A Zimbabwean senator from Matabeleland South is blasting ZIMRA over a treasury order that permanently seizes goods flagged as smuggled without letting people pay duties or fix paperwork mistakes. Nonhlanhla Mlotshwa told the Senate the policy bypassed parliament and is hitting small-scale traders and cross-border shoppers who make documentation errors, and she thinks it might violate constitutional protections for fair administrative process.
Mlotshwa called out an inland checkpoint in Gwanda that functions like a second border post, even though vehicles have already cleared customs at Beitbridge. Travelers coming from Johannesburg get stuck there for hours, and she says ZIMRA never explained the legal justification or why the agency...
Steven Bartlett is spinning up a tech news site called Founded that's going to cover startups and business stuff in the UK and America. The Dragons' Den guy is hiring about 10 reporters plus an editor-in-chief to run the whole operation, and the site is supposed to target founders and people building companies.
This drops right after Bartlett set up a new parent company called Steven.com that pulled in eight-figure funding and got valued at roughly 320 million quid. He still holds over 90 percent of the thing, and it bundles together his podcast empire, investment fund, and other creator businesses. The dude hosts Diary of a CEO and has money in more than 60 companies at this point, and he's saying this is just the beginning of...
Britain's financial regulator is about to start policing ESG rating companies for the first time after the sector blew up into a multibillion-dollar mess. The FCA dropped a consultation saying these agencies need to explain their scoring methods and deal with conflicts of interest because the right people are getting wildly different ratings depending on which firm they ask.
The watchdog thinks formal oversight could save around half a billion over ten years by cutting down on all the extra work fund managers have to do when they compare inconsistent scores. Almost everyone who responded to a government survey backed the regulation plan, and it lines up with international recommendations, even though ministers have been screaming at...
Keir Starmer says Rachel Reeves never lied about the budget mess after the Treasury and OBR got into a fight over whether public finances actually got worse. The prime minister claims tax hikes were always inevitable despite weeks of noise about potential income tax increases that never happened, and he defended dumping the two-child benefit cap while speaking at a London nursery.
The OBR chair told a parliamentary committee that nothing major had changed in the fiscal picture after late October except for scrapped welfare cuts, which contradicts Treasury claims about a massive shortfall. Reports show Reeves hinted at breaking Labour's income tax pledge in early November, but then briefings suggested improved forecasts killed the tax...
A Lithuanian startup that makes probiotic drinks just landed the biggest investment ever recorded on any European version of Shark Tank. Cannumo pulled in a million euros from investor Tadas Burgaila for their fermented beverage called Goodie, which packs 96 different bacterial strains and gets marketed as a gut-health alternative to booze. The founders already dumped half a million of their personal cash into getting production rolling.
Burgaila threw down 600k for equity plus another 400k as a loan, and he thinks the company can hit a 30-million-euro valuation within a year. The startup is about to blast into the UK market with a 90-day push, and they're working on another gut product aimed at American consumers. The drink already...
Accenture just told its 800,000 employees they're all reinventors, which is the consulting giant's way of saying it's betting everything on AI. CEO Julie Sweet is pushing the rebrand hard after smooshing all the company's divisions into one thing called Reinvention Services, and she already threatened to fire anyone who can't keep up with AI tools.
Branding people are roasting the move because calling everyone a reinventor sounds ridiculous when most workers are doing regular consulting stuff. The company already axed 11,000 people, and its stock tanked over 25 percent this year after Trump told federal agencies to review their consulting contracts. Revenue still grew to $69.7 billion, but Accenture warned that government spending cuts...
The UK just bailed on backing a massive gas project in Mozambique after years of protest over climate damage and human rights disasters. Business secretary Peter Kyle yanked the £870 million loan guarantee from TotalEnergies, saying it doesn't serve British interests anymore. The whole thing has been on ice since militants attacked a nearby town and killed hundreds of people back in 2021.
Environmental groups have been screaming about this for ages because Mozambique is already getting wrecked by climate change, and the project kicked local communities off their land. The French energy company wants to restart operations soon with beefed-up security, but campaigners are telling other banks to drop out and shift money toward renewables...
Black Friday flopped hard in the UK as people stayed home from stores over economic anxiety, and footfall tanked 2 percent compared to last year's already weak numbers. Online sales were mixed, with one day crashing but earlier in the week doing better. Experts are saying consumers are still getting crushed by cost-of-living pressures, and unemployment is creeping toward 5.2 percent.
Business confidence is in the gutter after the budget dropped. A CBI survey showed the worst optimism drop in three years, and an Institute of Directors index is sitting near all-time lows at negative 72. KPMG predicts GDP will limp along at just 1 percent growth next year because household spending is dead.
Pubs are about to get demolished by...
Britain is about to lock in a pharma deal with Washington that cuts US import tariffs on meds and forces the UK to spend more on NHS drugs. The agreement drops rebate rates for branded medicines and bumps up the cost-per-year threshold used to judge if treatments are worth it by about 25 percent from the current cap. London also promised to dedicate a bigger chunk of the NHS budget to pharmaceuticals, which drug companies have been screaming about for ages.
The whole thing went down after American pharma giants started rage-quitting UK investments over pricing disputes. AstraZeneca froze a massive Cambridge expansion, Eli Lilly walked back part of its London hub plans, and Merck ditched a billion-pound research center. Trump's people...
