Business

Nvidia has fired its loudest shot yet at the personal computing market, unveiling a new superchip that chief executive Jensen Huang says will turn the humble Windows PC into a “teammate” capable of running personal artificial intelligence agents.

Speaking on Monday at a keynote ahead of the Computex technology show in Taipei, Mr Huang likened the moment to the arrival of the smartphone. “This reinvention of the computer is as big of a deal as the reinvention of the phone into what we now know as the smartphone,” he told delegates as he lifted the lid on the RTX Spark.

The chip, which Nvidia describes as a “superchip for the era of personal AI agents”, will sit at the heart of a new generation of Windows machines from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface and MSI when they reach shelves this autumn. Acer and Gigabyte are expected to follow with their own models shortly afterwards. According to Nvidia’s own briefing notes, Spark pairs a Blackwell GPU with an Arm CPU and up to 128GB of unified memory, delivering roughly one petaflop of AI performance on the desk.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses, the implications are significant. On-device AI promises to run drafting, scheduling, customer-service triage and basic analytics without sending sensitive data into the cloud, a development that chimes with the productivity story Business Matters has been tracking in our recent coverage of small businesses embracing AI for quick productivity wins. It also raises the bar for the next hardware refresh, with finance directors now needing to weigh AI-capable specifications alongside the usual considerations of price and support.

The move puts Nvidia squarely in the path of Apple and Intel in a consumer PC market that has been searching for a story to tell since the post-pandemic slump. With an estimated stock-market value north of $5 trillion (£3.7 trillion), a milestone first reported in detail by CNN Business, Nvidia has both the firepower and the brand recognition to disrupt the established order on the high street as well as in the data centre.

The announcement was not without geopolitical noise. On Sunday, the US Department of Commerce moved to close a loophole that had allowed the most advanced Nvidia hardware, including its Blackwell processors, to reach subsidiaries of Chinese firms operating outside the mainland. Washington’s broader campaign to keep cutting-edge silicon out of Chinese hands has been a recurring drag on Nvidia’s growth narrative, even as demand elsewhere remains ferocious.

For UK owner-managers, the strategic question is no longer whether AI belongs in the workplace, but where it should live. As we noted in our analysis of why AI and green tech are vital to SME growth, the businesses that move first on practical, on-the-ground deployment tend to widen the gap on those that wait. That trend is already showing up in the lending figures, with our recent report on UK SME lending climbing to £17.5bn on the back of AI-led growth suggesting balance sheets are being shaped around the technology, not the other way round. Spark, if it delivers on Mr Huang’s billing, may finally make the case for putting that intelligence on the desk rather than in the cloud.

Whether it really represents a “smartphone moment” will depend less on the silicon and more on the software that ships with it. But after a decade in which the PC has felt increasingly like a commodity, Nvidia has at least given the industry something fresh to argue about.

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Nvidia takes the AI war to the desktop with RTX Spark superchip

Whitehall has turned to one of the City’s most seasoned retail chiefs in an attempt to head off what ministers are now privately describing as the most acute youth unemployment crisis in more than a decade.

Marc Bolland, the former chief executive of Marks & Spencer, has been drafted in by the government to corral Britain’s biggest employers behind a renewed push to get young people into work, following an excoriating review by the former Labour cabinet minister Alan Milburn that warned the country risked sacrificing a generation to worklessness.

Milburn’s interim report, published this week, found that one in six 16- to 24-year-olds will be out of work, education or training within five years unless ministers act decisively. The figure currently stands at one in eight. Official data has already pushed the cohort of so-called NEETs above the one-million mark, the highest level in more than 12 years, and Milburn warned of a “generational fault line” opening up beneath the labour market.

“The problem is that for too many young people, opportunities are not growing, they’re shrinking,” Milburn wrote. His review found that six in ten NEETs have never held a job, yet 84 per cent of those surveyed said they wanted to work or train, a finding that has galvanised support inside Number 11 for a more interventionist approach.

Bolland, who also ran Morrisons and served as chief operating officer at Heineken, will report to Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden and take up the role of Lead Non-Executive Director at the Department for Work and Pensions. His brief, confirmed by the government, is to convene chief executives across sectors and to advise ministers on how to respond to Milburn’s findings.

It is familiar territory. In 2012, in the wake of the previous summer’s riots, Bolland founded Movement to Work, the employer-led charity that has since helped more than 200,000 disadvantaged young people into employment. That track record, built on persuading rival boardrooms to pool resources rather than wait for state schemes, is precisely what ministers hope he can replicate at scale.

“I believe the government is serious about tackling this generational crisis of youth unemployment,” Bolland said on his appointment, “and I know that working hand-in-hand with business to support young people gives them the best possible chance of success.”

Alongside Bolland’s appointment, the government has secured commitments from some of the UK’s largest employers to back 300,000 work experience and training placements over the next three years. McDonald’s was first off the blocks earlier this year with 2,500 paid work experience placements, and Whitehall is now banking on a long tail of mid-market and SME employers following suit.

The push dovetails with the Treasury’s £725m package of apprenticeship reforms, which is expected to create 50,000 new roles and introduce shorter, more flexible training routes from April. Together, the measures represent the most concerted attempt to rebuild the rungs of the working ladder since the Coalition’s apprenticeship drive of the early 2010s.

Whether it works will depend in no small part on whether Bolland can persuade boardrooms that the cost of a placement now is cheaper than the cost of a hollowed-out talent pipeline later. As Milburn put it in his own assessment of the review’s findings, for every £1 the state spent on employment support for young people in 2024/25, roughly £25 went on benefits. That, more than any speech from the Despatch Box, is the number business will be asked to help shift.

Read more:
Bolland called in as Milburn review warns of a “lost generation” of British youth

Roughly nine in ten companies are yet to see a penny of financial benefit from artificial intelligence, despite a threefold rise in workplace usage over the past two years, according to the head of the world’s largest consulting firm in Britain and Ireland.

Matt Prebble, chief executive of Accenture UK and Ireland, said the disconnect between enthusiastic adoption and measurable returns now ranks as one of the most pressing strategic questions facing boardrooms on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Over the last two years, we’ve seen three times as many people using AI within the workplace, but that individual productivity … that’s not actually yet translating to real company performance,” he said. His verdict echoes fresh Accenture research showing that only one in ten UK organisations has successfully scaled the technology into core operations.

According to Prebble, the failure to extract value has its roots in companies treating AI as a bolt-on rather than reshaping the way they work “across people, process and technology”.

“We found that one in ten companies are really starting to get the productivity flow through to the bottom line, but on the other hand, 90 per cent of companies aren’t,” he said. He remained confident, however, that AI would yet have a “material impact” on businesses prepared to display the “confidence and the willingness to reinvent” how they operate, with the technology at the centre of the redesign.

His warning lands at a moment when chief executives and chief financial officers are sharpening their pencils over AI budgets. Businesses are increasingly questioning whether the sums they are pouring into AI tokens, the basic units used by large language models to read, remember and generate content, are delivering a defensible return. The growing scepticism mirrors a wider pattern of stalling adoption at large enterprises as doubts mount over AI returns.

Andrew Macdonald, chief operating officer at Uber, conceded last week that the ride-hailing and delivery group had yet to observe any direct productivity uplift tied to its rising AI token consumption. “That link is not there yet, right?” he said. By March, Uber had burned through its annual budget for “agentic”, or autonomous, AI, with the link between greater token spend and useful consumer features still unconvincing.

Microsoft has reportedly told some of its staff to switch to its own in-house model rather than third-party alternatives, in an effort to rein in costs. According to Axios, one unnamed company spent $500 million in a single month on Anthropic’s Claude platform after leaving employee usage uncapped.

The mounting cost pressure has emboldened critics of the sector’s hyper-investment cycle. A widely cited MIT study reported by Fortune found that 95 per cent of corporate generative AI pilots were failing to produce measurable returns, prompting renewed warnings of a possible correction in the valuations and business models of the industry’s leading players.

Cultural headwinds are building too. Pope Leo has criticised the AI industry and called for tighter regulation, while graduates at several US college campuses have booed speakers championing the technology. Prebble acknowledged that AI was suffering from “a bit of a brand issue” in the West, “very different to Asia”, with anxiety over job losses and the pace of change clouding the picture.

“You have seen leaders in the market talking around the job dislocation and giving headlines around the impact on early graduate or next graduate jobs, which I think has created some of the fear out there,” he said.

He insisted, however, that equating greater AI adoption with fewer overall jobs reflected a “narrow view” of productivity. “The further we go in this cycle … things will be done differently. And therefore there’ll be different skills and different capabilities required,” he added. “There’s always been those waves of technological change that have come and it is true that it’s always created new job opportunities and over time, those job opportunities have outpaced the previous job.”

For all the gloom over returns, Prebble argued that Britain still has time to turn AI into a national growth story. The UK may have largely missed out on the spoils of building AI infrastructure, but he believes there is a credible path to capitalise on the application layer by playing to British strengths in life sciences and professional services. That view aligns with separate HSBC research suggesting AI adoption could unlock a £105bn revenue boost for UK mid-sized firms by 2030.

“If we can get our innovation swagger back to be able to then scale that across the country and globally, we’ve got some good opportunities,” Prebble said.

Accenture has begun rebranding its 800,000-strong workforce as “reinventors”, a label Prebble said reflects the group’s growing remit advising clients on how to overhaul their operating models for the AI era. Last year the consulting giant restructured its own business, folding strategy, consulting, creative, technology and operations into a single division dubbed “reinvention services”. Earlier this year, reports emerged that the Dublin-based firm had been monitoring how its own staff used AI tools as a factor in promotion decisions.

For now, though, the message from the boss of Britain’s largest professional services consulting brand is blunt: the productivity revolution promised by AI is still, for the vast majority of UK plc, a promise rather than a payslip.

Read more:
Nine in ten companies still waiting for AI to pay off, warns Accenture chief

Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell has been left nursing a costs bill expected to top £40 million after a High Court judge tore into the media tycoon’s two-year campaign against the Gambling Commission, branding its case for £1.3 billion in damages “fanciful”.

In a punishing blow to the 73-year-old entrepreneur, Mrs Justice Joanna Smith ordered Northern & Shell and its subsidiary, the New Lottery Company, to pay costs on the indemnity basis, a punitive measure typically reserved for litigants whose conduct the court considers unreasonable. The judge further directed that 75 per cent of the bill be paid up front, denying Desmond’s camp the breathing space of a full appeal process before writing the cheque.

The ruling marks a humbling end to what was billed in court as the legal fallout from “the most financially significant procurement process in UK history” — the award of the fourth National Lottery licence, valued at £70 billion over a decade.

The anatomy of a defeat

Northern & Shell’s twin-track challenge attacked both the Gambling Commission’s scoring of its bid as a “fail” and the lawfulness of post-award modifications to the contract handed to Czech-owned Allwyn Entertainment, the eventual winner. Neither argument survived contact with the courtroom.

Smith found that the commission had been entirely right to disqualify Desmond’s bid, which had failed more than half of the 23 mandatory requirements the regulator had set. The judge highlighted an “enormous gap” of more than 30 points between Northern & Shell’s aggregate score and Allwyn’s, describing the Czech operator, controlled by billionaire Karel Komárek, as the “world leader in conducting lotteries”.

In dismissing the £1.3 billion damages claim outright, the judge concluded it was “fanciful to suppose” Desmond’s vehicle would have won any fair competition against Allwyn. The commission’s subsequent modifications to the licence were also held to be lawful, a finding that closes off the secondary route Northern & Shell had attempted to keep alive after dropping part of its claim on the eve of trial.

A bill that keeps growing

The Gambling Commission’s own legal costs are understood to have reached around £22 million, broadly in line with the £28.8 million the regulator had already disclosed in its mounting defence budget for the case. On top of that, Desmond’s company is liable for Allwyn’s legal fees and its own counsel, pushing the all-in figure comfortably past £40 million.

For a privately held group whose flagship asset is now the Health Lottery, launched in 2011, that is no trivial sum. Northern & Shell most recently reported around £20.8 million in cash reserves, while the New Lottery Company itself sat on a pre-tax loss. The interim payment alone could force a recalibration of group finances.

A founder running out of road

Desmond made his name in adult magazines before moving into adult television and, in 2010, the acquisition of Channel 5. He has since exited those interests along with Express Newspapers, leaving the Health Lottery and the failed bid for the National Lottery as the centre of gravity for his media-to-gaming empire.

The High Court ruling, published in full on the Courts and Tribunals Judiciary website, forms part of a wider pattern: the original April defeat on the substantive claim left little room for the costs hearing to deliver anything other than further pain. Northern & Shell has signalled an appetite to appeal, but the indemnity costs order suggests the bench took a dim view of how the proceedings were run.

What the regulator says

A spokeswoman for the Gambling Commission, which welcomed the ruling in a public statement, said the costs award would “lessen the potential impact of the litigation on good causes” — a pointed reminder that every pound spent defending the licence is a pound not reaching the charities and community projects the lottery is designed to fund.

Lawyers for the commission noted the order remained open to appeal, but called the interim payment a “significant milestone” that effectively closes this chapter of the dispute. A written judgment from Smith, expected within weeks, will set out in detail why she considered indemnity costs appropriate, and is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Desmond camp.

Northern & Shell has been contacted for comment.

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Desmond’s Northern & Shell faces £40m bill after ‘fanciful’ lottery claim collapses

Backed by the National Wealth Fund, the British Business Bank and M&G, Pragmatic Semiconductor is using a modular, low-capital model to scale flexible chip production at a pace Asia and the US would struggle to match.

On the Meadowfield industrial estate outside Durham, a 55,000 sq ft warehouse that spent a decade gathering dust, and the droppings of nesting seagulls, has been transformed into one of the more intriguing bets in British manufacturing. The gulls have been seen off by a hawk called Buzz; the drains have been cleared; and inside what was once a PVC piping factory, the UK’s most ambitious volume chipmaker is now in full production.

Pragmatic Semiconductor is twelve months into shipping its first commercial orders, the culmination of 14 years of work that began as a Cambridge science project. By year-end, the company expects billions of its ultra-thin, 300mm flexible chips to be leaving the Durham site bound for customers in pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics and fast-moving consumer goods. At that point, management believes Pragmatic will be the UK’s largest semiconductor manufacturer by volume.

The timing is pointed. The European Commission is this week expected to publish a refreshed Chips Act, the latest leg of Brussels’ attempt to wean the bloc off American and Asian silicon by backing home-grown semiconductor capacity. Westminster, too, has put domestic chipmaking near the top of its modern industrial strategy, with advanced manufacturing earmarked as a sector in which Britain has what ministers call a “genuine right to win”.

A different kind of chip, and a different kind of fab

Pragmatic’s edge is that it does not play the same game as TSMC, Samsung or Intel. Its proprietary thin-film transistor technology dispenses with silicon altogether, producing FlexICs, flexible integrated circuits, capable of tracking individual items through complex supply chains and giving consumers verifiable provenance in a way QR codes simply cannot. A bottle of wine can carry its full origin story; a packet of medication bought on Temu or Amazon can be authenticated as the real thing rather than a counterfeit. In time, the chips will power continuous glucose monitors and other slim, flexible medical devices used in the prevention of type-2 diabetes.

The contrast with the conventional fab model is just as striking. Where a Taiwanese or Korean facility can cost tens of billions and take months to push a wafer through its production cycle, Pragmatic’s modular plant requires materially less capital and turns chips out in days. Inside the 30-by-20-metre clean room, robots glide along ceiling tracks shuttling glass-backed substrates between a metal-oxide deposition machine, a photolithography rig that imposes the circuit image, and an etching station that chemically carves out each layer. The finished wafers, each carrying up to 50,000 chips, pass to an assembly room where they are diced and bonded to antenna-bearing circuits. The result emerges from the line looking, disarmingly, like a translucent roll of snowflake-patterned Christmas paper.

An IPO in the cross-hairs

Chief executive David Moore, who relocated from Idaho-headquartered Micron in 2023, is unambiguous about ambition. “Our goal is to be one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world,” he says. Pragmatic’s “north star”, he adds, is “a potential IPO”.

In June he is in Europe and China to meet customers, before turning to the US in July. The reception, he says, is warm. “We engage with the CEOs and chairmen of those customers. They see it as something very strategic and don’t look at us as some outlier UK-based semiconductor company. They see us as a world leader in FlexIC technology. It is now all about orders and shipping.”

Moore is, however, careful to temper near-term expectations. Each new fabrication facility, even with Pragmatic’s simplified processes, will take 12 to 14 months to bring online. The Durham site has space for seven more lines, equating to “capacity for tens of billions of ICs per year”. Significant revenues are expected this year for the first time, with a “milestone-based” path to gross margin, break-even and ultimately free cashflow.

Capital, and the british industrial strategy in action

The funding base behind that journey is unusually domestic. Pragmatic’s December 2023 raise remains the largest semiconductor venture round in European history, with around 70 per cent of the £162 million coming from UK pools of capital, the National Wealth Fund, the British Business Bank, the public/private Northern Gritstone fund and M&G’s Catalyst fund among them. A subsequent extension lifted the round to £179 million. It is precisely the sort of patient, blended-capital deployment that ministers have been pointing to as evidence the £1bn government commitment to the UK microchip industry is starting to bite, alongside earlier schemes that supported a wave of British chip start-ups.

In March 2024, HRH The Princess Royal formally opened Pragmatic Park, home to the UK’s first 300mm wafer fab, with the company committing to 500 highly skilled new jobs over five years.

Ciaran Mulligan, chief investment officer at M&G Life, who oversees £188 billion of client assets, says the case for institutional money is straightforward. “Our scale enables us to invest into private companies, opening up opportunities you simply don’t see in public markets. By sourcing these investments directly through our asset management teams, we can back businesses that are growing, creating jobs and driving innovation.”

The team behind the technology

Founded in Cambridge in 2010 by Richard Price and Scott White, Pragmatic has worked with the Centre for Process Innovation in Sedgefield, County Durham, since 2012. Its workforce now stands at 350, weighted heavily towards PhD-level researchers across the Sedgefield, Durham and Cambridge sites. The chair is Peter Herweck, the former chief executive of Schneider Electric and, before that, of the FTSE 100 software group Aveva, which Schneider bought for £9.5 billion in 2023. The board also includes former Intel chief engineering officer Murthy Renduchintala.

Talent retention in the North East is a quietly significant part of the story. Heather Flint, 31, moved from Lincoln to study in Newcastle, stayed on for a PhD in physical chemistry, her research was on translucent solar cells designed to be embedded in windows, and was contemplating a move south to Cambridge or overseas when she came across Pragmatic. “Staying up north was quite important to me. I just love it,” she says. The R&D team built a role around her. Three years and three promotions later, she has moved from device development to lead design scientist and now into project management. “There is something new every day.”

The company actively recruits postgraduates into its research and technical roles and apprentices into technician roles. Its youngest team member, based in Cambridge, is 21. “In the evening he builds robots for fun,” a spokeswoman noted.

The bigger picture

Whether Pragmatic ultimately lists in London, New York or both will be one of the more closely watched decisions in British technology over the next 24 months. What is already clear is that, by combining a genuinely novel product, a capital-light manufacturing model and an unusually British shareholder register, the company has handed Westminster a rare worked example of its industrial strategy actually working — and quietly assembled the sort of platform from which a UK national champion could, plausibly, take on the giants of Hsinchu, Pyeongtaek and Phoenix.

Read more:
The British chipmaker quietly building a global challenger in county Durham

America remains a growth market for British businesses, but slower corporate profits, sticky inflation and a patchwork of state-level rules mean the bar for success has been raised, according to leading audit, tax and advisory firm Blick Rothenberg.

The United States is still expanding, but the easy tailwinds that once carried ambitious British exporters across the Atlantic are fading. Fresh figures from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis show real GDP grew at an annualised rate of 1.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, with real final sales to private domestic purchasers up 2.4 per cent, a sign that households and businesses are still spending, even as profit growth softens.

For UK firms weighing an American push, the message from Blick Rothenberg is blunt: the opportunity is real, but the margin for error is narrower than it has been for some time.

A growth market, but a tougher one

Michael Holland, Partner and Lead for US Expansion at the firm, said the latest BEA data confirms the US remains a viable growth market for UK exporters and investors. “The US economy is still growing, with GDP expanding at an annualised rate of 1.6 per cent in Q1 2026. Core domestic demand is still holding up, with real final sales to private domestic purchasers rising 2.4 per cent, which suggests customers and businesses are still spending. However, with inflation remaining elevated and corporate profit growth slowing sharply, the bar for success is rising.”

His comments land against a backdrop of rising friction in the transatlantic trade corridor. According to the Office for National Statistics, UK goods exports to the US have been volatile since Washington introduced its latest round of tariffs, with sharp month-on-month swings as British exporters rework supply chains and pricing.

America is not one market

Holland is clear that the most common strategic mistake is treating the US as a single, uniform target. “British firms’ strategy to succeed in this environment needs to start with recognising that the US is a very large and highly varied country, not one single uniform market,” he said. “Successful expansion strategies usually focus on specific regions first, whether that is the East Coast, the Pacific North West, the North East or the central states — rather than trying to target the entire US at once.”

For founders looking at where to plant a flag, the practical questions are familiar to anyone who has crossed the Atlantic before: is there genuine demand, what does the local tax and regulatory mix look like, and how do tariffs and operating costs reshape the unit economics? As Business Matters has explored in its guide to key strategies for UK tech companies expanding to the US, local hiring, partnerships and a region-first mindset routinely separate the winners from the costly retreats.

Pricing, routes to market and the cost of getting it wrong

Holland argues that British firms need to be far more disciplined about pricing and capital allocation before they commit. “Firms need to test whether there is a genuine customer base for their product or service, decide which areas offer the best fit, and understand how local rules, taxes, tariffs and operating costs could affect margins,” he said. “They also need to think carefully about pricing, routes to market and how much investment is needed before the business becomes commercially viable.”

That diagnosis chimes with wider advice on market entry during international expansion, which routinely flags under-pricing and under-capitalisation as the silent killers of overseas ventures.

For SMEs in particular, the temptation to chase headline US revenue without a hard look at landed cost, state sales tax exposure and distribution economics can quickly turn a promising launch into a cash drain.

Pulled into America, not pushed

The most resilient UK entrants, Holland suggests, are those responding to demand rather than chasing it. “The British businesses most likely to succeed are often those being pulled into the US by real customer demand and that have a well thought out strategy to make the most of that opportunity,” he said.

That advice echoes the work of trade bodies such as BritishAmerican Business, whose trade and investment guide for UK firms in the US has become a standard reference point for boards weighing the transatlantic move.

The 2026 playbook

Holland’s closing message is one British founders and finance directors should pin to the wall. “The British businesses that will prosper in 2026 are those that are targeted in where they play, disciplined in how they price, and realistic about the cost and complexity of scaling in the US.”

In a year when American consumers are still spending but corporate margins are tightening, the UK firms that win in the States will be those that resist the urge to plant a flag everywhere, and instead pick their patch, sharpen their numbers and earn their growth.

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UK firms need a sharper strategy to win in a changing American economy

Christian Horner, the British motorsport executive who steered Red Bull Racing through two decades of Formula 1 dominance, has been engaged by Oakley Capital as an advisor on the firm’s investments in premium sports.

The move marks his first substantive role since departing the Milton Keynes constructor earlier this year.

The London-headquartered private equity house, founded by serial entrepreneur Peter Dubens, said Horner will work alongside its dealmakers to identify and unlock opportunities in what has become one of the most contested corners of European private markets. Sports assets, long viewed as trophy holdings, are increasingly being repositioned by sophisticated investors as resilient, cash-generative businesses with global growth profiles, as institutional capital floods into the sector.

For Horner, 52, the appointment caps a remarkable commercial chapter. Between 2005 and 2025 he led Red Bull’s Formula 1 operation to eight Drivers’ Championships, six Constructors’ titles and 124 race victories, while overseeing the launch of Red Bull Powertrains and Red Bull Advanced Technologies. Under his leadership, the team generated more than $3 billion in commercial revenue through global partnerships and sponsorships, a track record that few in motorsport, or indeed wider sports business, can rival.

Peter Dubens, Founder and Managing Partner of Oakley Capital, said: “Christian Horner is widely recognised as a highly successful leader in global sport. His track record, expertise and commercial instinct will be invaluable as we continue to scale our sports portfolio. We are increasingly drawn to businesses in this space that share the hallmarks of a typical Oakley investment: founder-led, high-growth and supported by resilient revenues, or under-commercialised ‘scarce’ assets with significant untapped potential. We look forward to working with Christian in order to unlock these opportunities.”

Horner added: “Sports businesses are benefitting from growing global audiences and participation rates as more people embrace healthier, active lifestyles. I have known and respected Peter and the Oakley team for many years and have always admired their approach to building ambitious, founder-led businesses. Oakley Capital has established a strong reputation across the sports and consumer landscape and I look forward to working together in the future and sharing my experience to help support the next generation of standout sports businesses.”

The hire fits a broader pattern in the UK mid-market, where private equity houses have been doubling down on co-investments and bolt-on strategies to navigate a more discerning fundraising environment. Sports, alongside consumer health and digitally native brands, has emerged as a defensive growth story, with global broadcasting rights, participation-led categories and premium consumer products commanding investor appetite that has so far defied broader macro headwinds.

Oakley’s existing sports portfolio gives Horner a substantive platform from which to operate. The firm is invested in Athena Racing, now rebranded GB1, the ‘Challenger of Record’ for the 38th America’s Cup; NOX, the high-performance padel racket brand that has become a global benchmark in the world’s fastest-growing racket sport; Vice Golf, the digitally-native German golf brand disrupting traditional equipment retail; and North Sails, the storied marine sports business that remains a leader in performance sailmaking.

Industry observers will read the appointment as a signal that Oakley intends to accelerate dealmaking in the sector at a moment when valuations for premium sports assets are being stress-tested. For Horner, whose contacts span team owners, rights-holders, sponsors and governing bodies, the brief offers a route back into the commercial heart of the industry without the operational burden of running a team. Specialist outlet Sportcal noted that the move places Horner at the centre of Oakley’s sports partnerships strategy, reflecting how senior executives are increasingly migrating into advisory roles at private equity firms as the asset class matures.

For seasoned readers of UK private markets, the message is unambiguous: the smart money is treating sport as an industry, not a hobby, and Oakley wants a seat at the table when the next generation of category-defining businesses changes hands. Those keen to understand the mechanics underpinning these deals can revisit Business Matters’ guide to investing in private equity like an insider.

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Horner joins Oakley Capital to steer premium sports dealmaking

There is a pattern hiding in plain sight across the world’s most dynamic economies. The cities that attract the most ambitious people, generate the highest GDP per capita, and set the pace for global business are, consistently, the same cities where burnout rates are most acute. London. Singapore. New York. Dubai.

The correlation is not coincidental — and understanding it has significant implications for anyone running a business in these environments.

A 2025 analysis by Instant Offices, which examined Google search data across 30 major cities, found that searches for burnout signs and symptoms have risen by 50% globally — and that the highest burnout sentiment is concentrated in exactly the cities that top productivity and economic competitiveness rankings. London ranked first. Singapore third. New York fourth. The cities that drive the most output are also the ones where the workforce is most visibly struggling to sustain it.

The Productivity Paradox

High-output cities share a set of structural features that are simultaneously the source of their economic success and the engine of their burnout problem. Dense concentrations of competitive professionals. Industries — finance, technology, consulting, law — where long hours are normalised and performance expectations are exceptionally high. A culture where ambition is the baseline rather than the exception.

In Singapore, nearly half the workforce — 47% — report feeling physically or mentally exhausted at the end of every workday. In the United States, 57% of workers experience negative impacts from work-related stress including emotional exhaustion, reduced productivity, and loss of motivation. In the UK, 91% of workers reported high or extreme stress levels in the past year, with one in five needing time off as a result.

These are not the numbers of failing economies. They are the numbers of some of the most productive workforces on the planet. Which raises an uncomfortable question for business leaders: at what point does the culture that drives performance begin to undermine it?

What the Data Says About the Real Cost

The financial case against burnout is now overwhelming. According to the World Health Organization, depression and anxiety alone cost the global economy approximately $1 trillion annually in lost productivity — equivalent to 12 billion working days. Burnout costs businesses $322 billion annually through absenteeism, turnover, and reduced output. Employees experiencing burnout are 63% more likely to take sick days and 2.6 times more likely to be actively looking for another job.

Teams operating under high burnout conditions show 18 to 20% lower productivity and markedly reduced discretionary effort — the initiative, creativity, and above-and-beyond contribution that is particularly difficult to replace in knowledge-based industries. For SMEs, where the departure of a single high-performing individual can have outsized consequences, these numbers carry additional weight.

In the UAE specifically, recent estimates place the annual cost of mental health issues and burnout to businesses at around AED 3.9 billion in lost productivity alone. Against that backdrop, the 2025 figure showing that 65% of UAE employees plan to seek new employment before the end of the year — with burnout and lack of wellbeing support cited as key drivers — represents a talent retention problem of considerable scale.

Dubai: A Case Study in Ambition and Its Limits

Dubai is a particularly instructive example of how this dynamic plays out. Built on performance, shaped by ambition, and populated largely by expat professionals who came specifically to excel — the city creates a professional environment where the pressure to succeed is unusually concentrated and unusually visible.

For expat workers, the stakes are compounded. Visa status is often tied to employment. Family support networks are typically thousands of miles away. The cultural expectation in many of Dubai’s dominant industries — finance, real estate, technology, hospitality — is one of consistent high performance, visible commitment, and minimal complaint. According to Meditopia’s research, 89% of UAE employees experience stress, a figure that surpasses the global average by a significant margin.

The city has, to its credit, begun to address this structurally. Dubai invested AED 105 million in mental health infrastructure in 2024. The UAE Federal Mental Health Law, which came into force in May 2024, formally protects employees from dismissal on the basis of a mental health condition. The Dubai Health Authority introduced comprehensive mental health service standards in February 2025. These are not cosmetic moves — they reflect a recognition, at government level, that the human cost of high performance has reached a point that requires active policy response.

What This Means for Business Leaders Operating in High-Performance Cities

The pattern across London, Singapore, New York, and Dubai points to a consistent finding: high-performance professional culture, left unmanaged, is self-defeating. The environments that attract the most capable people also, over time, erode those people’s ability to perform sustainably. The organisations that are ahead of this recognise that managing the human cost of ambition is not a welfare consideration — it is a productivity strategy.

For businesses with teams in Dubai, this means being specific about what support looks like in practice. An Employee Assistance Programme that nobody uses is not a solution. Directing a team member who is visibly struggling toward a qualified psychologist in Dubai who understands the specific pressures of expat professional life — the visa dependency, the distance from home, the cultural adjustment on top of the performance pressure — is categorically different from pointing them toward a generic helpline. The specificity of the support matters as much as its existence.

Research from the Global Wellness Institute shows that effective wellness programmes produce a 25% reduction in absenteeism and a 32% increase in productivity. Deloitte’s UAE analysis found a 6-to-1 return on investment for organisations with strong workplace wellbeing programmes. The investment case is not ambiguous.

The Leaders Who Get This Right

The distinction between organisations that manage this well and those that do not is rarely about resources. It is about whether leadership treats workforce psychological health as a business variable — something to be actively managed — or as a background concern that surfaces only when someone leaves or breaks down.

Leaders who get this right tend to share a few consistent characteristics. They model vulnerability — demonstrating, through their own behaviour, that acknowledging limits is not incompatible with high performance. They build access to credible, specific support into the infrastructure of the business rather than leaving it to individuals to find on their own. And they measure the outputs: retention, engagement, sick days, performance consistency — the signals that tell you whether the environment is sustainable before someone tells you it is not.

The most productive cities in the world are also the most burned-out. That is not a coincidence. It is a structural feature of high-performance environments that every business leader operating in them should understand — and build a deliberate response to, before the cost makes the decision for them.

Read more:
Why the Most Productive Cities in the World Also Have the Highest Burnout Rates

Most people think their heating or cooling system is the reason their energy bills are out of control. Usually, it’s the house itself.

Tiny gaps around attic beams. Drafts behind walls. Air is leaking through crawl spaces. In many homes, expensive heated or cooled air escapes nonstop while outside air sneaks in. Your HVAC system keeps working harder to catch up. That cycle burns money every month.

That’s why spray foam insulation has exploded in popularity over the last decade. It doesn’t just slow heat transfer like traditional insulation. It also seals air leaks.

Spray Foam Insulation USA has spent years fixing exactly these problems across the Tri-State area. The company started in 2015 with one trailer and has grown into a four-truck operation handling residential, commercial, marine, and industrial projects. Founder Jake Herman came from two decades in construction before building the business around one idea: making homes and buildings more comfortable while cutting energy waste.

“We walk into houses where the second floor is freezing in January and boiling in July,” Herman says. “A lot of homeowners think they need a new HVAC system. Then we seal the attic with spray foam, and suddenly the whole house feels different within a day.”

That change shows up on utility bills, too.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, air leaks and poor insulation can account for major energy loss in homes. Some studies estimate that homeowners can reduce heating and cooling costs by 15% to 50% with properly installed insulation and air-sealing systems.

That’s a massive swing for something most people never even see behind their walls.

Why Traditional Insulation Falls Short

Fiberglass insulation became the standard for decades because it was cheap and easy to install. The problem is that air moves right through it.

Imagine wearing a thick winter sweater while standing in a wind tunnel. The material exists, but air is still flowing everywhere.

Spray foam works differently. Once applied, it expands into cracks, gaps, and hard-to-reach corners. That creates an air seal instead of just a thermal barrier.

Closed-cell spray foam also delivers one of the highest R-values per inch among common insulation materials. Higher R-values mean stronger resistance to heat flow.

In simple terms, less heat escapes in winter, and less hot air pushes inside during summer.

That matters more than ever in places like New York, where homeowners deal with freezing winters, humid summers, and brutal temperature swings in between.

“People don’t realize how much outside air is moving through their house until we test it,” says Herman. “We’ve had jobs in Nassau County where you could literally feel cold air coming through electrical outlets.”

Your HVAC System Stops Fighting a Losing Battle

Heating and cooling systems burn the most energy in most homes. When insulation fails, those systems run constantly.

That creates a chain reaction:

Higher utility bills
More wear on HVAC equipment
Uneven room temperatures
Poor humidity control
Constant thermostat adjustments

Spray foam helps stabilize indoor temperatures so the HVAC system doesn’t need to cycle nonstop.

One of the biggest differences homeowners notice is consistency. Rooms stop feeling wildly different from one another.

The upstairs bedroom that used to feel like a sauna in August becomes usable again.

The drafty living room near the garage no longer feels cold.

The basement gets less damp.

That consistency also improves efficiency because the system reaches target temperatures faster and maintains them longer.

The Department of Energy states that air sealing combined with insulation improvements can significantly reduce energy waste in a home’s thermal envelope.

Summer Savings Hit Harder Than Most People Expect

Most homeowners think insulation only matters in winter.

Actually, summer is when many people notice the biggest difference.

Sunlight beats down on roofs and exterior walls all day. Attics can reach temperatures above 130 degrees. That heat pushes downward into living spaces, forcing air conditioners to work overtime.

Spray foam creates a tighter thermal barrier that blocks much of that heat transfer.

“You walk into some attics in July and it feels like opening an oven,” Herman says. “After we spray foam the roof deck, those attic temperatures drop dramatically. Your AC isn’t fighting against that giant heat source anymore.”

That can lead to serious cooling savings over time, especially in homes with older attic insulation or poorly sealed ductwork.

In many houses, ducts run through unconditioned attic spaces. If those spaces get extremely hot, the cooled air traveling through the ducts warms up before it even reaches the rooms below.

Spray foam helps address that issue by controlling the attic environment.

It Also Helps With Moisture and Noise

Energy savings get most of the attention, but homeowners usually end up loving the side benefits too.

Closed-cell spray foam helps reduce moisture intrusion by acting as an air and vapor barrier in many applications. Less moisture can mean lower risk of mold, condensation, and damp odors.

Open-cell foam and Rockwool systems also help reduce sound transfer between rooms and from outside traffic.

That matters in crowded suburban neighborhoods, apartment buildings, mixed-use spaces, and homes near busy roads.

“One customer called us after we finished their project and said it was the first time they slept through the night without hearing trucks from the parkway,” Herman says. “That’s something people never expect from insulation.”

The Upfront Cost vs. Long-Term Savings Debate

Spray foam costs more upfront than fiberglass. There’s no way around that.

But homeowners often focus only on the installation price rather than long-term operating costs.

Cheaper insulation can keep generating monthly losses through wasted energy for years.

Spray foam is more like fixing the root problem.

Industry estimates suggest many spray foam projects pay for themselves within a few years through lower utility bills. Federal tax credits and energy-efficiency incentives can also offset some installation costs.

That changes the math considerably for many homeowners.

A More Comfortable House Changes Everything

The funny thing about spray foam insulation is that most people start the process thinking about money.

Then they end up talking about comfort.

The house feels quieter.

The temperature feels balanced.

The air feels less sticky in summer.

Cold drafts disappear.

Certain rooms finally become usable year-round.

That’s why demand keeps growing.

People are tired of fighting their homes every season.

“We always tell customers this isn’t just about insulation,” Herman says. “It’s about how your house feels every single day after the job is done.”

Read more:
How Spray Foam Insulation USA Helps Lower Energy Bills Year-Round

Brussels has fired its loudest warning shot yet at the ultra-low-cost online marketplaces reshaping European retail, slapping Chinese-owned Temu with a €200 million penalty for failing to keep illegal and hazardous goods off its platform.

The fine, the largest yet issued under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), follows a near two-year investigation into whether the largest online platforms are policing the sale of illegal and harmful products to consumers across the bloc. It is also the most significant enforcement action taken against a Chinese-owned platform since the regime came into force.

In a decision published this week, the European Commission concluded that Temu had “failed to diligently identify, analyse and assess the systemic risks of illegal products being offered on its platform and the resulting harm to consumers in the European Union”. Further penalties could follow, the commission warned, with Temu given until the end of August to submit a remedial action plan or face periodic penalty payments.

Mystery shoppers, dodgy chargers and dangerous toys

At the heart of the case sits a mystery-shopping exercise in which investigators bought products directly from Temu and sent them for laboratory testing. The results made for uncomfortable reading.

A high proportion of phone chargers failed basic electrical safety tests. Baby toys were judged to present medium to high safety risks, including chemicals such as phthalates above EU legal limits, alongside small detachable parts that posed a potential suffocation hazard for infants and toddlers.

Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, was unsparing in her assessment. “Risk assessments are not box-ticking exercises, they are the backbone of the DSA,” she said.

“Temu’s risk assessment underestimates concrete risks, lacks specificity, is not grounded in solid evidence and is not comprehensive. It leaves regulators, users and the public in the dark about the true scale of potential harm posed by illegal products sold on Temu.”

Breakneck growth on a collision course with Brussels

Temu was founded in 2022 by the Chinese e-commerce group PDD Holdings and has expanded with extraordinary speed by offering ultra low-priced goods shipped directly from manufacturers, frequently via heavily subsidised logistics. Its push into the United Kingdom and continental Europe has been powered by aggressive digital advertising and deep discounting.

That model has placed it in direct competition with Shein, which pioneered the low-cost, app-driven approach and has already redrawn the contours of the fast-fashion supply chain. For independent British retailers and SMEs, the rise of both has stoked a long-running row over a tilted playing field, with industry groups calling for a crackdown on Chinese fast-fashion imports amid fears that domestic retail is being undercut.

The commission’s intervention will be watched closely on this side of the Channel. While the UK is no longer bound by the DSA, Brussels has been steadily tightening customs checks on online retailers in a wider crackdown on unsafe goods, and pressure is mounting on Westminster to follow suit. The Online Safety Act and the forthcoming Product Regulation and Metrology Bill are widely expected to give UK regulators sharper teeth on marketplace listings, with Reuters reporting that the Brussels ruling is already being used as a reference point by national consumer authorities.

Temu pushes back

Temu, for its part, was quick to reject the commission’s assessment. A spokeswoman said the company “respects the objectives of the Digital Services Act and the need for clear, consistent rules across the digital economy”, but added that it considered the fine “disproportionate”.

The decision, she stressed, related to Temu’s first DSA assessment back in 2024 and “does not reflect the current state of our systems”. The business had since strengthened its risk controls and governance, she said.

“We will continue to engage with regulators in good faith and work toward a marketplace that serves consumers, businesses, and communities responsibly. We are reviewing the decision carefully and considering all available options.”

What it means for SMEs

For Britain’s small and mid-sized retailers, the case lands at a delicate moment. Many have long argued that hyper-scale platforms enjoy a structural advantage on cost and compliance — and that consumers are bearing the risk in their parcels. With Temu now actively recruiting UK sellers as it builds out a domestic warehouse footprint, the commission’s ruling sharpens a familiar question: how far should responsibility for product safety travel up the chain, from the third-party seller to the platform that hosts them?

For now, Brussels has provided its answer. Whether London responds in kind may shape the next chapter of UK e-commerce.

Read more:
Temu hit with record €200m EU fine over unsafe baby toys and dodgy chargers