Author: Jonathan Symcox

The Financial Conduct Authority had ended its three-year investigation into Revolution Beauty Group.

The regulator said it would take no action against the AIM-listed beauty brand, which it was probing over potential market abuse – examining events and accounting issues that took place between July 2021 and September 2022.

It previously discontinued a probe into co-founders Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth, who recently returned to the business.

It brings to a conclusion an extended period of upheaval at Revolution Beauty, which sells across retail and online channels.

The Sunday Times 100 ranking of the UK’s fastest-growing companies has been revealed for 2026.

Gary Lineker’s podcast production and distribution company Goalhanger leads the way with 321% growth on £37.9 million sales.

In second, with almost 300% growth on £210m sales, is fellow London firm Lucky Egg, a board games maker.

Altrincham legal claims services provider TGG, West Sussex content creator firm Viewture and Hertfordshire-based meal delivery service company Simmer Eats complete the top five.

A record 33 of the 100 companies contain a female leader, including Michelle Laithwaite, a BusinessCloud Northern Leader who co-founded Warrington meal delivery service FuelHub with husband James.

The regional breakdown sees 45 firms based in London, followed by the North West (14), South East (10), East of England (8), the West Midlands and Yorkshire & Humberside (5 apiece), Wales (4), South West and East Midlands (3 apiece) and Scotland and North East (both 1).

Tech firms to make the top 50 include data consultancy Dot Collective (13th), consultancy Swift Strategies (29th), digital lender/broker Lovey (31st) and digital advertising firm FunnelFuel (33rd).

Roger Hunter has been appointed CEO of electric vehicle charge point firm Fuuse.

Hunter brings extensive senior leadership experience across the EV charging sector, including as global vice president, e-mobility at Shell, where he headed up Shell Recharge Solutions. 

He is an independent non-executive director at Ignitis, the largest charge point operator in the Baltics and was previously accountable for EV charging globally at BorgWarner. 

Founder and current CEO Michael Gibson will step down on 1st September following a decade leading the business. Gibson started the company in 2016 as a data analytics business before launching Fuuse in June 2021. 

 

Former DeepMind researchers have raised £15 million for their AI firm Airspeed.

The agentic AI scaleup has grown revenue 4x in the last 12 months and now serves 200 customers across 20 countries.

Airspeed is described as the execution layer for revenue teams, helping them turn customer conversations and commercial data into actions that move sales deals forward.

The Series A was led by DN Capital, with participation from Vi Partners, Framework Venture Partners and Atlassian Ventures. The round brings Airspeed’s total funding to more than $25 million.

It will be used to scale its presence in the US.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Computacenter and investment bank Investec are to join the FTSE 100 Index later this month alongside Aberdeen Group after the London Stock Exchange’s annual review.

Computacenter plc, an independent technology and services provider headquartered in Hertfordshire and led by CEO Mike Norris, has seen its share price rise 69% in the last 12 months on the back of growth in the UK and North America.

Berkeley Group Holdings, Mondi and Rightmove are to leave the FTSE 100 and join the FTSE 250 Index.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Lex Greensill has been disqualified from acting as a company director for nine years.

The Australian financier, founder of collapsed North West FinTech Greensill Capital, has been banned until June 2035 following an investigation by The Insolvency Service.

Lex Greensill, a former sugar farmer now aged 49, was a director of three companies within the Greensill Group – Greensill Capital (UK) Limited, Greensill Limited and Australian parent company Greensill Capital Pty Limited –  which collapsed in 2021 with combined liabilities of more than £1.6 billion.

Following the collapse it emerged that former Prime Minister Lord Cameron had sent dozens of messages during the COVID-19 pandemic requesting that Greensill be granted access to the government’s coronavirus loan support scheme.

Cameron had joined Greensill as an adviser after leaving Downing Street and owned stock options in the then-struggling company. The Treasury select committee found in July 2021 that the politician had shown a “significant lack of judgement”.

Lex Greensill was due to face a six-week trial from Monday (8th June), but that has been avoided after he signed a disqualification undertaking – a legally-binding agreement where directors do not dispute certain facts, for the purposes of the disqualification proceedings only, to end court action.

Wordsmith has raised more than £50 million to help companies to run their in-house legal teams.

The Scottish startup is reducing the reliance on outside legal counsel and is now used by more than 500 companies to organise, route and complete legal work.

Alongside recent customer wins Sage and Starling, its clients include BT, the Financial Times, Trip.com and Canva.

The Series B funding is from Highland Europe and Index Ventures, among others. The funding will be used to accelerate development of its AI platform, scale towards 300 people globally by the end of the year and double down on the US market.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Elon Musk is set to become a trillionaire when SpaceX floats on the Nasdaq next week.

The expected world-record $1.75 trillion IPO would see the space and AI company raise around $75 billion if it is successful in selling 555.6m shares at $135 apiece.

The plan was revealed by Space Exploration Technologies Corp – the formal name of SpaceX – in a company filing on Wednesday.

However Morningstar analysts warned that it is “significantly overvalued”.

Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were unable to access their apps or online banking services for several hours today.

Lloyds Banking Group, which has 26 million customers, started experiencing problems just after 11am this morning.

A spokesperson said early this evening that “all our services are back up and running” after customers took to social media to vent their frustrations that the problems had persisted throughout the afternoon.

Having apologised for the inconvenience caused, Lloyds advised those who were still experiencing issues to “please leave it a few minutes and try again”.

 

Dr Arnabu Basu, CEO of Durham tech innovator Kromek, will speak at a new tech founder-focused event at this year’s North East Technology Festival, TechNExt.

Taking place at Durham Business School on Wednesday 17th June, the Startup Hub has been curated by Jamie Hardesty, director of ecosystem development, Sunderland Software City, and will bring together entrepreneurs from across the North East to explore the realities of building technology companies.

It aims to move beyond polished startup mythology to focus on the genuine challenges, decisions and pressures involved in growing a company.

Flok Health, the world’s first AI-operated physiotherapy clinic, has raised £9.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round.

The round was led by Albion VC, with participation from existing backers Eka VC and Form Ventures, as well as new investors Mercia Ventures. 

Flok Health’s pioneering clinic is the first and only AI platform in Europe to deliver entire healthcare pathways autonomously without requiring human oversight. The tech is currently available to millions of NHS patients across the UK, offering on-demand appointments for back pain with zero waitlist, via a simple mobile app.

Oxford Quantum Circuits has raised £260 million in a Series C funding round.

The British Business Bank committed £100m to the round, one of Europe’s largest for a quantum computing company.

The round was led by Bullhound Capital, and included investment from Invus, Mastercard, COFIDES, Rokos Capital Management, IHAG, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, Magdalen College Oxford, Adaptive Capital Partners, Firgun and 18 West.

BGF has backed Bristol-based eSignature software platform Signable with a multi-million-pound investment.

Founded in 2012, Signable provides a secure and compliant way for businesses to manage electronic signatures and digital workflows. The platform is trusted by organisations across a range of sectors, with particular strength in regulated industries where auditability, compliance and ease of use are critical.

The investment will support Signable’s next phase of development, with a focus on expanding its offering in qualified electronic signatures, enabling the platform to support more complex use cases and evolving customer requirements. This will strengthen its position within regulated sectors such as legal, property, and financial services, while continuing to serve SMEs as a core part of the business.

Signable has grown organically since launch, building a diversified customer base across regulated and document-intensive sectors, including organisations such as Allegiant, Smart Pension, and Drewery Property Consultants, alongside well-known brands such as Aardman and Krispy Kreme, building excellent customer loyalty and long-term relationships. The business has developed a strong reputation for transparent pricing, responsive customer support, and a product that is easy to adopt and scale, underpinned by a people-first approach.

Patchworks has launched AI Studio, introducing AI-powered platform agents designed to help businesses build and manage integrations using natural language.

The technology allows users to generate workflows, mappings and connectors from prompts, with the longer-term vision of reducing integration implementation from weeks to hours.

The first phase of AI Studio introduces the ‘Implementation Agent’, a built-in platform agent designed to accelerate integration delivery and reduce technical complexity.

Features include Flow Builder, Smart Mapping and Connector Builder, allowing users to generate flows, automate schema mapping and create connectors directly from prompts and API documentation.

Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have been unable to access their apps or online banking services today.

Lloyds Banking Group apologised after thousands of customers experienced problems.

“We’re aware some customers are having issues with our app and online banking. We’re really sorry about this,” Lloyds Bank posted on X.

“We’re working hard to fix it and will let you know as soon as we’re back to normal.”

The group, which has 26 million customers, started experiencing problems just after 11am this morning.

It recently issued compensation after an IT malfunction exposed the personal data of nearly half a million customers in March.

GC Business Finance has delivered a record year through the British Business Bank’s Start Up Loans programme, directly injecting over £26m of Start Up Loan funding into ambitious businesses across the UK in the 2025/26 financial year.

Delivered across almost 2,500 loans, the funding has supported entrepreneurs across a wide range of sectors and areas throughout the UK.

As an alternative lender focused on supporting founders who may otherwise not be able to secure finance, the GCBF team has placed a particular focus on targeting founders who are typically underrepresented in the provision of finance. Of all loans directly provided over the last financial year, 39% went to female-founded businesses and 23% went to founders from ethnic minority backgrounds, exceeding the national average.

Operating as a Business Support Partner for both the North West, along with nationally, GCBF has helped businesses throughout the whole of the UK access vital funding. Outside of the North West, London received the highest proportion of funding at 11.4%, followed by the South East (11.2%), the South West (8%), and the East of England (7.1%).

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The CTO of Collctiv says he will champion consumers when he joins an array of big names on the Bank of England’s Payments End User Forum.

Pete Casson, who co-founded the Manchester FinTech with CEO Amy Whitell, has been appointed to one of three forums set to shape the future of retail payments in the UK.

Part of the BoE’s National Payments Vision, the other two forums are the Payments Innovation Design Group and Payments Academic Advisory Group.

Joining Casson on the Payments End User Forum are organisations including Tesco plc, the Federation of Small Businesses, Which? and The Pennies Foundation. The others forums include figures from the likes of Google, GoCardless, PayPoint, Amazon, Worldpay and Revolut.

Foreign exchange and currency risk management Lumon has acquired the business and assets of Fiscal FX, marking a major milestone for Lumon as it continues to expand its breadth and quality of service.

Fiscal FX represents the seventh acquisition by Pollen Street Capital-backed Lumon since 2018. The acquisition completed on 1st June and will help accelerate growth in Lumon’s corporate division both internationally and in the UK.

Fiscal FX, a London-based foreign exchange and international payments specialist, has built an exceptional reputation since it’s foundation in 2019, particularly focusing on SMEs and owner-managed businesses.

Over the past six years, Fiscal FX has seen consistent, organic growth, developing a loyal client base of more than 600 corporate accounts across the globe. The company has handled almost £1 billion worth of transactions since its inception thanks to outstanding client retention and reliable, recurring revenue.

easyGroup is entering mainstream online retail with the launch of easyShop.com, a new online marketplace set to go live later this year.

easyShop will bring retailers together into a single shopping destination. It will launch initially across 21 European countries. 

The easyShop domain will be operated by eCommerce and marketplace technology company OnBuy, and powered by its proprietary OnCommerce platform, which provides the infrastructure and operational framework required to support cross border trade at scale. 

EdTech unicorn Multiverse has announced a partnership with Synthesia, the world’s leading AI video communications platform.

Under the partnership, Synthesia’s AI video platform will be formally integrated into Multiverse’s AI Learner Toolkit — a suite of tools its learners can explore to scope, build and deliver AI projects inside their organisations.

Learners across Multiverse’s programmes will now have additional resources and guidance to implement Synthesia as a tool to design and deploy AI video solutions for their employers, alongside a range of other no-code, low-code and generative AI tools.

Learners have already begun applying Synthesia independently to drive real business impact across industries.