One of Northern Ireland’s most successful digital entrepreneurs, Cecil Hetherington, has significantly increased his investment in Belfast-based sports technology company Pitchbooking.

Hetherington is best-known for his involvement with Used Cars NI and PropertyPal, which lead their categories in Northern Ireland despite competing with Rightmove, Zoopla and Autotrader.

He has become Pitchbooking’s largest individual shareholder outside of its founding team Shea O’Hagan, Fearghal Campbell and Chris McCann.

Pitchbooking has quickly become the market-leader in modernising how sports facilities are managed and accessed. Over the past year, it has processed over £25 million in bookings, with its platform powering the operations of organisations including the Irish Football Association, Nottingham Forest & West Ham United Foundations, Soccer 5 USA and multiple UK City Councils.

It serves facilities across football, rugby, cricket, hockey, tennis and fitness.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Accountancy firm BDO and two of its former partners have been fined £6 million by regulator the Financial Reporting Council for failing to prevent false audit evidence being admitted over several years.

John Everingham and Kevin Cook admitted misconduct after Amanda Nightingale, a senior manager based in Gatwick, was able to pursue, undetected, a dishonest course of conduct on numerous audits between 2015 and 2019.

This included creating false audit evidence, causing auditor’s reports to be issued without approval from the relevant audit engagement partner, and inserting electronic copies of the audit engagement partners’ signatures in auditor’s reports without their approval.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

BT has reported a decline in its broadband business and profits – and says it laid off thousands of staff in the last six months.

The telecoms giant is delivering a ‘transformation plan’ which realised £247 million gross annualised cost savings during H1 FY26.

A cumulative total of £1.2 billion savings have been realised in the first 18 months of the £3bn programme.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The Bank of England has held interest rates at 4% in its final decision before the Autumn Budget.

The Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee was split on the decision, with four voting for a cut, and five voting to hold.

Governor Andrew Bailey’s decision to hold swung the vote that way.

Asked whether he was “unconvinced” by Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s pre-Budget speech, he told a news conference that he was “not passing judgement” and said the Bank bases its decisions on “policies that have been announced”.

The Bank expects inflation will fall to close to 3% early next year, and then decline towards the 2% target after that.

Inflation peaked at more than 11% in 2022 and returned to the 2% target last year. However it has risen again this year.

Interest rates are cut when the Bank wants to convince people to spend, and raised when it wants to control inflation.

The London Stock Exchange Group has announced a strategic partnership with Nasdaq to share private markets intelligence.

Under the agreement, LSEG will license Nasdaq eVestment private markets datasets including Market Lens insights, hedge fund insights and Limited Partner (LP) intelligence. It will also include limited exclusive distribution of Nasdaq’s private market datasets, private fund benchmarks, and deal-level benchmarks.

Nasdaq’s datasets will be integrated into LSEG’s ecosystem, expanding transparency and decision-making capabilities across the private investment landscape.

VIOOH, a global digital out-of-home (DOOH) supply-side advertising platform, has announced a programmatic partnership with RZK Digital, Brazil’s largest digital media operator in urban bus terminals, strengthening the presence of programmatic DOOH across Latin America.

RZK Digital operates an expanding network of over 800 digital screens across 43 urban terminals, set to reach more than 50 locations by the end of the year. The company delivers an average of four billion monthly impressions to more than 75 million verified visitors each month, with audiences measured through an advanced, sensor-based framework that combines computer vision, Wi-Fi analytics, and ad-server play logs.

Street Group, the PropTech company behind Street.co.uk and Spectre, won three awards at this year’s EA Masters 2025, the event recognising excellence across the UK estate agency sector.

The group was named Best Overall Supplier and Best Large Supplier as voted by estate agents, while Street.co.uk – Street Group’s next-generation CRM – was awarded Best Innovation in Estate Agency for its transformative impact on how agents manage, market, and grow their businesses.

The wins follow Spectre taking home Gold for Best in Sector – Instruction Generation Tool, and Street.co.uk winning Best in Sector – CRM Software at the recent ESTAS Awards 2025.

The firm also ranked second on our PropTech 50 this year.

Author: Chris Maguire

The co-founder of eComplete, Paul Gedman, says they plan to accelerate their plans after their success with The Beauty Tech Group.

He told The Dealmaker Uncut podcast that he currently in the middle of a further  £100m raise to make further investments.

The ex-THG exec co-founded eComplete with former Myprotein CEO, Andy Duckworth, in 2020 to disrupt the private equity world.

Their first investment came a year later when they invested £50m into CurrentBody, which formed part of The Beauty Tech Group and has just floated with a valuation of £300m.

He said: “You’re trading your reputation for capital, you’re betting your professional life on each acquisition. We cannot lose.

“Reflecting on what we have got done this year and the opportunity ahead is exciting, we are going to accelerate our plans now we have started to prove the model.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Summize has opened a new office in San Diego on the West Coast of the United States in California.

The new office, in the DiamondView Tower overlooking Petco Park, will be led by Summize’s senior director of sales, West Coast, Olly Atkin. 

The location will initially serve as a customer and sales hub to specifically cater to clients on the West Coast. The firm, led by CEO and co-founder Tom Dunlop, is hiring for a range of positions to support the expansion.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Young people across the country are turning their ideas into thriving businesses. But which city stands out as the UK’s young entrepreneur capital?

Capital on Tap analysed over 60,000 Companies House records using a custom script. They identified active founders aged 24 and under, then calculated their density per 100,000 residents to rank the nation’s top cities for young entrepreneurs.

Manchester takes the top spot as the UK city with the highest concentration of young entrepreneurs. The research found around 290 founders aged 24 or under, equivalent to 74 per 100,000 residents.

The sample found that Wakefield, West Yorkshire, ranks second for young entrepreneurs. It has 30 founders aged 24 and under, which is equal to 41 per 100,000 residents.

Canterbury ranks third, with one of the highest densities of young founders in our research, around 36 per 100,000 residents.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A year after launching its free legal templates, GitLaw is taking its next major step toward making legal documents accessible to everyone. 

The San Francisco-based AI company, founded by entrepreneur Nick Holzherr, has raised a $3 million (£2.3m) pre-seed round to power the launch of its agent – part of GitLaw’s platform built for startups and small businesses, not law firms – that helps teams draft, review, and negotiate contracts in minutes, for free.

In August Holzherr stepped down as CEO of Samsung Food due to “really feeling the urge to set up a new startup again with the dizzying acceleration of AI”.

He left the post 13 years after first pitching the idea that became Whisk and later Samsung Food to Lord Sugar on BBC show The Apprentice.

Eleven life sciences businesses from Greater Manchester and Liverpool City region joined a joint Mayoral Trade Mission to Ireland this week.

The Irish health care sector has undergone significant transformation in recent years, driven by a combination of policy reforms, increased investment in health infrastructure, and a growing emphasis on digital health solutions.

The visit was a response to these dynamic changes within the Irish health care system, with businesses gaining first-hand insights into the Irish market, and identifying tangible opportunities for collaboration, innovation, and expansion.

The trade mission was led by Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham and Mayor of Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram. They were joined by a delegation of eight life sciences businesses from Greater Manchester, and three businesses from Liverpool City Region.

The businesses were selected by GM Business Growth Hub, and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority to represent the growing life sciences sector in the North of England.

During the mission the businesses took part in visits to the health innovation hub at St James’s Hospital and University College Dublin’s innovation hub NovaUCD – alongside events at the British Embassy and Glencairn House, the UK Ambassador to Ireland’s residence.

ECI Partners, the mid-market private equity firm, has made two new hires as it scales its investment team.

Ben Kirrage joins as investment manager from FNZ, a global wealth management platform, where he was chief of staff for the European business and a member of the strategy and corporate development team.

Prior to FNZ, Ben worked in the M&A advisory teams at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods and Raymond James, where he focused on transactions involving software, data, and services businesses across the financial services ecosystem.

Georgia Ling joins ECI as investment analyst, where she will be supporting the team in identifying and converting deals across the ECI pipeline. After graduating from University College London, Georgia started her financial career at Rothschild & Co as an M&A Analyst with a tech focus, gaining experience in the IoT, Office of the CFO and vertical software sectors.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Convatec has appointed a new leadership team following the death of CEO Karim Bitar last month.

Jonny Mason has been appointed permanent CEO at the medical products and technologies business, with Fiona Ryder named CFO.

Mason joined the FTSE 100 firm as CFO in 2022 and took up the CEO role on an interim basis in early August when Bitar took a medical leave of absence.

Bitar, who had led the company since 2019, passed away on 27th October.

“Colleagues at Convatec are deeply saddened by this devastating news. Our sincerest sympathies are with Karim’s wife and family, and we extend our condolences to them,” read a statement from the firm on that date.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Auto Trader Group plc reported profit & sales growth in its latest six-month reporting period.

The Manchester-headquartered online vehicle marketplace saw overall group operating profit top £200 million for the six months ended 30th September 2025, an increase of 6%, with revenue growing 5% to £317.7m.

Losses halved in its Autorama division to £1.4m. Revenue for the leading platform – which operates the Vanarama brand – climbed 13% to £21.4m.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Half-year profits at Wise plc have dipped despite growing revenues, volume and its customer base.

For the six months ended 30th September 2025, the money transfer platform reported £658 million revenues, up 11% on the prior year, but underlying operating profit dropped 15% to £132.8m.

Active customers increased by 18%, with 13.4m people and businesses moving and managing their money during the period.

Its customers moved £84.9bn via the platform, an increase of 24% versus H1 FY25.

Filtronic plc has secured a €7 million contract with a leading European aerospace manufacturer to supply RF assemblies for a major Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation programme. 

The deal will be delivered over the next three years and deepens the firm’s relationship with a key new customer.

The high-performance assemblies will be designed and manufactured in-house and are built to operate reliably in the harsh conditions of space, supporting advanced communications systems. 

Headquartered in Sedgefield, Filtronic develops advanced microelectronics and RF systems for the space, aerospace, defence, and telecoms sectors.

Vault Ventures’ technology arm, System7, has secured two new commercial contracts with Fancy.com and Ellers Farm Distillery, expanding its client base across both the digital and consumer sectors. 

Since launching in January 2025, the AI-driven growth platform has become a self-sufficient, revenue-generating business with seven active contracts and projected first-year revenues of around £200,000.

For Fancy.com, System7 will manage go-to-market operations using AI-powered tools to automate customer acquisition and optimise conversions for the rewards-based financial app. 

Meanwhile, its existing partnership with Ellers Farm Distillery, co-owned by Ricky Gervais, has been extended to cover the full spirits portfolio, including 6 O’Clock Gin, using automation to scale sales across UK hospitality venues.

ITV has reported a solid third-quarter performance, with results coming in ahead of market expectations despite a weaker advertising market. 

Total group revenue rose 2% year to date to £2.8 billion, driven by strong growth at ITV Studios (up 11%) and digital advertising (up 15%) through the continued success of streaming platform ITVX.

Advertising remained resilient, with total advertising revenue flat in Q3 and down 5% year to date, following a strong 2024 comparison boosted by the men’s Euros. 

It expects advertising to fall around 9% in Q4 due to broader economic uncertainty ahead of the UK Budget but has identified £35 million of temporary savings to offset the softer demand.

The company remains on track to deliver its full-year targets, including at least £750m in digital revenues by 2026.

This is despite the broadcasting giant’s share price tanking last month following Liberty Global selling half of its 10% stake in the firm.

IMI plc, the FTSE 100 engineering group specialising in fluid and motion control, reported a strong third quarter with organic revenue up 12% year-on-year and 5% higher year to date. 

The company said the results reflected the success of its growth strategy and the resilience of its “One IMI” operating model.

The automation division, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the Birmingham-headquartered firm’s sales, delivered a standout performance with organic revenue up 17%.

IMI reaffirmed its full-year guidance, expecting mid-single digit organic growth and adjusted earnings per share of 129p-136p.