Money Buzz! Europa

Tag: london

  • Wizz Air and Ryanair to launch new routes from UK to Romania

    Wizz Air and Ryanair to launch new routes from UK to Romania

    Wizz Air has announced two new routes from Iași and Craiova to Birmingham in Great Britainm, starting from 23 and 24 October 2020. Tickets are available at fares starting from RON 89.

    The flights from Iași to Birmingham will commence on 23 October and be operated twice/week, on Wednesday and Sunday, while flights from Craiova to Birmingham will start on 24 October and will be available on Tuesday and Saturday.

    This is the second route from Craiova to Great Britain and the eight in the Wizz Air network from Craiova, while from Iași, the new service is the third connection to Great Britain, taking the entire network of routes from Iași to 20. 

    Ryanair to launch a new route from Oradea to London Stansted

    Ryanair announced a new London Stansted route to Oradea, with a twice weekly service commencing in December 2020, as part of Ryanair’s London Stansted Winter 2020 and Summer 2021 schedules.

    Ryanair has launched a seat sale with fares available from just £14.99, for travel until the end of January.

  • Cazoo raised another outstanding £240m of funding

    Cazoo raised another outstanding £240m of funding

    Cazoo, one of the UK’s fastest growing technology businesses, announced that it has raised a further £240m of funding. This latest round takes the total funding in the two years since the company was founded to a record-setting £450m.

    Cazoo has already achieved revenues of over £100m since its launch less than a year ago, another UK record.

    Latest backers are led by General Catalyst, D1 Capital Partners and funds managed by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Blackrock alongside other new and existing investors including L Catterton, Durable Capital Partners, The Spruce House Partnership, Novator, Mubadala Capital and dmg ventures, amongst others.

    Cazoo owns and fully reconditions all its cars before offering them for sale exclusively on its website. It lists thousands of cars in stock at any time, all stored centrally in the Midlands and available for either home delivery anywhere in the UK or collection from one of its Cazoo Customer Centres.

  • Wirex reaches target for first crowdfund in one and a half hours

    Wirex reaches target for first crowdfund in one and a half hours

    After opening a private allocation for their crowdfunding campaign, Wirex has reached their target of raising £1 million in less than 1 and a half hours.

    With over £1.6 million already raised, Wirex has been pushed into overfunding, and will remain open.

    Pavel Matveev, CEO and co-founder of Wirex, shared his excitement at the overwhelming success of the campaign: ”It’s a great milestone in achieving our original plan to raise £1 million so quickly”.

    Wirex reached £315 million gross revenue in the last 12 months and has over 3.1 million customers across 130 countries.

  • Kingfisher is launching a share plan for employees

    Kingfisher is launching a share plan for employees

    Kingfisher is launching an all-colleague share plan and every one of the 77.000 employees will be given the opportunity to become shareholders.

    The new plan will mean every share bought by a employee will be matched by Kingfisher on a one-for-one basis.

    The minimum monthly contribution will be £10, with a maximum total contribution limited to £1.500.

    The plan is open to all Kingfisher colleagues employed in September 2020 and participants can register for the plan between October and November 2020.

    Participants can choose to contribute anything between £10 and £250 a month (or the equivalent value in local currency). Contributions will be made for six months between January 2021 to July 2021.

    The shares will be bought in July 2021.

    After a vesting period of one year (in July 2022), participants can choose to keep or sell their purchased and matching shares.

    Participants will receive dividends accrued during the vesting period. These are automatically reinvested into shares.

    Participants can sell their purchased shares before the end of the vesting period, but they will not receive their matching shares if they do.

  • B&Q shop within shop in four Asda superstores

    B&Q shop within shop in four Asda superstores

    B&Q plan a shop within shop trial of compact B&Q stores in four Asda superstores. The first two compact stores will open at Asda’s Dagenham and Sheffield Drakehouse stores later this year.

    The 200-300 sq m concessions will give customers the chance to shop a broad range of B&Q products in-store or place an order via diy.com for home delivery or Click & Collect.

    The B&Q trial concessions in Asda stores will offer a range of paint (including paint mixing) as well as tools, hardware and other DIY essentials.

    B&Q is the UK’s leading home improvement and garden living retailer with 297 stores across the UK.

  • Ryanair to add more flights from Liverpool to Vilnius

    Ryanair to add more flights from Liverpool to Vilnius

    Ryanair announced it will add more flights from Liverpool to Vilnius, in light of strong demand from both British and Lithuanian consumers.

    Ryanair will now fly 3 times weekly (+1) from Liverpool to Vilnius from the 25th October as part of its Winter 2020 schedule.

    Ryanair’s British customers can now book a trip to Vilnius as far out as March 2021. The airline launched a seat sale with fares available from just £19.99, for travel until the end of December 2020, which must be booked by midnight Thursday (17 Sept).

  • Fresh Property Group has chosen Yardi solutions to manage its portfolio

    Fresh Property Group has chosen Yardi solutions to manage its portfolio

    Fresh Property Group has chosen cloud-based technology by Yardi to manage its 20,000+ unit student, build to rent and co-living portfolio.  

    Fresh Property Group will implement Yardi Voyager for property management and accounting as well as ancillary products to fully connect the resident lifecycle and maximise returns.

    With £1.6 billion assets under management, Fresh will eliminate a number of disparate systems thanks to Yardi’s single connected platform.

    Fresh will achieve marketing automation with Yardi’s RENTCafé Suite

    It includes RENTCafé for property marketing, website optimisation, online leasing and resident services; RENTCafé CRM Flex for prospect management and flexibility to handle workflows for multiple lease types; and MyCafé by RENTCafé a white-label app that provides a full range of resident services plus community engagement.

    Fresh will also adopt Yardi Job Cost for project cost control, Yardi Procure to Pay to streamline procurement and vendor managment, and a facility management solution for maintenance management and mobile inspections.

  • London FinTech start-up KodyPay raises £1.8 million

    London FinTech start-up KodyPay raises £1.8 million

    KodyPay, led by 20-Year-old Co-Founder and CEO Yao-Yun (Yoyo) Chang, has raised a £1.8 million seed round.

    Leading the financing was Cognition Foundry and Hank Uberoi, alongside a group of high-profile private investors.

    These include former members of senior management from Legal and General, Verifone and HP.

    KodyPay is a new mobile point of sale app and payment aggregator. Its technology allows users to pay for goods in-store without queueing.

    The platform enables businesses to perform all the necessary actions to carry out a standard electronic transaction and accept a multitude of different payment methods using a web and app-based technology platform.

    Who is Yoyo Chang

    Yao-Yun (Yoyo) Chang, CEO and co-founder KodyPay | Photo from technation.io

    At only 20 years old, CEO Yoyo Chang co-founded KodyPay in the final year of High School.

    Hoping to build a career in investment banking, Chang had started to invest in the stock market at the age of 13.

    With returns of over 80% in Q4 2016, he led his school team to first place in a national investment competition.

    However, in 2018, Chang first made a foray into the payments industry by self-investing £120,000 to start up KodyPay.

    Chang is currently working alongside co-founder Jack Howell whilst studying at the University of York.

  • Two-fifths of Britons are now more motivated to do home improvements after the lockdown

    Two-fifths of Britons are now more motivated to do home improvements after the lockdown

    An almost universal consensus (nine out of ten Britons) said that their home is important to make their life better, and 57 percent feel it is even more significant post-lockdown. 

    This is a main conclusion of a research, commissioned by B&Q, that polled 2.000 consumers to uncover how the Covid-19 lockdown has fundamentally changed Brits’ relationship with their homes. 

    Exploring why homes felt more significant than ever, the survey also found that 89 percent say their homes are a ”sanctuary” where they can be ourselves and 87 percent value the sense of security they provide. 

    Despite this, only one in ten (11 percent) currently live in their ideal home, whereas half of the population (47 percent) want to make changes to their living set up.

    The research also showed that the increased time spent at home meant over half (53 percent) of Brits realised more DIY needed doing. 

    And it seems the benefits go far beyond the functional bricks and mortar. During what was a difficult time for many, over half (51 percent) also said they found home improvement projects to be therapeutic. 

    Over two-fifths (42 percent) say they are more motivated to do DIY as a result of lockdown, and 35 percent feel more ambitious in the home improvement projects they want to tackle.

    This change in attitude is particularly prevalent among youngsters, with two-fifths (42 percent) of 18-24 year olds having learned DIY skills during lockdown, while only a quarter (24 per cent) of those aged between 45-54 said the same.

    The younger generation also now feel more ambitious to make changes and tackle further DIY (42 percent of 18-24 year olds and 45 percent of 25-34 year olds agreed).

    Gardening and decorating projects are by far the most coveted projects to improve people’s lives and enjoyment of their home.

    Nearly half (48 percent) said they had a gardening project planned and 43 percent want to get underway with decorating tasks.

    Signs of the lasting impact of lockdown on our home habits is also clear, with more than a third (35 percent) planning to improve their working from home spaces.

  • Beryl to provide a fleet of pedal bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters to Norwich

    Beryl to provide a fleet of pedal bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters to Norwich

    British micromobility provider, Beryl, announced that it will be the provider of a multimodal smart fleet including pedal bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters in Norwich.

    The Department for Transport and Norfolk County Council approved an e-Scooter trial in Norwich, initially with 100 scooters. 

    Beryl e-Scooters will be accessible through the same platform as the company’s pedal and e-Bikes.

    Currently, 94% of Beryl Bike trips in the British operators city-wide scheme in Norwich end in a ”Beryl Bay”, and the remaining 6% of bikes that are free floating are redistributed to bays by Beryl’s on street team via cargo bike.

    The company will update existing parking infrastructure to allow vehicles to be hired and parked in an orderly and secure manner.

  • Screwfix to open 40 new stores this year. 400 new jobs

    Screwfix to open 40 new stores this year. 400 new jobs

    Screwfix to open 40 stores this year, creating around 400 new jobs. 30 new stores are planned for the UK and 10 for Ireland.

    30 new stores in the UK will create up to 300 jobs in areas such as retail management, service assistants and supervisor roles, by the end of January 2021.

    More than 10 stores are planned in the Republic of Ireland, which will create up to 160 jobs over the same period.

    Screwfix has more than 680 stores, with a long-term target of 800 in the UK.

    Screwfix currently has five stores in Ireland, which opened in early 2020 and plans to open up to 40 stores in the country over the coming years, creating around 400 jobs in total.

  • Rude street names that can increase your property value by up to £44K

    Rude street names that can increase your property value by up to £44K

    When house-hunting, many Brits don’t pay much attention to the road name, but research by SellHouseFast.uk can reveal that the first line of your address can affect how much your house is worth.

    In fact, some street names increase your property’s value by up to £800,000, so it’s well worth considering a street name when looking at purchasing your next property.

    Upon examining hundreds of rude road names across the UK, SellHouseFast found that the property average on these roads increased the value of your home by £44,460.20 on average.

    The naughtiest road name with the highest added value, is one of America’s favourite swear words ‘jackass’. ‘Jackass Lane’ has an average selling value of £869,866.50 and is the most popular in both London and the South East of England.

    Gardening friendly, ‘hoe’, came in with an average value increase of £205,298.31 and is the most popular in the South East of England, making the South East of England home to some of the naughtiest street names.

    Other names that increased property values, along with their most popular regions

    • Cock: £125,921.51, East of England;
    • Thong: £111,429, South East & Yorkshire and the Humber;
    • Bottom: £101,158.31, East Midlands;
    • Dick: £56,215, Scotland;
    • Slag: £39,169, North West;
    • Butt: £30,076.53, South West;
    • Spank: £8,642, East Midlands;
    • Bell End: £7,963, East Midlands & West Midlands.

    UK regions with the rudest street names

    The region with the rudest street names was the South East of England number one with a whopping 84 rude streets, the top five were as follows, Butt (19), Beaver (18), Bush (11), Hoe (11), and Bottom (8).

    In second place was the East of England with 68 rude streets across the region, with Butt (21), Bush (14), Cock (14), Hoe (7) and Bottom (5) coming in as the top five naughty roads.

    ‘Butt’, the most popular ‘rude’ street

    SellHouseFast found that most popular ‘rude’ street name across the UK is ‘Butt’. It makes an appearance in 151 different road names and increases property value by £30,076.53 on average.

    Coming in second, with the possible need for a haircut, is the road name ‘Bush’, mentioned 79 times across England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. ‘Bush’ is closely followed by ‘Beaver’ which is found in 57 roads in the UK.

    ‘Bush’ appears 14 times in the East of England, ‘Beaver’ 18 times in the South East of England, ‘Bottom’ 13 times in the East Midlands and finally, ‘Cock’ with 15 appearances in the East of England.