Author: Chris Maguire

Apprentice winner Tom Pellereau has taken full ownership of his beauty technology company after buying out Lord Sugar’s 50 per cent stake.

Life-long inventor Pellereau found fame as the quirky winner of the 2011 series of BBC’s The Apprentice, creating the world’s first curved nail file.

He became the first winner to receive investment from Lord Sugar, who secured a 50 per cent stake in exchange for £250k.

Since then, Pellereau has grown STYLIDEAS into one of the UK’s fast-growing electrical beauty tech brands, including LED masks and makeup brush cleaners.

He revealed: “Today I graduated as an Apprentice. 14 years after his investment Lord Sugar and I’ve agreed terms that return me to 100 per cent owner of STYIDEAS.

“I will always be so grateful for the investment Lord Sugar made, and the potential he saw in me and my inventions.

“His time, knowledge and guidance have been invaluable. While now is the right time to regain full ownership of my business, I look back on the amazing journey we’ve taken together over the last 14 years with deep gratitude and happy memories.”

Days after The Graduate Guide was acquired by Apprentify Group, co-founders Peter Wood and Marlene Leiss have announced their next venture.

The UCL graduates built the The Graduate Guide into a fast-growing community platform of 30,000 graduates, with many going on to land roles at the UK’s fastest-growing startups.

Now the entrepreneurs have revealed details of their latest venture – Calibr – to shake-up the UK’s scale-up space.

Calibr is being built in partnership with Apprentify Group; the UK’s 30th fastest-growing company.

Peter Wood explained: “We’re taking the assessment, onboarding and development systems that work at enterprise level and bringing them into the scale-up world – where the stakes are higher and talent mistakes cost 10x more.”

Apprentify Group, which consists of  Apprentify, Netcom Training, The Juice Academy, Flourish and ioda, is on a mission to redefine early-career pathways through a blend of community, employability and upskilling.

Frasers Group shares jump after £70m Barclays buyback scheme.

Monzo CEO ‘ousted over IPO plans’ .

Fulham FC extends Bob deal.

TT Electronics shares plunge as DBAY snubs takeover deal.

Frontier Developments CEO leaves after 27 years at firm.

Tech-first PR firm Pathos, founded by comedian, in £20m IPO.

Pimberly secures £5m in funding as it steps up UK & US expansion.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A fledgling Manchester entrepreneur was inspired to found his startup after suffering a football injury one weekend.

Marketer Wesley Clarke-Sullivan injured his back playing five-a-side and was unable to move the next day. He spent hours trawling through clinic websites, manually comparing availability just to find the earliest appointment nearby.

“The initial idea came from a friend who works at a major private healthcare insurer. He explained that many policyholders struggle to book appointments – not because care isn’t available, but because the process is confusing, fragmented and stressful,” he explained to BusinessCloud. “When patients can’t easily use their insurance, they’re less likely to renew.

“The football injury experience then made the problem very real.”

He opted to take redundancy from his role in September – and MediMo was born shortly after.

Author: Richard Whittle, economist at the University of Salford

This move brings contactless cards in line with services such as Apple Pay, which are already unlimited.

The idea here is that phone security features provide greater protection from fraud. And with device payments on the rise perhaps the overall impact of changing card contactless limits will be limited. 

Yet for many, the £100 limit may act as a psychological bulwark against higher spending. Particularly at times like Christmas, where the lead-up momentum and subsequent sales may encourage us to spend more than we want to.

Author: Chris Jones, managing director at PSE Consulting

Lifting the contactless limit is not really about letting people spend more with a tap. It is about shifting responsibility across the payments ecosystem. By lifting the contactless cap, the FCA is stepping away from a blunt, one-size-fits-all rule and putting the onus on banks and card providers to manage their own risk exposure levels.

That significantly raises the bar for the industry. Higher or unlimited contactless only works if firms have robust fraud detection, real time transaction monitoring and strong customer controls in place. The technology already exists, but adoption is uneven. Providers that invest in behavioural analytics and dynamic risk scoring will be able to move faster and with confidence.

For consumers, the real win is not higher limits, but greater control. Being able to set personal thresholds, switch contactless on or off instantly, and manage settings through an app delivers far more value than mandating a simple ceiling.

Banks that treat this as a trust building opportunity will strengthen customer relationships. Those that rush to increase limits without clear safeguards and communication risk eroding confidence and attracting scrutiny from both regulators and customers.

Author: Jonathan Frost, director of global advisory for EMEA at BioCatch

The direct impact is clear, giving consumers greater convenience while maintaining fraud protection; however, FCA estimates indicate the change could cause up to £31.3 million per year in additional contactless fraud, representing a 131% increase. 

The core question is whether raised limits will trigger long-term impacts, such as shifts in criminal behaviour. In Spain, higher-value contactless transactions require a PIN to combat fraud.

There is also a broader ecosystem impact to consider. Some retailers are reluctant to accept contactless payments due to the abuse of chargeback fraud.

This friction risks undermining the very convenience the policy is designed to deliver.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The £100 limit for contactless payments is to be removed, with banks and payment providers to be allowed to set their own limits from March 2026.

The Financial Conduct Authority says that they must demonstrate strong fraud controls to do so.

The move will allow them to better respond to changing consumer demands, inflation and new technology, the FCA said.

They are also being encouraged to let customers set their own limit, or turn contactless off altogether, as many high street banks already do.  

Existing consumer protections remain in place, while consumers must be reimbursed in unauthorised fraud cases, such as if their card is lost or stolen.

Nodu, a stablecoin infrastructure startup aiming to make digital assets work within traditional finance, has closed a $1.45 million pre-seed round led by Digital Space Ventures.

Nodu’s long-term vision is to connect over 170 countries into one seamless payment network, where stablecoins act as the universal bridge between currencies, systems, and economies.

It provides banks, FinTechs and businesses with a ready-to-use global compliance and payments framework for stablecoins, allowing them to launch services without building their own infrastructure.

Clients can send, receive, and hold stablecoins as easily as traditional money, all while compliance and reporting happen automatically in the background. The platform merges fiat and crypto rails into one regulated flow, linking European institutions with worldwide payment and blockchain networks.

The streets of Greater Manchester town Rochdale will be transformed into an immersive nighttime light and audio experience this winter, as Stories We Tell: Rochdale invites residents and visitors to explore the borough through the real memories, voices and lived experiences of local people.

Running from Wednesday 28 January to Friday 6 February 2026, the free, guided audio walk will use large-scale projections, moving imagery and powerful 3D sound to animate buildings and streets, including Milkstone Road, Drake Street, Baillie Street and Rochdale Town Hall Square. Audiences will take a journey through town after dark, encountering stories of belonging, change and hope, gathered directly from local communities.

Commissioned as part of Rochdale’s year as Greater Manchester Town of Culture, the project is supported by Rochdale Borough Council and Rochdale Development Agency, with funding provided through the Community Regeneration Partnership from the UK Government, and supported by Arts Council England.

Produced by Rochdale-based multidisciplinary production company Breaking Barriers, Stories We Tell: Rochdale returns four years after its original debut in Deeplish. This new edition promises to reflect on what has changed, what has remained, and the stories that continue to shape Rochdale’s identity. Built from real stories, archival images, video and audio recordings shared by residents, the experience re-imagines familiar streets in new and unexpected ways through immersive storytelling.

One of the UK’s leading managed service providers has celebrated four decades in business by completing a landmark £1.8m investment.

First started in 1985 as a mobile phone specialist by Alan Jackson, Intercity has replaced its legacy platforms with an AI-powered ecosystem designed to give it the foundations to realise a £100m vision by 2030.

The company has not stopped there, upgrading its five sites in Bedford, Bolton, Nuneaton, Northampton and Birmingham to create greener, smarter workplaces, as well as a new technical training and cyber awareness Academy.

It marks what has been an exciting 12 months for the firm, which delivers access to communications, managed IT and the latest cyber security services to organisations, including HORIBA MIRA, King’s Cross Business Park and Saïd Business School.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A former boss of Inc & Co and his business associate have been banned from operating as company directors for a combined 23 years.

Scott Dylan, 41, has been banned for 13 years while David Antrobus, 39 and also formerly of Salford, allowed £13.9 million to pass through two companies using unauthorised bank overdrafts – with Dylan himself receiving £1.675m.

The duo opened bank accounts for the two companies in spring 2021 and made millions of pounds in transfers before the accounts were frozen by Barclays Bank, which subsequently demanded repayment. 

They subsequently defied the freezing injunctions, leading to contempt of court proceedings and jail terms for both.

Their bans as company directors begin on Christmas Day after a High Court ruling earlier this month.

Dylan was described by the judge as the “driving force” behind the operation, which was “little short of a scam”. There was “no legitimate purpose” for the removal of the funds, the judge added.

Author: Patrick Killeen

BGF-backed digital product consultancy hedgehog lab has acquired Edinburgh-based global innovation network Label Sessions.

The deal combines hedgehog lab’s AI delivery and product design and development expertise with Label Sessions’ methodology and a network of more than 500 innovation experts, with both firms confirming roles will be retained.

hedgehog lab, headquartered in Newcastle with operations in London, Leeds, Edinburgh and Sofia, has grown significantly over the past two decades and recorded its best-ever quarter earlier this year.

The consultancy counts Deliveroo, Under Armour, Aviva and AJ Bell among its clients, and secured investment from growth capital investor BGF in 2023 as it accelerated expansion.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Strix Group Plc has agreed to sell its Billi business to a new Australian entity for £110 million in cash, nearly tripling its money as the firm looks to accelerate debt reduction. 

The AIM-listed company, which is a global leader in kettle safety controls and water-heating components, said the disposal values Billi at an enterprise value of £110m on a cash-free, debt-free basis, subject to shareholder approval. 

The deal represents an approximate 3x return on the company’s original £38m investment when it acquired Billi in November 2022 and equates to around 47.8p per Strix share, a premium of about 18% to the recent share price.

Billi is a premium provider of instant boiling, chilled and sparkling filtered water systems and has continued to perform strongly under Isle of Man-headquartered Strix’s ownership, delivering double-digit growth at constant exchange rates. 

For 2025, the business is expected to generate revenues of around £47m and adjusted EBITDA of approximately £10m. 

TikTok’s US business is to be partially sold to American investors in a joint-venture deal which will see it avoid a ban in the country.

President Donald Trump had long threatened to shut down the Chinese-owned short-form video app, which has 170 million American users, in the United States over national security concerns.

Now ByteDance – owner of TikTok – has signed a deal to sell 45% of its US business to American investors Oracle and Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. It is expected to close in January. 

Another 5% will be held by other new investors, while 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance

The White House said tech giant Oracle, co-founded by Trump supporter Larry Ellison, will license a copy of TikTok’s recommendation algorithm as part of the deal. Oracle already manages TikTok’s data collected in the US.

Trump critics have said it is the latest example of affiliates of the US President being handed control of the nation’s biggest tech and media companies.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, wrote on Bluesky: “First Paramount/CBS and now TikTok. Trump wants to hand over even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies. Americans deserve to know if the president struck another backdoor deal for this billionaire takeover of TikTok.”

Morelife, an NHS and public health partner specialising in weight management, lifestyle and preventative healthcare, has been acquired by digital health provider Voy.

The companies said the deal will enhance delivery across Morelife’s NHS-commissioned services and support more technology-enabled care pathways for obesity and other chronic conditions.

The business will remain operationally independent, while drawing on Voy’s experience in scaling digital healthcare to improve efficiency and expand reach, including into communities facing health inequalities and among people who are digitally excluded.

Voy says its digital-first model supports highly personalised care plans, while Morelife brings 20 years’ experience running behaviour-change programmes, including in some of England’s most deprived areas.

Author: Patrick Killeen

London-based consumer tech company Nothing has raised around £6 million ($8m) in its third community investment round, valuing the business at approximately $1.35 billion.

The funding follows a period of rapid growth for the smartphone and hardware maker, which launched its first device, the Nothing Phone (1), in 2022 and has since shipped millions of products globally across smartphones, audio and wearables.

The company says it surpassed $1bn in lifetime revenue in 2024, recording year-on-year growth of 150%, and closed a $200m Series C round last year at the same valuation.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Currys has reported a strong first-half performance, driving its shares up 8.93% so far today.

Group adjusted profit before tax surged 144% year-on-year to £22 million, while free cash flow rose 68% to £84m.

Revenue increased 8% to £4.23bn, with like-for-like sales up 4%, supported by growth in both the UK & Ireland and the Nordics.

Its share price has risen to 137.9p today and it has a market cap of £1.15bn.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The acquisition of Alphawave IP Group plc by NASDAQ-listed Qualcomm Incorporated for around £1.8 billion has completed.

The firms agreed the deal in June. The addition of Alphawave Semi, which is headquartered in London and Toronto, is part of tech giant Qualcomm’s expansion into data centres.

Tony Pialis, CEO and co-founder of Alphawave Semi, will lead the Qualcomm data centre business.

 

The Bank of England has cut its base rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.75% after a tight 5–4 MPC vote, saying it expects inflation to be “closer” to its 2% target early next year.

Interest rates are now at their lowest level in almost three years.

Governor Andrew Bailey said: “We’ve passed the recent peak in inflation and it has continued to fall, so we have cut interest rates for the sixth time, to 3.75% today… with every cut we make, how much further we go becomes a closer call.”

Some policymakers argued rates should have been held due to persistent services inflation and the risk of “lasting changes in wage and price-setting behaviour”, while other members backed the cut amid worries about weakening consumer demand.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves welcomed the move, saying: “This is the sixth interest rate cut since the election – that’s the fastest pace of cuts in 17 years, good news for families with mortgages and businesses with loans. But I know there’s more to do to help families with the cost of living.”