Author: Jonathan Symcox

Leaf, a Newcastle-based technology and data science company delivering performance intelligence for eCommerce brands, started life far from a UK-headquartered eCommerce specialist. 

The business was originally founded on the other side of the world as Leaf Music, a platform designed to help musicians engage audiences and monetise their work at a time when streaming was rapidly reshaping the industry.

“We started the business in Costa Rica,” said CEO and co-founder Gilbert Corrales. “Our original mission with Leaf Music was to empower musicians to engage, grow and monetise audiences.”

At the time, Corrales and his co-founders Helga Alvarez and Wesley Hartley believed artists had been pushed out of the value chain by streaming platforms. 

Revenue had shifted away from albums and towards live gigs, while playlists – not musicians – increasingly dictated discovery.

“Artists went from making money through CD sales and albums to not making money from their music, and instead making money through gigs.

“Music became playlist-centric rather than artist-centric.”

While the mission resonated, the business struggled to scale in the way the founders had hoped. Corrales described the period as when a romantic idea met commercial reality.

What did work, however, was the underlying capability the team had built – marketing execution, data analysis and performance optimisation.

Gilbert explains the pivot and journey so far in our interview.

Guinness Ventures has launched Guinness Founders SEIS, a new service designed to invest in early-stage UK companies under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.

The Guinness Founders SEIS is targeting a raise of £3 million, with the intention of building a diversified portfolio of 10-20 investee companies. Each company will receive between £100,000 and £250,000 of funding to support it through the earliest stages of commercialisation.

Investments will focus on the business services, consumer and healthcare sectors, targeting ambitious founding teams that are typically pre-revenue or early-revenue and where capital and strategic support can drive meaningful value creation.

SEIS offers some of the most generous tax incentives available to UK investors, including 50% income tax relief, capital gains tax reinvestment relief, and tax-free growth on qualifying shares held for at least three years. Investors can subscribe from a minimum of £20,000.

Author: Chris Maguire

Reddit has been fined £14.47m after an investigation found the company failed to use children’s personal information lawfully.

The social media platform has 121 million daily users and is home to thousands of communities.

An investigation by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found Reddit didn’t apply any robust age assurance mechanism and therefore did not have a lawful basis for processing the personal information of children under the age of 13.

The social media platform also failed to carry out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) to assess and mitigate risks to children before January 2025.

These failures meant Reddit was using children’s data unlawfully, potentially exposing them to inappropriate and harmful content.

John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner, said: “It’s concerning that a company the size of Reddit failed in its legal duty to protect the personal information of UK children.”

 

Doug Gurr has been announced as the preferred candidate to remain as chair of the Competition and Markets Authority.

Gurr was appointed as interim chair of the CMA in January 2025 and has now been selected to complete a full five-year term following an open competition for the role.

The government says that over the past 12 months, Gurr has worked with chief executive Sarah Cardell to transform the CMA by improving the pace, predictability, proportionality and process of their merger investigations.

However the appointment of the former Amazon UK country manager was criticised at the time by trade unions and consumer activists, who said the government was ‘in the pocket of Big Tech’.

Late last year, Gurr was also forced to deny claims of a ‘toxic culture’ at the Alan Turing Institute. He serves as chair of the UK’s national AI body.

N4 Pharma plc has appointed a new CEO and changed its name to Thalia Therapeutics plc.

The BioTech firm is developing Nuvec, a proprietary gene delivery system to enable advanced therapies for cancer and other diseases.

It is now also expanding its pipeline to transition to a therapeutic biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative RNA-based therapeutics.

The company has submitted a preliminary patent filing for a novel dual-acting siRNA targeting the reduction of cardiovascular risk.

To implement this accelerated strategy, the company has appointed Dr David H Solomon as CEO to succeed retiring founder Nigel Theobald.

Totalmobile and Solvares Group have announced a merger which it says will create an international leader in field service management.

The deal follows the investment in Solvares in December 2024 by Five Arrows and funds advised by Deutsche Beteiligungs AG, and the completion of the subsequent acquisition of Totalmobile, following regulatory approval.

The combined business will now employ more than 800 people and support over 4,000 customers across Europe, the UK and Australasia. Customers span sectors including emergency services, health and social care, housing, facility management, telecommunications, infrastructure, engineering, IT, and logistics, supporting organisations that rely on field workforces to deliver essential services.

A Scottish quantum hardware company has raised £2.5m seed funding to advance sovereign quantum capabilities in the UK.

Glasgow-based Quantcore has been backed by PXN Ventures, Blackfinch Ventures, Scottish Enterprise, Quantum Exponential and STAC.

It claims to be the only UK company producing quantum hardware using niobium, providing components that operate at temperatures colder than outer space.

This helps its customers, which include UK national laboratories, to save energy and do more with its quantum components at a more scalable rate.

Operating from the University of Glasgow’s James Watt Nanofabrication Centre, the company designs, manufactures and tests the superconducting processors, resonators and sensors that form the core of quantum computers and advanced sensing systems.

Shade Station, an online retailer of prescription glasses and designer sunglasses, has secured a £1.35 million loan from NatWest, utilising the bank’s IP-backed lending proposition.

The funding will support Shade Station’s international expansion, as well as the development of AI-driven eCommerce features and the launch of a new smart eyewear platform, offering glasses capable of displaying digital information directly onto lenses.

The smart eyewear platform is expected to undergo a phased launch throughout 2026, initially in the UK and Ireland, before expanding into selected European markets including the Nordics and DACH region.

Based in Manchester, Shade Station has grown rapidly under its current management team, increasing its annual turnover from £4 million to £22m.

Digital content agency Greenpark has appointed Paul Donohue as EMEA operations director and Giulia Mazzei as influencer director.

Donohue previously served as operations director at Phantom Studios. Over the course of his career, Donohue has held senior roles at numerous prominent agencies such as R/GA, Ogilvy, M&C Saatchi and Dare.

He has worked with global brands like Google, Diageo and The Financial Times and was a part of senior teams recognised with multiple industry accolades, including Campaign’s Agency of the Year and Campaign’s Innovation Agency of the Decade.

Mazzei will lead influencer marketing across EMEA and North America and joins from Swarovski, where she served as a global head of influencer marketing in-house.

She began her career within Swarovski’s global communications team for Atelier Swarovski, leading international PR strategies and brand activations across EMEA, North America and APAC.

During this time, she worked closely with designers including Jean Paul Gaultier, Viktor & Rolf, Christopher Kane and Jason Wu before moving into global influencer leadership as digital and creator culture reshaping luxury communications.

Marco Pierre White-backed dining app EatClub is accelerating its UK expansion following a £14m+ oversubscribed pre-Series B funding round led by Marbruck, with continued support from EVP and CoAct.

The funding will support the rapid UK rollout of the app, beginning with Manchester on 10th March.

Founded in Australia in 2016, EatClub is a restaurant app that helps venues fill quieter tables by offering time-based pricing, giving diners access to better value when they choose to eat outside peak times.

Since launching in London in mid-2025, EatClub has grown to more than 1,000 live venues across the capital, spanning neighbourhood favourites and well-known brands including Lina Stores, Kricket, Coqfighter, Mildreds, Acme Fire Cult, Mangal II and Santo Remedio.

The app has grown more than 80x from its first month in the UK, surpassing 300,000 downloads, with thousands of new diners joining each week.

Author: Chris Maguire

THG CEO Matt Moulding has today bought £8.5m of shares in the Manchester-based online retailer.

The 53-year-old bought a total of 24.4m shares at 34.9p shares through his family investment company FIC Shareco Limited.

It brings his holding in the company he co-founded in 2004 to 25.4 per cent.

THG’s share price rose 7 per cent on the back of the news to 37.20p, taking the company’s market cap back over the £600m mark.

One unnamed market analyst told BusinessCloud: “It’s sign of the confidence that Moulding has in the business.

“He thinks THG is massively undervalued and if the market doesn’t want to fill its boots, then he will.

“To see a founder invest his own money back into the business is never a bad sign.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Elaine Sagar has built a fast-growing early years business, supporting around 180 children a day across two nurseries in Greater Manchester. 

The founder and CEO of Sunflower Childcare Group says one setting cares for roughly 70 children and the other around 110 – with 67 staff employed across the nurseries. 

Alongside this, Sagar has begun moving into residential care, with a children’s home team of seven in place as she explores growth beyond early years.

She doesn’t present herself as a typical childcare founder. 

“I’m basically a hairdresser,” she says, explaining that she has experience lecturing on hairdressing rather than early years.

Sagar describes three phases that shaped the way she now leads Sunflower: entrepreneurship and teaching in hairdressing; international auditing work assessing quality in hospitality; and education and childcare.

She explains: “The skills that I’ve got from those three areas have come together to make me what I am now really.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The founder of essensys plc is bidding to take the PropTech firm private with the backing of high-profile investors Sir Terry Leahy and William Currie.

A vehicle led by Mark Furness, who remains essensys plc’s largest shareholder and handed the CEO reins to COO James Lowery in May, has made a bid of 27 pence per share – valuing the company at around £11.3 million.

That is below the 20p/£13m price mooted when it was first revealed that Furness was preparing a potential bid in late November 2025.

Author: Chris Maguire

The CEO of Debenhams Group has provided an upbeat assessment of the retail giant’s turnaround strategy.

Daniel Finley also said the company remained committed to PrettyLittleThing after a reversal in the brand’s fortunes.

Last week, Finley joined Boohoo co-founder Mahmud Kamani  and outgoing director Iain McDonald in taking part in the £40m fundraise.

He said: “The momentum is real. This isn’t just about capital. It’s about confidence – in our turnaround strategy, our performance and where we’re heading next.

“Our marketplace model is scaling. Our brands are profitable. The direction is clear.

“And for customers, that means one thing: a better way to shop.

“With this investment, we can accelerate the shift to a marketplace model – onboarding more of the brands customers love, expanding choice and delivering even better value, all in one place.”

Author: Chris Maguire

Embassy Village, the pioneering new Manchester community designed to support people experiencing homelessness, has officially completed construction beneath 22 transformed railway arches in Castlefield.

Developed through a pro‑bono collaboration of more than 130 businesses, Embassy Village represents a national first in scale and ambition.

The project delivers 40 high‑quality, fully furnished homes, each offering residents their own front door and the chance to rebuild their lives with dignity.

Built on land provided by Peel Waters and driven by the Greater Manchester‑based charity Embassy, the completed village includes a fully equipped village hall, a multi‑use sports area and mini allotments.

More than 1,800 plants that have been planted in the newly created outdoor areas – all designed to support wellbeing, community spirit, and independent living.

Residents will also receive six hours of personalised, support each week, alongside training in cooking, budgeting, work readiness and more.

Embassy Village’s completion is the culmination of years of partnership between Embassy, Peel Waters, Capital & Centric, Vermont Construction Group (who delivered the build at no profit), and a city‑wide team of architects, engineers and consultants donating their expertise for free.

Author: Emma Yates, head of intellectual property, rradar

From 1st April 2026, official UK trade mark fees will increase for the first time in decades, with rises averaging around 25% across many services.

For large corporates, this may be absorbed into existing legal budgets.

For small and medium-sized businesses, particularly those in consumer, retail, or manufacturing sectors, it should be a prompt to review how seriously brand protection is being treated.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A regional growth initiative has rebranded as it looks to scale up and cement the UK as the ‘gender smart’ investment capital of the world.

The Whole Point, formerly known as The Lifted Project, is a UK-wide, government-aligned initiative to increase funding to women-led businesses. 

Using data-driven insights to highlight the benefits of backing women, five regional boards are already established in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle.

Now in its next phase of growth, The Whole Point is building on the 4,000+ hours of support it has already delivered and the 350 women-led businesses it has helped, alongside securing Lloyds Banking Group as a founding national sponsor.

Chaired by co-founder Zandra Moore MBE, the project is a delivery and insight partner for the government’s Invest in Women Taskforce’s national data taxonomy project, aiming to create a consistent definition of women-led businesses across UK funders, lenders and the government to achieve comparable data.

Near-Life has unveiled a significant upgrade to its scenario-based authoring tool at MediaCity’s Immersive Technology Hub – introducing integrated AI-assisted authoring capabilities designed to enhance behavioural simulation and decision-based training.

Near-Life is a platform for learning teams to create high quality interactive video and VR simulations that scale role-play, improve real-world decisions, and reduce organisational risk.

At the core of the update is a new integrated AI-assisted tool that enables users to create immersive experiences simply by describing what they want to build. Learning teams can generate structured branching scenarios, interactive simulations and immersive role-play experiences more efficiently. Using prompt-based inputs, creators can accelerate scenario design and media production while retaining full editorial control over logic, dialogue and assessment.

The upgrade also introduces powerful new media generation capabilities, including batch image creation, AI-assisted 2D video generation and high-quality 360-degree imagery from text prompts.

The development of the upgraded platform has been supported through innovation funding from Greater Manchester’s Business Growth Hub, alongside backing from MediaCity’s Immersive Technology Hub.

Pro:Direct Sport has opened its first PD:FC concept store in Manchester, marking the launch of a new flagship retail format for the football specialist.

The two-floor, 9,180 sq ft unit on New Cathedral Street in Manchester Arndale gives the online brand an immersive physical space which it hopes will give football fans an experience that bridges stadium performance and street culture.

Sam Baldock, chief of brand at PRO:DIRECT Sport, said: “Manchester is the beating heart of football culture – a city where the game’s history, passion, and future collide. Launching our new PD:FC concept here is about more than opening a store; it’s about creating a space that lives and breathes football and its culture.

“A place where players and fans can connect with the very best the sport has to offer. This is our home for the football inspired community in the Manchester area – from the streets to the stadiums – and we can’t wait to welcome everyone through the doors.”

HICX, a supplier management platform, has appointed Michael Fulthorpe as senior vice president of sales and Carly Spicer as vice president of marketing.

They join CEO Dafydd Llewellyn, who assumed the role last September, as part of a planned series of executive leadership hires designed to support HICX’s next phase of growth.

Spicer brings more than 20 years of experience leading global go-to-market strategies, demand generation programmes and high-performing marketing teams. She has held senior roles at leading technology companies, including Plantronics (HP Poly) and Tech Data, and brings deep expertise across marketing operations, pipeline development and post-acquisition integration.

Fulthorpe joins HICX with extensive experience in enterprise software sales, having held senior roles at Autodesk, insightsoftware, IRIS and Sage.