Business

UK household energy bills remain a top concern in 2026. Even after price cap adjustments, the average dual-fuel home pays £1,700+ annually for electricity and gas — and that’s before peak-time surcharges that can double daytime tariffs.

Combined with the government’s Smart Export Guarantee and zero-rated VAT on battery storage (since 2024), solar plus battery has become the most practical way for homeowners to take direct control of energy costs.

But “going off-grid” or even “adding backup” intimidates most homeowners. How big a battery? Which solar size? What’s it actually going to save? This article walks through the practical sizing questions and where to find honest, free tools to plan your setup.

Why battery storage suddenly makes sense

Five years ago, a 5 kWh home battery cost £6,000+ and the math rarely worked. Today, the same capacity is £2,500–£3,500, with LiFePO4 chemistry lasting 10–15 years (vs 3–5 for older lithium-ion variants). Add Smart Export Guarantee payments of 5–15p per kWh exported, and a battery often pays back in 6–9 years on a typical UK home — well within its working life.

For homes with solar, the case is even simpler: instead of exporting daytime generation at low SEG rates and buying back evening electricity at 28p+, you store your own solar for your own use. The price arbitrage alone justifies the storage.

How to size your battery bank

Sizing isn’t guesswork. It’s a calculation: daily energy use (kWh) × number of days you want autonomy ÷ usable depth of discharge.

A typical UK semi-detached home uses 8–12 kWh per day. To cover one day of evening loads (4–6 kWh between 4 PM and midnight), most homeowners install a 5–10 kWh LiFePO4 bank. Full off-grid setups need 20–40 kWh and a dedicated solar array.

For accurate sizing without spreadsheets, try this free LiFePO4 battery sizer — enter your daily kWh, system voltage, and autonomy days, and it returns the exact bank size and cell configuration.

Drop-in batteries vs DIY: choose your path

There are two routes to battery storage:

Drop-in LiFePO4 batteries — ready-made 12V, 24V, or 48V units with built-in BMS. Brands like Renogy, Battle Born, and EcoFlow ship in plug-and-play form. Cost: roughly £200–£350 per usable kWh. Best for homeowners who want to install once and forget.

For comparing models by capacity, cycle life, and price, this drop-in lithium battery banks for UK homes listing is a good starting point.

DIY 18650 packs — building your own from individual lithium cells. Cost: roughly £80–£120 per usable kWh — a third of drop-in pricing. But requires spot welding, cell matching, BMS wiring, and ongoing maintenance.

If you’re considering the DIY route, this DIY 18650 powerwall builder calculates pack voltage, capacity, and state-of-charge for any series/parallel configuration. Essential before you start ordering cells.

What it actually costs to install

A complete 10 kWh home battery system (storage only, paired with existing solar) typically runs:

10 kWh drop-in LiFePO4 bank: £2,500–£3,500
Hybrid inverter (Victron, GroWatt, Sungrow): £1,200–£2,500
Installation by MCS-certified electrician: £1,500–£2,500
Total: £5,200–£8,500 installed

DIY route (same capacity, self-installed): roughly £2,000–£3,500 in components. Bigger savings but longer commissioning time, and your insurance may not cover self-built lithium installations.

The hidden incentives

UK homeowners often miss these:

VAT 0% on residential battery storage since February 2024 — saves £1,000+ on a typical install.

Smart Export Guarantee — most major suppliers pay 5–15p per exported kWh. Combined with storage, you arbitrage daytime solar to peak evening rates.

ECO4 grants for low-income households can cover solar+storage almost entirely, though waiting lists are long.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Oversizing the inverter. Bigger isn’t better — match continuous wattage to your actual peak draw plus 25% headroom.
Skipping the BMS spec. Cheap battery banks ship with weak BMS units that fail in cold weather. Confirm low-temperature protection.
Going for cheap lithium-ion drop-ins. LiFePO4 is the only chemistry that consistently lasts 4,000+ cycles. Other lithium variants degrade in 5 years.
Forgetting export limits. Some DNOs cap export to 3.68 kW per phase — your inverter setup needs to respect this.

Where to start

Don’t buy components until you’ve sized your system. Use a free calculator to work out exact kWh storage and panel wattage for your usage, then compare drop-in vs DIY costs honestly.

Most UK homeowners overestimate what they need and underestimate the savings. A correctly sized 8 kWh battery often pays for itself within 7 years and provides backup during winter blackouts that have become increasingly common during peak demand. Whether you go drop-in or DIY, planning with real numbers is the difference between a system that saves you money and one that sits underused in the garage.

Cyber attacks used to feel distant. They were something that happened to big banks or government agencies. Not anymore. Ransomware hits hospitals. Phishing emails slip into small business inboxes. Even home networks are vulnerable.

Behind the scenes, a handful of companies spend their days (and nights) trying to stay one step ahead. Here are ten cybersecurity firms that are shaping how we defend ourselves against modern threats.

1. Check Point Software Technologies

Check Point has been a leader in security for many years. That experience shows. Its firewalls and threat prevention tools sit quietly in the background of many large networks, just doing the work.

What makes Check Point different is its focus on deep, layered protection. It brings together network security, cloud security, and endpoint tools under a single management roof. That helps security teams see patterns they would otherwise miss. If you had to pick one cyber security company that understands long‑term, policy‑driven defense, Check Point would be high on the list.

2. Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto is the name you keep hearing in serious security discussions. They helped push the idea that firewalls should understand applications and users, not just ports and IP addresses.

Today, their reach goes far beyond the data center. Cloud security, secure access for remote workers, automated response—it’s all there. Many teams like Palo Alto because its tools don’t just alert. They try to reduce noise and highlight what really matters in a messy environment.

3. CrowdStrike

If you talk to incident responders, CrowdStrike comes up quickly. Its Falcon platform lives on endpoints, laptops, servers, and cloud workloads and watches for signs of attack in real time.

CrowdStrike’s strength lies in speed. It’s built to see suspicious behavior early and shut it down fast. The company also invests heavily in threat intelligence. That research often shapes how the rest of the industry talks about new attack groups and campaigns.

4. Fortinet

Fortinet is known for blending strong security features with serious performance. Its FortiGate firewalls use custom hardware to push a lot of traffic, even when deep inspection and SSL decryption are switched on.

But Fortinet does more than perimeter firewalls. The “security fabric” idea ties together switches, access points, endpoints, and more. For organizations that want one vendor to cover a big chunk of their stack, Fortinet is a regular contender.

5. Cisco Secure

Cisco may be famous for routers and switches, but its security arm is big in its own right. Firewalls, email security, DNS protection, zero trust access—these all contribute.

The real win for Cisco customers is integration. If your network is already Cisco, the security tools can plug into the same identity and policy sources. That can make complex things like segmentation and access control a bit less painful. Not easy. Just less painful.

6. Microsoft (Defender and beyond)

For a long time, people laughed at the idea of Microsoft as a security leader. That’s changed. Completely.

Microsoft has quietly turned Windows Defender into a serious endpoint platform. It pairs that with identity protection in Entra, cloud security in Defender for Cloud, and a huge amount of telemetry from Office, Azure, and more. Because attackers often exploit Microsoft services, having the vendor itself monitoring for patterns at that scale is significant.

7. SentinelOne

SentinelOne is one of the newer endpoint security players. It focuses on using behavior and automation rather than just signatures and static rules.

The charm here is autonomy. The agent is built to make quick decisions on the device itself, even if it’s offline. It can roll back changes, isolate systems, and block processes in seconds. For understaffed teams, that kind of automation can be the difference between a small incident and a disastrous week.

8. Zscaler

Zscaler came at security from a different angle. Instead of defending a central office, it assumes people work from anywhere. Rather than pushing all traffic back to a head office, Zscaler runs a huge cloud service that sits between users and the internet.

In practice, that means secure web gateways, zero trust access to internal apps, and strong inspection without the old “VPN hairpin” headaches. As more companies go hybrid or fully remote, this model looks less like an experiment and more like the default.

9. Okta

Okta doesn’t scan packets or endpoints. Its job is identity. Who are you, and what should you be allowed to touch?

In a world full of SaaS apps, cloud consoles, and remote sign‑ins, identity has become the new perimeter. Okta’s single sign‑on and multi‑factor authentication tools help companies tighten that perimeter without tormenting users too much. When attackers steal passwords or try to move laterally inside a network, a strong identity layer makes life harder for them.

10. Cloudflare

Most people know Cloudflare for speeding up websites. It also plays a major role in security.

Cloudflare runs one of the largest global networks on the planet. It uses that to absorb DDoS attacks, filter malicious traffic, and provide secure access to internal apps without clunky VPNs. It also offers DNS filtering and email security. Because so much web traffic already flows through Cloudflare, it has a broad view of emerging attacks in the wild.

Final Words

Modern threats don’t stay still. Ransomware groups rebrand. Phishing lures get sharper. Attackers learn from each other. The companies above are in a constant race to keep up and sometimes to get ahead.

No single vendor can solve every problem. But the right mix of tools, backed by knowledgeable people, can improve your chances. In the end, that’s what matters: making it just hard enough and expensive enough that attackers decide to move on to an easier target.

A recent article in The Shift placed renewed scrutiny on International Hotel Investments (IHI), owner of the Corinthia Hotels brand, after it revealed the scale of debt now carried by one of Malta’s best-known hospitality groups.

The Maltese investigative outlet reported on 11 June that IHI had returned to the bond market while holding almost €790 million in debt. That’s a significant debt burden for any company, but for a hotel group that has spent a decade struggling to turn expansion into consistent profits, it is a clear warning sign.

These figures contradict Corinthia Group’s expansion story. Despite the company’s best efforts to maintain the appearance of continued international growth and present positive numbers in its annual financial reports, recent figures point to severe financial difficulties that cast doubt on the company’s financial health.

 Corinthia’s financial annual reports: a closer examination

A closer reading of Corinthia’s public accounts suggests that the nearly €800 million debt reported on the Shift is just the tip of the iceberg. The company has reported net losses every year since at least 2014. By 2024, accumulated losses had reached €46 million. Persistent losses weaken a company’s ability to fund growth from its own operations and make it increasingly reliant on lenders, investors, and refinancing.

Corinthia’s own actions suggest those pressures were understood internally. Dividends have not been paid since 2019, an apparent recognition of the company’s financial struggles. Then in 2022, Corinthia underwent bruising cuts to staffing when the Board instructed a deliberate reduction to staffing targeted at keeping headcount at least 15% below 2019 levels.

In spite of the apparent financial reality, Corinthia’s expansion continued. New Corinthia-branded projects have been promoted all the way from Rome in Europe, through Asia, and most notably entered the market in the Middle East’s tourism capital – Dubai. Corinthia’s international expansion story is difficult to reconcile with its clear financial difficulties, raising serious questions over the financial prudence of the company’s expansion strategy.

In fact, Corinthia’s latest financial annual report shows that net debt was more than 11 times EBITDA, a level widely regarded as high by international lending standards. Put simply, the company’s borrowings appear far larger than the earnings available to support them.

Borrowing can be sensible when it funds growth that later pays for itself. But when a company is already facing consistent financial losses, every new refinancing begins to look less like confidence and more like survival. As of 2024, interest costs consumed much of the operating profit needed to service the debt, leaving Corinthia with less room for error and even fewer ways to absorb another shock.

 Auditing Corinthia’s finances: cause for concern?

EU Reporter has previously reported that PwC’s auditors’ report does not appear to flag the near ~€800 million debt or the latest bond market return as a specific audit concern, leaving open whether investors were alerted to the scale of the risk.

The picture is therefore not simply of an ambitious hotel group temporarily carrying high debt. It is of a company that has spent years losing money, cutting dividends and staff, borrowing to keep expanding, and relying on asset revaluations to help its financial reports stay afloat. With more bonds due in 2026 and debt forecast to approach €880 million, the question is no longer whether Corinthia is expanding. It is how much longer can its financial model withstand the weight of deception

In business, the people who make the biggest impact are not always the loudest voices in the room. Often, they are the ones quietly solving problems, connecting teams, and helping organizations run better every day.

That description fits Arshad Sadikeen.

Based in Chicago, Sadikeen has spent nearly two decades working at the intersection of technology, operations, and business strategy. Today, he serves as a Senior Business Systems Manager in the logistics industry, helping organizations improve the systems that keep people, products, and information moving.

His career has been built on a simple belief: technology works best when it works for people.

“If people don’t adopt the system, the system is broken—not the people,” Sadikeen says.

That mindset has shaped every stage of his professional journey.

How Arshad Sadikeen Started His Career in Technology

Sadikeen grew up on Chicago’s North Side during a time of rapid change across the city. He remembers being fascinated by both technology and people from an early age.

As a child, he often took apart old electronics just to understand how they worked.

“Sometimes they went back together better than before,” he jokes. “Sometimes they didn’t.”

But while he enjoyed understanding machines, he was equally interested in understanding people. He spent time listening to stories from neighbors who had watched Chicago evolve over the decades.

Looking back, he sees a connection between those early interests and the work he does today.

“Systems tell a story,” he says. “Whether it’s a computer network or a business process, there are people behind every part of it.”

After graduating from high school in 2002, Sadikeen studied Information Systems and Business Management at a Chicago-area university. During college, he worked with small businesses throughout the city, helping owners create websites, manage inventory systems, and adopt new technology.

Many were intimidated by digital tools.

“My job wasn’t to make technology sound impressive,” he says. “It was to make it useful.”

That ability to simplify complex ideas would become one of his greatest strengths.

Why Business Systems Leadership Is About People

After graduating in 2006, Sadikeen joined a manufacturing company as a technical support specialist.

The work was demanding. Production schedules often depended on systems running correctly, and downtime could create immediate problems.

It taught him how to solve issues under pressure.

More importantly, it taught him that most organizational challenges are rarely just technical.

“People think technology problems are about software,” he says. “Most of the time they’re really communication problems.”

Over the following years, he moved into IT operations, business systems analysis, project management, and program leadership roles.

What made him effective was his ability to speak multiple professional languages.

Executives wanted strategic outcomes. Engineers focused on technical details. Frontline employees needed practical solutions that fit into their daily work.

Sadikeen learned how to connect all three groups.

“You can’t improve a process from a conference room alone,” he says. “You have to understand what the work looks like on the ground.”

Leading Digital Transformation in Logistics

By 2018, Sadikeen had joined a Chicago-based logistics and supply chain company as a Senior Business Systems Manager.

The role placed him in one of the Midwest’s most important industries.

Chicago has long been a transportation hub, connecting rail, trucking, warehousing, and distribution networks across North America. In that environment, even small process improvements can create meaningful operational benefits.

Rather than relying solely on reports and dashboards, Sadikeen made a habit of visiting warehouse floors, talking with dispatch teams, and meeting directly with customer service employees before recommending changes.

Those conversations often revealed issues that data alone could not explain.

“The people closest to the work usually have the best insights,” he says.

His projects have focused on improving internal systems, strengthening information flow between departments, and making customer tracking processes more efficient.

The goal, he says, is not simply to implement new technology.

“The real goal is helping people do their jobs better.”

Beyond Technology: Mentorship and Community Impact

While his professional career has centered on business systems, Sadikeen’s impact extends beyond the workplace.

Throughout the past decade, he has volunteered with workforce development programs, mentored young professionals, and supported educational initiatives across Chicago.

His efforts have earned several community recognitions, including the Neighborhood Impact Champion Award and the Humanitarian Excellence in Service Award.

Among those honors, the Neighborhood Impact Champion Award stands out.

“That one meant a lot because it came from the community,” he says. “Titles are temporary. Impact lasts.”

Much of his volunteer work focuses on helping students and early-career professionals explore opportunities in technology and business.

He believes many talented young people simply need exposure to possibilities they may not have considered.

“Sometimes one conversation can change how someone sees their future,” he says.

What’s Next for Arshad Sadikeen?

Today, Sadikeen continues to lead business systems initiatives while exploring new ways to expand access to technical education.

His long-term vision is creating stronger pathways that connect underserved students with careers in technology, data systems, and operations.

The mission reflects a lesson he learned growing up in Chicago: success is most meaningful when it creates opportunities for others.

For Sadikeen, leadership is not about recognition. It is about consistency.

It’s about improving a process, mentoring a student, solving a problem, or helping a team communicate more effectively.

And after a long day of meetings and problem-solving?

He returns to another Chicago tradition.

“There are a lot of debates about pizza in this city,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve learned it’s better to appreciate all of it.”

That perspective may explain his success.

Whether he’s evaluating a business system, leading a project, or supporting his community, Arshad Sadikeen focuses less on proving a point and more on understanding the bigger picture.

In an era driven by technology, that human-centered approach remains one of his most valuable leadership traits.

Britain’s largest trade union has thrown its weight behind Ed Miliband to become the next chancellor, a move that sharpens an increasingly bitter contest for control of the Treasury under a prospective Andy Burnham government.

Andrea Egan, general secretary of Unison, has backed the energy secretary as one of two frontrunners to replace Rachel Reeves in No 11. Her endorsement matters: Unison is the largest union in the country, with more than 1.3 million members concentrated in the public sector. Yet the support is far from unanimous across the movement, with two other big unions, GMB and Unite, lining up against him.

The jockeying between supporters of Miliband and his most likely rival, Wes Streeting, comes as Burnham prepares to deliver his first major policy speech since being elected as the MP for Makerfield. The former Greater Manchester mayor will set out his thinking on devolution and the economy in Manchester on Monday, but he is under mounting pressure to name his chancellor, a choice that investors, MPs, unions and business groups all regard as the single most consequential decision he will make in office. For business owners watching from the sidelines, the identity of the next occupant of No 11 will shape everything from the autumn Budget to the future ownership of Britain’s utilities. We have set out the runners and riders for the Treasury here.

Egan did not mince her words. “Andy Burnham has a historic opportunity to rebuild our country in the interests of workers and communities, but that chance will be squandered if his government is made up of politicians determined to continue the same failed approach,” she said.

“We need a chancellor who will rewire the economy and properly invest to improve the lives of the majority. Of those reported to be in the running, only Ed Miliband could enact the kinds of policies trade unions and our members urgently need.”

Burnham is assembling his inner circle of advisers and ministers, having entered the Commons only a week ago. Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement on Monday that he intends to resign as prime minister, swiftly followed by Streeting’s endorsement of Burnham, has made it overwhelmingly likely that the outgoing Manchester mayor will walk into No 10 as soon as next month.

Labour’s ruling national executive committee confirmed on Thursday that a new leader would be named on 17 July if only one candidate comes forward. Should a rival secure the backing of 81 Labour MPs and force a contest, the party will hold a full leadership election and declare the result on 29 August.

The new prime minister’s first appointment is already drawing fire. Burnham has chosen his former cabinet colleague and long-standing friend James Purnell as chief of staff, a decision that has irritated parts of the Labour left, who are wary of Purnell’s Blairite pedigree.

Attention has now turned squarely to who will run the Treasury, a brief that extends well beyond setting tax policy in this autumn’s Budget. The next chancellor will be charged with reigniting growth and overseeing the de-privatisation of some of Britain’s largest utilities, an agenda with direct consequences for investors and the wider business community.

The two leading contenders, Streeting and Miliband, hail from different wings of the party and would almost certainly pursue different priorities. Streeting, like Purnell, is a Blairite who, as health secretary, welcomed private sector involvement in the NHS. He is regarded as the more business-friendly option and the candidate most likely to reassure international investors, though some on the left worry he would be lukewarm on returning water and energy companies to public ownership.

Miliband, by contrast, is seen as more ideologically aligned with Burnham’s programme. But he has drawn anger from sections of both the unions and the business community over his approach to net zero. Some investors believe he would prove anti-business, pointing back to his time as Labour leader, when he drew a sharp line between companies he cast as “producers” and those he branded “predators”.

Unions with a strong presence in the North Sea oil industry have been exasperated by Miliband’s refusal to soften his pledge not to issue new exploration licences. They also fear he will decline to approve the Jackdaw and Rosebank megafields, even though waving them through would not technically breach that promise, since both already hold licences. The two projects, analysed in detail by the Institute for Government, have become a lightning rod in the wider argument over energy security and the pace of the transition.

One senior union official told the Financial Times on Thursday: “There are ongoing discussions to try to stop Ed Miliband. There is a GMB-Unite axis on this.”

Unison’s endorsement will strengthen Miliband’s standing within the labour movement, and he is not without other backers. Smaller unions, including the TSSA, are expected to issue similar messages of support in the coming days, while the National Education Union came out for him earlier on Thursday.

Even so, Miliband and Streeting are not the only names in the frame. Other possible candidates include Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, John Healey, the former defence secretary, and Jonathan Reynolds, the chief whip.

Allies of Reeves insist she would like to stay put, arguing she is best placed to keep markets calm while giving Burnham’s platform her full support. Her own appetite for the job has not gone unnoticed in the City, and her position has fed into a broader debate about fiscal devolution as Burnham eyes No 10.

Asked by the BBC on Wednesday about her chances of remaining in cabinet, Reeves said: “I’m not going to pre-empt the decisions that the new prime minister will make. I’m backing Andy and I think he’d be a great prime minister, but those are his decisions, not mine to make.”

She later told the British Chambers of Commerce annual conference: “I hope that whoever is chancellor in the future, whenever that future may be, sticks to what I’m doing. Because it is beginning to bear fruit, and we are seeing that investment return to the economy, that growth return to the economy, and crucially, that stability, so that businesses can plan and invest in the future.”

Allies of Burnham, however, are adamant that he will not keep her in place. For Britain’s businesses, the only certainty is that the answer is coming, and soon.

Alona Shevtsova, CEO of Sends, will lead an industry discussion at The Blockchain Show Riyadh, bringing together experts from cybersecurity, banking, blockchain infrastructure, and digital asset innovation to explore how artificial intelligence, risk management frameworks, and distributed ledger technologies are shaping the future of digital banking.

The panel, titled “AI, Risk & Blockchain: Building the Next Generation of Digital Banking,” will examine the opportunities and challenges facing financial institutions as emerging technologies become increasingly integrated into global financial infrastructure.

The discussion will focus on four key themes: the foundations of secure and resilient digital banking; the role of blockchain in financial infrastructure and digital trust; responsible AI governance and innovation; and the future of digital finance across the Middle East and global markets.

As moderator, Alona Shevtsova will guide the conversation around one of the most pressing questions facing the financial sector today: how financial institutions can continue to innovate while maintaining trust, security, transparency, and regulatory compliance in an increasingly digital environment.

Commenting ahead of the event, Alona Shevtsova, CEO of Sends, said: “The future of banking will be defined by the ability to balance innovation with trust. AI, blockchain and digital infrastructure are creating new opportunities for financial institutions, but long-term success will depend on building secure, transparent and resilient systems that inspire confidence among customers, businesses and regulators alike.”

The panel is also expected to explore the growing role of blockchain technology in institutional finance, the evolution of digital assets and decentralised financial systems, and the opportunities emerging from the convergence of AI, digital identity, and automated decision-making.

Particular attention will be given to developments across the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia’s growing position as a regional hub for digital innovation, financial technology, and blockchain adoption.

The Blockchain Show Riyadh brings together industry leaders, innovators, regulators, and technology experts to discuss the trends and technologies shaping the future of digital finance and blockchain adoption worldwide.

Earlier this month, Alona Shevtsova was shortlisted for the 2026 Great British Entrepreneur Awards in the Established Business of the Year category. Her team is also preparing for the Fintech Connect conference in London later this year. Sends will be a leading sponsor of this event.

In July 2025, Alona Shevtsova announced the first stage of the project in collaboration with Sends Messenger. Teams plan to integrate payment functionality directly into the messaging app. The initiative, developed in partnership with Sends Messenger, aims to redefine how users across the UK, Europe, Ukraine, and beyond interact with digital payments in everyday conversations.

During the Q1 2026, Sends introduced customisable digital cards for personal accounts available in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet. Giving customers more flexibility and available control over their experience with Sends is one of teams priority.

In June 2026, Sends announced the launch of Samsung Pay as a supported payment method, giving merchants access to millions of Samsung users.

With over 15 years of experience in payments and financial and technology Alona Shevtsova drives Sends’ growth into the scalable, secure, and globally, accessible financial platform.

*Sends is a trade name of SMARTFLOW PAYMENTS LIMITED, registered in England and Wales (Company No.11070048). For more information, visit sends.co .

Revolut, the fintech that has long worn its remote-first credentials as a badge of difference, has confirmed that its newest recruits will no longer enjoy the same freedom.

From 2027, graduates and interns joining the company will be required to spend at least three days a week in the office, a notable shift for a business that has spent years arguing that results matter more than location.

The change applies only to those at the very start of their careers. Explaining the decision, the company said “the early stages of a career benefit from in-person collaboration and mentoring”, a line of reasoning that will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the steady retreat from fully remote working across the City. For everyone else, Revolut was at pains to stress, “our remote-first policy is unchanged”.

It is a carefully drawn distinction. Until now, graduates were free to choose whether they worked from home or came into the office, and the company’s headline-grabbing perks remain firmly in place. Chief among them is the 120-day “workation”, which lets staff work remotely from abroad, “exploring new cultures while staying productive and connected”. Chief executive Nik Storonsky, who co-founded Revolut in 2015 with Vlad Yatsenko, told staff last year that the firm cared “more about what you do than where you do it”, and insisted the flexible approach would survive as long as productivity held up.

The recalibration arrives at a moment of considerable momentum for the group. Revolut became a fully licensed UK bank earlier this year after a long wait for regulatory approval, and was valued at 75 billion dollars in November 2025, eclipsing several of Britain’s established high street lenders. Founded as an app that let people in the UK and Europe spend abroad at interbank exchange rates, it now serves more than 70 million customers and supports transfers across roughly 160 countries and regions. The company has also signalled that about 40 per cent of its 12,000-strong global workforce, spread across more than 30 countries, will be based in India by the end of this year.

For all the talk of disruption, the policy itself looks rather conventional. Hybrid working is now firmly the British norm: the Office for National Statistics reported in June 2025 that around 28 per cent of workers split their week between home and the office, with the figure rising to nearly half in information and communications businesses. The debate over whether younger staff in particular should be in the room has been running for some time, with voices ranging from JP Morgan’s leadership to Lord Sugar urging young people to get their “bums back into the office”.

Employment lawyers see little to quarrel with. Jo Mackie, employment law partner at national firm Michelmores, said Revolut was “falling into line with most other major employers in making hybrid working the norm, when practical”, adding that “working alongside colleagues is particularly important for junior staff to learn and be mentored”. The sentiment is echoed across the sector, where HR specialists have noted a growing consensus that early-career development is hard to replicate over video calls.

The wider message for Revolut watchers is one of maturation. A company built on doing things differently is, in this corner at least, beginning to look a little more like the institutions it set out to challenge.

The Midlands has overtaken every other part of Britain outside the capital for foreign direct investment (FDI) employment, creating almost 6,000 jobs last year even as investment into the UK slumped to a ten-year low.

According to the EY 2026 UK Attractiveness Survey, the region generated 5,970 FDI-related jobs in 2025, more than Scotland and Wales combined and equivalent to roughly one in five of all such jobs created across the UK. That makes it the leading location for overseas-backed employment outside London, a notable result in a year when global investors turned cautious.

The region also landed 102 FDI projects, ranking it behind only Greater London and Scotland for the volume of inward investment won. The figure represents 14 per cent of all UK projects, the Midlands’ third-highest share in a decade.

Investor sentiment, meanwhile, is pointing upwards. Among companies planning to invest, the West Midlands is now seen as the third most attractive UK region, and Birmingham ranks as the second most sought-after city outside the capital, despite the reputational knocks the city has absorbed over the past year.

The headline numbers are all the more striking given the wider backdrop. Project numbers across Europe fell by 6.6 per cent in 2025, while the UK recorded a sharper 14.4 per cent decline, securing 730 projects nationally, the lowest tally in ten years.

Only three parts of the UK bucked the trend on project numbers: Greater London, up 5 per cent, Northern Ireland, up 65 per cent, and Wales, up 56 per cent. The South West held flat, and every other region went backwards. The Midlands itself was not immune, with projects down 16.4 per cent year on year and FDI jobs off 29.3 per cent, from the 122 projects and 8,439 jobs it banked in 2024.

Even so, holding on to the top regional spot for jobs and a podium position for projects, while the national market shrank, underlines the region’s pull for international capital. As one recent analysis of regional investment trends has noted, the competition between UK regions for overseas money has intensified, making the Midlands’ staying power more meaningful than the raw decline might suggest.

Business and professional services emerged as the standout sector for the Midlands, drawing 18 projects, a sharp jump from just five in 2024. Transportation manufacturers and suppliers came second with 16 projects, while software and IT services climbed to third with 14, up from nine the year before.

The United States remained the single largest source of investment, accounting for 14.7 per cent of projects. Germany, India and France followed, each delivering 10 projects apiece.

That momentum builds on a longer run of form. The region was recently named the UK’s top regional destination for foreign investment, and has previously been recognised as one of Europe’s strongest performers for inward investment strategy, finishing second in the continent at a major European investment awards.

Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, said his economic strategy was beginning to bear fruit. “My Growth Plan is clear in targeting international markets to get our economy firing on all cylinders. And it’s an approach that’s working. More jobs are now being created by global companies in the region than in any UK location outside of London,” he said.

“My recent trade missions to India and China, alongside the Prime Minister, have opened even more doors for our businesses, universities and other investors. Getting more deals over the line with some of the world’s biggest players will help deliver my number one priority as Mayor, a stronger economy with more high-quality jobs for local people and more money in their pockets.”

Claire Ward, Mayor of the East Midlands, said the figures reflected confidence in the wider region. “These figures underline the Midlands’ continued strength as a destination for international investment in a highly competitive global market, and demonstrates sustained investor confidence in our people, businesses and places,” she said. “For the East Midlands, international investment creates high-quality jobs, strengthens local supply chains, and expands opportunity in communities across our region.”

Neil Rami, chief executive of the West Midlands Growth Company, struck a more cautionary note on what it will take to keep the momentum going. “Our unmatched scale, connected innovation ecosystem and deep talent pool make the region a compelling proposition for international investors,” he said. “However, in an increasingly competitive global market, investment does not simply follow economic fundamentals. Sustaining growth will require continued targeted intervention, strong international partnerships and a clear, market-led proposition that aligns investor demand with local opportunities.”

The picture is reinforced by separate official data. The Department for Business and Trade’s inward investment results for 2025/26 show the West Midlands attracted more FDI jobs, 18,036, over the past three years than any UK location outside London. The region secured 10 per cent of all UK projects and 18 per cent of projects and jobs created outside the capital, with its 25 per cent fall in projects broadly mirroring a 26 per cent national decline.

Behind the statistics sit a string of concrete wins. Networking and security giant Cisco has chosen STEAMhouse in Birmingham’s Knowledge Quarter, part of the West Midlands Investment Zone, as the home of new office space.

Adele Every, managing director, public sector at Cisco UK and Ireland, said the city’s assets made the decision straightforward. “Top tech talent, world-class innovation infrastructure and a collaborative ecosystem are key to our mission of powering an inclusive future for all. Birmingham’s strengths in these areas were clear to see, making it the obvious location for our new regional hub.”

Other arrivals span fintech, fashion and software. Islamic property finance provider Offa has invested in new offices in Solihull, where executive chairman Sultan Choudhury said the firm’s team had doubled in size over the past year. Australian fashion brand Hello Molly has opened an e-commerce warehouse in Dudley, with operations director Ena Eaton praising the region’s “excellent transport and logistics infrastructure”. Software provider Target Integration has set up in Coventry through the West Midlands Global Growth Programme, with chief executive Rohit Thakral citing the city’s proximity to the West Midlands tech sector and the University of Warwick Science Park.

The Growth Programme, which offers tailored support to help international businesses navigate the UK investment process, is now accepting applications for 2026.

The King’s property company has held back almost £1 billion to bankroll its own investment pipeline, choosing to keep the cash on its balance sheet rather than hand it to the Treasury while it waits for landmark borrowing powers to be switched on.

Revenue account profit, the Crown Estate’s preferred measure, fell by 58 per cent over the year to £487 million, down from a record £1.15 billion the year before, according to annual accounts published on Thursday. The drop was driven largely by a decision to set aside £886 million for new capital projects, more than double the £441 million retained a year earlier. The share of gross revenues kept back jumped from 27 per cent to 60 per cent.

For a 265-year-old institution that has spent most of its life simply passing profits up to the public purse, that is a notable shift in posture, and it tells you everything about where the organisation believes it is heading.

Two forces pulled the headline number lower. The first was the deliberate hoarding of cash. The second was the fading of the offshore wind windfall that flattered the books in recent years.

So-called option fees, the payments developers made to reserve patches of seabed after winning the rights to build new wind farms in January 2023, slid 18 per cent from £1.07 billion to £875 million as those projects moved from speculation towards construction. Strip out the option fees and the underlying picture was steadier: revenue edged up from £560 million to £600 million, and underlying profit held at a healthy £1.37 billion. As we reported when the estate matched its record profits on the windfarm windfall, management had already warned that the boom was temporary.

The six wind farms behind those fees, sited off the coasts of Cumbria, Lancashire and north Wales, are expected to generate enough renewable power for eight million homes a year once they are running, though the sector’s wider build-out has not been without questions over delivery timelines.

Net asset value, the worth of everything the Crown Estate owns, rose from £15 billion to £16.7 billion. Part of that gain came from buying a 220-acre site in Oxfordshire earmarked for laboratory space, which the estate reckons could add £2.5 billion to GDP and create 30,000 jobs nationally.

The reason for stockpiling cash is straightforward. Under the Crown Estate Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in March last year, the business will be able to borrow to fund capital spending for the first time in its history. The government and the estate are still hammering out the precise terms, with the memorandum of understanding setting a loan-to-value ceiling of 25 per cent. On Thursday the estate estimated the powers could unlock up to £5 billion of investment over the next decade, money it says will “materially increase the money returned for public spending”.

“This additional retained revenue will support increased investment in areas that will further boost the public finances and energy security, create jobs and benefit communities,” the Crown Estate said.

Dan Labbad, chief executive, struck a similar note. “Over recent years we have delivered strong growth for the country and invested in areas of national importance including renewable energy, housing and science and innovation. With the new powers approved by parliament, retaining more revenue for investment, we can now go further, boosting long-term investment in these sectors and generating increased returns for public spending.”

The Crown Estate hands its profits to the Treasury, which then passes a slice to the royal family as the sovereign grant. That share was cut from 25 per cent to 12 per cent in 2023 to reflect the surge in profitability from offshore wind.

Here is the wrinkle. Payments to the King are pegged to the estate’s profits from two years earlier, so the grant is set to climb sharply because the Crown Estate booked profits north of £1 billion in that reference period. The mechanics of how the Treasury’s return has moved with the wind windfall are worth watching for anyone tracking the cost of the monarchy.

The relationship dates back to 1760, when George III agreed to surrender the profits from the royal land holdings to parliament in exchange for a fixed annual payment. Over the past decade the Crown Estate has returned £5.1 billion to the Treasury.

The more interesting story is structural. By handing the estate the freedom to borrow, the government has nudged it a step closer to resembling a sovereign wealth fund, the sort of investment vehicle designed to channel returns into assets for the wider economy. Ministers were explicit about the ambition when the Act passed, framing the new flexibility as a route to invest in Britain’s future across decarbonisation, nature recovery, housing and growth.

Before the legislation, the estate could only sell assets to raise cash for reinvestment, a clumsy constraint for a portfolio of its scale. It expects to use the new powers “modestly” at first, before deploying them in earnest towards the end of the decade.

The estate is in little doubt about why it won the freedom. Its annual report argues the Act was passed “as a result of our strong track record and significant potential to drive economic growth and create value for the country”. That is a fair reading, even if the recent record has leaned heavily on those one-off option fees rather than the day-to-day grind of the property book.

Whether the Crown Estate can turn borrowing freedom into the kind of durable, diversified returns a true sovereign wealth fund delivers is the open question. For now, it has a near £1 billion head start and a decade to prove the point.

A Hampshire letting agent has launched a free property portal, wagering that agents and landlords worn down by the rising cost of advertising will welcome a route to market that does not come with a monthly bill.

Find My Move, the brainchild of letting agent Mark Vine and housing professional Chris Moss, has signed up more than 9,000 subscribers and stitched together a network of listings drawn from over 6,600 estate and letting agencies across the country. The platform now carries upwards of 58,000 rental properties and more than 435,000 homes for sale, with subscriber numbers climbing by around 3,000 a month.

More than half of registered users are actively searching for a property, the founders say, and over 200,000 people have visited the site in the past three months.

The timing is pointed. Frustration over what agents pay to list their stock has been building for years, and the figures help explain why. Analysis reported by Property Industry Eye found that Rightmove’s listing fees can swallow as much as 13.5 per cent of an estate agency’s sales commission in lower-value markets such as Glasgow and Newcastle, with the average British agent handing over 7.2 per cent. For independent firms already wrestling with tighter margins, that is a sizeable slice of income.

Those pressures land on a private rented sector that is itself under strain. Average UK private rents rose 4.4 per cent in the year to November 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics, squeezing tenants while landlords face higher borrowing and compliance costs of their own.

The idea for Find My Move grew out of Vine’s experience running a letting agency and the conversations it prompted with fellow professionals.

“After six years in lettings, I found myself having the same conversations with agents time and again,” Vine said. “Many felt they were paying increasingly large sums simply to advertise housing stock at a time when businesses across the sector are facing growing pressures.

“We wanted to create a platform that offered agents and landlords another route to market without the significant costs often associated with property advertising. The response so far has been extremely encouraging and gives us confidence that there is genuine demand for a different approach.

“With more than 9,000 subscribers already on the platform and thousands more joining every month, we believe Find My Move can become a valuable additional channel for agents, landlords and property seekers alike.”

Unlike the established portals, Find My Move is free for agents and landlords to use, with the founders planning to earn revenue through advertising and commercial partnerships rather than subscriptions. It is a model that echoes a wider appetite for lower-cost listing options, a theme Business Matters has explored in its rundown of the top free rental property listing websites in the UK.

Chris Moss said the immediate focus was growth. “Our priority is to continue growing the number of agents, landlords and property seekers using the platform across the UK,” he said. “We’ve created Find My Move to be accessible, straightforward and beneficial for everyone involved in the property journey. The scale of engagement we’ve seen already shows there is an appetite for new ideas and alternative ways of connecting people with property opportunities.”

The platform will remain free for agents and landlords for the foreseeable future, the pair say, as they concentrate on expansion and building awareness across a sector where questions of standards and oversight remain live, as Business Matters has reported in its coverage of calls for regulation of property agents.

Longer term, the founders want Find My Move to play a broader role in widening access to housing, working with agents, landlords, local authorities and other stakeholders to help more people find suitable accommodation. For landlords still weighing how to bring a property to market, the perennial question of whether to use a letting agent at all is one the new portal is quietly hoping to reshape.