Business

JP Morgan is quietly unwinding part of its post-Brexit Parisian build-up, shifting a clutch of trading roles back to London in what insiders describe as a recalibration rather than a retreat from the Continent.

The Wall Street giant, which moved aggressively to bulk up its French operations after Britain’s departure from the European Union, has concluded that it overshot when estimating how many EU-based staff it would need to satisfy the bloc’s regulators. A handful of traders are now packing their bags for the City, with the bank citing a combination of evolving role requirements, regulatory clarity and, tellingly, personal tax considerations among bankers themselves. Bloomberg was first to report the move.

“Paris is the home of JP Morgan’s EU sales and trading team, and we are committed to our sizeable operations on the Continent for the long term,” a spokesperson for the bank insisted, in language designed to soothe the Élysée as much as the markets.

Britain’s exit from the EU triggered one of the most disruptive structural overhauls global banking has seen in a generation. Lenders were forced to redistribute assets, capital and personnel across jurisdictions to keep client access alive and regulators on side. JP Morgan was among the most enthusiastic movers, transplanting hundreds of bankers across the Channel and turning Paris into a genuine European trading hub.

The strategy paid handsome dividends, at least diplomatically. Chief executive Jamie Dimon, widely regarded as the world’s most influential banker, was awarded France’s Légion d’Honneur in recognition of the bank’s contribution to lifting the French capital’s status in international finance. By the back end of last year, JP Morgan had roughly 1,000 staff in France, with 650 of them on the markets side.

That figure is now drifting in the opposite direction, and the timing is no coincidence. The bank is pressing ahead with plans for a colossal 3m sq ft tower in Canary Wharf, unveiled in the wake of an Autumn Budget that, to the relief of the Square Mile, spared the banking sector from a long-trailed tax raid. Chancellor Rachel Reeves hailed the project as “a multi-billion pound vote of confidence in the UK economy”.

The numbers are eye-watering even by the standards of British infrastructure spending. The development is expected to pump as much as £10bn into the wider economy, generate 7,800 construction and supply-chain jobs and ultimately house up to 12,000 employees, cementing London as JP Morgan’s principal base across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

But the deal is not done. JP Morgan has made plain that the skyscraper will only rise if Westminster keeps the fiscal weather favourable. A report from Tower Hamlets council disclosed that the bank has lobbied for “a business rates incentive over a period of years”, and ministers themselves have cautioned the local authority that JP Morgan is “unlikely to progress” without “clarity and certainty” on its eventual tax bill.

For SME owners watching from the sidelines, the message is mixed. A reinvigorated London financial centre would be a fillip for professional services firms, suppliers and the wider hospitality and property ecosystems that depend on a thriving Square Mile. Yet the unmistakable subtext, that even the bluest of blue-chip lenders are willing to play hardball on tax — is a reminder that the post-Brexit settlement remains a work in progress, and that footloose capital will continue to test the limits of British competitiveness.

Read more:
JP Morgan reverses Brexit-era Paris move as London beckons trading roles back

The John Lewis Partnership has been hauled before the High Court by the past and present owners of Brent Cross shopping centre in north London, in a dispute that could redraw the lines between bricks-and-mortar leases and the digital tills that now run through them.

Hammerson, the FTSE 250 landlord that owns Brent Cross today, and Standard Life, its predecessor, allege that the employee-owned retailer has been underpaying its rent for more than a decade by failing to count click-and-collect transactions as part of its in-store takings. The claim, lodged at the High Court last December and first surfaced by the *Financial Times*, hinges on the wording of a lease drafted in 1972, four years before Brent Cross even opened its doors and decades before the world wide web entered commercial use.

John Lewis has been one of the centre’s anchor tenants since 1976. The 125-year lease it signed obliges the partnership to pay a base rent of £30,000 a year plus a turnover top-up: 0.75 per cent of sales between £4m and £10m, rising to 1 per cent on anything above £10m. Industry sources put the store’s annual takings at around £50m, which would imply a rent bill of roughly £475,000 a year, a modest sum in modern retail terms, and a reminder of just how favourable these deals could be.

Such generous arrangements were common for anchors. In the heyday of the British shopping centre, landlords routinely offered cut-price rents to the John Lewises, BHSs and Marks & Spencers of the world on the basis that their mere presence would pull in footfall, lift surrounding rents and de-risk the entire scheme. Half a century on, those legacy leases are now being stress-tested against a retail landscape their drafters could not have imagined.

At the heart of the case is the meaning of “gross receipts”. Hammerson and Standard Life argue the term should capture online orders collected at the Brent Cross store, online orders fulfilled from the store, and in-store orders dispatched later from a John Lewis delivery depot. They point to lease language that already takes in “mail, telephone or similar orders received or filled at or from” the premises, alongside orders that “originated and/or are accepted at or from the demised premises” regardless of where delivery ultimately takes place.

John Lewis is not commenting publicly, but court papers show it is contesting the claim. Sources close to the partnership argue that a lease drafted before the internet existed cannot, as a matter of common sense, have intended to scoop up e-commerce.

That view has support across the property industry. “The sale occurs at the click, not the collect,” one rival landlord told *Business Matters*, “and the landlord should be benefiting from the ‘halo’ sales when shoppers come in to pick up their orders. You can’t argue there was intent to include click-and-collect in the lease because the internet didn’t exist in the seventies.”

The case is not solely about definitions. Hammerson has also taken aim at the way John Lewis has been reporting its numbers. Under the lease, the retailer must supply an audited sales certificate, signed off by its accountants. The landlord claims that for the past 12 years those certificates have come with a striking caveat: that the accountants’ examination “was not such as to constitute an audit”. Nor, it says, have the certificates included a breakdown of sales. The landlords “consider it likely” that some of those certificates have omitted sums that should have been included.

The remedy being sought is far-reaching. The claimants want the court to compel John Lewis to produce a detailed sales breakdown for every year since 2013, with backdated rent, interest and costs to follow if the figures show click-and-collect was excluded.

For SME retailers and landlords watching from the sidelines, the implications are considerable. Turnover-linked rents, once a niche feature of anchor tenant deals, have spread rapidly through high streets and retail parks since the pandemic, as landlords have offered flexibility in exchange for a slice of the upside. How the courts interpret half-century-old wording could set a benchmark for far more recent agreements that are similarly silent on omnichannel trading.

It also raises a more uncomfortable question for retailers running hybrid operations. If a click-and-collect order is fulfilled from a back-of-store stockroom, is the shop a shop, a warehouse, or both? The answer matters not just for rent, but potentially for business rates, insurance and even planning classifications further down the line.

A trial date has yet to be set. Whatever the outcome, the case is likely to be studied closely by every property director, finance chief and retail lawyer with a turnover lease in the bottom drawer.

Read more:
John Lewis dragged into High Court over click-and-collect rent at Brent Cross

As an Atlanta real estate professional, based in Atlanta, I’ve seen how many careers in this industry are shaped less by single breakthroughs and more by consistent, long-term discipline.

Sam Lagod’s story reflects that reality clearly. Through the lens of real estate market insights in Atlanta, his path shows how fundamentals, relationships, and steady execution often matter more than timing or luck.

Sam Lagod’s career did not start with big headlines. It started with small steps, steady work, and a clear focus on people.

Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Lagod grew up in a close family. Sports were a big part of his early life. Baseball, football, hockey, and wrestling filled his days. Those experiences shaped how he approaches work today.

“Family was and remains a huge aspect of my life,” he says.

That early structure taught him discipline. It also taught him how to work with others. Both would later play a key role in his career.

From College Jobs to Real Estate Foundations

Lagod attended the College of Charleston, where he earned a degree in Business and Hospitality. During that time, he worked as a bartender and server.

It was not just about making money. It was where he learned how to communicate, stay organized, and handle pressure.

Outside of work, he spent time surfing, playing golf, and being outdoors. That balance between work and lifestyle stayed with him.

After graduating, he entered residential real estate. It was his first real look at how deals come together and how relationships drive business.

As someone who now follows real estate market insights in Atlanta, it’s clear how foundational those early experiences are for anyone trying to understand how markets function beyond the surface.

He later moved into commercial real estate. There, he focused on leasing and working with property owners and tenants. It gave him a deeper understanding of how properties perform over time.

Building Something Bigger with Amicus Properties

In 2019, Lagod helped bring a new idea to life. He was part of the early team behind Amicus Properties, a real estate investment firm focused on student housing across the Southeast.

The idea was simple. Focus on a specific market. Build systems that work. Grow with intention.

From an Atlanta real estate professional perspective, this kind of targeted strategy is often what separates scalable firms from reactive ones.

Lagod played a key role in shaping how the business operated. He worked across different areas, from managing properties to helping guide investment decisions. His work focused on improving how properties were run. That included working with teams, overseeing renovations, and tracking performance.

“Trust, communication, and commitment,” he says. “Those are the things that make everything work.”

Instead of chasing fast growth, the focus was on consistency. Step by step progress. Strong execution.

Navigating Change and Uncertainty in Real Estate

Like many in the industry, Lagod has faced periods of uncertainty. Market changes, shifting roles, and new challenges are part of the process.

He does not see those moments as setbacks. He sees them as part of the path.

“A significant obstacle I’ve faced has been navigating periods of transition and uncertainty,” he says. “I’ve learned to stay disciplined, seek advice, and focus on what I can control.”

That mindset is especially relevant when viewing broader real estate market insights in Atlanta, where cycles and shifts are constant and adaptability is essential.

That mindset helped him stay grounded. It also helped him make better decisions over time.

He believes success is not about avoiding challenges. It is about how you respond to them.

“I measure success by the progress I make and the relationships I build along the way,” he adds.

What Sets Sam Lagod Apart in Real Estate

Lagod’s approach is not complicated. It is built on a few core ideas.

Stay consistent. Build strong relationships. Focus on long-term growth.

As an Atlanta real estate professional, based in Atlanta, I see these same principles reflected in the most sustainable careers across the industry.

He believes that personal and professional success are closely connected. When one improves, the other often follows.

“When I’m growing personally and maintaining strong relationships, it allows me to perform better professionally,” he says.

He also values the people around him. From early mentors to current partners, those relationships have shaped his path.

“Trust yourself and who you surround yourself with,” he says.

That focus on people has been a key part of his work across residential and commercial real estate.

Life Outside Work: Balance and Perspective

Outside of business, Lagod keeps a strong focus on health and balance. He spends time outdoors with his dog, Forrest. He also enjoys surfing, golf, and tennis.

Fitness plays a big role in his routine. So does mental and emotional well-being.

He believes that taking care of yourself helps you show up better in every area of life.

He also gives back to his community. He volunteers with the varsity wrestling program at Marist High School and supports Project Open Hand.

“Family and friends,” he says when asked what matters most.

A Career Built on Steady Progress

Sam Lagod’s story is not about one big moment. It is about a series of decisions made over time.

From working in restaurants to building a career in real estate. From learning the basics to helping grow a business. Each step added to the next.

His definition of success reflects that journey.

“Success is building a life where I’m proud of the work I do, the people I surround myself with, and the impact I leave on others,” he says.

It is a simple idea. But it has shaped how he approaches everything.

And it continues to guide what comes next.

Read more:
Sam Lagod: Turning Discipline Into Real Estate Growth

If you visit enough factories, you start to see the same patterns repeat.

When a site owner complains about high power costs. An audit is commissioned. Metering is installed. Spreadsheets are produced. The conclusion usually assumes the same few points: total kWh consumption, peak demand, and, finally, how much solar could offset the bill.

On paper, everything looks very thorough.  On the factory floor, nothing really changes.

The machines and motors still regularly trip. Production still pauses. Equipment still fails earlier than it should. Operators keep resetting systems and working around problems that never appear in the audit report.

That gap is where the real losses live.

Energy audits are good at counting electricity, not behavior

Most commercial energy audits are built around a simple question: how much energy does this site use, and when?

That question is easy to answer. Utilities already provide the data. Data loggers or Smart meters refine it further. Half-hourly or five-minute intervals can be plotted and averaged. Solar simulations can be layered on top. Demand curves can be easily smoothed.

What audits rarely capture is how power behaves under stress.

They don’t show how the voltage changes when large motors start. They don’t record harmonics rising as loads stack on top of each other. They don’t explain why controls reset on certain afternoons or why drives fail well before their expected life.

Those problems don’t sit comfortably in a kWh chart, so they tend to be ignored.

When the numbers look acceptable, but operations keep suffering

Recently, we were asked to look at a factory where the energy numbers appeared reasonable. Consumption was in line with production. Nothing in the utility bills suggested a crisis.

On-site, the picture was very different.

Power factor was sitting around 0.8. Harmonic distortion was elevated enough to matter, even if it didn’t trip protections outright. The combined effect translated into an estimated one to two percent energy loss before production even started. That loss never appears as a line item. It is baked into inefficiency.

More damaging were the operational effects. Power interruptions were happening roughly once a week. Some were brief. Others lasted most of a day. Each interruption disrupted production sequences, caused spoilage, and forced shutdowns that took time and labor to unwind.

Over time, the site had also racked up significant replacement costs for electrical equipment. Drives, controls, and components were failing more often than their operating hours would suggest.

None of this was clearly shown in the audit.

From the audit’s perspective, energy consumption was roughly as expected. From the factory’s point of view, power was unpredictable and expensive in ways that weren’t being measured.

Power quality losses are real, even when nothing trips

One of the biggest blind spots in most audits is power quality.

Harmonics, phase imbalance, poor power factor, and voltage instability don’t usually announce themselves dramatically. They don’t cause blackouts. They don’t always trigger alarms. Instead, they subject equipment to constant low-level stress.

Motors can run hot. Different types of drives can derate more often. Controls misbehave under certain load conditions. Components age unevenly.

Taken separately, these effects look minor. Collectively, they shorten equipment life and increase maintenance costs. They also create a background level of inefficiency that never gets attributed to power.

Audits that focus only on energy quantity miss this entirely. They tell you how much electricity you used, not how much damage that electricity caused along the way.

Downtime is an energy cost, even if it isn’t billed

Another major omission is production downtime.

When power is interrupted, even briefly, factories lose far more than kilowatt-hours. They lose product. They lose labor. They lose process stability and predictability. They often lose entire batches.

Because downtime isn’t measured in energy units, it rarely appears in energy analysis. It sits in operations reports, maintenance logs, or simply in people’s heads.

Over time, sites normalize it. One interruption a week becomes “just how the grid is.” A few hours lost here and there become part of planning assumptions. The cost is real, but it’s diffuse enough that no one owns it.

An audit that ignores downtime is ignoring one of the largest controllable losses on many industrial sites.

Why solar does not automatically solve these problems

Solar is often proposed as the fix once an audit is complete. And in fairness, grid-tied solar does one thing extremely well: it produces low-cost energy during the day.

What it doesn’t do on its own is improve how power behaves.

A site can install a large solar system, reduce its daytime grid consumption, and still experience the same interruptions, instability, and equipment failures. From the audit’s perspective, the project is a success. From operations, frustration remains.

That’s because the underlying issue was never energy volume. It was power quality and control.

Measuring what actually matters changes the conversation

The moment proper measurement is introduced, the discussion shifts.

Instead of arguing about whether equipment is “too sensitive” or whether the grid is “getting worse,” teams can see exactly what is happening. They can correlate events. They can identify patterns. They can quantify losses that were previously dismissed as bad luck.

This is where field-grade power quality measurement becomes invaluable. Not utility averages. Not billing data. Actual recordings of voltage, frequency, harmonics, and transient behavior at the point where equipment is connected.

Once those signals are visible, many fixes turn out to be surprisingly modest. Power factor correction. Harmonic mitigation. Better coordination of equipment starts. Adjustments to protection and control logic.

In many cases, the capital required is far lower than the cost of continuing to absorb hidden losses year after year.

The difference between audited systems and engineered systems

Well-engineered industrial systems tend to age quietly.

They don’t demand constant attention. They don’t suffer from mysterious failures. Their equipment degrades evenly rather than catastrophically. Maintenance becomes routine rather than reactive.

You can see this clearly on sites where power quality has been treated as a design input rather than an afterthought.

One example is an industrial installation such as the Atlantic Grains facility, where system design focused not just on energy production but on maintaining clean, stable power under real operating conditions. That kind of approach doesn’t eliminate the grid’s imperfections, but it prevents them from cascading through the plant.

The result is not just lower energy cost. It’s calmer operations.

Why audits stay shallow, and why that’s unlikely to change

To be fair, most audits are not designed to miss these issues. They’re constrained by scope, budget, and expectation.

Clients often ask for savings numbers, not operational insight. Consultants deliver what is requested. Measuring deeper requires time, equipment, and a willingness to deal with uncomfortable findings.

But as operations become more automated and margins tighter, the cost of ignoring these losses keeps rising. Factories today are less tolerant of power irregularities than they were a decade ago. Controls are faster. Processes are tighter. Small disturbances propagate further.

The gap between what audits measure and what factories experience is widening.

Experience changes what you look for

Teams that spend years operating in facilities begin to approach energy very differently. They stop asking only how much power is used and start asking how it behaves when things aren’t ideal.

That perspective comes from seeing the same failures repeat across different sites and sectors. From watching equipment fail early for reasons that never appear in reports. From understanding that reliability is not a binary state but a spectrum.

Operators like Solaren Renewable Energy Solutions Corp., working across industrial and commercial sites, often encounter factories that believed their problems were mechanical or operational, only to discover that power quality was the silent trigger all along. Once that trigger is addressed, many long-standing issues simply stop occurring.

What a useful energy assessment should really answer

A meaningful assessment should go beyond energy accounting.

It should answer questions like:

How stable is the supply under real operating conditions?
Where does power quality move outside acceptable tolerances, and when?
How much does each interruption actually cost the business?
Which losses are structural, and which are fixable?

Those answers don’t fit neatly into a single spreadsheet. They require measurement, context, and experience.

Without them, businesses risk spending heavily on solutions that improve the optics while leaving the underlying problems untouched.

The uncomfortable truth

Most commercial energy audits don’t miss losses because they are careless. They miss them because those losses are harder to see, measure, and attribute.

Unfortunately, those are often the losses that matter the most.

Factories don’t usually struggle or fail because they lack energy. It’s because the power they receive isn’t consistent enough to keep modern operations stable.

Until audits start treating power quality, downtime, and equipment stress as first-class costs, businesses will keep solving the wrong problem.

Counting kilowatt-hours is easy.
Understanding what power is really doing takes more work.

That difference is where the real savings are found.

Read more:
Most Commercial Energy Audits Miss the Real Losses

For many leaders, digital transformation has long been something to tackle when time allowed, after the next funding round, after the next product launch, after the next operational fire was put out.

Marcin Pichur, Docuware, Regional Vice President Sales, UK/IRE, Spain, Italy, Poland, explains that the UK and Ireland now setting firm timelines for mandatory e‑invoicing, the era of “digital later” has officially ended.

In the UK, April 2029 has become the defining milestone for finance and IT teams. In Ireland, the deadlines arrive even sooner. Large organisations must comply by late 2028, and every business -regardless of size – must be capable of receiving structured e‑invoices by November of that year. For businesses, this means the countdown has already begun. Even if you only issue a handful of invoices a month, your systems will still need to handle structured data, not PDFs that merely mimic digital progress.

What’s often overlooked is that this shift is not simply a compliance exercise. This is a rare opportunity to modernise finance operations, eliminate manual friction and build a more resilient, data‑driven business. Those who act early will gain a meaningful operational advantage. Those who wait will find themselves scrambling to comply while competitors quietly accelerate.

Europe has already proven the model works

The UK and Ireland are not stepping into uncharted territory. Across Europe, e‑invoicing has already transformed how businesses operate. Italy’s Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) has shown how real‑time reporting can dramatically reduce VAT fraud while forcing a step‑change in business digitisation. France, Spain and Poland are following suit, each using structured invoicing to modernise B2B trade and improve tax transparency.

The results are consistent: real‑time visibility, fewer errors, faster payments and a more predictable cash‑flow environment. For SMEs, where cash flow is often the difference between growth and survival, this level of visibility is truly nothing short of transformative.

One misconception persists, however – the belief that emailing a PDF is digital enough. A PDF is not an e‑invoice. It is digital paper. It still requires manual keying, error‑prone OCR and endless reconciliation work. True e‑invoicing uses structured data (typically XML following the EN 16931 standard) that flows directly from one system to another without human intervention. This is the leap UK and Irish businesses must prepare for, and one that exposes the fragility of many finance processes.

IDP: the missing link that makes e‑invoicing viable

This is precisely where Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) becomes indispensable. If e‑invoicing is the destination, IDP is the engine that can get you there without chaos.

Most SMEs do not operate with pristine data, perfectly aligned supplier records or a single unified ERP. They operate with a blend of accounting tools, spreadsheets, legacy systems and manual workarounds. IDP provides the orchestration layer that makes structured invoicing viable in the real world, not just in policy documents.

Modern IDP platforms can extract, validate and match data across the likes of invoices, purchase orders, goods‑received notes and statements. They can identify discrepancies before they become problems, flag exceptions automatically and create touchless workflows that eliminate manual checking. Crucially, IDP validates data before an invoice leaves your system, ensuring that VAT numbers, line items and PO references are correct. This prevents the rejection loops that drain resources and delay payments, a hidden cost that many underestimate until it becomes a crisis.

For businesses with lean finance teams, IDP is a realistic way to scale without adding headcount. It protects your business from the administrative burden of compliance while laying the foundations for automation that goes far beyond invoicing.

Avoiding the “integration tax”

The challenge for many SMEs is what some call the “integration tax”. Large enterprises have transformation budgets and IT teams. Start‑ups have agility. SMEs often have neither. They are caught between ambition and legacy systems, between the desire to modernise and the reality of limited resources.

Waiting until 2028 or 2029 will only make this worse. A last‑minute scramble leads to rushed implementations, bolt‑on tools that don’t integrate and processes that meet the mandate but do nothing to improve the business. Early adopters, on the other hand, can use the mandate as a driving force to fix long‑standing inefficiencies. They can clean supplier data, eliminate spreadsheet‑driven processes, standardise approvals and build a finance stack that supports growth rather than constraining it. This is where SMEs can turn compliance into a competitive advantage, by treating the mandate not as an obligation but as an opportunity.

For SMEs trading across borders, the complexity increases. Each country has its own tax authority, schema updates and technical requirements. Trying to manage this with multiple tools creates inconsistency and unnecessary risk. The smarter approach is to adopt a single e‑invoicing gateway that manages multi‑country compliance and shields core systems from constant regulatory change, giving businesses the stability to focus on growth rather than chasing tax updates – an outcome an e‑invoicing service like DocuWare’s is designed to deliver.

E‑invoicing is only the beginning

Once structured invoice data flows into your business in real time, the benefits extend far beyond compliance. Cash‑flow forecasting becomes more accurate. Month‑end closes become faster. Supplier relationships improve. Audit trails strengthen. Financial reporting becomes more reliable. And, perhaps most importantly, you can gain the data foundation required for AI‑driven analytics and automation. Finance shifts from a reactive function to a strategic one.

For UK and Irish SMEs, the e‑invoicing mandate is a once‑in‑a‑generation chance to modernise. Those who start now will reduce manual workload, improve cash flow, strengthen compliance and build scalable finance operations long before the mandate arrives. Those who wait will face a rushed, expensive, compliance‑only project that delivers none of the upside.

The shift from digital paper to structured data is already underway. The only decision left is whether your business uses this moment to get ahead or simply to catch up.

At DocuWare, we anticipate regulatory shifts long before they become urgent, giving you the power to act while others scramble. Speak with our experts today and claim your competitive advantage.

Read more:
E-invoicing: A mandate that marks the end of “digital later”

For many small businesses, workforce technology is like that. When it works properly, nobody notices it. When it doesn’t, it can quickly become the centre of the working day. And if you don’t have a dedicated IT team to step in and fix issues quickly, the impact is magnified.

This is felt especially sharply with employee laptops, because so much of modern work runs through this single device: email, documents, spreadsheets, browser tools, calls, messaging and client communication. When a laptop is not up to the job, it reshapes how work feels, how smoothly people move through the day and how much energy gets wasted on things that should be effortless. Crucially, this often doesn’t show up as one dramatic failure. It shows up as constant, low-level friction that people gradually learn to work around. That is what makes it so easy to miss. Employees adapt, lower expectations, build bad habits to cope with the device and push through, so the drag on time and energy becomes ‘just how it is’.

In practice, that can mean slowdowns when switching between email, documents, spreadsheets, browser tabs and calls, video meetings that glitch, freeze or feel unreliable under pressure, battery anxiety when working away from a desk, repeatedly waiting for the laptop to catch up, restart or reconnect, cramped side-by-side working on smaller screens, and too much reliance on dongles, adapters and setup workarounds.

The cost in terms of behavioural impact includes employees switching cameras off just to keep calls running smoothly, which hampers communication and damages the client experience, keeping fewer windows open than they need, which slows tasks down, delaying restarts and important software updates, increasing exposure to vulnerabilities, and using their personal devices as a backup, sometimes handling sensitive business or customer information.

For small business leaders, there is another layer of concern: buying the wrong thing and being stuck with it for years. That might mean devices already feeling stretched after 12 to 24 months, overspending on tech people do not fully use, or risking client trust through weak privacy and security. The biggest risk is that these ways of working start to feel normal. Once that happens, friction stops looking fixable and starts getting absorbed into everyday life.

Because people often stop flagging these issues and simply work around them, it’s easy for leaders to underestimate the scale of the problem. But this is affecting millions of SMBs in the UK and many millions more around the world. HP’s 2026 SMB workflow research found that nearly 60% of SMB IT leaders say troubleshooting consumes more of their time than innovation, nearly half of SMB workers say obsolete tools make everyday tasks unnecessarily frustrating, and more than 60% of small business leaders link those inefficiencies to increased burnout and employee turnover.

If hidden friction is the problem, then simply adding more technology is not the answer. Rather, it is about how to choose the right devices that will remove the most important points of friction from the working day.

The HP EliteBook 8 G1a is a useful example of a lower-friction device because it is built around the problems small businesses actually experience. Work feels faster and less stop-start, because the laptop has the headroom for how people actually work now, moving between documents, spreadsheets, browser tabs, messaging and HD calls without quickly feeling maxed out. That is where the AMD Ryzen AI 7 Pro platform, 64GB RAM and 1TB storage make a real difference.

Long, multitasking sessions feel more comfortable, because the 16-inch, 16:10 display gives people more room to compare documents, work across spreadsheets and take notes during meetings without constant resizing and juggling. Hybrid work becomes less awkward, because built-in HDMI, USB-A and multiple USB-C and Thunderbolt 4 ports make it easier to move between meeting rooms, home offices and shared workspaces without relying on a bag full of dongles and adapters.

Security and privacy feel more built in and less disruptive, which matters especially for SMBs without a dedicated IT team. HP Wolf Security helps isolate common threats such as phishing links, malware and ransomware in the background, while Sure View narrows the viewing angle of the screen so sensitive information is harder for people nearby to see in shared or public spaces. Meetings feel more professional without extra effort, because the 5MP camera and built-in AI-powered meeting features help people look clear, stay centred in frame and sound better on calls.

As a next generation AI PC, it is a more future-ready choice, because AI will increasingly be part of the tools businesses already use. With a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and enough memory to support more local AI-enabled workloads over time, it is designed to stay fast and efficient for longer rather than feeling like the wrong decision a year from now.

For small business leaders, the key question is: What will reduce friction for our team for long enough to justify the investment? Some useful ways to think about this, and questions to ask your team directly, include identifying where current laptops are quietly slowing people down, looking for repeated low-level problems rather than dramatic failures such as lag, poor meetings, awkward setup, battery stress and too many workarounds. It also means understanding what the busiest day actually looks like and buying for the reality of multitasking, video calls, side-by-side working and hybrid movement.

Leaders should consider whether they are buying for short-term savings or long-term value, since a cheaper device that feels stretched after a year can become worse value than a better-specced one that stays comfortable for longer. They should also ask whether security feels built in or bolted on, because the safest setup is usually the one that asks the least extra effort from already busy people.
It is also worth thinking about whether a device will stay useful as AI-enabled tools become more normal. The practical issue is not whether AI matters this minute, but whether the laptop will keep pace as those features become part of everyday software. Finally, consider whether the device fits how people actually work, as the right choice is about balance: performance headroom, screen space, connectivity, collaboration and peace of mind.

Future-ready technology should not demand more attention from a small business. It should support the business without demanding more effort to use it, by reducing everyday friction, protecting sensitive work and staying useful for long enough to offer real value. For more information, please visit HP’s site.

Read more:
Are You Building a Future-Ready Small Business? Choose Tech That Is Less Visible, Not More Complicated

Lloyds Banking Group has cemented its position as the most complained-about name in British financial services, racking up more grievances with the City regulator than any other lender during the second half of 2025, as the wider sector handed nearly a quarter of a billion pounds back to disgruntled customers.

Fresh figures from the Financial Conduct Authority show the FTSE 100 banking giant fielded a hefty 187,516 complaints across its subsidiaries between July and December last year. The black horse brand itself bore the brunt, accounting for 90,837, while its Edinburgh-based commercial arm Bank of Scotland was not far behind on 79,508.

The scale of the figures partly reflects the sheer footprint of the group, which counts roughly 28 million customers and remains the country’s biggest financial services provider. Santander, which serves around 14 million Britons, came in a distant second with 124,919 complaints.

Despite the eye-catching numbers at the top of the table, the wider picture is one of relative stasis. Total grievances across the industry edged up to 1.9 million, a rise of just under one per cent on the first half of the year and broadly consistent with the trend that has prevailed since early 2021, when figures have fluctuated between 1.7 million and 2 million.

There was, however, a measure of good news for the sector. The proportion of complaints upheld in the customer’s favour slipped from 57.9 per cent to 55.5 per cent, while the total bill for redress fell to £236.2m, down sharply from £283.7m in the first half of 2025. The average payout also tracked lower, dropping to £215 from £238.

The findings come at a sensitive moment for the high street, with both Lloyds and Santander under fire from consumer groups for the pace at which they are pruning their branch estates. Analysis by Lightyear shows the Spanish-owned lender has shuttered close to 500 sites over the past two years and announced a further 44 closures in January, fuelling accusations that vulnerable customers are being left stranded.

Lurking behind the headline numbers is the motor finance mis-selling scandal, which continues to cast a long shadow over Britain’s lenders. Lloyds has set aside £2bn to cover potential redress linked to so-called secret commission arrangements between car dealers and banks, while Santander has earmarked £461m. Both are among the most heavily exposed names in the sector.

The FCA’s pause on motor finance complaints, in place since January 2024 after volumes surged on the back of concerns over discretionary commission arrangements, is due to be lifted on 31 May 2026, raising the prospect of a fresh wave of grievances landing on lenders’ desks this summer.

Elsewhere, motor and transport insurance proved the standout pain point of the period, with complaints leaping by more than a third to 340,000. That surge helped drive a 10 per cent jump in overall insurance and protection grievances to 790,329. Current accounts remained the single largest category, although the volume eased to 492,149 from 541,493 in the first half.

For Britain’s biggest banks, the latest data offers little immediate respite. With the motor finance reckoning still to come and branch closures continuing to draw political heat, the pressure on customer service teams looks set to remain firmly elevated through 2026.

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Lloyds tops the league of shame as Britain’s finance firms pay out £236m to aggrieved customers

The United Arab Emirates has announced it is to withdraw from Opec and the wider Opec+ alliance after nearly six decades of membership, in a move that analysts warn could herald the unravelling of the world’s most powerful oil cartel and usher in a fresh wave of price volatility for British businesses already grappling with stubborn energy costs.

The Gulf state, which joined the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1967, said the decision reflected its “long-term strategic and economic vision and evolving energy profile”. Abu Dhabi’s energy minister suggested that operating outside the cartel’s quota system would afford the country greater flexibility to pursue its own production ambitions, free of the collective discipline that has long shaped global crude markets.

For the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises, the immediate consequences are far from academic. Energy-intensive sectors, from manufacturing and logistics to hospitality, have spent the past three years contending with input costs that swung wildly on the back of geopolitical shocks and Opec+ output decisions. A weakened cartel could mean cheaper oil in the short term as producers compete for market share, but it also raises the spectre of greater price swings as the disciplinary mechanism that has historically tempered volatility begins to fray.

Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Financial, did not mince his words, describing the move as “the beginning of the end of Opec”. With the UAE’s departure, the cartel loses roughly 15 per cent of its production capacity and what Mr Kavonic called “one of its most compliant members”. The UAE currently pumps approximately 2.9 million barrels per day, against Saudi Arabia’s nine million.

“Saudi Arabia will struggle to keep the rest of Opec together, and will effectively have to do most of the heavy lifting regarding internal compliance and market management on its own,” he warned, adding that other members may yet follow Abu Dhabi’s lead. He went further, characterising the development as a “fundamental geopolitical reshaping of the Middle East and oil markets”.

The departure leaves Opec with eleven members. Founded in 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, the cartel was created to coordinate production and stabilise revenues for member states. The current line-up also includes Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Nigeria and the Republic of the Congo.

For SME owners watching from Britain, the message is clear: hedging strategies, fixed-price energy contracts and supply chain stress-testing are no longer the preserve of FTSE 100 boardrooms. The post-Opec era, if it does indeed dawn, promises a more fragmented and unpredictable global energy market, and the businesses that prepare now will be best placed to weather what comes next.

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UAE’s shock Opec exit signals a new era of energy market volatility for British business

The lurid purple shopfronts that ushered a generation of British teenagers into their first ear piercing have, quite literally, gone dark.

Claire’s Accessories has confirmed the closure of all 154 of its standalone stores in the UK and Ireland, with more than 1,300 staff handed redundancy notices in one of the most emphatic high-street collapses of the year so far.

Administrators at Kroll said trading ceased across the estate on 27 April after the chain tumbled into administration for the second time in barely twelve months. The 350 concession counters that Claire’s operates inside other retailers will continue to trade for now, but the standalone model, for decades a fixture of British shopping centres from Bluewater to Buchanan Galleries, is finished.

For the SME-heavy ecosystem of suppliers, landlords and shopping-centre operators that depend on anchor tenants of this kind, the implications are sobering. Claire’s was not a marginal player: it was, until recently, one of the most reliably trafficked footfall generators on any mid-tier high street, hoovering up pocket money from a demographic that few competitors knew how to reach.

That demographic, it turns out, has moved on. The chain has been outflanked on price by the Chinese-owned ultra-fast-fashion platforms Shein and Temu, whose algorithmically curated trinkets land on teenagers’ doorsteps for a fraction of Claire’s shelf prices. It has been squeezed on the high street itself by Primark and Superdrug, both of which have aggressively expanded their value accessories ranges. And, perhaps most damaging of all, it has been culturally outmanoeuvred.

“We’ve moved away from novelty, colourful jewellery for the most part, which is what Claire’s are best known for,” Priya Raj, a fashion analyst, told the BBC. Today’s teenagers, she noted, take their cues from TikTok and Instagram rather than from a Saturday-afternoon trawl of the local Arndale, and their tastes have shifted to “minimal jewellery, sometimes chunky, sometimes with a more curated look, basically not the cutesy, juvenile look that Claire’s is known for.”

The retail analyst Catherine Shuttleworth was blunter still. Gen Alpha, she argued, has more competing claims on its disposable income than any cohort before it — matcha lattes, bubble tea, gourmet desserts, in-app purchases, and a shop “just selling ‘stuff’ simply doesn’t cut it” any longer.

The collapse will reignite the increasingly fractious debate over the Government’s tax treatment of bricks-and-mortar retail. When Claire’s owner, the private-equity backed Modella Capital, first put the chain into administration in January, it pointed to “alarming” Christmas trading and singled out the rise in employers’ National Insurance Contributions as a material drag on viability. Trade bodies including the British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses have warned for months that the cumulative weight of higher NICs, business rates and the National Living Wage uplift is pushing marginal store-by-store economics into the red — a warning that Claire’s now embodies in unusually stark form.

The structural picture is no kinder. Town centre footfall has yet to return convincingly to pre-pandemic levels, the Treasury’s long-promised business rates overhaul has under-delivered, and landlords are still struggling to re-let space vacated by the likes of Wilko, The Body Shop and Ted Baker. A 154-unit hole in the property market is not one that will be filled overnight.

Across the Atlantic, the picture is little better. The American arm of the business filed for Chapter 11 in 2025, its second bankruptcy in seven years, after an earlier failure in 2018 — underlining that Claire’s troubles are global rather than peculiarly British.

What was once a rite of passage has become a case study in how quickly retail brands can be rendered obsolete when consumer culture, cost inflation and online disruption converge on the same balance sheet. The bright purple frontages will be gone within weeks. The questions they leave behind for Britain’s high streets will not.

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Claire’s pulls down the shutters: 154 stores shut and 1,300 jobs lost as gen alpha turns its back on the high street

The Tony Blair Institute has called on ministers to pull an “emergency handbrake” on Britain’s runaway sickness benefits bill, urging Whitehall to strip cash entitlements from claimants with mild depression, ADHD and other conditions the think tank argues are compatible with work.

In an intervention that will land squarely on the desks of finance directors and HR chiefs across the country, the institute founded by Sir Tony Blair has proposed a new statutory category of “non-work limiting conditions” covering anxiety, stress-related disorders, lower back pain, common musculoskeletal complaints and certain neurodevelopmental conditions. Claimants would receive treatment and employment support in place of benefits, in a shift the TBI insists could be introduced without primary legislation.

The proposals arrive at a critical moment for British employers. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast in March that spending on health and sickness benefits for working-age adults will hit £78.1bn by 2029-30, a 15 per cent jump on this year’s outlay. With around 1,000 people a day becoming newly eligible for health and disability payments, business groups have grown increasingly vocal about the squeeze on the labour market and the corresponding drag on productivity.

The TBI’s report lands in awkward political territory for the Labour government, which last year tabled plans to tighten disability benefit eligibility only to gut its own proposals after a backbench revolt. Whitehall now points to a review led by Social Security Minister Sir Stephen Timms, expected to report later this year, as the vehicle for any further reform.

Dr Charlotte Refsu, a former GP and the institute’s director of health policy, said the welfare system was “drawing too many people into long-term dependency for conditions that are often treatable and compatible with work, and not doing enough to support recovery”. She added: “A system that leaves people on benefits without timely treatment or a route back to work is not compassionate. It is bad for the country and bad for people’s health.”

Under the TBI blueprint, every claimant would require a formal diagnosis before applying for benefits, and those already on the books would face more frequent and rigorous reassessment. The think tank stopped short of estimating either fiscal savings or the number of claimants who would lose entitlement, but argued any windfall should be ploughed back into employment support and NHS treatment for mental health and musculoskeletal conditions, the two clusters that have driven much of the post-pandemic surge in claims.

YouGov polling of more than 4,000 British adults, commissioned by the institute, found that 54 per cent of voters believe the welfare system is too easy to access and fails to prevent misuse, a finding likely to embolden ministers minded to revisit reform.

For SME owners contending with stubborn vacancies and rising employment costs, the report sharpens a debate that has been simmering in boardrooms since the pandemic. Smaller employers have repeatedly flagged the difficulty of recruiting from the economically inactive cohort, particularly the more than 2.8 million working-age people currently signed off long-term sick. The TBI argues that supporting claimants into “appropriate work” would not only ease the fiscal pressure but also reduce social isolation and improve mobility and independence, a framing that aligns with the back-to-work rhetoric increasingly heard from both Labour ministers and the Conservative and Reform UK opposition.

The proposals have, however, drawn fierce criticism from the disability sector. Jon Holmes, chief executive of the learning disability charity Scope, branded the report “deeply unhelpful and ill-informed”, arguing it ignored “the lived reality of people with a learning disability and plays to a populist trope about welfare”. He warned: “Slapping labels on people and denying them benefits will not tackle the root cause. It will push people into deeper anxiety, misery and poverty. That’s not reform, it’s a recipe for making things worse.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said it had already “rebalanced” Universal Credit to deliver £1bn of savings, with the health-related element for new claimants cut by up to 50 per cent earlier this month. A spokesperson said the department had “increased face-to-face assessments and improved use of NHS evidence, all while ensuring those who genuinely can’t work are always protected”, adding that ministers would “consider the TBI’s report”.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized employers, the question is no longer whether reform comes, but how quickly, and whether it will deliver the workforce uplift that has eluded successive administrations.

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Blair think tank urges ’emergency handbrake’ on sickness benefits as bill races towards £78bn