East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive Miranda Barker is stepping down from her role after nine years.

Barker plans to concentrate on her passion for low carbon innovation by focusing on her work with the RedCAT Group.

In addition, she will continue to develop climate tech philanthropy through Petrichor, and a portfolio of low carbon focused NED roles.

In 2022  Barker was awarded the OBE for services to business and the community of Lancashire, and in 2024 she was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Lancashire.

Deputy chief executive Louise Sydenham will also be stepping down from her role later this year after 24 years with the Chamber.

Birmingham AdTech Covatic has secured £1.5 million to accelerate the commercialisation of Covatic Sense, its person-level connected TV (CTV) targeting technology.

The pre-B Bridge round was led by the West Midlands Co-Investment Fund (WMCO), managed by Future Planet Capital Regional, alongside investment from Creative Growth Finance, PXN Group, and a number of angel investors.

Deployed on more than 1.7 billion devices with nearly 200 million monthly active users, Covatic is already the attribution and targeting partner of choice for global publishers and broadcasters, including Sky, BBC, Bauer Media, and Octave.

 

Unloq, a Birmingham-based AI company helping businesses make better strategic decisions, has raised £900,000 to accelerate the development of its decision intelligence platform.

The round was led by the West Midlands Co-Investment Fund (WMCO), with backing from Future Planet Capital Regional, Mercia Ventures and Haatch.

Founded by Dr Yiannis Maos MBE and Satyen Fakey, Unloq is building AI software that helps organisations move beyond dashboards and retrospective reporting. Its platform connects internal business data with external market signals to predict likely outcomes, recommend practical actions and help leadership teams improve performance with greater confidence.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Moonpig jumped 8% this morning after it reported growth in both annual revenues and profits.

The online card retailer welcomed former AutoTrader COO Catherine Faiers as CEO in March as Nickyl Raithatha – who oversaw Moonpig’s IPO in February 2021 – left the company after eight years in the role.

One of her first duties has been to inform the markets of 6.5% revenue growth for the year ended 30th April 2026, reaching £373 million, with adjusted EBITDA growth of 8.1% to £104.6m – a margin of 28%.

Moonpig’s shares stand at 241.8 pence, giving it a market cap of £729m – up 20% in the year to date.

The firm said £60m of share buybacks were completed in FY26, with the intention to repurchase up to £65m during FY27.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Mind Gym plc has reported a drop in annual revenue as talks remain ongoing about a potential sale of the company.

For the year ended 31st March 2026, it reported revenue of £29.9 million, a 23% drop on the previous 12 months.

Losses before tax, however, were reduced from £6.2m in the prior year to £5.2m.

MindGym said the 12-month period marked the second year of a three-year transformation from an episodic training provider to a strategic behavioural-change partne – with products that are easier to buy, sell and renew.

It said recurring licensing and membership revenue grew from 9% to 17% of total revenue year-on-year, with MindGym memberships increasing to 62 customers from 11 in FY25.

The firm also returned to profitability in H2.

Author: Chris Maguire

YouTubers, podcasters and TikTokers are among the names included in Forbes’ 2026 Top Creators list.

The ranking of the world’s 50 most powerful influencers broke the billion-dollar mark for the first time, a 20 per cent jump from last year’s $853m.

The list is topped by American YouTuber MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, and who has turned YouTube stunts into a global production studio. According to Forbes, he has earnings of $300m.

The highest-placed Brit on the list is Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett, who finished third with earnings of $52m (£40m) and total followers of 38.7m.

TRIMTECH Therapeutics’ seed round has topped £35 million.

The Cambridge biotechnology company is developing novel small molecule therapies that target and degrade protein aggregates associated with neurodegenerative diseases.

It has raised another £11m led by Johnson & Johnson’s corporate venture capital organisation (Johnson & Johnson Innovation) and BGF.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The CEO of digital connectivity provider Purple says its unified WiFi network deal with Newcastle City Council is an “inflection point” for the business.

Oldham-headquartered Purple has partnered with the council to deliver an extensive city-wide WiFi network for residents, students and visitors.

With the rollout of free WiFi across council buildings and other participating venues, including gyms, libraries, commercial buildings and public spaces, the partnership aims to transform Newcastle into one of the UK’s most digitally inclusive and connected cities.

Powered by the Purple app, the initiative aims to create a seamless, secure and dense network of connected locations throughout the city.

“We’re several months in and the partnership has exceeded what we hoped for at launch. The unified network is live across council buildings, libraries, gyms and public spaces, with both of the city’s universities and the transport network being woven in too,” Gavin tells BusinessCloud. 

“Alongside that we’ve been steadily onboarding local businesses, from larger commercial venues right down to independent cafes in places like Jesmond. Venues with existing broadband can be up and running in less than half an hour, which has been a real accelerator for sign-ups. 

“What’s most encouraging is that residents and visitors are using it the way we always said they would: download the Purple app once, then roam the city without ever filling in another form.

“Jenny Nelson and her team at the council have been outstanding partners. They were brave enough to be first, and that bravery is paying off.”

He adds: “It’s a genuine inflection point for us. Newcastle is the first city in the world to deploy a unified network of this kind, and what we’ve built there is a blueprint we can replicate.

“We’re in active conversations with councils across the UK, and there’s significant international interest as well.”

Purple, which featured on our MarTech 50 ranking, has made two senior hires to lead those conversations.

Adult social care must sit at the heart of NHS reform – and the technology already exists to deliver it.

That’s the finding of a white paper launched by techUK’s Social Care Working Group at the trade association’s first CareTech conference.

In Why digital adult social care transformation is central to the future of the NHS, techUK sets out the principles that the industry is willing to commit to in order to drive this change.

It draws on real deployment evidence from across the sector, with case studies from organisations including Kyndi, Lilli and Medway Council, Aico and Selwood Housing, Archangel and Bield Housing and Care, Rethink Partners and the Royal Borough of Greenwich, The Access Group and Derbyshire County Council, CoolCare, Ally Cares, and System C and Suffolk County Council, alongside thought leadership from Civica and Tunstall.

The white paper argues that the NHS 10-Year Plan’s three shifts – hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention – all depend on what happens in the homes and neighbourhoods where adult social care already operates at scale. 

The technologies needed to support that shift – predictive monitoring, interoperable records, AI-enabled decision support and digital telecare – are mature and already deployed, the paper says. 

HICX, a supplier management specialist for multinational enterprises, has secured a £15 million growth funding and refinancing package by HSBC Innovation Banking and current investor Wavecrest Growth Partners.

The funding comes as enterprises place greater weight on trusted supplier data as a foundation for procurement, compliance, risk management and AI-enabled decision-making.

London-based HICX operates as the foundational layer, enabling large organisations to operate a governed, reliable supplier data backbone that works alongside existing enterprise systems as supplier data becomes a boardroom priority.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

B&M has turned to ASDA figure Atheeq Akbar to fill its troublesome CFO role – but he won’t join until 2027.

The retailer’s finance chief Mike Schmidt resigned in October following a £7 million accounting error which triggered a profit warning.

Helen Cowing, a seasoned executive with experience in turnaround strategies, was brought in as interim CFO but a second profit warning followed in January and she left in April, with group financial controller Peter Waterhouse stepping into the role on a temporary basis.

Akbar will join B&M in February 2027. He is currently vice president of commercial finance as ASDA and previously led the retail and manufacturing finance functions at Morrisons before being appointed as a finance director in 2021. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A former CEO at ANS Group has been handed the top job at Trainline plc.

Ian Brown will succeed Jody Ford, who has doubled net ticket sales at the rail travel platform and overseen growth in new markets in France, Spain and Italy during his six years in charge.

Most recently, he was CEO of the UK & Ireland division of Flutter Entertainment Plc, the Irish-American parent company of Betfair, FanDuel, Paddy Power, PokerStars, Sky Betting & Gaming and Sportsbet which is listed both in New York and London.

At Flutter he delivered sustained double-digit growth but left as part of a restructuring of the firm. Prior to this, he was CEO of Manchester cloud and digital transformation provider ANS Group and, previously, CEO of the Trips business unit at Booking.com.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

THG PLC has posted a strong trading update ahead of its annual general meeting later today.

The beauty and nutrition eCommerce retailer says revenue in H1 grew 6.5% while adjusted EBITDA of at least £40 million is up 36% year-on-year, “supporting strongest H1 free cash flow since 2021”.

It reiterated its full-year guidance.

Quint Group, a FinTech group focused on credit and payments, has appointed FinTech leader Laurence Krieger as a director.

Formerly CEO of Tide and COO at Revolut, Krieger will now formally join Quint Group to work in close partnership with founder and CEO Greg Cox and the rest of the board to accelerate the growth of the group’s portfolio businesses.

He will also shape its emerging M&A strategy as Quint explores aggregation opportunities across payments and credit.

 

Astral Systems – a deep-tech firm pioneering a new type of nuclear fusion technology – has secured £23 million in the first close of a Series A investment led by Mercia Ventures. 

The round is supported by prominent tech investors including Tees River, Daphni and Blast Club, alongside previous investors Speedinvest and Playfair Capital.

It will enable the company to use its proprietary multi-state fusion (MSF) technology to develop medical isotopes that are critical for cancer diagnosis and treatment, expand production of its modular reactors and advance fusion research.

 

Author: Chris Maguire

With the clock ticking until Andy Burnham’s expected coronation as Prime Minister, BusinessCloud will be tracking the activities of the Makerfield MP.

Highlight:

According to reports in The Times, Burnham had his first meeting with Keir Starmer since Friday’s win in the Makerfield by-election. The two reportedly met for an hour at a secret location.

Media watch:

• ‘Andy Burnham: I’ll boost spending on defence’ – The Telegraph
• ‘Andy Burnham is already feeling the heat’ – The Times
• ‘Andy Burnham set to demote Rachel Reeves to lesser Cabinet role’ – Financial Times
• ‘How Andy Burnham’s wife went on disastrous Blind Date show while the pair were dating’ – Daily Mail

Social media watch:

As of 9pm on Tuesday, Burnham has had a quiet day on his social media channels, with updates from Monday’s dramatic return to Westminster and his official swearing-in ceremony as Makefield’s MP.

“Love to watch England in the pub tomorrow football but we’ll have to see what we can arrange,” he said.

Andy Burnham’s social media following:

Facebook: 109k

Instagram: 40.5k

TikTok: 56.4k

X: 622.4k

• Listen to the latest episode of the Northern Spin podcast here 

 

Newcastle EnviroTech GeoPura has been bought in a deal potentially worth more than £300 million.

Ballard Power Systems, a hydrogen fuel cell technology firm listed on New York’s Nasdaq exchange, has agreed an up-front payment of £275m for the zero-emission hydrogen-based power solutions provider.

Founded in 2019, GeoPura has built a rapidly growing business focused on developing, leasing and selling Hydrogen Power Units and hydrogen fuel supplied through its three production sites, including a 50% ownership interest in UK-based HyMarnham Power. 

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

One of the world’s top investors has backed a UK-headquartered AI company in a $50 million round of funding as it launches into the United States.

Partly was co-founded by CEO Levi Fawcett in New Zealand in 2020 and has built the world’s only AI foundation model purpose-built for the automotive repair supply chain. 

Fawcett is a rocket scientist who managed and developed hardware simulations for the Electron Rocket at Rocket Lab USA before co-founding Partly. Following years of research, he launched the product into the UK market and relocated the firm’s headquarters to London.

“The UK was pretty much from day one our biggest market,” Fawcett tells BusinessCloud.

Partly’s Interpreter model is the result of five years of training on human feedback and synthetic data, more than 50 manufacturer agreements, and continuous training on live data. 

So why has DST Global Partners backed it – and what attracted Fawcett to the investor?

Olympians, Paralympians and elite athletes from across the country have united behind the ambition to bring a future Olympic and Paralympic Games to the North of England, adding their names to a joint statement of support for a North of England Games.

The joint statement, signed by more than 40 Olympians, Paralympians and elite athletes, has attracted support from some of Britain’s most recognisable sporting names, including Dame Laura Kenny, Sir Jason Kenny, Dame Sarah Storey, Britain’s most successful Paralympian, double Olympic champion Tom Pidcock, Ed Clancy, gymnast Beth Tweddle, and Steve Cram.

They are joined by leading figures from across British sport, including Sir Brendan Foster, founder of the Great North Run, Olympic medallists Laura Weightman and Marc Scott, Paralympic medallists Susie Rodgers, Krysten Coombs and Rob Davies, and a new generation of athletes such as Paris 2024 Paralympic champion Poppy Maskill, creating a broad coalition of sporting talent backing the ambition for a future Olympic and Paralympic Games in the North of England.

Their support represents the most significant athlete backing yet for the Great North Games vision and demonstrates growing momentum behind the proposal, as Government and sports governing bodies explore the feasibility of a future Olympic and Paralympic Games hosted across the North.

The support comes at a pivotal moment for the proposal. Earlier this year, Northern mayors and leaders, through The Great North, called on the Government to explore the potential for a future Olympic and Paralympic Games hosted across the North of England. Last week, the Government confirmed it would begin an initial strategic assessment into the feasibility of a future Games in the North, marking the first formal step in exploring the opportunity.

The Competition and Markets Authority has ordered ticket marketplace StubHub UK to refund customers over hidden fees.

The competitions regulator found that the firm did not show fans the total price upfront when purchasing tickets, as required by law. Instead, a mandatory fee was included later in the process. 

StubHub UK is one of the largest marketplaces allowing people to buy and sell tickets for live shows and events in the UK. 

The CMA has fined the company close to £900,000 and ordered it to issue refunds to more than 50,000 fans exceeding £590,000 for using this illegal practice, known as drip pricing.