Business News

Just a few days after the New Street Station launch, Grand Central, and the flagship John Lewis store, the largest outside of London, will open to the public today at 10am! Have you had a chance to see inside the new station yet? What are your thoughts? Get in touch with your views via our Facebook and Twitter pages with your images of your exploration of Birmingham's newest addition!

Margaret Corneby, Chief Executive of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce, has informed the Chamber Board of her intention to step down. Margaret, who took over the role in autumn 2009, said: “I am very proud of what I have achieved. When I took over, the Chamber had been making regular financial losses. Now it has almost £1.5 million in reserves."

A unique project to help young people in Wolverhampton cope with the trials and tribulations of modern life has moved into new offices in the city.  Last year, the City of Wolverhampton Council was given £500,000 by The Big Lottery Fund to establish a series of pilot HeadStart projects which would test different ways of improving the mental health, well-being and resilience of 10 to 16-year-olds and giving them the best chance to do well at school and in life.

Farrington's Mellow Yellow welcomed HRH The Duke of Gloucester to view their newly expanded production facility and announced export deals to UAE and Asia. Farrington's Mellow Yellow unveils its production expansion and biggest investment to date, which sees a significant increase in production facilities to support continued domestic growth and new export deals to UAE and Thailand.

The European Court of Justice said that the shape of the KitKat alone was not distinctive enough for consumers to associate it with the snack. Cadbury has persistently fought to prevent Nestle obtaining the trademark and both Nestle and Cadbury said they were "pleased" with today's ruling. Nestle's next challenge will be to try and demostrate that the public identifies the KitKat only by its shape, not the name.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report into the ‘Financial sustainability of police forces in England and Wales’ has highlighted the West Midlands as having been unfairly treated. The report highlights that “West Midlands Police had its initial funding allocations reduced by £132 million between 2010-11 and 2013-14 as a result of damping, while Northumbria Police received an extra £99 million in the same period.”

Sage and PwC have announced an alliance that will enable growing private business customers to combine cutting edge technology with support from leading professional services firm, PwC. The launch will combine the strength of Sage Live, the real-time social accounting solution and PwC's cloud based accounting service, My Financepartner.

One hundred community projects across the West Midlands, including projects in Birmingham, Coventry, Halesowen, Hereford, Leamington Spa, Lichfield, Stoke-on-Trent, Wolverhampton and Worcester will be helping local people improve their communities after the Big Lottery Fund awarded a total of £2,121,499 to the region.

Comedian Frank Skinner and actor Adrian Lester are among 13 celebrities backing their favourite London bridge in a bid to encourage people  in the West Midlands to sign up for Diabetes UK’s 10-mile London Bridges walking challenge taking place on 11 October, to raise vital funds.

PwC, the professional services firm, has reported revenue growth of 10 percent to £3,083 million for the year ended 30 June 2015, up from £2,814 million the previous year. Profits increased by 6 percent to £818 million as the firm continued to invest heavily in its people, training and skills, infrastructure and technology.

Since their introduction to the UK market as an alternative to smoking tobacco almost 10 years ago there have been calls for e-cigarettes to be better regulated. More recently there has been a shift towards e-cigarettes being a means of helping to quit and smoking cessation, however research continues into their long term use and any associated health effects.

Investment in the city, investment in businesses and investment in the workforce are the key messages of Wolverhampton Business Week, announced today by Wolverhampton’s Economic Growth Board. Business Week will run from Monday, September 28 to Friday, October 2, 2015. Among the events planned by the Economic Growth Board – which is made up of the city’s key public sector organisations and leading business representatives – are the ‘Annual Business Breakfast’ and ‘Meet the Buyer - Investing in Business’.

World Travel Market London 2015, the leading global event for the travel industry, will be opened by David Gill, former Chief Executive of one of the world's most valuable and well known football clubs Manchester United.  Since joining the club as Finance Director in 1997, Gill lead the way to Manchester United becoming one of the world's most valuable football clubs, now valued at $1.98 billion, overseeing four Premier League titles, three League Cups, one European Cup, one Club World Cup and an FA Cup since 2003.

The UK public is being thanked by the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) for fighting back against insurance cheats and reporting valuable information they have about insurance fraud to the IFB’s ‘Cheatline’. In 2014 over 500 reports were made to the Cheatline every month by members of the public, 6,347 reports in total for the year, and the IFB attributes the number of reports and the quality of the information to increased public awareness of the issue combined with the realisation that insurance fraud is not a victimless crime.

The number of people working excessive hours in the West Midlands has risen by 10 per cent since 2010, according to a new TUC analysis published recently. The number of employees working more than 48 hours per week in the West Midlands has now reached 249,000 – up by 23,000 since 2010 – following more than a decade of decline in long hours working.

Margaret Corneby, Chief Executive of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce, has recently announced the £6 billion growth challenge for the region. “Our aim is to double the size of the Black Country economy by the end of 2023: from a GVA of £17 billion at the start of 2013 to £34 billion at the end of 2023. If we do nothing, current projections suggest that we will have a GVA of £22 billion, £12 billion less than our aim."