ITV has agreed to invest up to £3 million in Joe Wicks’s health and fitness platform The Body Coach, deepening the broadcaster’s push into digital consumer brands. The deal has been struck through ITV’s AdVentures Invest fund and will see The Body Coach advertise across ITV’s linear channels and its streaming platform ITVX, giving the app access to one of the UK’s largest broadcast audiences. Wicks launched The Body Coach app in late 2020, building...
The world’s richest individuals accumulated a record $2.2 trillion (£1.7 trillion) in additional wealth during 2025, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with just eight billionaires accounting for around a quarter of the gains. The surge pushed the combined net worth of the world’s 500 wealthiest people to $11.9 trillion, fuelled by booming equity markets, a rally in cryptocurrencies and metals, and renewed investor optimism following Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024. While wealth creation...
One pub a day closed permanently across England and Wales during 2025, underlining the mounting pressure facing Britain’s hospitality sector as rising costs continue to bite. Analysis of government data shows that 366 pubs were either demolished or converted for alternative uses in the year to December, equating to an average of one irreversible closure every 24 hours. The figures, analysed by property tax specialists Ryan, show the total number of pubs in England and...
As a sustainable business owner, I’ve always believed that every choice we make, from the suppliers we trust to the packaging that carries our products, reflects our values. But the conversation around packaging sustainability is evolving quickly, and 2025 is shaping up to be a defining year for anyone in this space. The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will soon change how every business that uses wood or paper packaging operates. Whether you export into the...
For many UK small and medium-sized enterprises, time is one of the most valuable, and most wasted, resources. While digital tools have streamlined accounting, marketing, and sales, one area still quietly consumes hours every week: meetings and documentation. Internal meetings, client calls, training sessions, and project updates generate vast amounts of spoken information. Yet much of it is never properly captured, shared, or reused. Notes are rushed, details are missed, and valuable insights disappear once...
American men have lost their work ethic and increasingly feel entitled to a comfortable life without applying themselves, according to Wilbur Ross, who served throughout Donald Trump’s first term. Ross, the Wall Street investor once dubbed the “king of bankruptcy”, said younger generations have been “coddled” by growing up in a wealthy society, weakening the drive to work that underpinned previous generations and threatening long-term economic growth. “It used to be that the mantra for...
Britain remains stuck at the bottom of the G7 for overall investment, despite Labour’s pledge to inject billions of pounds into public spending over the next two years, according to international data. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that total investment, combining both public and private spending, stood at just 18.6 per cent of GDP in the third quarter of the year. That leaves the UK trailing all other G7 nations,...
A third of British businesses are planning to invest in artificial intelligence in 2026 as firms sharpen their focus on productivity, skills and technology in an increasingly competitive market. Research from Lloyds Bank shows that AI is becoming a central pillar of growth strategies, with companies looking to automate processes, improve efficiency and strengthen long-term competitiveness. The Lloyds Business Barometer, based on a survey of 1,200 firms, found that productivity improvement is the top priority...
Small businesses across the UK have recovered £10 million in late and overdue payments with the help of the Office of the Small Business Commissioner, marking a major milestone in efforts to tackle damaging payment practices by larger organisations. Almost £1 million has been recovered so far in the current financial year alone, with more than £500,000 secured in December 2025, highlighting an acceleration in enforcement and case resolution compared with previous years. Since its...
Britain’s electricity demand has risen for the second year in a row after two decades of decline, marking a decisive turning point as electric vehicles, heat pumps and AI data centres usher in a new era of electrification. Provisional figures for 2025 show electricity consumption rose by 3 per cent, the fastest annual increase since 2001, according to analysis by Imperial College London for Drax Electric Insights. It is the first time the UK has...
