Quickline has confirmed that CEO Sean Royce is to retire after nearly five years at the helm, marking the end of a period of major growth for the rural broadband provider.

Royce, who has led the company since its acquisition by Northleaf Capital Partners in 2021, will be replaced by Mark Bowden, who joined the business earlier this year as CFO, later becoming chief transformation officer.

He brings extensive experience in finance and leadership from senior roles at Vodafone, O2, and as CFO for giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and Checkatrade.

The Hull-based company has also announced the promotion of Martin Cook to CFO, who joined nearly four years ago and was previously director of strategic finance.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A High Court ruling largely in favour of Stability AI over Getty Images will “frustrate many in the creative industries”, according to a legal expert.

Getty had accused Stability AI – a London GenAI firm which counts Avatar director James Cameron among several leading names on its board – of infringing its copyright by using 12 million of its images to train the Stable Diffusion AI model. 

This summer Getty withdrew its primary copyright and database infringement claims as it was unable to prove that training took place in the UK. The secondary, narrower claim amounted to an accusation that Stability had brought images trained on unlicensed works into the UK – akin to ‘importing infringing copies’. 

Justice Joanna Smith disagreed, stating: “An AI model such as Stable Diffusion which does not store or reproduce any copyright works – and has never done so – is not an ‘infringing copy’.”

An accompanying trademark claim alleged that the AI model sometimes generated images with Getty’s watermarks on them. Getty partially succeeded with that claim.

Justice Smith said striking a balance between the creative industries’ interests and the AI industry was “of very real societal importance”. 

 

Marks & Spencer’s profits have plunged as the full impact of the widely-reportedly cyber attack that it suffered earlier in the year has been revealed.

The company reported underlying profits of £184.1 million for the six months to the 27th September, less than half the £413.1m earned in the same period last year.

The disruption, which forced the retailer to suspend online clothing and homeware sales for more than six weeks, hit its non-food operations particularly hard, leaving the clothing and homeware division struggling to recover.

European and transatlantic investor Hg has appointed Steven Batchelor and Jean-Baptiste (JB) Brian as managing partners and co-CEOs.

The pair will take on responsibility for the day-to-day running of the London-based firm, which has become one of the largest investors in software and workplace automation technology.

The move marks the next stage in the company’s leadership rotation model and is designed to support it described as the next phase of its development.

Matthew Brockman and Justin von Simson, who have led the business in the same roles since 2017, will both remain in full-time leadership positions.

Trainline plc has reported growth across all metrics for the six months ended 31st August 2025.

Group net ticket sales were up 8% year on year to £3.2 billion, while revenue grew 2% to £235m, adjusted EBITDA rose 14% to £93m and operating profit jumped 38% to £68m.

Europe’s most downloaded rail app now has a total active customer base of 27m people.

The board of Built Cybernetics, a smart buildings group, has disposed of its subsidiary Anders + Kern U.K. Limited to the latter’s managing director Barrie Meehan for a nominal sum.

A+K has been significantly loss-making.

In the year ended 30th September 2024, A+K recorded a total comprehensive loss of £342,000 and concluded that year with a net liability position of £45,000. The business made further losses in the year following.

Water Intelligence plc has reported a rise in revenue, profits and EBITDA.

The provider of tech-enabled preventive maintenance solutions for water and wastewater infrastructure said group revenue increased by 9.2% to $69.3 million in the nine-month period ended 30th September.

Group Statutory EBITDA rose by 14% to $12.7m while statutory profit before tax grew by 4% to $6.5m.

The CFO of Quantum Base Holdings plc has stepped down.

David Broadbent, who saw the company through its IPO and first annual report as an AIM-quoted company, will also step down from the board.

Anthony Clayden, an experienced financial leader with a 26-year career spanning numerous executive and advisory positions, primarily in technology and life sciences, has taken the role of interim head of finance while the company initiates the process to find a permanent CFO.

Quantum Base is a quantum science company focused on creating a new global standard in authentication.

Trading in Falconedge plc has now commenced on the Aquis Growth Market Access Segment.

The company, a provider of turnkey advisory solutions for asset and fund managers founded last year, has raised £1.44m at IPO, following a pre-IPO round of approximately £1m.

It has a market capitalisation of approximately £10.5m.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Cambridge Cognition Holdings plc, which makes digital health products to advance brain health research and treatment, has announced a series of leadership changes.

Joint managing director Alex Livingstone-Learmonth will leave the company in the new year to pursue new opportunities, with his fellow joint MD Rob Baker named CEO.

Prior to joining Cambridge Cognition Holdings in 2022, Baker held several senior roles at Amazon including leading large operational teams to scale Alexa voice technology improvements and its privacy and security operations. He was also responsible for regional Amazon Echo device sales.

Dr Steven Powell, who will retire as non-executive chair of the board at the next annual general meeting, will be succeeded in the role by non-exec director Nick Rodgers.

Rodgers is an adviser to gene therapy company Santo Therapeutics and was until May 2024 chair of SEHTA, a health technology membership and networking organisation supporting businesses in the HealthTech sector. 

He has also served as chair of Destiny Pharma plc, a developer of novel anti-infective products; ZPN Energy Limited, a developer of battery storage technologies and systems; and Oxford BioMedica plc, a pioneer of gene and cell therapy.

Pollen Street has launched a share buyback programme.

Over the coming 12 months, the asset manager will purchase up to £30 million worth of shares via Investec Bank plc and Panmure Liberum.

The sole purpose is to reduce the company’s share capital, with any shares acquired under the agreement to be held in treasury.

Cizzle Biotechnology, a UK-based diagnostics developer of early cancer tests, has raised up to £250,000 through the issue of further unsecured convertible loan notes to Frazer Lang, an existing investor in the company.

In May Cizzle secured funding of £150,000 from Lang to roll out its CIZ1B biomarker test to help detect lung cancer early.

The company has now announced that it has entered into a Letter of Intent with a leading medical diagnostic services provider, acting in partnership with the NHS, as result of that initiative.

Entrepreneur Jenna Meek said it’s a ‘dream come true’ after being confirmed as a guest Dragon on the 2026 series of Dragons’ Den.

The co-founder of Manchester-based beauty brand REFY will join Gary Neville, Tinie Tempah, and Susie Ma in entering the Den alongside heavyweights Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman and Steven Bartlett.

Meek, who was also named in BusinessCloud’s Northern Leaders list, said: “Always dreamed of being on Dragons Den as a Dragon and my dreams came true this year.

“After years of pestering the BBC they finally let me loose on the show. An incredible, incredible experience. January 2026 I will be on your screens.  What type of Dragon do you think I will be?”

REFY has become one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the UK with an annual turnover of more than £40m.

 

Luxury cruise retailer Panache Cruises has promoted Anna Perrott to the newly-created role of Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

Perrott, who joined the Chorley-based company three years ago, previously worked as senior partnerships and marketing director and her promotion follows a period of record-breaking growth.

At the same time Alex Langton has been promoted to the role of Sales and Operations Director.

In the last 12 months turnover at tech-enabled  Panache Cruises has grown 64 per cent to £39m and staff numbers have increased from 68 to 93.

 

Author: Jamie Roberts, managing partner, YFM Equity Partners

It felt like tax rises are being framed as unavoidable – maybe that is right as the level of debt and cost of interest is so high and there is no short-term fix to this other than tax rises.

But sustained growth rarely comes from taxation and today’s words seems to ignore the long term risk of making it less attractive to create businesses in the UK.

Entrepreneurs, founders and business leaders, like everyone else, are feeling the strain of slower productivity and high inflation. If the UK wants to improve productivity and drive growth over the medium term, then it must continue to back the entrepreneurs starting and running businesses.

These are the people creating jobs and prosperity for all. The UK is still the best place in the world to start and run a business with tax incentives to drive investment (venture capital trust and EIS), a world leading legal system and a huge pool of talent – but we risk eroding that edge if we keep targeting the very people we need to build businesses and create employment.

I’m hoping that as well as the now expected tax rises that the Chancellor signals that Britain remains a place where people are rewarded for building businesses and creating jobs to deliver long-term prosperity.

Author: Andreas Adamides, CEO, Helm

Founders have mortgaged their homes and invested life savings to create jobs based on manifesto commitments that are now being ripped up.

Many are already on a knife-edge after being clobbered with a £40bn tax raid in the last Budget. Now they’re facing tax rises on top of a 6.7% minimum wage increase that will decimate margins.

Faced with higher taxes, soaring wage bills, and spiralling costs, businesses will be forced to slash jobs, abandon growth plans, or simply shut down. Those that survive will have no choice but to push prices up and inflation will stay high. This government is engineering a crisis.

We’re 18 months into a five-year Parliament. Stop blaming everybody else. Breaking manifesto pledges isn’t forced upon you – it’s a cop out, a betrayal and a death knell for investment.

Author: George Holmes, managing director, Aurora Capital

Businesses need clarity, but all they got today was a warning shot from the Chancellor. Rachel Reeves’s refusal to rule out tax hikes throws yet more uncertainty into the mix just as small business confidence was beginning to stabilise. Talk of ‘necessary choices’ and ‘everyone doing their bit sounds like code for squeezing taxpayers, including thousands of owner-managed firms already dealing with rising costs.

If the government walks back a key manifesto pledge within 18 months of taking office, it could stall hiring, investment, and growth plans across the SME sector. Small firms can’t make long-term decisions when policy is uncertain. And with cash flow already under pressure, any increase in income tax or national insurance would hit sole traders and small company directors hardest.

A ‘Budget for growth’ cannot be built on the backs of small businesses. If the Chancellor is serious about long-term stability, she needs to support productivity by investing in the SME backbone of the economy, not by taxing it into paralysis.

Risers:

Diversified Energy Company – +8.41%

Pantheon Infrastructure – +3.37%

Vietnam Enterprise Investments – +2.85%

SEGRO – +2.47%

Derwent London – +2.42%

Fallers:

Hochschild Mining – -4.46%

Ninety One – -4.15%

Anglo-Eastern Plantations – -3.76%

Metro Bank – -3.47%

Senior – -3.41%

Gumtree has partnered with Mangopay as part of its transformation into a fully transactional customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplace, moving away from its traditional model. 

With over 10 million monthly visitors and 2m active listings, the company will begin introducing wallet-first payments in selected categories before a full launch in 2026. 

The partnership allows users to pay and receive funds directly on the platform, eliminating offline transactions and improving safety and convenience for buyers and sellers. 

Mangopay’s white-label wallet system enables Gumtree to manage its payment flows and offer users instant re-spend options.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Rachel Reeves has refused to rule out tax rises in this month’s Budget.

In an unusual pre-Budget news conference in Downing Street, the Chancellor hinted that she would break a Labour election manifesto commitment not to increase income tax, VAT or national insurance.

Against the backdrop of an estimated £20-30 billion shortfall in the public finances and £2.6 trillion of national debt – 94% of GDP – Reeves said the country was in a worse state financially than they had expected after “years of [Conservative] economic mismanagement”.