our systems are automated.”
Stock control is another area for savings. “We try to hold as little as possible,” says David. “We have a warehouse at Halifax held by a distributor who ships nationwide. At peak times, we are shifting thousands and thousands of stoves.”
Says David: “We got into the online shopping scene early and pushed it hard. But it has not been easy – there’s been a lot of hard work involved. A lot of people think it is easy. They set up an online shopping business – and they go by the by.
“There is a lot you have to do to make an online business credible and get any kind of customer to part with their hard-earned cash. It’s about having a website that looks professional, it is about functionality and it’s about building up trust so that customers know their money is going where it should be going.
“Small things matter – such as having a local phone number on the website. I have a personal aversion to 0800 numbers because I don’t know where they are based. If I get a phone call from an 0800 number, I’m not going to answer it!”
There’s no doubting where Stores Direct is to be found – nor where it is heading. Says David: “We have expanded our showroom in Elland and last year we opened the showroom in Lancashire. We also took over a company in Darlington and have built up that business under the StovesAreUs brand to give us more coverage and give people the choice of viewing products in person as well as online. Having showrooms gives people the opportunity to touch and feel the products, see the quality.”
Says David: “It also means we know what it takes to run a bricks-and-mortar outlet efficiently as well as how to sell successfully online. We sell to customers in person in the ‘triangle’ of Yorkshire, Lancashire and the North East, but we also sell online to London, Scotland and the South of England.”
David still clocks up the miles, but this time its visiting the warehouse and showrooms on a regular basis. “During the peak eselling season it’s all hands to the pump,” he says. “There’s no job in this company that I haven’t done myself. I spent two months when I joined the company in the warehouse learning how to strap and pack stoves, so I know what’s involved in other aspects of the business.”
Away from work, David is busy trying to rediscover his form on the golf courses at Bradley and Fixby. “I used to play as a youngster and I was junior captain at a local club for a couple of years,” he says. “I’m also a former Thai boxer. I started when I was 16 and I was an instructor for a while as well. I’m a black belt, but my last fight was back in 1996, although I was still training up to the age of 29. Now I keep in shape by doing a bit of boxing at the gym.”


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You would think that it in the midst of a pandemic year, when economic indicators were down across the board and the realities of Brexit kicked in, the British-Portuguese Chamber of Commerce (BPCC) would be struggling.
But nothing could have been further from the truth in 2020. The BPCC did surprisingly well in terms of revenue stream and corporate membership which actually increased, coming as “rather a surprise to us” according to CEO Chris Barton and new chair Rui Pedro Almeida, CEO and Managing Partner of the Moneris Group.
And membership churn rate (5.5%) was less than in previous years. This year, however, will be more challenging, both believe, as traditional income streams from sponsorships and trade fairs (20%) dried up since the pandemic ruled out live events and trade shows.
“We were able to reinvent ourselves, keep our business community together and grow our membership since there was a need during the pandemic for businesses to feel more united and connected,” says Rui Pedro Almeida adding that the BPCC currently has more than 370 members, recording a net increase of 15 new members in 2020.
Chris Barton says that “the ability to adapt to changing circumstances was fundamental in these trying times”.
A comprehensive digital agenda
In 2020, the BPCC had a comprehensive agenda with different speakers on subjects as wide as the legal aspects of layoffs, talks about marketing, presentations on oil price volatility and even webinars on managing stress and burnout in the workplace.
Rui Pedro Almeida points out that fully transitioning to digital was another major change in the way the chamber operates, catalysed by the pandemic.
“I think we acted very swiftly regarding changes in the digital sphere. By March and April 2020 we were already running conferences, training workshops and seminars online, so I think we had a first-move advantage and acted very flexibly and our members really appreciated that,” he says.
In fact, not only did the BPCC attract new members, some existing members upgraded to premium membership category, while the attendance rate in terms of events “went through the roof”.
Of course, there’s always the argument that during lockdown it was simply convenient and sufficiently distracting to log onto a webinar, and that may well have been the case in the first quarter of 2020. But as Chris Barton points out “what is true today will not necessarily be true tomorrow”.
“Zoom was a novelty and then became a nuisance, fashions change quickly and what people liked in the early days was to of fashion later on,” he notes.
Hybrid format events
“The biggest challenge now is to become hybrid for those that can attend in person and those who, for time and logistical reasons, can only attend remotely,” says Rui Pedro Almeida adding that this is particularly valuable when members or interested parties are spread throughout Portugal, or indeed the world.
“Last year we started to prepare the trade missions that this year were supposed to be attended in-person, but have now become remote,” he says pointing out that the BPCC had just completed a virtual trade mission on digital, media and IT which had been “a huge success”.
Rui Pedro Almeida explains that because missions had been conducted remotely, it was possible to foster relations that otherwise would have been more difficult. For example, the BPCC promoted meetings between Portuguese tech companies and Level 39, the world’s most connected tech community, with over 200 tech startups and scaleups based onsite and 1,250 leaders in cybersecurity, fintech and retail tech based in the United Kingdom which, he says, would have been “logistically almost impossible” to bring so many interested parties together.
“The ability to shift the value proposition to digital was absolutely fundamental and highlights that we are very much focused on content rather than just social events and cocktails. If you are content based and on-line, you remain relevant,” he says.
Another important change resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic is that members based in the Algarve usually would meet with each other at events in the region. With the online events, the BPCC was able to reach a wider nationwide membership and distance was no longer an issue because people were wasting over an hour driving to and from events. “Including travel time, a lunch event could typically take up four to five hours of a member’s time. Now with remote events, it’s an hour,” says Chris Barton.
Brexit teething problems
On the issue of Brexit, the BPCC admits there have been some teething problems surrounding import and export paperwork. In some cases members in the logistics sector were able to resolve problems. “Even when the paperwork has been correct there have been delays because of the backlog, with a queue in both directions,” admits Chris Barton.
Barton also gives the example of a UK company specialising in treating oil slicks that had applied for a contract through the EU’s Maritime Safety Agency in Lisbon which was excluded from bidding for the contract because they are British and not from EU Member States.
And while not sensing any antagonism or the active creating of difficulties from the Portuguese authorities, dealings elsewhere within the EU have been “difficult with a certain attitude of ‘you left Europe, you’ve made your bed so lie in it’”.
Rui Pedro Almeida, who is also CEO and Managing Partner at grupo Moneris, specialists in accountancy and management consultancy, says the BPCC has provided an “interesting membership base where we can showcase our expertise and have ‘airtime’ which some of our most important business partners and get referrals. We’ve been involved in trade missions, training, webinars, seminars and are very much involved in the chamber’s activities”.
“Every year we ask ourselves the question on behalf of each member what are we providing for their membership fee and what are they getting out in terms of value as members? The feedback is positive through testimonials and the regional reps who meet regularly with members at their companies,” says Chris Barton.
“This regional outreach makes us unique, since we are the only chamber with delegations in both Porto and the Algarve,” concludes Chris Barton, CEO of the BPCC.
Chris Barton says the BPCC has always been quite good at being flexible, keeping up with changes and reacting. The mantra for the foreseeable future is “collaboration between members”. Rui Pedro Almeida stresses that “We want to improve collaboration and increase business opportunities for our members, encouraging connectivity and promoting regular exchange of knowledge and ideas within our membership base”.
Chris Graeme (Essential Business)


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Tata Motors: TPG Goes Into Tata Motors EV Business With $ 1 Billion Investment
Tata Motors, which already gained shareholder approval to separate its passenger vehicle business in March, will now create a separate electric-only branch in which the proposed investment will be made over the next 18 months, said the company said in a press release. The new EV co, will be lightweight and house only technology and future IPs, while manufacturing will be housed under the paid passenger vehicle division.
New investors will be issued Mandatory Convertible Preferred Shares (CCPS) which, after conversion over an 18-month period, will give them an 11-15% stake in the EV branch, while parent company Tata Motors will own the remainder. The conversion will also be linked to certain previously agreed income thresholds. The first round of 50% capital injection is expected to be completed by March 22 and full funds to be injected by the end of 2022.
Tata Motors’ board of directors met earlier today to approve the transaction.
Tata Motors is already the domestic market leader in the electric vehicle segment with 70% market share and 3 models.
Shares of Tata Motors have jumped XXX over the past month and ended Tuesday at Rs 420.80 with a market cap of Rs 1,718.55 crore.
Tata Group President N Chandrasekaran spoke on orienting Tata Motors’ business towards sustainability and green mobility options. The company has already announced plans to roll out 10 new battery-electric vehicles in its domestic product portfolio by 2025. The company is also evaluating the creation of an automotive software and engineering vertical within the Tata group that will l ‘will help to be a leader in the field of connected technologies and autonomous vehicles. Tata Motors’ CFO, P Balaji, said the company is considering an investment of Rs 15,000 crore over the next XXX years just to fuel its aspirations for electric vehicles.
“We will continue to proactively invest in exciting products that delight customers while meticulously creating a synergistic ecosystem. We are excited and determined to play a leading role in the government’s vision of having an electric vehicle penetration rate of 30% by 2030, ”said Chandrasekaran.
RISE & SHINE
TPG’s investment is being made through the recently raised $ 7 billion climate fund – Rise Impact. Former US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is the executive chairman along with the fund’s co-founder, James Coulter. Like many fund managers, TPG has also actively focused on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investment themes.
The climate fund Rise had previously backed a Hyderabad-based Fourth Partner Energy (4PEL), which focuses on the commercial and industrial (C&I) segment and has an operational portfolio of 550 megawatts (MW). At the end of last year, TPG Pace Beneficial Finance Corp., a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), agreed to acquire EV Charged BV, a unit of the French public utility Engie SA specializing in the technology of recharging electric vehicles to create a combined entity, the EVBox group. , with a valuation of around $ 1.4 billion.
TPG is already an investor in Reliance Jio Infocom and Reliance Retail.
“There is significant momentum around India’s electric vehicle movement, supported by government vision and policies, as well as growing consumer demand for greener solutions. The investment aligns with TPG Rise Climate’s focus on carbon-free transportation and builds on TPG’s long history in India, ”said Coulter, Managing Partner of TPG Rise Climate and Founding Partner of TPG. Previously, TPG had partnered with former Tata group manager Mukund Rajan to purchase the struggling Tata teleservices, but it never paid off.
Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan advised Tata Motors and Bank of America were the advisers to TPG. Khaitan & Co and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas were the legal advisers.
“The company believes fiscal 2024E could be the tipping point for the electric vehicle industry. As a result, it improved its market share to 10.1% in the first quarter of fiscal 22, compared to 6-7% in fiscal 2019. In addition, in terms of profitability, the company has improved the PV segment EBITDA margin to 4 to 5% in the first quarter of fiscal 22 compared to stable levels in fiscal 2019. During the last two quarters, the EBITDA per vehicle of the photovoltaic segment was at same level as that of Maruti Suzuki, which is commendable, ”said Rishi Vora, analyst at Kotak Institutional Equities.
As a group, Tatas relies on various companies in the group to create an ecosystem. While Tata Power is engaged in charging infrastructure; Tata Chemicals Evaluates Lithium-Ion Cell Manufacturing; Tata Autocomp maps battery manufacturing; and the eponymous financial arm of Tata Motors provides financing solutions for the adoption of electric vehicles. An internal working group comprising officials from all of these companies would also work together. The mandate is to move quickly and develop and offer the entire ecosystem to consumers.
Energy Efficiency Services, the EV branch has already completed the production of more than 200 cars and the plan is to be a forerunner and seize the opportunities arising from new mobility trends, as stated by Chandrasekaran. Tata Capital will be the support arm for financing and Tata Power for the charging infrastructure network. Investors were previously hesitant given the huge valuation sought by Tata Motors, but realize the immense growth opportunities here, a senior group official said.
The new company will leverage all existing investments and capabilities of Tata Motors Ltd and channel future investments in electric vehicles, dedicated BEV platforms, advanced automotive technologies and catalyze investments in charging infrastructure and charging technologies. battery, the company said in a statement.


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By Cynthia Roldan
You could say that 7-Eleven knows how to be “cool” on its birthday. Every year, participating stores across the country join in the celebration and hand out more than 5 million Slurpees to free Slurpee Seekers.
Any time today, you can walk into a 7-Eleven store and ask to receive a free Slurpee, as long as the store has not run out of the seasonal 7.11-ounce cups yet. Make sure to congratulate the store, as the company celebrates its 84th birthday this year.
So join in the “Slurpee-bration!” With at least 40 stores throughout Palm Beach County, you should be able to sneak a freebie before Slurpee Seekers, who drive from store to store, drink them all first!


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It’s all been said before: We work long hours and often fail to disconnect when we get home. Our corporate duty follows us out onto the high street, with most checking emails via free WiFi while at restaurants and shops.
From a business perspective, it’s become incredibly lucrative to?wield free WiFi as a customer attraction tool. As was explained in a Real Business interview with?Andrew Gibson, senior manager at Virgin Media Business: “Acaf offering fast, free internet would be more appealing to an entrepreneur waiting around for a meeting than one that charges, or has poor connectivity.
“There is no need to move on if it’s free and it’s fast here. So, I?ll stay longer, spending more and come back again. And whilst I?m here I?ll let everyone know I?m here and tell them why it’s great. Perhaps in the future I?ll arrange to meet people here, confident that I can kill time while I?m waiting and get in touch if there are problems, and tell my network of screen addicts to visit.
But the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), set to be introduced 25 May 2018, will’strengthen the conditions for consent. Transparency and a lack of jargon is also among government expectations.
Though the responsibility lies chiefly on companies, it also rests on our shoulders. We skim the top of terms and conditions if at all before quickly agreeing. But with more’simplified terms on the horizon, we need to ensure we read the full text a notion that was recently highlighted by WiFi provider Purple.
It claims to be the first WiFi provider compliant with?GDPR, and chose tocelebrate by doing an experiment that”highlightedthe lack of consumer awareness around free WiFi access.
Hidden amongits terms and conditions?was an extra clause, which only one out of 22,000 customers spotted. They had all, bar one, unwittingly ended up agreeing to 1,000 hours of community service and not the picking up trash with a stick kind.
Entitled the “Community Service Clause , it’said those signing up to use free WiFi would be required to “cleanse local parks of animal waste”, “provide hugs to stray cats and dogs” and “manually relieve sewer blockages”.
What’s more, users would end up “cleaning portable lavatories at local festivals and events”, “painting snail shells to brighten up their existence” and “scraping chewing gum off the streets”.
Of course, CEO?Gavin Wheeldon explained no one would be called upon to perform these duties.
He added: WiFi users need to read terms when they sign up to access a network. What are they agreeing to, how much data are they sharing, and what license are they giving to providers” Our experiment shows it’s all too easy to tick a box and consent to something unfair.


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Google recently unveiled a new operating system project called Fuchsia, described on GitHub as “Pink + Purple = Fuchsia (a new Operating System).” Firstly, it might be confusing and surprising to think about the fact that Google are developing a new operating system, and secondly, it might be even more confusing to learn that Fuchsia is not based on Linux. Linux has become one of the world’s most important platforms and all of Google’s other operating system platforms are based on Linux. Fuchsia is something of a departure. The new operating system may be trialed on a device based around either an ARM, Intel, or virtual computer and the team are working on porting it to the Raspberry Pi in order to see how well it performed in very limited hardware. The new operating system runs on a newly developed Magenta kernel, which itself is based on the Little Kernel project. In other words, the platform is looking like it will be developed entirely in-house at Google. It’s too soon to say if it will be a “better” platform than Linux, or more efficient.
Fuchsia uses Google’s own Dart language and is being designed for “modern phones and modern personal computers.” That sounds like the Android platform, which Google has already successfully reworked for other types of platform (such as Android Auto, Android TV and Android Wear) and is based on Linux. However, Fuchsia can also be run on embedded devices, such as the billions we are expecting to join the internet as part of the Internet of Things revolution that’s right around the corner. This sounds like Google’s Brillo platform, which is essentially “Android Lite” and could at a stretch be included in the list of sub-Android operating systems above. Are Google planning on reinventing the Android platform into Fuchsia? Or are they planning on combining Android and Chrome into Fuchsia?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and let’s first take a deeper look into Fuchsia. Fuchsia is more than a simple low powered operating system designed for simple devices. It has mature operating system functionality including advanced graphics, 64-bit processing support and, importantly, a capability-based security system. The fact that Fuchsia has these features and isn’t based on Linux, a constantly developed, open source platform that has been adopted the world over, is interesting. It also points out that Google has perhaps realized that Android cannot be the platform for absolutely everything, even though the plethora of Android-based platforms might suggest otherwise. There are good reasons why Android is central to Google’s computing strategy – over a billion reasons residing in the Google Play Store as it happens. It is no surprise that whilst Google is committed to keeping the Android and Chrome OS platforms separate, it is keen to integrate certain Android features on the Chrome platform and the Play Store was one of them. This is likely something that Google will look to replicate with Fuchsia in the future.
Microsoft is a business that has changed its mobile platform ambitions in the last couple of years. In 2014, Microsoft pumped time, effort and money into a number of mobile operating systems from Windows CE to PocketPC to Windows Phone before finally deciding that it wasn’t able to compete from a platform perspective, and switched its focus to providing great quality applications and services that could run on whatever computer hardware and platform the customer was using. That’s why we can use Microsoft Office 365 on anything from an iPhone to an Android tablet to a Chromebook to a Windows 10 desktop. Google have a similar approach from some perspectives: yes they have saturated the smartphone market with Android, but their revenue generation is predominantly from advertising revenue, which relies on the Google services. Android is a means of delivering these services – especially search – to customers such that the company can sell this information. It doesn’t matter if a customer is using a Windows 10 laptop, Macbook, or Chromebook to search Google, the information derived is still worth something to Google. Fuchsia drops right into this line of thinking as another means of delivering the Google services to customers.
One of the golden rules of computing is that one doesn’t pick the best platform based on hardware specifications, memory, chassis color or charging port, but instead one should pick the best platform to run whatever applications that are needed. To look back at the console wars between Microsoft and Sony, it doesn’t matter if the Xbox is a technically superior product if one wants to play a Sony-exclusive title, such as Gran Turismo – you need to use the Sony hardware. Google’s Fuchsia project may well be about bringing a “better platform” to a certain type of device to allow customers to access Google’s services. In order to do this, Google will need to ensure that Fuchsia is compatible with everything people love and use about Android and Chrome OS. That may simply mean ensuring that third party applications can run on the new operating system. In the short term it could mean a form of emulation and in the longer term it might mean developers building a universal application, similar in some respects to Microsoft’s plans with Windows 10.
It is too soon to say how the Fuchsia platform will evolve and when we might see devices running the software, or how it will compete or complement the existing Android and Chrome OS platforms. Details about Fuchsia are still limited. The new operating system might be a core part of Google’s ultimate long-term plan to resolve the fragmentation and update issues inherent with Android by incorporating a similar update scheme as we see with Microsoft’s Windows operating system: Fuchsia could be backwards compatible with the applications and services customers the world over have come to love with their Android devices, but running over a different technology. In 2016, it seems difficult to believe that Fuchsia could simply take over from Android, but in 2006 it was difficult to believe that the Android platform would take over from Nokia’s Symbian smartphone platform.


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ITG Global Logistics and its local partner Fahrenheit Freight Forwarders Ltd are celebrating 10 years of reliable cargo transport services between Malta and Germany.
On Friday October 23, directors and staff of Fahrenheit and ITG welcomed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon. Tonio Borg, and directors from leading manufacturing and import companies in Malta, to commemorate this significant milestone. The event, which treated guests to a traditional German food and beer night, was held at Il Cortile Farmhouse, in Naxxar.
ITG, a member of Deutsche Post AG, is a renowned logistics service provider established in 1981. Its vast network extends to over 200 localities in 90 different countries. In 1999, the company started a regular weekly import and export trailer service between Malta and Germany. Today this is a crucial service for major companies operating in Malta. It provides fast and reliable transport for the importation of raw materials for manufacturing firms, consumer and industrial products for local importers, and also for the exportation of goods rolling off Maltese production lines.
This achievement would not have been possible without the German company’s collaboration with local freight forwarding firms. In the last years, ITG increased its use of Fahrenheit’s extensive fleet for its services to Malta. A few months ago, this collaboration was strengthened as ITG endorsed Fahrenheit Freight Forwarders as its new official partner in Malta. This development reconfirmed ITG’s commitment to its services in Malta.
With a privately-owned fleet of over 150 trailers and 40 road tractors, Fahrenheit is one of Malta’s leading providers in the international freight forwarding sector. Using the latest technology, the company’s team provides high quality air, sea, and road freight forwarding and logistics services. Fahrenheit is a member of the Famalco Group.
Locally, ITG also uses the services of the local firm Miksons Transport Ltd.
Addressing the guests, Minister Borg explained that Fahrenheit’s collaboration with ITG is another testimony to the fruits of Malta’s EU membership. “I can reassure you that despite the current global economic crisis, as a government we are committed to make business in Malta work. We have, over the years, reviewed legislation in order to facilitate investment,” he said, “of course, it would be folly to consider that our overall objectives have been reached. Much more can be done, but this can only materialise if we engage in a collaborative climate of mutual assistance, based primarily on regular one-to-one feedback on how best to bolster our joint endeavour. Only by creating such synergies can we seek to find solutions to overcome the hurdles which may be hindering companies from further expansion.”
“In this fast-changing world, every long lasting partnership is worth celebrating,” an ITG spokesperson explained, “a decade
of business is even more special if it involves such a trustful, friendly and prosperous partnership like the one we have with Fahrenheit and Miksons. We can confirm that we love this beautiful small island and this milestone will be the foundation of an even stronger partnership. As we aim for many more decades of business with Malta, let us hope that our efforts to succeed will be accompanied by peace, freedom, and health to make this planet a place worth living in for all people, and not only for a privileged few.”


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2018 was a major year for Kandi Burruss' daughter Riley. The Real Housewives of Atlanta teen celebrated her 16th birthday, got her first car, and embarked on a fitness journey. In June 2018, Riley shared the results from her new healthier lifestyle, revealing that she had lost 52 pounds thanks to a healthier diet and exercise. And if you thought this past holiday season or the new year were going to throw Riley off her game, think again.
Riley has remained committed to her new lifestyle, and she recently took to Instagram to share an update on her progress. The ATL native posted a side-by-side photo of herself in two pink outfits (both of which she looks fab in). "Still working & trying to improve w @iamthekingoffitness but look at this transformation," she wrote.
Of course, mama Kandi is just as proud as ever. The RHOA singer also shared Riley’s transformation photo on Instagram. “So proud of @rileyburruss and her journey, she made some fitness goals and conquered them and looks amazing!" she wrote.
Riley just gave us some much needed motivation to get back to our own fitness goals. Way to go, Riley!
The Lookbook is Bravo’s celebration of personal style. We keep you up to date on the inspiring looks from trend-setting stylistas, test and report on the most-coveted fashion and beauty products, and offer solutions to all your style-related conundrums. Like us on Facebook to stay connected to our daily updates.


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Artificial intelligence may not be a new thing in eCommerce, what with e-tailers of all sizes maximizing its use to boost their profits.
AI’s specific role in physical stores, however, hasn’t been determined yet until Walmart transformed its 50,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market in Levittown, New York into what it calls the Intelligent Retail Lab (IRL).
Equipped with 100 servers that have over 400 graphics processing units (GPUs), 10 cooling towers, cameras, sensors, and real-time analytics software, the new store focuses on monitoring inventory and making sure that items are always available for Walmart’s in-store and online customers.
The IRL technology automatically detects which shelves in the store need to be replenished or replaced with new items, and then it notifies the staff.
Walmart as a vanguard of future retail
IRL speeds up the work of its employees because they would know in an instant what to get from the stockroom even before anyone has placed an order for it. What’s more, the technology gives them more time to engage with customers.
“The point of having AI in the retail environment is to really understand what we can do for our customers and associates. Customers can be confident about products being there, about the freshness of produce and meat. Our contention in the IRL is that AI is going to be a transformer of retail as eCommerce was.” – Mike Hanrahan, CEO, IRL
Walmart’s IRL comes with touchscreen information stations to help customers understand the store’s new technology and offerings.
What are your thoughts on this retail breakthrough? Let us know in the comments below or join our Facebook Group.