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Posted by: HotViews Editor at 00:00
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) has announced its first programme: Scale Compute. And it is set to address one of the biggest challenges we face as AI use cases begin to scale: accessing the unprecedented amount of computing power required, particularly when using natural language processing or deep learning.
ARIA is a UK Government research funding agency, which was conceived as an idea in early 2021 and was formally established on 26th January 2023. Operating as an Arms Length Body (ALB) of the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), its focus is on high-risk, high-reward STEM research.
Scale Compute, which is supported by £42m of funding, aims to “redefine our current compute paradigm”. It states, “for the first time in history, increased performance requires increasing costs, and this coincides with an explosion of demand for more compute power driven by AI”. And with traditional methods for improving hardware performance now economically unviable, it is seeking to find a solution to issues around availability, performance, and cost. Indeed, being led by director, Suraj Bramhavar, co-founder of cloud optimisation firm, Sync Computing, its ambition is to cut the costs of delivering AI by 99.9% - or, in other words, enable AI to be delivered at 1,000th of the current cost.
Scale Computing’s hypothesis is that the principles of the natural world can be applied to deliver simple processing, as natural systems innately process complex information more efficiently (on several orders of magnitude) than today’s largest AI systems. They do this by not distinguishing between computing elements and memory elements; incorporating noise and not being binary; and not operating in discrete time intervals.
We have started to see innovative solutions emerge that seek to strike a balance between performance and energy efficiency and allow sustainable AI development. As an example, Ampere Computing has sought to challenge leading players like AMD, Nvidia, and Intel, by offering a low-power, high performance CPU solution, and aiming to scale in ways that legacy architectures aren’t able to. Its Altra Max solution has been adopted by all the major hyperscalers and claims up to a 3x reduction in the number of datacentre racks required.
This ARIA programme has even more ambitious targets. Individuals or organisations who want to bid for a piece of the programme’s funding have until 27th March to submit a short concept paper on one of three technical areas: bold solutions; bold ideas; and system level software simulation. When invited to submit a formal proposal, submissions will be due by 7th May.
Posted by: Georgina O'Toole at 10:03
Tags: research government AI STEM R&D ML nlp compute cpu
AIM-listed fast-growing acquisitive internet domain name and web services provider, CentralNic rebranded as Team Internet Group Plc last September taking on the moniker of a company that it acquired back in 2019 (see CentralNic acquires again). CEO Michael Riedl has been in charge since late 2022 and has kept the business growing aggressively (CentralNic up 18% in H1).
Annual results out this morning confirm the continuation of this trajectory, with the Group’s revenue increasing by 15% (13% organic) to $836.9m (FY2022 $728.2m). Adjusted EBITDA was by 12% to $96.4m (FY2022 $86m) whilst operating profit increased 26% to $42.3m (FY2022 $33.6m).
Bolt-on additions have formed a key part of the mix allowing Team Internet to build capability in two main areas. Firstly, ‘online presence’ which includes the basic tools to get an organisation online – so things like web addresses, websites, hosting, email etc., all paid for via annual subscriptions. Secondly, it provides ‘online marketing’ services which both help attract customers to a site and generate revenues paid for via rolling open-ended revenue share contracts. Both segments performed well during FY2023 with sales up 14% to $657.1m in the latter and 17% to $179.8m in the former, which also secured exclusive supplier status for the UK Crown Commercial Service last year.
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 09:35
Tags: results domainservices
TechMarketView recently sat down with Netcompany’s Richard Davies (UK Country Managing Partner) and Matthew Rowe (Principal) to talk about the company’s momentum in the public sector, and particularly how the Danish-founded company’s focus on outcomes and principles of re-use are seeing it build on successes across Europe with new wins in the UK.
Netcompany talks of the need for an “Agile 2.0” mindset, where concepts of re-use aren’t restricted to code dev; they’re applied upstream in a strategic way too—where use case transferability (from sector to sector) drives discussions about requirements definition and refinement.
In our UKHotViewsExtra article Re-use and re-imagination—Netcompany’s Public Sector growth, subscribers to TechMarketView research services can learn more about Netcompany’s vision for modernisation of the public sector’s “Cinderella Systems”, and how its PULSE and AMPLIO platforms are being applied—both across continental Europe, and in UK regional government.
If you are a TechMarketView subscriber you can access the research now UKHotViewsExtra – Re-use and re-imagination—Netcompany’s Public Sector growth. If you are not yet a subscriber, or are unsure if your organisation has a corporate subscription, please contact Deb Seth to find out more.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:29
Tags: re-use regional government
Surrey-based Bytes Technology Group has provided updates, both on its full year trading (ended 29 February 2024); and on the continuing investigation into unreported share-dealing by former CEO Neil Murphy which came to light late last month (resulting in his immediate resignation and Byte’s share price taking a dive – see Bytes CEO resigns, shares tumble).
First, the numbers – and Bytes has reported that it expects growth in gross profit and adjusted operating profit both to be “comfortably in double figures” (12% and over 25% respectively), resulting in a “record year for the group”. However, no other metrics were released, and we will have to wait until May or early June for the company preliminary results for FY24.
As for the trading activities of its erstwhile CEO… in a separate bulletin, Bytes has disclosed that Murphy (through his lawyers) has provided information on an additional 15 previously unreported trades (on top of the 119 transactions that came to light in February) which he conducted on behalf of his wife. He’s said that this is now the final list, and there are “no further relevant transactions” to report.
As a result of these revelations, Bytes has produced reconciliations to its previously announced Directors’ Shareholding disclosures in the company’s last three annual reports, and appointed another independent committee of the Board to investigate both Murphy’s resignation and share-dealing (the outcome of which will be shared with external auditors EY and feed into Bytes’ FY24 annual report).
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:26
Tags: results investigation share-dealing
London-headquartered fintech PPRO has secured a further €85m in funding to enable it to pursue growth in key markets and enhance its global network of local payment methods. Both new and existing investors participated in the funding round, including Eurazeo, HPE Growth, Sprints, PayPal Ventures, J.P. Morgan, Citi Ventures, and funds managed by BlackRock.
Founded in 2006, the digital payments solutions provider has grown quickly in recent years and now has more than 400 employees across 11 locations worldwide. It achieved unicorn status in its 2020 equity funding round with a valuation of $1 billion but remains loss-making. According to results filed with Companies House, in the year to December 2022 revenue was essentially flat at €56m, and with costs increasing the company made an operating loss of €21m.
Since then, PPRO has seen a lot of change. Last May, CEO of nine years Simon Black announced he was stepping down at the end of 2023 having completed the integration of March 2022 acquisition Alpha Fintech, reshaped the management team, and strengthened the Board with the appointment of Lazaro Campos as Chairman. The company’s then Chief Commercial Officer, Motie Bring, took on the CEO role in the autumn.
After what CFO Rahul Raswant describes as a ‘stellar 2023’, PPRO is now ‘firmly on track to reach profitability’ (according to the MD for Growth at investor Eurazeo), and plans to use the new funding to accelerate growth in the face of strong demand from banks and businesses for its payments infrastructure and platform services.
Posted by: Tola Sargeant at 09:13
Tags: funding payments fintechs
Delighted to see that Mike Norris, CEO of Computacenter, got the “CEO of the Year” Award at the plc awards last night. But Mike should have got a Lifetime Achievement Award as the longest serving FTSE250 CEO. He's been with Computacenter since 1984 and served as its CEO since 1994. Indeed, as followers will know, Computacenter is the only current holder of a Holway Boring Award. Not just for 10 years of uninterrupted EPS growth, but now an unprecedented 19 years. Whether they make it to 20 years might be affected by the recent increase in corporation tax - but I hope to 'find a way' around that if the tax rate increase is the only reason for a blip. (Well, I invented the award so I can change the rules if I want!!) I've also had the pleasure of knowing Mike for most of his 40 years at Computacenter. So a heartfelt and personal WELL DONE MIKE.
Editor’s Note: The plc awards are open to all companies listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange. In his category for CEO of the year, Mike was up against a strong selection including the likes of Luke Ellis (Man Group) David Lockwood (Babcock International Group), and Stuart Machin (Marks & Spencer Group).
Posted by: Richard Holway at 09:45
Tags: people awards
As I was weaving in between the numerous potholes of West Berkshire and Hampshire the other day, I said to my partner, “wouldn’t it be great if we could just outsource fixing these types of issues to a robot”. Well, it would seem that Hertfordshire County Council in collaboration with Warrington based tech firm Robotiz3d is doing exactly that!
It is believed that currently there are more than 1 million potholes on the roads across the United Kingdom. It is a perennial problem, and it seems like no matter how many are fixed another two pop up in its place, like a proverbial Hydra. Given many councils remain under intense budgetary pressures, it is not really surprising that they are struggling to field the necessary personnel to tackle the problem.
Named the Autonomous Road Repair System (ARRES), a team comprised of Robotiz3d, academics at the University of Liverpool and Hertfordshire County Council Highways Engineers, have been developing a new robot to address the pothole problem for four years. The project has been funded by £30,000 of Transport Research and Innovation Grants, as well as by Innovate UK and other investors.
Utilising AI powered software and advanced imaging technology, the robot can identify potholes and defects with precision, swiftly executing repairs to mitigate surface water infiltration, a common precursor to pothole formation. The proactive approach not only prevents pothole expansion but also optimises resource allocation by addressing issues before they escalate.
The council has stated that the technology could ‘revolutionise the way Hertfordshire and the rest of the world deal with potholes and issues with road surfaces in the future’. Following successful tests in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, the project team is now poised to advance towards full-scale production of ARRES. Future plans include the development of an even larger iteration of the robot, promising enhanced efficiency and broader applicability.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:35
Tags: robotics AI
Press release yesterday from the Cabinet Office heralded an upgrade to the Government’s AI-powered fraud detection tool - the Single Network Analytics Platform (SNAP) - with UK and US sanctions data added for the first time, as HMG looks to up its fight against organised crime and sanctions evasion.
SNAP was launched by the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) in 2023 as part of a £4m partnership with the UK-based AI player Quantexa – a business that we have covered multiple times since it was awarded the contract with the then newly created, PSFA (see Quantexa to help combat public sector fraud)
Quantexa was founded in 2016 and is led by CEO Vishal Marri with an existing customer base that includes BNY Mellon, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Vodafone, and of course the Cabinet Office. The company has been rapidly raising investment funding in the past few years as it seeks to establish itself as one of the key UK providers of Data analytics and AI solutions. The company has also established a strong ecosystem of partners, including Accenture, Appian, AWS, Deloitte, Google, KPMG, Microsoft and Salesforce (see Quantexa to invest £85m in UK AI).
The Government’s plan is for SNAP to be regularly updated with new datasets, increasing the ability to detect fraud committed against the public sector. In the latest upgrade, three new datasets were added:
Minister Neville-Rolfe also announced that HMG will run several AI discovery projects in 2024-25 to identify new ways to detect fraud. The first of these projects will use AI to identify entities registering and bankrupting successive companies to avoid paying debts, something known as ‘phoenixing’.
All this comes on top of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s decision to expand the PSFA by investing £34m to build additional counter fraud tools with the government’s Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI). The investment announced in last week’s Budget is forecasted to save taxpayers £100m over the next spending review (see Spring Budget 2024: Challenging productivity goals).
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 09:33
Tags: AI frauddetection
US software vendor Adobe has published its first quarter results for fiscal 2024 (ended 1 March 2024), showing revenue was up 12% year-over-year in constant currency to a record $5.18bn. The company posted double-digit growth across its largest business segments, with Digital Media up 13% (ccy) to $3.82bn and Digital Experience up 10% to $1.29bn.
Whilst gross profit for the quarter was up (+12.4% to $4.59bn), net income took a $1bn hit from the termination fee associated with Adobe’s aborted attempt to acquire San Fransisco-based rival Figma in December 2023 (after over a year of tussling with regulators), see Adobe forced to abandon $20bn Figma takeover. Without that one-off expense, net income would have risen 29.9% from Q1 2023’s figure of around $1.25bn (which itself had held steady since the same period in FY22 – see Adobe carries its momentum into new fiscal).
Adobe exited the quarter with a record $17.58bn of Remaining Performance Obligations – indicating that it expects Q2 to recognise healthy revenue growth (its Q2 targets now stand at $5.25bn-$5.30bn, which would represent 10.2% growth from Q2 23 at the top end).
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 09:32
Tags: results Q1
Pressure on Rackspace’s Private Cloud business has dragged the firm’s FY23 revenue down below the three-billion-dollar mark.
For the year to end December 2023, revenue declined 5% to $2.95bn. Private Cloud revenue slumped 13% to $1.2bn, while Public Cloud revenue increased (just) by 0.4% to $1.7bn. Note that $1.2bn of total FY23 revenue is classified as “pass-through infrastructure resale costs”. The loss from operations deepened to $899m from $679m in the year before.
The company’s CEO, Amar Maletira, spoke about FY23 as being a “period of transition” during which the firm put in place “structural changes” to support its turnaround and repositioning. At the beginning of 2023, it completed its leadership line-up for its new operating model, which has clearly has filtered through to the figures yet. Another important change was the reduction in net financial debt, by over $900m, and securing an additional $575m of new capital.
It’s still tough times for Rackspace, which is playing in a rapidly evolving market where the competitive scene is relentless. The firm is forecasting Q1 revenue to be in the $680-$690m range. For comparison, Q1 2023 revenue was $759m (down 1% on the equivalent period in 2022).
Posted by: Kate Hanaghan at 09:30
Tags: results
The European Parliament has approved the AI Act, a comprehensive framework for constraining the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). However, it still has to pass several more steps before it formally becomes law.
The approval of the AI Act, a proposed law that has been in development for five years, marks a key point in the global regulation of AI. The question now is whether this will make the EU the “de facto” global standard for AI regulatory compliance, and what this means for UK companies?
Whilst the UK has so far been reluctant to regulate AI, instead devolving responsibility to the individual regulators, the EU has taken a much more heavy-handed approach. The AI Act legislation follows a risk-based approach and establishes obligations for providers and those deploying AI systems depending on the level of risk the AI can generate. AI systems with an unacceptable level of risk to people’s safety would therefore be prohibited, such as those used for social scoring (classifying people based on their social behaviour or personal characteristics). Providers of foundation models (such as OpenAI’s GPT) will have to assess and mitigate possible risks and register their models in the EU database.
In November, at the global AI Safety Summit in London – (See - AI Safety summit concludes, but was it a success? ), AI developers agreed to work with governments to test new models before they are released, in an attempt to help manage the risks of the technology before it reaches the public, but it is a non-binding commitment. However, even with such commitments you have to wonder whether such retroactive actions will help stem some of the inherent risks from AI development, after all the capability will still exist even if it is not used by one particular government or organisation.
Given most organisations are using one or more of the many globally developed AI LLM models, it seems likely that regardless of geography, organisations will be impacted when the AI Act legislation is passed. AI developers such as Google or OpenAI will have to be more transparent about how their models work, and any IT services and software providers supplying AI solutions will equally have to follow the legislation, guiding how AI is developed and delivered. LLM suppliers are not going to develop different models for different regions, that is highly impractical, so we are likely to see a knock-on effect even if the UK doesn’t adopt similar legislation itself.
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:57
RM plc has reported results for the year ended 30 November 2023. Performance reflects an extremely challenging period for the edtech business; however, the situation has been stabilised and its management team has now unveiled a new strategic programme intended to turnaround RM’s fortunes and provide a clear path to growth.
Revenue from continuing operations decreased by 8.9% to £195.2m (FY22: £214.2m), primarily due to the underperformance of the Consortium business, where revenue was down 42.8% to £19.3m (FY22: £33.7m), as well as ongoing budgetary challenges in the UK schools' market.
The company took the decision to close Consortium in November 2023 (see EdTech focused RM to close Consortium business). Coupled with the subsequent termination of its associated ERP replacement programme, this resulted in the business recognising a total impairment charge of £38.9m. Adjusted operating profit from continuing operations fell to £0.3m (FY22: £7.5m) and it recorded a statutory loss of £29.1m (FY22: loss of £14.5m). Excluding Consortium, RM had revenues of £175.9m (FY22: £180.4m) and adjusted operating profit of £10.0m (FY22: £12.5m).
At the divisional level, RM Assessment revenue grew by 8.7% to £42.3m (FY22: £38.9m) and a 39.0% increase in adjusted operating profit to £10.3m (FY22: £7.4m). RM TTS (formerly part of RM Resources alongside Consortium) saw revenue decrease by 5.8% to £75.9m (FY22: £80.6m); however, its non-UK business grew by 5.8% to £23.7m. RM Technology revenue declined by 5.3% to £57.7m (FY22: £60.9m) but it managed to return to profitability in the second half of the year, delivering an adjusted operating profit of £0.7m (FY22: £2.2m).
It has been a turbulent period for RM, but under the new leadership team the situation has been stabilised. Consortium and the ERP replacement programme are now in the past. The operational structure has been simplified, delivering annualised savings of £8.5m with a further £10m of annualised cost synergies underway. There is now a new strategic plan to create a simpler, customer-centric business focused on investing in RM-owned and designed IP. There will be more focus on digital solutions, including the application of AI to its assessment and school services. RM will also look to build on the positive progress it has made internationally to become a more global business. This includes developing a new Global Accreditation Platform to enable end-to-end digital examinations, authoring and accreditations.
While the business has made significant progress over the past year, management acknowledges that there is still much to be done. However, there is a new confidence and positivity within the business that the worst is behind it, and RM is now positioned to take a bigger slice of the global edtech market.
Posted by: Dale Peters at 09:52
Tags: results education schools assessment edtech
British semiconductor researchers and businesses now have access to research funding backed by the UK government and Horizon Europe, with the UK joining the EU’s ‘Chips Joint Undertaking’.
The move provides the UK semiconductor sector access to a €1.3bn pot of funds set aside from Horizon Europe to support research in semiconductor technologies up to 2027. Access to one of the Chips Joint Undertaking’s funds is being backed by an initial £5m this year from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and delivered by Innovate UK. An additional £30m is due to support UK participation in further research between 2025 and 2027.
The UK joined Horizon Europe through a bespoke new agreement with the EU last year. The programme is giving UK companies and research institutions opportunities to lead global work to develop new technologies and research projects, in areas from health to AI. Tens of thousands of UK companies are now eligible for Horizon Europe grants, which are worth £450k to a business on average. UK firms already benefitting from Horizon funding include Nova Innovation, whose consortium won over £17m to develop tidal energy in Orkney, and South Yorkshire tech firm The Floow who are part of a project awarded just under £3m, looking into road safety.
The UK has seen some great semiconductor success stories such as ARM, with shares up over 130% since its IPO on the NYSE last year (alas not the LSE but can you blame them). It also posted strong Q3 results with revenue up 14% (See ARM hands strong set of Q3s to shareholders). We have also seen some struggle however, such as Bristol HQ’ed Graphcore, whose AI bets have not paid off (See Is UK chip designer Graphcore considering a sale?)
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:45
LSE-listed Alfa Financial Software’s FY 2023 results reveal strong subscription growth driving both revenue and total contract value and supporting a healthy outlook for 2024.
The London-headquartered provider of software for the global asset finance industry reports revenues up 9% on 2022 to £102m, with subscription revenues 16% higher at £32m. Operating profits climbed 2% in the same period as Alfa invested in its platform. TCV hit a record at £165m, also up 16% on FY22, and cash generation remained strong with 115% free cash flow conversion.
We’re pleased to see Alfa is also making progress in client diversification – its top five customers generated 35% of revenues, down from 61% in 2019 – and reporting strong sales and delivery momentum.
The asset and automotive finance markets that Alfa operates in have remained robust, as has demand for software in the sector, and Alfa has built a resilient business with reduced customer concentration and diverse markets, both geographically and by asset class. Combine this with growing subscription revenue and a healthy late-stage pipeline and it’s not surprising that the management are positive about the outlook, forecasting 2024 revenue growth in mid to high single digits. Against this backdrop, it is also not surprising that Alfa received two approaches from Private Equity houses in the summer, although neither of them led to a formal offer.
Posted by: Tola Sargeant at 09:22
Tags: software Finance
Things continue to improve at Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market leader UiPath, with the business growing revenue 24% in FY 2024 (year ending 31st January 2023) to $1.3bn. The company has been focused of late on improving its profitability and whilst the software player still made an operating loss of -$165m it was significantly down on the -$348m dollar loss made this time last year (see UiPath beat expectations for the FY). Q4 was particularly positive for the Romanian/US software player with record quarterly revenue of $405m up 31% YoY. Crucially it achieved its first quarterly operating profit (+$15m for Q4) as a public company.
UiPath continues to benefit from a more disciplined approach to growth having initially struggled in the Public Markets since its IPO in April 2021. This subsequently saw a new Co-CEO Rob Enslin join in April 2022 (see New Co-CEO at UiPath) to sit alongside founder Daniel Dines with a view to helping grow the business more efficiently.
Operationally, the business is grappling with how best to integrate gen AI into its automation platform and launched UiPath Autopilot for both professional and ‘citizen’ automation developers. Autopilot for Test Suite provides a collection of AI capabilities to boost the productivity of testers throughout the entire testing lifecycle, including AI-powered Quality Checks, Test Design, and Test Automation. Elsewhere, the group also launched a new partnership with Google Cloud integrating Vertex AI and Google Workspace business collaboration offerings with the UiPath platform.
Looking forward, UiPath expects to continue on the same direction of travel with FY 2025 revenue in the range of $1.555bn to $1.56bn (growth of c.16%), ARR in the range of $1.725bn to $1.73bn, and a (Non-GAAP) operating profit of approximately $295m (up from $233m).
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 08:56
Tags: results software RPA
Posted by: HotViews Editor at 13:39
Kent County Council has announced details of a four-year, multi-supplier framework for the supply of various software products (including HR and payroll, school management information systems, workflow management systems, cybersecurity software, backup and recovery software, virtualisation, as well as operating systems and “Microsoft products” generally), plus “associated services”. Although Kent County Council is the contracting authority, access to products and services is open to “all UK public bodies” (subject to the council’s agreement), though the expectation is that it’s NHS trusts, housing associations, police and fire services, academies and free schools that will be most interested.
Companies awarded places on the contract include numerous re-sellers, but also those suppliers with active services arms and consultancy businesses.
Those listed include Insight Direct (which won a seven-year £45m contract with Star Academies trust last year), Phoenix Software (whose MD, Samantha Mudd, became interim CEO for parent company Bytes – which is also listed on the framework), Boxxe (whom we reported as the vehicle for a ServiceNow win at HMRC last year), Bromcom (which also gained a place on HFL Education’s framework last month), IRIS Software (which received a funding boost at the tail end of last year), Trustmarque (which won a place on Digital Health and Care Wales’ single-supplier framework to provide Microsoft solutions to NHS Wales last month), Education Software Systems (acquired by ParentPay from Capita in 2021), Cantium (which started life in 2015 as Kent County Council’s own Business Services Centre, an internally commissioned service to deliver transactional finance, HR and IT services to the council’s schools and external customers, and which won at Gloucester County Council last year), Waymark, Softcat, Hitachi Solutions Europe, CDW, and SoftwareONE.
Posted by: Craig Wentworth at 10:23
Tags: framework schools Local & Regional Government
Leicester City Council has reported IT systems and a number of its critical service phone lines will remain down until later this week at the earliest following a "cyber incident" last Thursday.
Richard Sword, the council’s strategic director of city developments and neighborhoods said: “Over the weekend we have continued to work with our cyber security and law enforcement partners, as well as learning from other councils who have had attacks, to identify the nature of the incident and the steps we need to take to get our systems back online”
As ever with these situations’ details on exactly what has happened are sparse to say the least, though ransomware would be the most likely culprit given the scale of the disruption and its prevalence as an attack method. The recovery process will begin with the most critical services the council has said, which may mean it is some time until all services are fully restored. There is of course also the question of whether any data was exfiltrated.
Leicester are just one of the latest in a number of councils being targeted by cyber threat actors. In January an unspecified cyber incident (again likely ransomware) impacted Canterbury City Council, Dover District Council and Thanet District council, who all suffered disruption to their online services following a near-simultaneous cyber attack. All outsource their IT as part of the East Kent Services [EKS] shared services function. The ransomware attack on Gloucester city council in 2021 is a great example of the impact of such attacks, costing over £1m to fix. The problem persisted for months with the council having to rebuild all its services.
Other areas of the public sector and public facing services are equally under threat. In January we had the attack on the British Library causing a major IT outage (See Ransomware attack to cause major financial hit to British Library), and in September last year Greater Manchester Police were impacted by a ransomware attack through a third party supplier (See Greater Manchester Police reports data breach).
Posted by: Simon Baxter at 09:31
Tags: cybersecurity
UK fintech, Flagstone, has secured a £108m equity investment from Estancia Capital Partners, who now take a minority stake in the business. Estancia’s Takashi Moriuchi and Keegan Mitchell are to join the Flagstone Board, with the deal expected to close in Q2 of 2024 after necessary approvals etc.
Flagstone was founded in 2013, by the firm’s Managing Partner, Andrew Thatcher, following a 15-year career with the likes of Merrill Lynch, Citi and MAN Group. The company provides a cash deposit platform that sits somewhere between the aggregators, price comparison sites and treasury management. The firm is authorized and regulated by the FCA. Clients include wealth management firms, other corporates and high net worth individuals. Flagstone claims a customer base of over 600,000, and total Assets under Administration (AUA) now standing at more than £11bn.
The deal combines primary and secondary investments. The primary investment will be used to consolidate the company’s position in the cash deposit market. The secondary investment will be used to reward early backers, enabling them to realise a return on their investments (see Moneysupermarket backs £11m Flagstone cash injection).
Posted by: Marc Hardwick at 09:00
Tags: FinTech equity
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