Chief financial officers (CFOs) are targeting increased investment in areas such as AI in the year ahead as enterprises look to supercharge workforce productivity.

Findings from Deloitte’s Q4 CFO Survey show more than half (59%) of firms have changed their tune on the potential performance improvements unlocked by the technology, marking a sharp increase on the same period in 2024.

As a result, an overwhelming majority (96%) of finance leaders told the consultancy they expect to see a rise in technology spending over the next five years.

Running parallel to this investment surge is an anticipated boost to productivity and business performance, with AI playing a key role in fueling this growth.

Richard Houston, senior partner and chief executive at Deloitte UK, said the optimistic outlook among CFOs comes at a critical period for enterprise AI adoption rates.

“CFOs are significantly more positive about improving performance through deploying AI and remain upbeat about technology investment over the medium term,” he said.

“We know technology was a big driver of US GDP in 2025 and we see real potential in the year ahead for AI to boost UK business performance and fuel growth.”

AI adoption continued at pace throughout 2025 as enterprises flocked to agentic AI. Key business functions such as IT, software development, HR, and customer support have become notable focus areas for enterprises looking to drive AI-related productivity gains.

Analysis from Gartner in November, for example, found the technology will “touch all IT work” by 2030 as enterprises look to ramp up automation across IT teams.

Return on investment (ROI), a recurring pain point for IT leaders during the early days of the generative AI “boom”, has also improved. Research from SAP in October, for example, found enterprise spending on AI projects is expected to continue growing in the year ahead.

Enterprise skills focus needs sharpened

While a sense of optimism prevails among CFOs and other C-suite executives, Houston warned that many enterprises need to sharpen their focus on skills development and upskilling to capitalize on the technology.

“To realize the full value from AI, we must combine human skills with technology and upskill people, so nobody is left behind,” he said.

Upskilling emerged as one of the main talking points across 2025 with regard to AI, largely due to warnings that the technology could render some roles – and by default, workers – obsolete.

As ITPro reported in November, research from Gartner warned workers across an array of industries could be left behind as businesses ramp up AI integration, prompting calls for greater investment in employee training.

The consultancy said that from 2028 onwards, around 32 million roles a year will be “reconfigured, redesigned, or fused” as a result of AI, meaning worker skillsets will need to evolve to keep up with the pace of change.

CFOs leading the AI charge

The Deloitte survey marks the latest in a string of studies highlighting the crucial role CFOs now play in AI investment and adoption rates.

While integration and roll-outs remain a domain reserved for CIOs and CTOs, finance leaders are now frequently calling the shots on spending at their respective organizations.

This is a new trend, however, with CFOs having traditionally cautioned restraint on lavish spending plans. Research from Salesforce in August last year revealed CFOs had “fundamentally shifted their approach” to the technology over the course of 2025.

Nearly three-quarters (70%) told the CRM giant they had a “conservative” AI strategy in 2020. Five years later, the arrival of generative and agentic AI solutions means only 4% still hold that same position.

A key factor behind this change in outlook, Salesforce noted, is that CFOs have come to view AI as a lucrative revenue and productivity driver, prompting one-third to adopt an "aggressive approach” to AI adoption and investment.

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The best-performing stocks over the last few years have consistently included technology businesses – from Microsoft and Apple to Amazon and Netflix. More recently, industry giants like Broadcom and Nvidia have enjoyed tremendous growth in their share price, with such industry giants representing a great opportunity to grow capital. 

There’s arguably an innovation slowdown underway, however, particularly among device manufacturers. The rising popularity of second-hand smartphones, for example, can be explained both by the cost of flagship devices as well as the fact older handsets are still functionally identical. 

As society’s appetite for the latest technologies slows, shareholders continue to place manufacturers under intense pressure to innovate in order to spark sales. Indeed, shareholders often have a significant influence on the direction of a company. They stand to gain – and lose – the most with every passing quarter, and businesses need to maintain a healthy and trusting relationship with their shareholders to see their ideas for new technologies through.  

Are shareholders a help or a hindrance?

Investors have a huge hand in the creation and maintenance of a profitable business, explains Jonathan Hunter, CEO of AIM-listed Eleco. “If you take the build tech sector, there's a huge amount of businesses entering the space that need capital, they need investors and shareholders to be able to enter the market and expand when they need to,” he tells ITPro.

“Having shareholders own part of the business means they can provide their views, vote if they agree or disagree with the direction of the business, or – as a last resort – sell their shares and move on. As a result, it’s important for executives in the business to be open and transparent with all stakeholders, communicate, and set those expectations so that investors can make sound investment decisions.”

A decision to withdraw money may be drastic and only occur in extreme circumstances, but it can seriously impact the business. As David Newns, Entrepreneur and Investor details, managing shareholder expectations has wide-ranging consequences throughout the business.

“Public companies have this real challenge of balancing the running of their business with what is essentially a promise to shareholders,” he says. “As someone running the business, if that promise looks like a challenge, you will do anything to deliver on that, because that is your job.

“If that means cutting short-term or long-term investments, that is definitely something you would consider. If a business decides to half the R&D team, they may not have a product to launch for five years, but at least some people can keep their jobs.”

Managing shareholder expectations

Job cuts are part of the process of managing a business. After all, the balancing of the books comes before uncomfortable calls with shareholders. 

Nevertheless, these are unsavory aspects of doing business, and don’t look good whatever way you spin it; all that spinning doesn’t change the fact shareholders can withdraw their money.

To negotiate this, Hunter advocates for an open policy of clear communication, adding “you have to treat all shareholders the same”.

“Fortunately, a lot of shareholders think long term so they know and understand companies better, and we find that new investors that are joining will meet a couple of times first before taking the holding,” he continues. “It's important to build trust which boils down to management. Communicating effectively as well as delivering on the things that have been committed to develops that trust.”

When ideas run out of road

Communication and building trust can only get so far though. There are several examples of shareholders in the tech industry losing faith in the direction the company is going.

From the moment Twitter became a publicly traded company to the moment Musk carried a sink into HQ, monetization has been a topic that has dogged the company. Similarly, Meta’s quest to build the metaverse has taken a backseat due to the investment this project demands, as well as the turmoil its advertising business was facing. 

Such moves from companies make shareholder value a dirty word, and headlines and opinion pieces criticizing tech giants for not staying the course only add to the discontent. As Newns explains, though, Meta’s metaverse u-turn demonstrates there has to be a cut-off point when it comes to investing in new technologies.

“When Mark Zuckerberg said the future is in the metaverse and then spent a lot of money trying to chase this opportunity, initially everyone was interested and gave him the space to pursue it,” he says. “A number of years, and a lot of billions later, the reality is nothing much was happening. But at the same time, the core business was under threat from lower consumer spending and ad revenue decreasing. 

“I think actually Zuckerberg got a lot of leeway when it came to the amount of money and the amount of time he spent on the metaverse and, at the end of the day, I think the decision to step back was more to do with the metaverse, rather than how they innovate as a company.”

How shareholders influence innovation

With shareholder value often prioritized above all else, many feel products the companies are developing begin to lose importance. This raises fundamental questions over whether this is affecting the overall health of the industry.

Although shareholders pulling their money can obviously halt innovative practices, Newns says the activity of investors is actually a reflection of the sentiment in the market. “The synthetic meats market is an example of the sentiment dropping out of the market and prime investors asking ‘If there are no requirements for this stuff, why would we invest?’

“I think that’s happening to the metaverse now, and that affects everyone in the ecosystem down to the startups. But, equally, if you're developing a ChatGPT solution, then everyone will want to invest. So it's a moving piece with lots of factors.”

Hunter adds being able to communicate the value of the company and the direction it’s going in is at the heart of reassuring shareholders. “It’s up to the investor as to whether they will stay or leave,” he says. “As a business, we have a responsibility to communicate the value that we're adding to the business and why we are making the decision we do.

“It’s about communicating across a broad audience. For example, we made a divestment this year because the business that we divested was not adding value and wasn't part of our strategic roadmap. 

“Because we communicated this with our investors, what could have been seen as a negative was well received by shareholders.

We’ve seen three high-profile corporate scandals recently, with three larger-than-life business leaders facing serious allegations. The companies at the centre of the action are Theranos, Wirecard, and Autonomy, and all three CEOs have been charged with fraud.

The former CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, has been found guilty of fraud and is facing up to 20 years in prison. Holmes touted Theranos as a health technology company, raised $700 million, featured in Forbes, and defrauded a catalogue of wealthy families as well as a number of prominent statesmen.

The payment processing firm Wirecard’s former CEO Markus Braun languishes in jail after his bail was revoked. Braun is awaiting trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust, and accounting manipulation. But that’s the sanitised account. For the money shot, read Money Men by Dan McCrum, the Financial Times (FT) investigative journalist who brought down Wirecard. That book reads like a mash-up between the novelist John le Carré and the late, great gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson.

Lastly, Autonomy founder and former CEO Mike Lynch is on track to be extradited to the US where he faces charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Lynch created his company's core product, Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), a clever bit of kit focused on the analysis of unstructured data.

Three previously highly regarded CEOs are in a whole lot of hot water, awaiting sentencing, awaiting trial and awaiting extradition. These scandals provide useful fodder for investors generally, but tech investors especially, to recast what we think we know about corporate governance and due diligence. However deep their pockets, no investor can afford to put their money into a scheme that’s bound to fail in the future – or worse, is already failing now.

What difference does jurisdiction make?

There's a good deal of academic literature on corporate governance models in the UK, the US and Europe. Typically, the authors will make a case for one of these jurisdictions as a pre-eminent destination for investors because of oversight, monitoring and/or control of management. As if to demonstrate this is not the case, each of these businesses was incorporated in a different jurisdiction; Theranos in the United States, Autonomy in England and Wirecard in Germany.

Whether Theranos could have occurred in Germany isn’t for me to say. What I can say is that, obviously, each jurisdiction is capable of delivering a type of fraud that is really damaging to the investor. While jurisdiction provides no sanctuary, there’s no immunity for professional investors either.

Auditors and the value of verification

It’s a normal function of any professional team working to acquire a business or invest that they would seek to verify statements made by these companies with respect to cash reserves, revenue streams, profitability and so on.

Typically, auditors can be relied upon. Unfortunately, in the matter of Autonomy and Wirecard, the auditors failed to properly scrutinise the businesses they were auditing. Deloitte’s audit of Autonomy enabled Lynch and his Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to “present a misleading picture of its financial position”. Similarly, Ernst & Young’s audit of Wirecard’s revenue stream failed to reveal that the apparently highly profitable and cash-rich company was neither profitable nor rich.

This is deeply discouraging for any investor who would consider auditors a sound and reliable resource. Truth buys trust and if auditors aren’t capable of getting to the truth, then their reports are of no value. It raises the question: can an auditing business be truly independent when it’s dependent on the subject of its audit for revenue?

Verifying with independent, trusted experts has enormous value. Had Theranos investors checked with professionals from the pharmaceutical or biomedical sectors, or a medical doctor, then it’s entirely conceivable that they would have learnt the tech wasn’t possible and avoided substantial losses.

What could profiling the CEOs have achieved?

Profiling the CEOs of Autonomy and Wirecard would not have revealed anything that might have assisted the investors. If anything, the exercise may have been a source of comfort.

Lynch was a gifted academic, and he earned his PhD from Cambridge. Braun’s undergraduate degree is in commercial computer science and he completed his PhD in social and economic sciences while working as a KPMG consultant. On paper, these guys look like the real deal.

This is in stark contrast to Holmes. She had no background in any of the disciplines necessary to take part in, never mind run a medical diagnostics equipment project. If only those investors had checked.

Can you check the tech?

In the case of Autonomy, checking the tech did not assist in revealing the fraud. The product IDOL worked. In fact, IDOL worked so well that in the summary judgement, the judge referenced words attributed to Meg Whitman who became CEO of HP. She said it was “almost magical”. Tech doesn't go to the heart of the Autonomy fraud, which is a plain vanilla key metric and earnings manipulation fraud.

Investors in Wirecard, like Softbank for example, may have had more luck had they checked the tech before pumping in nearly €1 billion into the failing firm. Wirecard was, on the face of it, a profitable payment processing firm, but its revenues were fabricated. Checking the tech would have revealed data relating to the payment process. The payment process involved a few different actors: the end user, the issuing bank, the merchant and partners. A closer scrutiny of a random set of payments could have followed these “payments” up or down the pipe. Fabricating revenues is one thing. Fabricating users interacting with merchants and issuing banks is beyond the wit of men.

The most egregious tech fraud is undoubtedly Theranos. Its blood-testing system amounted to wires in a box. The tech didn’t exist. To test the efficacy of the Edison, the investors would only have needed to have had known an answer to a question in advance and sense checked that against the Edison’s response. The lack of imagination and determination by investors to verify the efficacy of this tech makes this a dreary fraud.

The great thing about techies is they want to show you how their kit works. They want to show you all the clever features, and when it works, they want you to play with it. Whether you’re investing in the firm or the technology, always kick its tyres. It’s the fastest way to determine whether something works.

Dubious morals are a giveaway

Both Wirecard and Theranos engaged in tactics that fell well beyond normal business practices, including surveillance, doorstepping, intimidation and threats against analysts, journalists and former employees. That is shameful behaviour. It indicates a willingness to cross the line that should have put current and future investors on notice of a failing firm. Integrity and principles aren’t subject to the hokey cokey routine. You’re either in or you’re out. The firm either behaves in a principled manner or it doesn't.

Another red flag was missed in both of these cases; individuals within the firms were promoted well beyond their capabilities into critical business roles while experts were demoted, demeaned and defamed. This shows such poor leadership that this alone should concern investors.

Why investors, meanwhile, didn’t raise an eyebrow when lawyers for Wirecard and Theranos pursued credible, leading global publications in an effort to silence them is anyone’s guess.

It's to their endless credit the investigative journalists and editors at both the FT and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wouldn't be intimidated into submission. Uncovering these frauds and bringing them to light was only possible because both publications had the might and the resources to withstand such tactics.

Doing your homework goes a long way

Anyone looking to invest in tech should not only be doing a lot of reading, but carefully considering the sources of that information. Had investors such as Softbank put more weight in the reports from the FT about Wirecard they could have saved themselves €900 million.

Auditors, as we learned, can’t be relied upon. They’re paid by the company and in no way meet the definition of “independent”. While large auditing firms hold themselves out as the unrivalled experts, that changes when they’re caught up in a fraud.. At that point, they’re only human. More of that humility at the front end and more confidence at the back end of these scandals would help to restore the reputation of some of these players.

Academic theory suggests that optimising for corporate governance makes a difference. The reality is that criminals will work around every system to perpetrate their fraud. Investors can’t afford to be complacent.

Ultimately, what investors did right was to seek to verify the statements made by these firms. What they did wrong was to rely on sources that weren’t credible and simultaneously to dismiss those that were. To avoid a similar fate, investors would do well to rely on trusted, independent experts.

However you carve these scandals up, these leaders operated from the same fraud playbook. They overstated performance, recorded bogus revenue, and they trusted that the mocked documents painted a picture of firm value and that no one would bother to check. For all their differences, these scandals relied on the same tactics: dishonesty, deflection and misdirection. They just had different products.

Google is now the owner of its previously-rented multi-floor office space in London’s Covent Garden area.

Purchased for $1 billion (around £730 million), the Central Saint Giles development is situated between the capital’s Tottenham Court Road tube station and the bustling shopping area of Seven Dials, and features 408,000 sq ft of office space as well as 17,000 sq ft of roof terraces.

However, before Google employees will be able to move in, the office space will undergo a “multi-million pound refurbishment” that is expected to last a few years.

The purchase of the Central Saint Giles building will provide Google with an overall capacity for 10,000 employees across all of its UK sites – a third more than its current tally of 6,400. This includes its additional King’s Cross development, construction of which had been delayed due to the pandemic and is likely the reason why Google decided to invest in Central Saint Giles.

In a blog post detailing the investment, Google UK & Ireland VP and MD Ronan Harris said that the renovations will include building “outdoor covered working spaces to enable work in the fresh air”.

This is in line with studies that show the spread Covid-19 outside is less likely than in poorly-ventilated closed spaces, as companies try to entice employees back to the office after almost two years of remote working.

“We believe that the future of work is flexibility. Whilst the majority of our UK employees want to be on-site some of the time, they also want the flexibility of working from home a couple of days a week. Some of our people will want to be fully remote. Our future UK workplace has room for all of those possibilities,” said Harris.

Kas Mohammed, VP of Digital Energy at Schneider Electric UK & Ireland, another company which has chosen to invest in its offices during a global pandemic, said that the rise of the hybrid working model “demands a change in how current offices are designed and utilised”.

“If businesses like Google are hoping to see staff return to the office for the long term, wellbeing and engagement will be crucial. Companies must invest in safety, but also provide tangible benefits to going into the office - from greater personal environment control to training and collaboration. Creating a safe, comfortable, and productive workplace will be fundamental to any working model,” Mohammed told IT Pro.

According to Russ Shaw CBE, founder of Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates, "Google’s decision to commit its future to the capital is proof of a healthy ecosystem in which all businesses - startups and scaleups as well as Big Tech - can flourish".

"Votes of confidence in London like this are brilliant both for aspiring tech founders and for bringing talent, investment and job opportunities to the capital to maintain its current growth trajectory. Where and how we work may have changed, but London’s reputation and status as an international technology hub only goes from strength to strength," he told IT Pro.

Completed in May 2010 at a cost of £450 million, the Central Saint Giles building was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, who is also behind London’s Shard building and Paris’ Centre Pompidou.

The UK government has launched its £375 million startup Future Fund: Breakthrough scheme that aims to help “high-growth, R&D intensive companies bring game-changing technologies to market.”

Future Fund: Breakthrough was first announced in March as part of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s budget announcement. It's separate from the original Future Fund, which was announced in April 2020 and offered convertible loans of up to £5 million to UK companies struggling with the financial impacts of the pandemic.

Focused on later-stage R&D startups, in particular those that accelerate deployment of breakthrough technologies, develop new medicines, and support the UK’s transition to a net-zero economy, Future Fund: Breakthrough will see the government spend up to £375 million on stakes, with each investment set to be matched by private funds.

British Patient Capital, which is a subsidiary of the UK government’s economic development-focused British Business Bank, announced that the scheme is now welcoming online application forms from eligible investors.

Companies interested in benefiting from the scheme have not yet been asked to apply. However, the British Patient Capital outlined some requirements for applicants, such as being able to raise a minimum total investment round size of £30 million, with the maximum Future Fund: Breakthrough contribution to an investment round being 30%.

Interested companies are also required to have raised at least £5 million of equity investment from third-party investors in previous funding rounds.

Commenting on the news, Tech Nation chief executive Gerard Grech said that “R&D funding is more important than ever to turn the UK’s new breed of innovators into game-changing market leaders”, especially “as the potential of technologies like AI, machine learning and quantum computing become fully realised and applied at scale”.

“Funds focused specifically on R&D intensive companies aligned to the UK’s strategic sectors, including net zero companies, will help to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing society today. It will open up new job opportunities, drive economic growth, and cement UK Tech as world-leading,” he added.

British Patient Capital CEO Judith Hartley said that the scheme “will enable these R&D intensive companies to raise the patient capital they need to fuel the later stages of their growth, and in doing so, help ensure the UK is a world leader in the industries of the future”.

“With many world-class universities and a strong track record in science and research, the UK is fertile ground for creating high-growth companies based on cutting edge technologies. Through the commercialisation of R&D, these transformative companies will help accelerate the deployment of innovative breakthrough technologies that can transform major industries; develop new medicines; support the transition to a net zero economy and strengthen the UK’s position as a science superpower,” she added.

Bitcoin has fallen to a three-month low following a promising surge in value that created a number of opportunities for its investors.

Dropping more than 9% on Monday to just under £30,000, the cryptocurrency is at its lowest point since 9 February, Reuters reported. However, it then regained some of its traction, rising to £32,000 on Monday morning.

Similar fluctuations were also seen in other popular digital currencies such as Ethereum and Dogecoin, with the latter falling by 7%.

The drop of all three cryptocurrencies has caused even the most confident traders to become anxious, Reuters found, with one of its most high-profile champions, Elon Musk, taking to Twitter to state that the company had “not sold any Bitcoin”.

The clarification came after a Twitter exchange between the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and Twitter account @CryptoWhale. The latter suggested that Tesla had “dumped the rest of their #Bitcoin holdings”, with Musk replying "Indeed". However, at the time, Musk didn’t clarify whether he was agreeing with @CryptoWhale’s or the account’s comment about Musk facing online criticism.

Musk’s business decisions have been seen as catalysts for the ongoing fluctuation of Bitcoin's value. The move recent slump comes days after Musk announced that his electric car company would no longer allow customers to purchase vehicles using the digital cryptocurrency due to concerns about the increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining.

According to research conducted by the University of Cambridge, Bitcoin was found to consume an estimated 148 Terawatt hours (TWh), increasing almost four-fold since 2017. Commenting on the decision, Musk said that “cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment”. The statement caused Bitcoin to fall £5,000 overnight.

Although Bitcoin is still far from its lowest point of this year, the news comes days after it was revealed that the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, was under investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and IRS due to allegations of money laundering and tax violations.

The US Department of Defense has agreed to remove Chinese tech giant Xiaomi from the “Communist Chinese Military Companies” (CCMC) blacklist introduced during the Trump administration.

The company, which last year overtook Apple as the world’s third-largest phone manufacturer, had previously filed a lawsuit against the US government, describing its decision to classify Xiaomi as a Chinese military-backed enterprise as "unlawful and unconstitutional".

The tech giant was placed on the list in January 2021 as one of the last policies enacted by president Donald Trump prior to his departure from office. The classification meant that Xiaomi was unable to secure US investment, causing the tech giant’s share prices to suffer a drop of almost 20% since the ban.

Throughout the dispute, Xiaomi maintained that it had no links, especially ownership-related, to the Chinese military. In fact, three of its most prominent shareholders were US investment groups.

The enforcement of the blacklisting was temporarily blocked in March, with US District Judge Rudolph Contreras describing the US government’s process behind the ban as “deeply flawed”. The federal judge wrote at the time that the US Defense Department’s move was “arbitrary and capricious” and deprived the company of its due process rights. He also noted Xiaomi was likely to suffer “irreparable harm” without the injunction.

A new court filing seen by Reuters states that Xiaomi and the US government have come to an agreement to resolve their ongoing litigation without further contest. Both parties are expected to file another joint proposal on 20 May, bringing the legal dispute to an end.

The news comes weeks after Xiaomi unveiled the Mi 11 Ultra, a dual-screen smartphone that boasts the largest smartphone camera sensor currently available on the market. Introduced as the company’s new premium flagship, the arrival of the Mi 11 Ultra sees the tech giant venture into a higher price point than its usual budget offerings.

The Mi 11 Ultra is likely the most expensive smartphone offering from the company to date, after the Mi MIX Alpha at £2,265.

UK startups benefited from a record-breaking level of venture capital (VC) investment in 2020, despite difficult economic conditions created by Brexit and the global COVID pandemic.

At $15 billion (£10.84 billion), the UK once again led Europe in VC investment in tech and was ranked third globally after the US (£104.33 billion) and China at (£32.25 billion), according to the latest report by Tech Nation.

The UK’s 2020 VC investment broke records for the second year in a row, having increased its investment by $200 million (£144.5 million) since 2019. In fact, the country made moves to close the gap with China, which faced a drop in investment in both 2019 (-50%) and 2020 (-3%).

Moreover, Brexit didn’t seem to hinder the UK’s ability to remain open to overseas investment. Last year, 63% of 2020 investment (£6.79 billion) in UK tech came from overseas, compared with 50% (£2.17 billion) in 2016. According to Tech Nation, overseas financing represented 84% of total investment at the $250m+ mark, up from 54% at Series A.

Tech Nation found that the UK’s investment gained momentum throughout the year, reaching a peak in December 2020. This growth was driven by UK tech hubs such as London, Oxford, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Cambridge – home to the UK’s ‘tech crown jewel’ ARM as well as startups such as FiveAI.

However, Tech Nation also warned that the UK must provide more support to regional tech clusters, as their collective strength can be credited with helping the nation achieve the title of a world-leading tech centre.

Despite this, the focus continues to be placed on London alone, with the percentage of total UK VC investment made in London increasing from 73% to 88% between 2018 and 2021. Tech Nation suggested that tech hubs outside of the capital should be supported by the development of more targeted regional investment funds.

Commenting on the report, Tech Nation founding chief executive Gerard Grech said that “in the face of a major global crisis, [the UK] has not only survived; in many areas, it has boomed”.

“From EdTech to HealthTech, tech scaleups are at the centre of rebuilding the British economy and setting new standards worldwide,” he said, adding that “developing Britain’s AI-powered deep-tech is especially critical” for the UK’s future.

“Much of our future economy will be built on this new technology that leverages machine learning for faster innovation. Bold investment is needed in R&D to boost Britain’s new deep-tech companies and ensure our global competitiveness.”

Prime minister Boris Johnson said the UK “is maintaining its lead as one of the world’s premier centres for tech of all kinds”.

“While the real credit lies, as ever, with the engineers and designers toiling away at laptops across the country, I’m immensely proud to lead a government that is so comprehensively committed to supporting the sector. We’re continuing to invest in your success, and I hope that the winning combination of UK tech and this government will lead us to yet another record-breaking year in 2021,” he added.

The UK government is reportedly considering spending as much as £375 million buying up stakes in later-stage tech startups as part of a new Future Fund "Breakthrough" effort.

The Future Fund, which was first announced in April 2020, was launched as a support scheme for startups impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, and in June 2020 was extended to UK companies that have their headquarters abroad.

The Future Fund: Breakthrough scheme will see the government spend up to £375 million on stakes in later-stage tech startups, with each investment set to range into the "tens of millions of pounds" and be matched by private funds, according to government sources who spoke with the Financial Times.

Due to the high threshold for individual investments, the number of qualified tech startups could be quite limited. For now, the government hasn’t announced how many, nor which companies will make the cut, but more information will likely be revealed on Wednesday when chancellor Rishi Sunak makes his budget 2021 announcement.

Sunak is also expected to provide more detail regarding the Infrastructure Bank, which was first announced in last year’s Spending Review as a £40 billion boost to the UK's gigabit broadband and 5G rollout. The Bank, which is expected to launch sometime in spring 2021, will be supported by an initial £12 billion capital investment as well as £10 billion in loan guarantees, according to reports.

TechUK CEO Julian David described the Infrastructure Bank and the Future Fund expansion as “welcome announcements from the Chancellor ahead of the budget”.

“Ensuring that the new National Infrastructure Bank can invest in digital infrastructure and the new Future Fund: Breakthrough scheme aims to increase investment across the UK will be vital to building an inclusive recovery," David said in a statement given to IT Pro. "Enabling access to world-leading digital infrastructure across the country and providing funding for the next generation of entrepreneurship will be vital to make sure that opportunity and success is not limited by location,” he said.

However, David also warned that if the UK’s 5G rollout is further delayed, it could cost the country “up to £173 billion in growth over the next decade”.

“We also need to ensure that high growth firms outside of London are well supported, as while the Future Fund was a lifeline for many at the height of the pandemic over 60% of funding went to London based firms,” he added.

Investing in digital technology could increase the UK’s GDP by almost 7%, delivering a £232 billion boost to the economy by 2040.

That's according to new research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Virgin Media Business.

The study examined how focusing on digital ways of working, which has been magnified by lockdown restrictions, could help the UK recover from the economic effects of the pandemic. The report claims that investing in digital technology could boost the economy by £74 billion in the next four years, and by £127 billion by the end of this decade.

By 2040, if these investments are sustained, digital technology is expected to add £232 billion to the national economy – equivalent to 6.9% of the UK’s GDP.

Digital processes in the public sector will create efficiency gains and cost-savings of £75 billion, according to the report, while investments in digitising health and social care, as well as the justice, central, and local government sectors could add £33 billion and £32 billion to the UK economy, respectively.

Cebr also found that digital investment in private sectors such as retail, professional services, and construction, could be worth an additional £40 billion by 2040, with other parts of the economy also predicted to experience similar gains.

Cebr director of Economic Analysis, Cristian Niculescu-Marcu, said that the economic impacts of the pandemic alone “fall far short of capturing the scale of the pandemic’s toll on people’s lives and wellbeing”.

“Within this research we have examined the potential economic impact of a wave of digital transformation, driven by the rollout of new ways of working and connecting,” he said, adding that “this could create an economic high road over the coming decades, helping the UK economy to grow while also having the flexibility to deal with future challenges”.

Commenting on the Virgin Media Business managing director Peter Kelly said that “the UK has a £232 billion opportunity ahead of it which we must now grasp with both hands”.

“By continuing to invest in new digital ways of working, we can seize this moment and help UK businesses to bounce back better. Moves to accelerate digital adoption are driving extraordinary outcomes across private and public sector organisations, helping them to revolutionise how they work, deliver for customers, and provide vital services for our communities,” he added.

The release of Virgin Media's report comes days after the company announced that it is planning to create more than 400 new graduate, intern, and apprenticeship roles over the course of 2021.

The CEO of European fintech giant Adyen has expressed concerns around using Bitcoin as a mainstream form of payment.

The cryptocurrency's volatility makes it less viable for transactions, the company's founder and CEO, Pieter van der Does, told CNBC.

Ayden, a Dutch payment platform founded in 2006, processes payments on behalf of Netflix, Facebook, and other leading brands. It's one of a number of companies that enjoyed significant growth due to the pandemic with more customers using its online payments and e-commerce services. But, the firm's CEO has said it has "no interest" in adding crypto payment methods to its roster of services.

"Bitcoin is more of an investment asset than a payment method," Van der Does said, according to CNBC. "We are interested in payment methods which are being used. I am wondering if the huge movement in the value of Bitcoin is helping it as a payment method."

In that regard, the value of Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, has fluctuated wildly throughout its existence. Just over the last few years, Bitcoin value has dropped below £10,000 but also, more recently, shot up to new heights of $36,352.20. The recent news that Tesla will use its corporate cash to buy Bitcoin saw its value soar past $40,000.

The electric car firm announced a $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin on Tuesday alongside plans to start accepting payments in the digital currency. Similarly, Mastercard has also suggested it will offer some cryptocurrencies on its network in the future, although it's unclear if Bitcoin will be included.

Adyen's stance to not follow suit adds to a growing list of companies and organisations that are suspicious of cryptocurrencies. The likes of in-coming Intel boss Pat Gelsinger and the Financial Conduct Authority have expressed concerns and warnings around the use of digital tokens. Van der Does has also suggested that Adyen's clientele have shown no interest in it either.

"It might not actually be helping cryptocurrencies if they are more like investment assets than a currency," he told CNBC. "That makes it less interesting for a merchant - to have potential (as a means of payment), you need a stable currency."

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has announced the launch of a new review into listing rules, in an attempt to lure more tech companies to London.

Launched today and led by former EU financial services commissioner Jonathan Hill, the review aims to facilitate better access to the finance required by businesses to grow, as well as strengthen the UK’s position within the global tech industry following Brexit.

According to Sunak, Lord Hill “will be spearheading efforts to reform our listings rules and help companies raise capital in the UK’s open, well-regulated and transparent markets”.

“As we start this new chapter for UK financial services, we want to attract the most successful and innovative companies to list and grow here in the UK,” Sunak added in a statement. “More dynamic equity markets will enhance the UK’s position as a world-leading financial centre, and drive growth and innovation across the wider economy.”

Currently, firms hoping to list on the London Stock Exchange must have a minimum of 25% of shares available for trading, something which business owners have said makes it more difficult to maintain control of their companies and prevent hostile takeover.

Lord Hill, aided by financial services, legal, and academic experts, is expected to develop a list of recommendations which he will present to the government as well as the Financial Conduct Authority early next year.

Commenting on the announcement, Lord Hill said that, in order “to drive the economic recovery, we need the strongest possible financial services sector in the UK”.

“Helping to improve the climate for raising capital in London is only one part of getting the whole financial ecosystem right, but I hope it is an area where we can make some quick early progress and help show a path forward,” he added. “I am very keen to involve the industry in our work, which is why we are kicking things off today with our Call for Evidence.”

The news of the review launch is the latest attempt from the UK government to make London more appealing to tech giants. In August, Sunak was reportedly considering dropping the 2% Digital Services Tax in a bid to avoid any potential points of contention during upcoming trade talks with the US. The tax was previously branded as “unfair” by the country’s officials, with trade representative Robert Lighthizer having already announced plans to investigate all countries that are adopting similar rules.

The number of new UK tech startups increased by almost 16% in the third quarter of 2020, according to Companies House data analysed by consulting firm RSM.

The three-month period saw the incorporation of 3,641 tech startups, a 15.5% rise compared to the first quarter of 2020 when 3,150 new startups were recorded.

Scotland saw the strongest growth in the number of new tech startups (a 57% increase since Q1), followed by the West Midlands (48%), Northern Ireland (44%), the East Midlands (36%), and north-east England (29%).

Despite most areas of the UK experiencing growth in the number of tech startups, areas such as Wales, the east of England, and Yorkshire and the Humber saw declines of 6%, 1.4%, and 0.8%, respectively.

Commenting on the findings, RSM’s head of the technology, media and telecoms team, David Blacher, said that “at a time when many sectors are feeling crippled by the impact of the pandemic, it is encouraging to see the tech industry experiencing growth”.

“This can be attributed in part to the lockdown, which drove an increase in demand for technology to support remote working. The huge increase in working from home, as well as leisure time spent at home, has meant far greater need for digital technology and a growing demand for digital entertainment,” he added.

The news comes as research from Tech Nation and Dealroom found that investment into UK startups addressing one or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals increased almost ten-fold between 2014 and 2019.

In 2020 so far, the UK’s impact startups have managed to raise €1.4 billion (£1.27 billion) in capital, with the largest rounds going to Octopus Energy and Cambridge-based FiveAI.

Other significant UK impact startups include Arrival, Connexin, Tokamak Energy, Compass Pathways, Cera, Highview Power, and The Meatless Farm Company (Leeds), which have a combined 390 job vacancies in the UK, according to database lists from Impact & Innovation.

Tech Nation head of insights George Windsor said that UK tech must continue to play a key part in tackling some of the world's toughest challenges, including climate change”.

“UK impact tech firms have come on leaps and bounds over the last six years - with nearly 10x more investment made into groundbreaking companies in 2020 than 2014,” he added.

“This revolution is happening right across the country. Tech Nation is pleased to work with some of the leading companies in this space through our world-first Net Zero programme - ensuring that companies working in this sector can scale to have the greatest impact.”

The UK needs to be wary of “hostile state actors” planning to extract technology and jobs out of the country, according to chancellor Rishi Sunak.

In a live Q&A session on LinkedIn last week, Sunak warned that the UK needs stricter regulations regarding foreign investment in order to give the government “the power to intervene if necessary”.

Although Sunak did not refer to any country by name, the comments could have been directed to China after Huawei was banned from the UK’s 5G infrastructure due to security concerns.

The tech giant is accused of having ties to the Chinese government and being exploited for espionage. Following the US sanctions imposed on Huawei earlier this year, the UK officially blacklisted Huawei in July, and the ban has the potential to influence the country’s trade relations with China and the world.

“We have always been a country open to foreign investment and it has been very good for us. It has driven up productivity and is part of what makes our economy dynamic,” said Sunak.

“But we really need to be eyes wide open because, sadly, in the world in which we’re living there are hostile state actors that come to invest and try to extract technology out of the UK, or indeed jobs.”

The chancellor’s calls for stricter investment regulations might also have an influence on the UK’s relations with the European Union post-Brexit. Last month, the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) called for the UK government to provide transition vouchers for firms ahead of the country's latest round of talks with the EU.

"The economy is in a very different place today compared to the last time we were told to prepare for a no-deal outcome. Small firms don't have the time or money to get across new bureaucracy or stockpile,” said FSB national chairman Mike Cherry.

Although the government has yet to respond to the plea, Sunak today announced the launch of a £238 million back-to-work scheme. The Jobs Entry Targeted Support (JETS) will aim to help those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic find employment again.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is leaving Initialized Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded with Gary Tan in 2012.

The news was first reported by Axios on Friday and TechCrunch has since confirmed it. Ohanian’s decision to leave Initialized Capital comes just weeks after he publicly stepped down from Reddit’s board of directors.

According to Axios, Ohanian’s interests have shifted from seed-stage investing to pre-seed investing. To date, Initialized Captial’s focus has been on traditional seed-stage investing. For those unfamiliar, seed-stage funding focuses on growing an already established business or startup whereas pre-seed investing focuses on solidifying a founding team and developing a business plan.

Ohanian reportedly plans to remain involved with existing Initialized Capital’s portfolio companies, though he won't make any new investments with the firm.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Initialized Capital explained Ohanian is leaving the firm to work on “a new project that will support a generation of founders in tech and beyond.” At this time, there’s no word on what that project entails specifically.

Ohanian and Tan co-founded Initialized Capital in 2012. In 2014, Ohanian took a step back from the firm and returned to his position at the helm of Reddit. He then returned to Initialized Captial on a full-time basis in 2018 and joined its board of directors. Ohanian’s deals at Initialized Capital have included Goat, Ro and Patreon.

Leaving Initialized Capital isn’t the only career move Ohanian has made this month. He publicly announced his decision to step down from Reddit’s Board of Directors earlier this month. Ohanian announced his decision to resign on Twitter and called on the company to elect a black board member to his seat. Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel has since been elected to the position.

Facebook paid just 28 million in corporation tax last year despite recording gross UK revenues of 1.6 billion.

Although the firm's net 'recognised' revenues rose by 50% to 797 million during 2018, the costs incurred meant the social media giant was only liable to pay tax on 97 million of profit.

When factoring in the 34 million 'cost of sales' and 'administrative expenses' valued at 667 million, the overall taxation rate amounted to just under 30% of the company's declared profit. This, however, translated to just 1.7% of the company's overall revenues from 'advertisers and others'.

"The UK is now one of Facebook's most important hubs for global innovation," said Facebook's vice president for Northern Europe, Steve Hatch.

"We continue to grow and invest heavily in the UK and by the end of the year we'll employ 3,000 people here. These high-skilled jobs are not only working on products like WhatsApp and Workplace but also help develop technology to proactively detect and remove malicious content from our platforms.

"Businesses across the country use our platforms to grow and revenue from customers supported by our UK teams is now recorded here so that any taxable profit is subject to UK corporation tax."

Factors behind the vast expenses incurred during 2018 could be attributed to the company's recent hiring spree, coupled with a plan to expand its UK base with a new London office.

The firm unveiled plans to double its current floorspace by leasing 611,000sq/ft of workspace in King's Cross last July. This would involve hiring additional staff as part of the expansion, as well as recruiting more employees in its two other offices.

Despite paying so little to HMRC against the company's overall sales intake, this actually represents an increase on the 17 million the firm paid in corporation tax the previous year. In 2017, its operating profit was 62 million.

Over the years, tech companies like Facebook and Google have gained a reputation for deploying financial trickery to avoid paying corporation tax on the vast revenues generated.

Facebook, for instance, before 2017 funnelled its international advertising revenue from across the world into Ireland in order to pay a much more favourable tax rate. Only following a public backlash and European Union (EU) action did the company pledge to pay corporation tax in each individual nation in which it operates.

The UK government last year also announced plans to introduce a Digital Services Tax (DST) to combat the "unsustainable and unfair" tax practices of social media giants and search engines. Coming into effect from April 2020, this would be a 2% tax on revenue, not on profit, on firms generating more than 500 million per year.

Up to 100 million is being poured into researchers and small businesses as part of public sector efforts to invest in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI).

The government's Future Leaders Fellowships scheme will receive 78 million to be invested in 78 researchers to work on scientific and technological discoveries.

The remaining 20 million will be allocated to universities to support small businesses in rapidly-growing industries including AI, but also areas like clean growth and agri-food.

The 20 University Enterprise Zones (UEZs) will provide specialist support to small businesses and raise the level of knowledge-sharing between academics and entrepreneurs through frequent collaborations.

Through these UEZs, startups and small businesses will be given the facilities and expertise to help take their ideas through from a concept into the production and marketing stages.

These programmes will run across the UK in cities like Exeter, Falmouth, and Durham, not just London, with the government hoping this regional diversity will lead to several improvements to local economies.

These packages are part of the government's UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) programme, which has seen various sums allocated to boosting aspects of tech growth in recent months.

The NHS, for example, this month received 69.5 million to fund four projects that involve developing therapies and technologies to treat genetic mutations that predicate life-threatening conditions like cancer and arthritis.

The UKRI programme even funded three R&D projects in Bristol with a 50,000 round of investment in March this year.

"UKRI is committed to creating modern research and innovation careers and our Future Leaders Fellowships aim to support and retain the most talented people, including those with flexible career paths," said UKRI chief executive Professor Sir Mark Walport.

"These 20 University Enterprise Zones funded by Research England will be important focal points for collaboration in business-friendly environments, driving innovation and delivering benefits that will be felt across economies at the local, regional and national scale."

The largest recipient of the 20 million UEZ fund is the University of Southampton, which will use a 1.5 million boost to fund the Future Towns Innovation Hub.

Other prominent projects include Oxford Brookes' 1.2 million AI & Data Analysis Incubator, and Lancaster University's Secure Digitisation UEZ.

The British tech sector has already racked up greater foreign investment in the first seven months of the year than it did for the entirety of 2018.

A total of 5.5 billion worth of foreign investments were made in UK tech between January and July, a figure up 43% from the same point last year according to research from the UK Digital Economy Council and Tech Nation.

The majority of the investment came from firms based in the US and Asia, which the report believes is due to the attractive billion-dollar UK tech companies such as OVO Energy and Deliveroo. However, the weak pound, which has been steadily losing value against most global currencies, including both the US and Canadian dollars, the Euro, the Japanese Yen and Chinese Yuan, since May this year.

The top 30 of these tech companies that have attracted the most foreign investment include Starling Bank, Skyscanner, Darktrace, Checkout.com, which have collectively created more than 5,000 UK jobs in digital tech and other roles such as HR and marketing.

"These fantastic figures show the confidence overseas investors have in UK tech with investment flows from the US and Asia at an all time high," said Nicky Morgan, secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

"We have a longstanding reputation for innovation and the statistics endorse our reputation as one of the best places in the world to start and grow a digital business," she added.

The figures announced today means the UK has now overtaken the US in terms of foreign tech investment and signals that the country's developing industry is attracting top talent and producing impactful tech innovations.

"With the exception of Germany, this surge in foreign investments from US and Asian investors is higher than the amount received by the whole of the rest of Europe," read the report. "Since 2013, this takes the total amount of money put into the sector by US and Asian investors to $14.6 billion compared to a respective $6.5 billion and $2.5 billion into Germany and France."

When divided by region, domestic funding still takes the majority share at 37%, with the US and Canada providing 30%, Asia 16% and the remaining portion coming from other foreign and European countries.

The range of investment sources and types of investment indicates a period of stability for the UK tech market. By seeing venture capital, growth equity and investments in startup fundraising rounds at various stages, the worldwide interest indicates the UK's tech sector could see a strong few years ahead of it.

"It is incredibly gratifying to see that in addition to domestic and European investors, British tech innovators are also attracting US and Asian investor attention and allocation," said Eileen Burbidge, chair of Tech Nation.

"The fact that this is growing is a testament to the strength and depth or our entrepreneurial talent, coupled with the dynamic and deeply engaged ecosystem that has been established here in the UK," she added.

Oxford has received a 150 million donation to build an institute to study the ethics of artificial intelligence, which is the largest single donation for a UK university.

The money came from US philanthropist and businessman Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm, who has also worked with President Donald Trump.

Schwarzman made a number of donations recently, such as a $350 million (279m) gift to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish a centre for computing and AI. Schwarzman told the BBC he was giving the money to Oxford University because artificial intelligence is the major issue of our age.

"At the moment, most governments are utterly unprepared to deal with this, and why would they be, it's a different type of technology," he said. "They're going to have to rely on great universities like Oxford, and others around the world who specialise in helping them think this through."

Schwarzman said universities need to help construct an ethical framework for changes that are happening rapidly in the technology world. AI, which is powering autonomous technology in all industrial sectors, is often cited as a disruptor of jobs, with many concerned it will lead to prolonged unemployment for certain demographics.

The study of the ethics of AI at Oxford will be in a new humanities centre, bringing together subjects from languages to philosophy. Schwarzman said it was "important for people to remember what being human is".

"Why are we here? What are your values? How does technology deal and interact with that," he said. "We should want it to be positive and productive for society, and technology can't be allowed to just do whatever it wants because it can."

The donation has been warmly received by the University and UK officials. It's even been praised by the father of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who hopes it helps technology and society advance together.

"This will be very valuable," he tweeted. "Will hopefully help ensure that technology and society advance in a coordinated way, one which benefits humanity. Congratulations @UniofOxford and, thank you Stephen Schwarzman!"

A senior Apple lawyer entrusted to oversee the company's safeguards against employee insider trading has been charged with using confidential information to illicitly earn more than half a million dollars.

Gene Levoff allegedly used information about prospective movements in Apple's share price to earn more than $600,000 between 2011 and 2016, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Levoff, who was fired from his post as Apple's senior director of corporate law last September, was tasked with ensuring the firm's employees themselves didn't violate US insider trading laws.

But in court filings submitted yesterday, the SEC accused Levoff of making a series of illegal trades during his time with the company that led to profits of $227,000 and avoiding losses of 377,000. These trades amount to violations of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act.

"Levoff was an insider who owed a duty of trust and confidence to Apple and its shareholders not to trade on the basis of material nonpublic information that he learned through his position at Apple," the filings said.

"Further, as a member of the core group of senior Apple insiders entrusted with material nonpublic information, and as an attorney with a sophisticated understanding of securities and corporate law, Levoff knew, or was reckless in not knowing, that he had a duty of trust and confidence to the company and its shareholders."

As part of his role, Levoff set the criteria for employees, himself included, who were restricted from trading around quarterly earnings announcements. He was also party to non-public information about Apple's financial results as part of the company's Disclosure Committee.

He was, therefore, able to make profits and avoid losses on such a scale by buying and selling Apple stock in light of information that Apple's share price movement before this was made public.

For example, on at least three specific instances between 2015 and 2016, the SEC alleges, Levoff profited and avoid losses of approximately $382,000.

On one occasion, in July 2015, he was tipped off that Apple would miss analysts' estimates for iPhone sales, and sold approximately $10 million in Apple stock, ahead of what transpired to be a 4% share price fall. As a result, he avoided losses of $345,000.

Beyond maintaining Apple's procedures, including a 'blackout' around the time financial results were released, the SEC outlined how Levoff personally sent memos to employees warning against engaging insider trading despite insider trading at that time himself.

For example, Levoff sent an email to Apple employees explaining that a blackout period would last from 1 March 2011, and remain in effect "until 60 hours after earnings are released in April 2011".

The email written in all-caps stated: "REMEMBER, TRADING IS NOT PERMITTED, WHETHER OR NOT IN AN OPEN TRADING WINDOW, IF YOU POSSESS OR HAVE ACCESS TO MATERIAL INFORMATION THAT HAS NOT BEEN DISCLOSED PUBLICLY."

The SEC identified two such occasions in 2011 on which he sent such emails immediately prior to insider trading.

"Levoff's alleged exploitation of his access to Apple's financial information was particularly egregious given his responsibility for implementing the company's insider trading compliance policy," said the SEC's associate director of enforcement Antonia Chion.

"The SEC is committed to pursuing insiders who breach their duties to investors."

The complaint charges Levoff with fraud and is seeking the return of his trading profits plus interest, penalties, and a permanent injunction. The US Attorney's Office has also announced criminal charges.

Levoff's lawyer Kevin Marino told CNBC he was reviewing the allegations and looked forward to defending his client. Gene Levoff has denied wrongdoing.

Fresh concerns have been raised about the state of diversity in the tech industry following the release of a scathing report that showed the overwhelming majority of funding for startups was being handed to all-male founding teams.

Investors were found to have committed 93% of all start-up funding to teams founded entirely by men during 2018, with all-women founding teams comprising just 2% of all investment. Those startups made up of both men and women received just 5% of funding.

The figures, released in Atomico's latest 'State of European Tech' report, are relatively consistent on previous years' findings, with the 93% statistic actually representing an increase from a recorded 92% in 2013. Moreover, this pattern is also seen in terms of deals made, with 85% of total deals in 2018 involving all-male founding teams versus 5% for all-female teams a statistic that has again remain unchanged for the previous five years.

Francesca Warner, co-founder of non-profit organisation Diversity VC, said she was encouraged to see diversity increasingly appear on tech firms' agendas but that no meaningful change had been made when it came to supporting early development.

"Lack of diversity is driven by a combination of factors that affect the pipeline of talent in STEM subjects, the availability of diverse role models, access to expertise and capital, social mobility and a range of other issues.

"Europe is not necessarily tangibly better or worse than other tech hubs however, given that Europe is such a diverse range of geographies and people this should be a key strength."

Atomico also analysed press coverage surrounding diversity and inclusion, finding that while its importance has "unquestionably gained an elevated prominence in the news narrative", the topic paled into insignificance compared with other issues.

Between 2017 and 2018, four times the number of articles from European news sources were published on fundraising (43.6%) versus diversity and inclusion (10.6%), while 11.9% of all news content was devoted to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

Moreover, the researchers also found the social media sentiment regarding diversity and inclusion coverage was far more negative than on any other topic, with negative sentiment driving 42% of social engagement. For reference, the researchers measured no negative sentiment in social engagements for artificial intelligence stories.

Atomico's research only reinforces previous findings and statistics which point to a diversity crisis concerning both female and BME participation in the tech industry.

For instance, the number of women learning computer skills in the UK slumped by a third in the last few years according to Makers Academy findings published in September. The software programming course provider said the number of young women taking computing or ICT GCSEs fell from 52,835 in 2014 to 35,103 in 2018.

There have also been a handful of high-profile controversies in major tech companies in the last year, including a recent walkout by 200 Google engineers in protest at the firm's alleged handling of sexual misconduct.

There are, however, several initiatives being run to further the cause of women in tech, such as the government-backed TechTalentCharter, an initiative that aims to align UK tech firms to a voluntary code of practice.

Similarly, a consortium led by UK tech organisations such as Tech Nation announced this summer it would raise 15.1 million to invest in the tech industry with the aim of doubling female and BME-founded startups.

In business, the bottom line is the bottom line. It's all about making or saving more money than you spend.

When it comes to IT projects, however, things always prove a little more complicated. They require you to make a bunch of assumptions or projections about how a system is likely to benefit a business, and balance those against initial setup costs and additional expenses like training and the removal of legacy equipment. As such, it's not always easy to make guarantees that a return on investment is certain.

Those various complications add up to a total cost of ownership, and that total cost can be a red flag for senior management, particularly if they lean towards an "if it ain't broke..." attitude.

Of course, some projects are easier wins than others. We've identified a handful of IT upgrade projects some practical and some more strategic that are almost guaranteed to benefit almost any business. If your organisation hasn't started these already, it should certainly be considering them.

1. Get virtual

There's something reassuringly tangible about physical hardware, and, although we're nearing the end of 2018, there's plenty of hardware resellers out there that will happily supply you with a room full of servers.

If you're wanting something more cost-effective, virtual machines are by far the best option. The great bit is that you don't have to go all-out to see immediate benefits, as running just two VMs in a single server can help you cut your physical footprint in half.

And of course, that's the most conservative setup. The big cloud hosts and enterprise IT people routinely wedge in 20 server instances per physical machine, and technologies such as Docker and Container Virtualisation can take the figure higher still. You don't need super-powered hardware to do it, either: most individual servers run at under 5% load most of their lives.

Yes, there are plenty of people around who have been burned by too-early, too-ambitious attempts at wholesale virtualisation. But in the decade or more that hypervisor technology has been mainstream, things have only been getting better and easier. Most of the annoying bugs that bit early adopters are mere painful memories.

2. Offload into the cloud where it makes sense

I've seen it argued that the cloud gives you the best return on investment in the business; after all, since cloud services are classified as a running cost rather than a capital expenditure, you're getting a benefit without technically making an investment. However, if your business already owns a rack of perfectly good servers, mothballing them in favour of hosted services doesn't maximise your return on that investment it minimises it.

Indeed, if you unthinkingly shift everything into the cloud you're almost certainly throwing money away. Azure VMs can cost around $200 a month in fairly low-usage situations, for example. That's a year's worth of running costs for a small, sensibly specified business server. Cloud providers emphasise that such pricing covers spikes in compute power, for those distressing days when you just don't have enough of your own. But do you really need to pay distress-load rates for a year-round, non-distress requirement?

It's also important to be realistic about the value of what you're replacing. Quite a lot of migrations are based on absurd comparative costings. I recently walked through a bank's server room and found it filled with 7U servers, each with a single CPU sitting in a four-way motherboard, and a single 9GB hard disk occupying its 12-tray RAID enclosure. Clearly, some rationalisation was overdue; I might have recommended that the racks be consolidated into a single 12-core, 1U server and a storage array network, offering a more flexible performance envelope and more easily controlled costs, looking into the future.

However, the bank had decided that cloud was the way to go because it had accounted for each server in each rack as a cost of 250,000. That huge sum had been arrived at by factoring in all sorts of considerations such as premises, insurance, and so on, which of course could not be ditched by moving into the cloud. Once it became apparent that the cost-saving was likely to be minimal, the argument for the cloud seemed far weaker. Then the first few emails announcing tariff shifts from their hosting provider came in.

The lesson is that you should engage with the cloud, but only where it's cost-effective to do so. Don't be swayed by TCO comparisons that include irreducible overheads such as pension contributions, plus inflated costs for service and inappropriately specified top-end gear. Most corporate servers are perfectly capable of participating in a well-designed hybrid cloud deployment: this lets you extract the maximum value out of the assets you already own.

3. Outsource IT functions to specialists

This is a superset of the cloud option, but it's a more multi-faceted idea. The logic, though, is simple: "computer people" are broadly the same no matter what industry they inhabit, so it makes sense to treat them as a commodity. Better career prospects for them, less admin for you: you can focus your budget on people who advance your business.

The catch is the notion that all IT bods are created equal. Back in about 1998, you could get away with that assumption. But today it's likely that IT is the core of your business: it's the machinery that delivers your products or services, the way staff communicate and even the way you interact with customers. Think about that and it's clear that you don't want all the knowledge of how your processes work to be left in the care of someone who has no particular stake in your business.

Even if everything goes well, there's the question of continuity when you switch or leave providers. We've all heard stories of online systems asking for passwords and credentials nobody has, because the setup was handled by a contractor.

This is another area where the return looks great if you focus only on the balance sheet but it's key to weigh the benefits carefully against the potential savings. You may decide to outsource only certain roles, while keeping the engineers in-house.

4. Get on board with Web 2.0

You want your business' web presence to be accessible to as many people as possible, using as many different devices as possible, for as little as possible. That's especially true for sites that do business in the browser, such as online retailers. It's no surprise, then, that the great and grand retail houses run continuous development models; they invest in making it as easy as possible for customers to spend money, without having to think too hard about how to use features or a particular platform.

So if your site doesn't work like theirs do, why not? Of course, most IT-savvy businesses now have histories of product buying and code cutting and document production. It may seem a challenge to shift from historic architecture over to a modern, adaptive design and presentation that accommodates phones and tablets as well as desktop browsers.

But if you can follow the models of the established online giants, your visitors will immediately know how to interact with you: in effect, they'll come to you having been organically, socially trained.

Just remember that it's about more than aping the appearance and feel of a site. It can be more discouraging and frustrating for customers if a site looks familiar, but doesn't work in the same way as other sites.

5. Don't just call hyperconverge!

The name sounds futuristic, but hyperconvergence mostly just means moving telephony onto VoIP and bringing it within the purview of your IT department. This can be a great money-saver, because phone costs are a big fat number on most larger business' balance sheets. Run your phone calls over your network and you cut out a lot of phone-specific line items. No more great big hot 50V power boxes buzzing away in a cupboard, with those odd button-festooned phones running from them: simply give everyone a free desktop app and a headset.

It's the same persuasive rationale as the original Skype for home users, translated into businesses. And it's becoming increasingly powerful as most businesses are experiencing lower volumes of calls these days than a decade or two ago. It makes perfect sense to ditch the high-cost telephone infrastructure and replace it with something that can also be used for internal and external video conferencing.

The only question is if your company network is up to the job. It's a good bet that even your senior IT staff don't know exactly how many Ethernet packets are dropped per year, month, day or hour. That's because most applications can handle the odd network hiccup without missing a beat but that's very hard to do with audio, and stuttering, glitchy phone calls create a very unprofessional impression.

As a result, some companies with business-critical telephony traffic allow their phone provider to put in a whole separate infrastructure for voice; or they might give VoIP top priority across the entire LAN and effectively squeeze the data part out of the equation. Whatever approach you choose, it's likely to provide an eye-opening insight into the state of your network, and a chance to make your LAN work more for its money.

6. Let employees bring their own devices

Like many bright ideas, this one looks like a no-brainer at first glance just think how much you'll save if you don't have to buy and support a fleet of laptops and smartphones! but it comes with a lot of caveats.

One is simply about how shiny consumer devices can colour the way your employees do their jobs. If your web developers are all using iPhones, that doesn't promise a great customer experience for Android users. At the least, you need to provide a spread of platforms for testing, including a grubby old Windows PC. That ought to shake up the inexperienced developer who always upgrades to the latest iPad.

There's also the management overhead to think about. If employees are reading work emails, accessing work servers and writing work code on their own devices, you need clear policies handling issues like privacy and intellectual property, and you'll also want some sort of MDM (mobile device management) system in place to deal with lost phones and leavers.

You'll still need to think about segmenting tasks: there are simple everyday jobs that can be left out in BYO land, and some complex, critical ones that can't. It's extremely unlikely you'll be able to completely abdicate responsibility for client systems, so when it comes to that RoI meeting it's best not to over-promise the potential of BYOD.

7. Embrace open-source

Many businesses rely on a library of bespoke scripts and cobbled-together apps that do specific tasks with a minimum of fuss. Unfortunately, these normally also come with a minimum of documentation, and no guarantee of compatibility with future OS releases, unfamiliar networks and so on.

Even if it seems less efficient in the short run, you're generally better off using established systems. In particular, if you can build your processes on open-source software, a huge amount of testing, upgrading and support comes for free.

Of course, in practice it's not always quite that easy. You do need to plan for what happens when the relevant coding team has an internal hissy fit and suddenly bifurcates into two coding teams. Even so, that's a small price to pay, compared to your average industry-partner quote for a custom solution. And when it comes to taking on new employees, you may well be able to draw on a huge pool of existing open-source expertise.

However, there aren't that many OSS projects that address the kind of kind of industry-specific IT jobs that tend to attract bespoke solutions in the first place. If you really want to drive RoI then it's worth exploring to what extent it's possible to structure your processes around the open-source tools available, rather than vice versa.

Government representatives have returned from a US visit to mark one year on from signing a landmark transatlantic Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement.

Science Minister Sam Gyimah MP met with leading academics and tech disruptors in Boston, Houston and Washington DC to announce a further research partnership in medical technology, and learn from the industry.

He also revealed plans to embark on a further fact-finding mission to Texas in November, accompanied with academics and business representatives from the UK's life sciences sector. The party will set meetings with American colleagues, and "seek out opportunities for global innovation" by exploring how the UK can more easily infiltrate US markets.

"Science has no borders. By collaborating with our US colleagues, we are pooling our power to find the answers to the biggest science questions of today and making the most of the inventions of tomorrow," Gyimah said.

The government said the science minister used the opportunity to learn how academic and business partnerships between the two nations are commercialising and marketing the latest innovations.

As part of the trip, Gyimah met with a firm called LearnLaunch in Boston to learn about emerging educational technology, before visiting aerospace startups in Houston and NASA's senior leadership at the Johnson Space Centre.

"Building on our reputation as a global force in science is at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy and we will continue to learn with and from international innovators to push new boundaries," he continued.

The initial cooperation agreement, announced in September last year, included a 65 million UK investment for research into the structures and origin of the universe.

Given the spectre of Brexit hanging over the UK's science and technology industries, the onus on the UK government to explore trade and investment opportunities beyond the European Union (EU) has never been greater.

According to research last year despite the majority of UK businesses feeling optimistic about growth, a significant proportion had decided to withhold IT investment, and in many cases freeze budgets entirely in light of the looming uncertainty.

Brexit has even led to claims the UK will suffer a brain drain' if the final deal negotiated with the EU misses aspects such as intelligence sharing. Meanwhile, Nesta research shows the UK's skills shortage could be exacerbated.

Forging closer ties with industries beyond the confines of Europe, a process which involve trips such as that scheduled for November, is something the government is hoping to do more to ensure any post-Brexit economic risks are mitigated.

Image: Bigstock

Nationwide has announced a multi-billion pound programme to digitally transform its services over the next five years.

The building society will commit a further 1.3 billion above the previously announced investment in a six-pronged approach that aims to overhaul legacy systems, and adapt high street branches, as well as build digital platforms.

Its investment will also see between 750 and 1,000 new jobs created, as well as the construction of a UK-based technology hub for existing staff to be trained and re-skilled.

"Nationwide is in an incredibly strong position, something we've achieved through understanding consumer needs and serving members on their terms," said its deputy chief executive Tony Prestedge.

"Testament to this is that we have over recent years realised record membership, customer service and financial strength and security.

"As a mutual we can afford to take a longer-term view rather than focus on short term gains. The pace of technological change means that we need to reassess continually how we serve our members in order to remain relevant, valued and competitive.

"We are therefore seizing this moment with confidence as we set ourselves up to succeed long into the future."

The transformation programme is based on six strands and will prioritise supporting branches with new technology as opposed to wholly replacing them and the staff who work there.

The plan will see Nationwide phasing out legacy IT systems, and simplifying its data estate from 20 stores to two while investing in machine learning and AI to more effectively process customer data.

This comes on top of an additional 350 million Nationwide committed to transforming high street branches, which CEO Joe Garner said was a testament to the value his company places on physical interactions with staff in an online era.

Speaking in a conference call with journalists, Garner explained the company was in a strong position but needed to prepare itself ahead of several "near-term challenges" including Brexit and the expansion of fintech.

He also cited rampant innovation in the financial services sector (such as open banking) and his view that data handling has become the number one driver of trust for consumers, as motivations behind the programme.

His comments resonate with the introduction of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gave citizens a raft of additional data and privacy rights, as well as a number of high-profile data misuse scandals.

The company's executives also said there would be no high-profile data migrations of the breed that has plagued high street banking competitor TSB. To underline the scale of this crisis, the IT woes which stretch as far back as April saw TSB's CEO Paul Pester resign earlier this month.

Transformation drives such Nationwide's often raise the prospect of job losses, with automation threatening to relieve humans in sectors such as customers services.

Retailer M&S for example recently announced it would replace its call centre staff with an AI chatbot - but insisted the 100 staff being replaced would be reassigned to in-store roles rather than being made redundant.

The European Commission wants to make Europe a hub for fintech startups with its 'Fintech Action Plan' for the sector.

The Action Plan, published today, detailed 23 steps to "enable innovative business models to scale up, support the uptake of new technologies, increase cyber security and the integrity of the financial system". These steps are based on the formation of best practices through regulation, making it easier for startups to access investment capital, and the creation of a fintech laboratory.

This lab will be used as a place for European and national authorities to engage with technology providers in a neutral and non-commercial space.

The Action Plan involves tapping into the EC's Blockchain Observatory and Forum, established to look at the development of blockchain tech and the cryptocurrencies it supports, as well as considering other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and the ever-expanding adoption of cloud computing.

It will also involve the running of workshops and the sharing of best practices around cyber security and the use of regulatory sandboxes where fintech startups can conduct live service experiments within a controlled environment with regulatory supervision.

Due to the lack of shared rules across the European Union when it comes to crowdfunding, the Action Plan will look to establish regulation that allows startups to apply for an EU label based on a single set of rules, which will allow for them to seek funding and offer their services across EU member states, while investors get protected by that single set of rules rather than fragmented regulation.

"Digital technologies have an impact on our whole economy citizens and businesses alike. Technologies like blockchain can be game changers for financial services and beyond. We need to build an enabling framework to let innovation flourish, while managing risks and protecting consumers," said Mariya Gabriel, commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society.

Currently, London is the capital of the EU's fintech sector. But with the UK set to leave the EU, access to the European Single Market could be lost. So by making it easier to trade within the EU, the Commission could not only compensate for this but also establish another city or nation as the fintech capital of Europe.

Customers of Aviva's online pensions platform found they could not withdraw their money after the platform crashed late last week following a recent migration.

When the insurer faced a deluge of support calls from concerned customers, it "took the phones off the hook" rather than answer the calls as it tried to clear its backlog of problems, according to a customer who first informed IT Pro of the issues.

Those issues included withdrawing money, payments to financial advisers, accessing valuations and more.

While an Aviva spokesperson has told IT Pro the platform was fixed on Monday morning, many of these issues remain unresolved, with payments only due to come out on 9 February now, according to Aviva's own reporting dashboard.

The same source who informed IT Pro about the issue said he was kept in the dark about the problems for more than two days after emailing the company in lieu of call centre support.

The issues began last week after Aviva migrated its Adviser Platform over to fintech services provider FNZ's infrastructure, which also underlies Aviva's Customer Platform.

"As part of this [migration] we invited our advised customers to use a new online service to complement their advisers' access," an Aviva spokesman said.

"There was a technical issue with this access for some customers which resulted in a backlog of customer requests. We took the decision to focus all of our available people, in one of our call centres, on processing the backlog to clear it as soon as possible. Customers could still contact us by email."

But this impacted small business owners like IT Pro's source, who said he needed to make a pensions withdrawal to pay for development work for his online design business.

While he has now been able to access his funds, Aviva's reporting dashboard shows that payments to its Advisers Platform users are still affected, flagging the issue as 'amber', which it defines as "not fully working as expected".

Many other issues were still listed as amber at the time of writing.

"I've resolved my immediate pension issue - but it doesn't resolve the underlying issues with Aviva and their online systems," the customer told IT Pro.

Aviva launched its FNZ-powered platform on 23 January, following five days of downtime as it migrated the system over from another vendor, Bravura, according to Money Marketing.

The launch was immediately impacted by issues including difficulties running quotations, accessing valuations and getting new applications accepted on the platform.

Speaking to the publication, Facts and Figures Financial Planners managing director Simon Webster said: "These problems have gone beyond the minor teething problems that are part and parcel of any big IT project. Large areas of the system are simply not functional."

IT Pro understands Aviva is being referred to the Pensions Ombudsman over the outage.

Tech giant Google's European venture capital firm, GV, continues to face challenges, with yet another partner leaving the organisation for a new opportunity.

According to Business Insider, Avid Larizadeh Duggan has confirmed she's to join music technology firm Kobalt, which describes itself as an independent rights management and publishing company.

She'll take up the role of executive vice president and chief strategy and business officer next month. Her job will be to manage and develop the firm's strategy and business teams globally.

Larizadeh Duggan has already worked with the company, being she was instrumental in GV's investment deal with Kobalt in 2015.

The firm secured 40 million in funding to launch a global expansion plan and to improve its product offering. This also happened to be Google Ventures' first European investment.

Although this is clearly a big opportunity for Larizadeh Duggan, GV appears to be struggling. Her departure means there's only one partner left working at the firm in Europe, Tom Hulme.

As Business Insider points out, she was the only female general partner working at Google's investment company and the firm hasn't announced any plans about redeveloping the partner team.

In 2015, Peter Read became the first partner to depart the company. But by the end of the year, Eze Vidra made similar decision and MG Siegler ended up quitting, too.

Google brought GV (formerly Google Ventures) to Europe in 2014 and ploughed $125 million (92.6 million) into the organisation. At the time, it hired five partners.

In a statement about her new position, Larizadeh Duggan said: "As one of my portfolio companies while at GV, I had been closely witnessing Willard (Ahdritz, Kobalt's founder and CEO)'s inspiring leadership and the Kobalt team's commitment to build the music industry by putting creators first.

"Kobalt is on a clear mission to bring transparency, fairness and efficiency to the music industry as a whole through the combination of technology, one of the best creative teams in the industry and bold vision.

"To have the opportunity to drive forward this mission and be part of Kobalt's stellar team at such a key time in the company's growth, is a real privilege."

The consumerisation of technology goes across all technology types. The recent boom in smart home devices is fuelling growth in IoT, but how is this driving buying decisions in businesses?

The consumerisation of IT has led to more business departments - whether HR, marketing or finance - making purchasing decisions on cloud solutions, according to consulting firm Intrinsic Technology.

This can lead to lots of different systems running in silos. In turn, this is counter-intuitive for the CIO, who effectively takes on a supply management role, and who has to fight to augment disparate systems to ensure they are interoperable.

With processes such as shadow IT taking a grip on companies, some business teams are now making technology decisions without the CIO, which can cause them to lose control of the IT and end up with issues such as information sprawl.

In a recent survey of 850 software decision makers, Forrester found that on average, enterprises buy 50% of their software without direct IT involvement. The survey also found that managers outside IT perform too little due diligence on software suppliers' security, and fail to negotiate vital protection into SaaS contracts.

"We've seen several organisations facing 30% price hikes from SaaS providers because the manager who placed the order didn't secure a price commitment beyond the initial contract term," said Duncan Jones, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

"We've seen others who faced a ransom to get their data back if they did not renew their contracts, because the manager hadn't considered that eventuality."

Some technology management groups are trying to stem this tide, while others are simply hoping they won't get blamed for subsequent problems.

Trusted expertise is needed

One of the biggest pitfalls businesses face is jumping in feet-first, without doing the groundwork to create a clear strategy and understand how the implementation of new technology will impact the wider IT estate. There are opportunities here for the channel to provide trusted expertise and advice to end user organisations.

Many providers, including AWS, LinkedIn and Slack, have had success selling direct to enterprise employees. This method avoids expensive enterprise software sales processes, but it also requires good, automated processes for user engagement.

Vendors adopting this model should ensure they have customer-friendly contracts that enterprises can accept without having to negotiate multiple concessions. This reduces friction in the sales process, and reduces the risk of corporate groups vetoing the business manager's choice of product.

With 27% of final decisions now being made by a different group or person other than the IT department, IT channel vendors should look to adapt their business models and sales strategies to their new buying audience.

Picture: Bigstock

A consortium of tech magnates led by Bill Gates is investing $1 billion (800 million) in a venture capital fund backing green energy sources, in order to stave off global warming.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures is also supported by Sir Richard Branson, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Alibaba boss Jack Ma, and will focus on long-term investments rather than short-term profits. The group's capital will reportedly be invested over the next 20 years.

The group will look at four criteria when examining potential investments: whether they can attract additional sources of capital, whether they have an existing scientific proof-of-concept, whether they need the firm's expertise, and whether they have the capacity to reduce emissions by at least half a gigaton.

The fund's investors have a collected wealth of 135 billion, and many have previously invested in, or donated to, environmentally-friendly projects. Gates in particular has been famed for his charitable efforts since ceding control of Microsoft in 2000.

"Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world," he said. "I am honored to work along with these investors to build on the powerful foundation of public investment in basic research."

The new initiative marks the first official act of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of 28 environmentally-conscious investors formed at last year's Paris climate talks.

Notably missing from the group is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. In addition to the electric car company, Musk also heads up renewable energy company Solar City and is one of the most prominent and active environmentalists in Silicon Valley.\

Picture courtesy of The Henry Ford/Michelle Andonian

Virgin Media, one of BT's biggest rivals, has joined the company in battling against a possible Openreach split.

Running in national broadsheet newspapers, a joint ad campaign will focus on the fact that the average download speed in Britain is faster than in many other EU countries.

It also adds that broadband speeds in the UK have "more than quadrupled" over the past five years, claiming that this is thanks to investments of over 15 billion by the two companies.

"BT and Virgin Media may be commercial rivals but we both have a proud track record of investing billions of pounds in the UK's digital infrastructure," BT CEO Gavin Patterson told The Telegraph.

"It's important post-Brexit that we don't talk the country down and that the right climate exists for further investment."

Together, BT and Virgin Media own and operate the entirety of Britain's broadband cable network. Aside from Virgin, all other internet service providers piggyback on BT's Openreach network to provide internet access to their customers.

Communications regulator Ofcom called for the division to be reformed, outlining proposals in July that would see Openreach become a "ring-fenced, 'wholly-owned subsidiary' of BT Group, with its own purpose and board members". By doing this, Ofcom hopes to remove any possibility that BT could bias against its rivals who rely on the network.

This legal separation, Ofcom claims, would give it more control over its investments and make the market more competitive "without incurring the costs and disruption... associated with separating the companies entirely."

Rival companies that currently depend on Openreach cables say that if Openreach and BT separate, they will be able to invest in upgrading the network, meaning better speeds and increased reliability.

IT Pro has approached both BT and Virgin Media for comment, but had received none at the time of publication. Ofcom's proposals are open to public consultation until 4 October.

Europe needs to increase its investment in the tech sector, according to CA Technologies.

Despite having the same level of coding proficiency as America, Europe's start-up scene still lags behind Silicon Valley in many ways, EMEA president Marco Comastri said at CA World, the company's annual conference, last week.

"In terms of competence, I don't see a big difference. Universities in Europe, I think they are delivering a level of education which I think is the same quality as any other university in the world," he said.

"In Silicon Valley, it's easier to start a company in this kind of new environment Why? I think it's easier to find money - to find risk capital."

Comastri says that this is due to Europe's much more risk-averse financial culture. America, by contrast, breeds many more venture capitalist firms.

These speculative investment firms have played a large part in Silicon Valley's success, frequently providing large cash injections to startups, allowing them to grow and flourish.

According to Comastri, Europe's more turbulent economic conditions have hade firms reticent to gamble on untested start-ups.

"We need to take a little bit more risk, because risk equals reward. In a way, I think we are too conservative We are not trusting our youth, which I think is a killer," he added.

He also noted that European business culture is a lot less forgiving of failure than it is in America. "It's a problem," he claimed. "It's something we need to fix. Because if we want to push the innovation, we need to accept failures."

UPDATE: Facebook has this week broken the barrier of 1 billion users in a single day.

On Monday, founder Mark Zuckerberg said, Facebook had been used by "1 in 7 people on Earth", marking the latest landmark in the site's meteoric growth.

The company already broke a million monthly users in 2012, but this week marks the first time that Facebook has had that amount of logins in one day.

Earlier this year, Zuckerberg claimed that over half of the globe's population used Facebook at least once a month.

"When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different", he said. "This was the first time we reached this milestone, and it's just the beginning of connecting the whole world."

Zuckerberg has put his money where his mouth is in that respect; he has thrown Facebook's substantial weight behind the Internet.org project, which aims to bring internet connectivity to the world's developing nations.

Facebook has also made in-roads into the emerging virtual reality market, purchasing VR headset manufacturer Oculus in 2014.

The social media titan published its second-quarter earnings results in July, which showed that its monthly users grew 13 per cent to just under 1.5 billion.

This figure is comprised of everyone who uses Facebook at least once a month, but many access it much more frequently, with 65 per cent using the service on a daily basis.

It is estimated that around three billion people worldwide have internet access, bringing Facebook's total share of those users to roughly 50 per cent.

Mobile internet is clearly a key driver of this growth. Indeed, in the US, the company claims that for every five minutes of smartphone use, one is spent on Facebook.

Facebook profits drop by almost 10 per cent

Development costs on projects like the forthcoming Oculus Rift and Zuckerberg's Internet.org initiative pushed expenditures up to $2.8 billion for the second quarter, a rise of more than 80 per cent.

This means that despite a 39 per cent year-on-year revenue increase for a total of over $4 billion Facebook's overall profits suffered a 9.1 per cent loss, coming out at $719 million.

The recent spate of financial results have been a mixed bag for many companies. Following their recent Windows Phone mis-steps, Microsoft announced a loss to the tune of $3.2 million.

Apple, on the other hand, has had a relatively good quarter, with profits topping out at more than $10.7 billion. Huawei also had a fantastic year, with a year-on-year growth of 124 per cent.

According to reports, this growth has pushed them to the top spot in their native territory, as they nab the largest market share in Chinese smartphones.

A Google-commissioned survey of 3,600 workers from across Europe has shown the majority are unhappy with their company's tech policies.

The study, carried out by Deloitte, showed 54 per cent of UK employees believe access to better collaboration tools would improve productivity, but only 32 per cent currently used online collaborative tools in their workplace.

There is also a high level of dissatisfaction among workers about the technology provided to them, with only 18 per cent of respondents claiming to be happy with the devices they have and just 5 per cent with the digital collaboration services made available to them.

According to the report, companies that fail to invest in these tools could put employees at a disadvantage and, by extension, themselves. Workers are 17 percentage points more satisfied with their workplace culture when they have collaboration tools and 22 percentage points more likely to believe their employer cared about their morale.

Furthermore, denying employees access to collaboration tools will not stop them from using such technology, the research shows. Of those who had requested collaboration tools but been denied, half had started using them anyway.

Commenting on the results, Roger De'Ath, Google Enterprise manager UK, said: "This report clearly shows the positive impact that technology has on employee morale, innovation and productivity.

"Businesses that want to realise the full potential of their employees should look at the benefits that technology can bring to collaboration and innovation. Technology is not just about saving costs but about transforming the workplace," he added.

Will Gosling, a partner with Deloitte Human Capital, said: "Over 60 per cent of people in the UK use digital collaboration tools in their personal lives, so it's unsurprising they want to make use of them to improve productivity and happiness at work.

"What is surprising is how few British organisations are providing those tools or creating a workplace culture that promotes collaboration and innovation."

Mike Lynch, the co-founder of software firm Autonomy has invested in an augmented reality start-up based in London.

The start-up known as Taggar, allows people to share video and other content they have tagged to objects, Lynch said.

The undisclosed investment is the second by Invoke Capital, a $1 billion fund set up by the British entrepreneur after he left Autonomy. The first was a $20 million investment in cybersecurity firm Darktrace.

Lynch is now focusing on commercialising science and mathematics technology coming out of British universities, which he calls "techy tech".

"I am a great believer that techy tech and creative tech need to talk to each other a bit more, on both sides," he said in an interview.

"We are good at both of them, but the sad thing is in the past they haven't leveraged each other enough."

The use of augmented reality, which allows devices such as smartphone to recognise objects in the real world, such as a building, and overlay relevant information onto the image on its screen, is expected to become increasingly common.

The launch of Taggar comes on the third anniversary of London's Tech City, a government-backed initiative to create a cluster of tech business in the capital.

Lynch netted $760 million after HP bought Autonomy, but the deal has been overshadowed by accusations of accounting fraud.

Lynch, who has strongly contested the claims, said he had heard "remarkably little" from the authorities, including the US Department of Justice and Britain's Serious Fraud Office, in the last year.

"We are still sitting here waiting to hear what this is all about," he said.

"It's an absolutely bizarre situation to us."

Top UK Fujitsu exec Michael Keegan has warned that Michel Dell's recent leveraged buyout of his company may lead to Dell suffering the same fate as fallen service provider 2e2.

Referring to 2e2's bankruptcy earlier this year, Keegan commented: "They went bust because they took on too much debt and they couldn't meet their interest re-payments on the debt. Michael Dell is now playing that game. He's a brave guy."

Speaking to IT Pro's sister title Channel Pro at the Fujitsu Forum in Munich this week, Keegan added: "There are so many companies that have done this a leveraged buyout and it has not worked, and they've become a zombie' company. A zombie company is weighed down by debt on its balance sheet; they don't have any profits they can re-invest in the channel, into its R&D all the profits go to pay the people they borrowed the money from to buy the company. It's like being mortgaged to the hilt."

The executive director of Fujitsu's Technology Product Group at Fujitsu UK and Ireland also scoffed at Michael Dell's recent appearance at Dell's Tech Camp in Paris, where he said that no longer answering to shareholders will allows Dell more freedom to build its enterprise business, with increased investment in R&D.

"It's the freedom you have when you're 100 per cent mortgaged," said Keegan. "The truth of it is, they have $22bn of re-financing; most of it is debt. Why did he come? He came because he needs to reassure everybody the business is still there."

Keegan continued: "He's bought businesses that could bring margin, but the truth of the matter is they haven't really been integrated well. This is a classic problem with companies. When you get famous for one thing, and you know who to do that very well, then the game changesit's a big job to show you can move your business model [from PCs] to do the new stuff to take you forward. I think the problem they've got, is that they are, at their heart, a PC company. When you boil it all down, that's their problem."

Speaking of Fujitsu's own growth, he said the year-on-year the vendor was posting overall low single digit revenue growth, which he was "really happy about." He said: "In a market that's seeing the desktop market decline, the PC business decline, flat on server and low single digit growth on storage, growing the UK & Ireland in Fujitsu is a strong powerful message."

Keegan also said the firm's UK channel is now double the size of its direct business the opposite of just three years ago.

"We've definitely got out channel proposition right, now. Three years ago we were going to market in entirely the wrong way, but we've found out what works, listen more rather than spoke, and got ourselves educated. Now I think we're serving ourselves up the channel in a way that's going to lead to success."

This article was originally published on IT Pro's sister title Channel Pro.

The Doctor's Surgery: Various commentators and experts believe the tarnished British economy has started to take on a more rosy hue. The British Chambers of Commerce recently upgraded its UK growth forecasts for the next three years from 0.9 per cent to 1.3 per cent in 2013, from 1.9 per cent to 2.2 per cent in 2014, and from 2.4 per cent to 2.5 per cent in 2015.

There are other indicators, too. Service firms saw UK sales and orders rise at the fastest pace since 2007 during the third quarter of 2013, while rises for manufacturing were the sharpest since the early 1990s. Such positive indicators are good news for embattled British executives, but they also present something of a conundrum to CIOs.

The big problem with an upturn is that the preceding period of economic stagnation has meant CIOs and their executive peers have had to run the business in a lower gear. A climb towards growth will need a more ambitious approach. Unfortunately, finding the right gear is no straightforward task.

IT leaders have spent the past five years pushing down costs and trying to make the most of existing technology resources. The move towards growth will create a clamour for technical innovation, especially as all-things-digital is often seen as the key to gaining a competitive advantage.

But downward pressure on costs since 2008 has led to a severe under-investment in enterprise technology across the boardrooms of UK plc. The consumerisation of IT also hasn't helped, with line-of-business executives believing technology problems can almost magically be solved by workers bringing their own devices to work.

The problem, however, is that firms can only act in a bespoke manner if the right human resources are in place.

Many companies have under-invested in in-house IT during the past five years. Attracting new IT staff will be tough enough, but existing people will also move on if they feel they haven't been looked after during the downturn.

Such moves will occur because top IT professionals will have more options in the upturn. Increased demand for digital innovation will lead to a scramble for talent and key technology skills.

Firms that have pushed down too hard during constrained economic conditions will find their desire for growth is left floundering due to a lack of talent.

As one CIO said to me recently, preparing for economic change is always complex but getting access to the right people in an upturn is absolutely crucial. So, is your business ready for a move to a higher gear?

Dr Mark Samuels, editor at advisory organisation CIO Connect, examines the future role of the IT leader in his monthly column.

Michael Dell's attempt take the ailing PC vendor private appears to have hit a major stumbling block as shareholders could reject the proposal.

Dell's plan to pay $13.65 per share was expected to be passed by shareholders during a vote today. However, WSJ sources suggest that a trio of prominent stakeholders in the form of the Vanguard Group, State Street and BlackRock will oppose Dell's offer in an attempt to get him to increase his bid.

There are also concerns over whether existing CEO Michael Dell is the right person to help lead the firm's transformation from a PC vendor to a one-stop shop for enterprises.

The shareholder vote could be adjorned as Dell and his advisers look to convince shareholders to accept his proposal.

Reports suggest Dell is unwilling to increase his offer to retain control of the company he started in his dorm room at the University of Texas.

Meanwhile, Dell's second largest shareholder Carl Icahn claims his bid to buy shares reflects the true value of the company. With a deal involving a share buy-back scheme, Icahn claims his proposal is worth between $15.50 and $18 per share.

If his bid is successful, Icahn will take control of Dell, remove Michael Dell as CEO and also look to replace the board.

Updated 18/7/2013

Dell has confirmed that the its Special Meeting of Stockholders has been adjourned to "provide additional time to solicit proxies from Dell stockholders".

No vote has been taken and the Special Meeting will reconvene on 24 July, 2013 at 5 p.m. CDT.

Microsoft is reinforcing its commitment to helping startups get off the ground with the rollout of a new business and technology mentoring programme.

The software giant's new Microsoft Ventures initiative aims to provide enterprise-focused startups with access to technology guidance, seed funding, and joint selling opportunities.

The initiative is designed to capitalise on the response Microsoft has had to its BizSpark programme, which is geared towards privately-held startups in the software developer space that are less than five years old, and several other similar initiatives its launched in recent years.

The BizSpark programme is free to join for up to three years and offers members access to technology services to support the growth of their business, as well as investors, mentors and startups from other parts of the world for information sharing purposes.

According to Microsoft, more than 75,000 startups from over 100 countries have made use of the BizSpark programme since 2008.

In a blog post, announcing the launch of Microsoft Ventures, the company said the programme's aim was to bring all of its various startup initiatives under one roof.

"By unifying our efforts, we will give entrepreneurs a single point of entry to engage with Microsoft," it stated.

"Startups have enough to worry about. We want to make access to us as intuitive and friction-free as possible."

The programme is made up of three components, with the Microsoft Ventures Community portion open to "anyone with a great idea" who may require access to BizSpark resources.

There is also the Microsoft Ventures Accelerators part, which is a three-to-six month programme open to companies with a full-time founding team.

To qualify for entry to this part of the programme, Microsoft said applicants must also have raised less than $1 million, and have "technology-driven solutions".

"The accelerators provide access to business mentors, technical and design experts, development tools and key resources to help entrepreneurs take the early steps toward turning their ideas into businesses," the blog added.

The third part is essentially an extension of Microsoft's Big Fund, which was launched last year to provide seed investments to startups.

"Startups can receive direct funding from Microsoft after achieve early business success," the blog post continued.

"That may mean having a viable product in market with demonstrated customer traction, a full-time founding team or alignment to Microsoft domain expertise, including enterprise software, big data, security, artificial intelligence, advertising, gaming, SaaS and cloud services," it added.

Market watcher IDC has slashed its 2013 IT spending growth forecast, driven in part by the continued decline in PC shipments.

The analyst house said IT spending during the second half of 2012 and first quarter of 2013 fell below market expectations, with many IT vendors reporting problems closing deals.

This it blamed on a mix of global economic problems, including the ongoing European debt crisis, which had left many firms unwilling to invest as much as previously forecast on IT.

As a result, IDC has revised down its worldwide IT spending growth forecast from 5.5 per cent to 4.9 per cent for 2013.

As well as the uncertain global economic landscape, IDC said the decision to downgrade its spending forecast had been "largely driven" by the rapid decline in PC shipments since the second half of 2012.

This is a trend IDC expects to continue, with PC spending expected to fall by three per cent this year, which would make 2013 the third successive year of declining PC revenues.

As stated in previous reports from IDC and fellow market watcher Gartner, the ongoing decline in PC shipments has been largely attributed to the increasing popularity of tablets and smartphones.

"The shift to mobile devices remains a key driver for overall tech spending growth," said IDC in a statement.

"Excluding mobile phones and tablets, worldwide IT spending increased by only 2.8 per cent in 2012 and is forecast to grow by just 2.6 per cent this year,

"Worldwide spending on smartphones will increase by 17 per cent in 2013 while tablet spending will grow by 32 per cent," it continued.

It's not just the PC sales that are being affected by the emergence of newer technologies, as the rise of cloud is also taking its toll on commercial software and IT services sales, said IDC.

"Just as tablets are cannibalising PC spending, so the growth of cloud services continues to cannibalise commercial software and IT services.

"IT services demand remains stable, but the pass-through from capital spending and software deployment remains tepid by historical standards."

Stephen Minton, vice president of IDC's Global Technology and Industry Research Organisation, said the cannibalisation trend has accelerated over the past two quarters.

"The trickle of substitution is becoming a flood, as many organisations look for ways to do more with less in the context of an uncertain economy in which CFOs are attempting to protect profitability by limiting the size of budget increases," said Minton.

"Just as outsourcing got its boost from the 2001 recession, and virtualisation from the financial crisis of 2009, low-cost mobile devices and the cloud are being partly driven by the willingness of businesses to look for new ways of getting things done in return for improvements in efficiency," he added.

Minton also flagged Western Europe as one of the worst areas for IT spending, while emerging markets were hailed as the "engines for growth" when it comes to driving up investments in IT.

"Our surveys confirm that underlying demand for IT products and services remains strong, but that businesses [are] being forced to delay new projects or investments in the face of longer decision-making cycles and a lack of short-term visibility," he said.

"This storm could pass quickly, if governments in the US, Europe, China and Japan succeed in steering their ships towards calm waters in the second half of the year."

Managing an IT budget efficiently is never easy. For smaller companies, it can be close to impossible to ensure money spent on IT is money well spent.

The costs of hardware, security, software licences, hosting and services all add up. Even a relatively small firm, with around 250 employees, might be dealing with as many as a dozen IT suppliers.

Is that far fetched? Not at all. Take a look around a typical small business employing just to make it simpler mostly knowledge workers.

There is the desktop and laptop hardware: Dell, HP, Lenovo or Apple perhaps supply that. There will be tablets: Apple, again. Smartphones? Let's assume Samsung. But the finance director still has a BlackBerry.

There is Microsoft for Windows and Office. Symantec, McAfee or Sophos for security. There will be some networking: for the sake of argument, pick Cisco. A physical server, or more likely, several of them: IBM.

Storage could be from any number of vendors, from Netgear or Iomega to NetApp or EMC. A back up power unit you really should have these takes it up to a round 10.

Bring in someone to install or maintain it, and an offsite backup you really should have one of those, too and it's a dozen.

And that's before adding accounting software, ERP or CRM, for example, or going anywhere near the cloud. Drawing a diagram of who supplies what to a small firm is like unravelling a plate of spaghetti.

Small company finance directors could be forgiven for thinking they may as well follow the lead of 80s pop group The KLF and burn a million pounds on a remote Scottish island.

Recent research by SolarWinds, an IT management tools vendor, appears to back up the suggestion that smaller firms are overwhelmed by the complexity of IT. As a result, much of their spending is wasted.

According to the company, 87 per cent of firms admitted to paying for software they never used; 28 per cent said that as many as a fifth of licences are wasted. Despite, or maybe because of this, IT spending by SMBs continues to increase.

Overspending, or wasted spending, may be slightly less common, because it is more visible, but it is still a problem. There are plenty of firms that buy more desktop or laptop PCs than they really need, and more still that over specify servers.

One solution could be to rip out all the IT and move to the cloud; another is to embrace BYOD bring your own device and either expect staff to provide their own computers, or give them a budget for buying them.

Neither solution is entirely practical for most companies. But there is another solution: make business units pay for the IT they use.

IT directors might like managing large budgets, but the business is more likely to spend wisely, if it is picking up the tab.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT Pro.

Market watcher Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will top $3.8 trillion this year, despite the economic turmoil blighting many countries within EMEA.

Despite the ongoing collapse of the PC market, the amount spent on devices including computers, mobile phones and printers is expected to be nearly 8 per cent higher than in 2012 and hit $718 billion by the end of the year.

The analyst had previously forecast growth of around 6.3 per cent for the devices market, but claimed the lacklustre performance of the PC and printers market has been offset by the soar in demand for smartphones.

Worldwide spending on enterprise software is also expected to be up on last year, to the tune of 6.4 per cent, and top $297 billion in 2013. This is in line with Gartner's previous forecast for this part of the IT market.

The only blot on the landscape seems to be datacentre systems spending, where the growth forecast is nearly one per cent lower than Gartner previously predicted at 3.7 per cent.

"This reduction is largely due to cuts to the near-term forecast for spending on external storage and the enterprise in the economically troubled EMEA region," said Gartner in a statement.

Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner, said IT spending looks set to weather the various economic storms happening across the globe in 2013.

"Although the United States did avoid the fiscal cliff, the subsequent sequestration, compounded by the rise of Cyprus' debt burden, seems to have netted out any benefit, and the fragile business and consumer sentiment throughout much of the world continues," said Gordon.

"However, the new shocks are expected to be short-lived, and while they may cause some pauses in discretionary spending along the way, strategic IT initiatives will continue."

Fujitsu UK and Ireland has confirmed that its Japanese subsidiary has made good on its promise to pay 800 million into three of the vendor's pension schemes.

The payment was announced during the firm's third quarter financial results, and is designed to shore up the financial standing of three of the firm's UK pension schemes, which have around 21,000 members.

The move will allow Fujitsu's UK and Ireland arm to reduce its annual pension scheme contributions, and in turn ramp up its investments in the company's continued UK growth.

In a statement, Fujitsu UK and Ireland said: "This action underlines the company's responsible approach to invest in the UK economy and to honour its commitments to current and former employees."

Fujitsu employs around 14,000 staff in the UK and claims to have increased its headcount by 3.6 per cent over the past 12 months.

Duncan Tait, chief executive of Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said the payment will allow the company to maintain its contribution to the economic health of UK PLC.

"Our 2012 investment in the UK was close to 50 million, including more than 14 million spent on R&D. Our total investment is more than 3 billion. This move only strengthens our ability to contribute to economic growth on these shores," said Tait.

"[This] has created space for the UK and Ireland business to invest over the coming years and to continue to drive growth within the UK," he added.

Richard Holway, chairman of UK analyst house TechMarketView, said the investment from Fujitsu Japan constitutes a huge vote of confidence for the firm's UK operations and management team.

"I make no excuses for being an out-and-out supporter of UK Tech," said Holway in an email alert to TechMarketView's subscribers.

"Of course, I'd prefer those companies to be UK-owned, [but] ownership is not as important as the good' companies can do to the UK economy by creating jobs, supporting an SME ecosystem, paying taxes and generally being a Good Citizen'. On that basis, Fujitsu UK really does score highly."

London is to become home to a new 150m technology initiative aimed at making cities smarter and more innovative, the Government has announced.

The Technology Strategy Board-backed scheme will result in the opening of a smart cities-focused Catapult centre in the capital.

Its aim will be to look for ways to integrate health, transport, energy and public safety services and in turn change the way cities operate in the future.

The centre will receive funding of 50m from the Technology Strategy Board over five years, as well as a further 100m from the private sector.

News of the initiative follows on from the announcement about Glasgow City Council bagging 24m of Government funding to establish a future cities demonstrator.

The London-based Catapult centre is expected to work closely with the team in Glasgow to encourage UK businesses to create products and services that could aid the development of smart cities in the future.

Business secretary Vince Cable announced the plans at the Innovate UK 2013 event in central London earlier today.

"This latest addition to the Catapults network will complement those established in high value manufacturing, satellite applications, cell therapy, offshore renewable energy, transport systems and connected digital economy," he said.

The Government's former chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, has been appointed the Catapult's chairperson, and has been tasked with finding a CEO for the project.

Iain Gray, chief executive of the Technology Strategy Board, added: "[London's] unique set-up including national and international transportation links, world-class universities, leading engineering, construction and digital businesses and highly-skilled staff makes it the perfect place for the Catapult."

A quarter of enterprises will have access to their own corporate app stores by 2017, predicts IT market watcher Gartner.

These hubs will provide business users with a range of apps that have been sanctioned for use by senior management, providing companies with greater control over the software their staff use.

Ian Finley, research vice president at Gartner, said enterprise app stores have the potential to improve security and simplify application procurement for larger firms.

Enterprise app stores enable procurement to broaden user choice by encouraging providers to submit competing apps.

"Enterprise app stores promise at least a partial solution [to security and procurement concerns] but only if IT security, application, procurement and sourcing professionals can work together to successfully apply the app store concept to their enterprises," said Finley.

"When successful, they can increase the value delivered by the application portfolio and reduce the associated risks, license fees and administration expenses."

The analyst house predicts enterprise app stores will allow IT departments to delegate application procurement to end users, which could save firms money.

Stewart Buchanan, research vice president at Gartner, explained: "Enterprise app stores enable procurement to broaden user choice by encouraging providers to submit competing apps, and to monitor demand for popular apps that may benefit from better negotiation of license terms and prices."

However, companies will need to constantly update the content of these app procurement hubs to encourage end users to keep visiting them, and let users provide feedback on the software offered through them.

"The primary determinant of success is app supply," said Brian Prentice, research vice president at Gartner. "The types of apps downloaded and used provide important information as to what types of solutions are of value to each type of user."

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe have been ordered to appear before Australia's parliament to explain why local consumers pay so much for their products, despite the strong Aussie dollar.

Broadening a row between the world's most valuable company and Australian lawmakers over corporate taxes paid on Apple's operations, the company's executives were formally summonsed on Monday to front a parliamentary committee in Canberra on March 22.

"In what's probably the first time anywhere in the world, these IT firms are now being summoned by the Australian parliament to explain why they price their products so much higher in Australia compared to the United States," said ruling Labour government MP Ed Husic, who helped set up the committee.

For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more.

All three companies have so far declined to appear before the special committee set up in May last year to investigate possible price gouging on Australian hardware and software buyers, despite the Australian dollar hovering near record highs above the US currency around A$1.03.

A 16GB WiFi iPad produced by Apple with Retina display sells in Australia for A$539, $40 above the price in the US, despite the stronger local currency. Microsoft's latest versions of Office 365 home premium cost A$119 in Australia versus $99.99 in the United States.

IT firms and other multinationals have blamed high operating costs in Australia including high local wages and conditions, as well as import costs and the relatively small size of the retail market in the $1.5 trillion economy.

Failure to appear before the committee as ordered could leave all three firms open to contempt of parliament charges, fines or even jail terms.

"For some time consumers and businesses have been trying to work out why they are paying so much more, particularly for software, where if it's downloaded there is no shipping or handling, or much of a labour cost," Husic told Reuters.

Adobe and Microsoft have previously provided separate written statements and submissions to the inquiry. But executives have been reluctant to explain their pricing before a public inquiry.

Apple executives in Australia declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

"The companies have blamed each other for not appearing. One will say 'we're not going to appear if the other is not going to appear'. So we've cut straight to the chase and said we'll just summons you," Husic said.

Price gouging in IT for hardware and software, Husic said, could be costing Australia's more than 2 million SMBs as much as $10 billion extra.

Husic took aim at Apple last week over local taxes paid by the company, telling parliament that Apple generated A$6 billion in revenue in Australia in 2011, but paid only A$40 million in tax - less than one percent of turnover.

"While they generated A$6 billion in revenue, they apparently racked up from what I understand A$5.5 billion in costs. How?" Husic said. "They do not manufacture here. They have no factories here."

He accused Apple executives of maintaining a "cloak of invisibility", while dodging scrutiny of operations. Apple has been criticised elsewhere for its zealous secrecy.

"Ask anyone who has sought answers from them about their Australian operations and you will hear a common theme. They will not talk," he said.

More than half (52 per cent) of UK SMBs have bought or downloaded illegal software, claims research by the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The anti-piracy body enlisted research company Vanson Bourne to oversee the survey, which polled IT decision makers from 250 UK SMBs.

BSA discovered that 41 per cent of the SMBs that admitted purchasing illegal software had reportedly fallen victim to identity theft or had their credit cards cloned (21 per cent).

Although 88 per cent of SMBs said the use of illegal software creates liability concerns, 21 per cent admitted using software key generators, which are programmes that generate an unauthorised registration key or serial number.

"The research suggest that a large number of UK businesses have an unclear understanding of what constitutes illegal software use, at best, and a blatant disrespect for copyright law and business ethics, at worse," said Michala Wardell, UK committee chair of the BSA.

The use of illegal software reportedly proved to be accidental for many of the SMBs that took part in the poll. For instance, after discovering their software was illegal, 51 per cent said they replaced it with a legitimate copy.

Furthermore, 27 per cent paid for a legal software key and 10 per cent uninstalled the software, without replacing it.

Handley Brustad, a joint lead officer for intellectual property at the Trading Standards Institute, said SMBs that use illegal software are exposing themselves to security threats.

"While we strive to bring down dishonest traders, we rely upon businesses to take proper precautions when purchasing their software," he continued.

Dell is to go private in a $24.4 billion deal involving the company's founder, software giant Microsoft and private equity house Silver Lake.

Following weeks of speculation, the company confirmed the news in a statement, and said the deal is expected to close before the end of the second quarter.

The transaction is being funded by Michael Dell, who will stay on as the firm's CEO, Silver Lake, MSD Capital, and a $2 billion loan from Microsoft.

The buyout has already been approved by Dell's board of directors, but stockholders will still need to vote on whether or not the deal should go through. It will also be subject to regulatory approval too.

Under the terms of the deal, Dell stockholders will receive $13.65 in cash for each share of Dell common stock they hold.

"The buyers will acquire for cash all of the outstanding shares of Dell not held by [Michael Dell] and certain other members of the management.

The company has been making a concerted effort in recent years to expand away from its PC-making roots into areas, such as storage, networking, security and cloud, through mergers and acquisitions, as well as investments in R&D.

The company's decision to go private is reportedly being undertaken to allow the firm to continue this transition behind closed doors.

In a statement, Michael Dell said the deal marks an exciting new chapter for the company.

"Dell has made solid progress executing this strategy over the past four years, but we recognise that it will still take more time, investment and patience, and I believe our efforts will be better supported by partnering with Silver Lake in our shared vision.

"I am committed to this journey and have put a substantial amount of my own capital at risk together with Silver Lake," Dell added.

Mobile phone maker Nokia will be one of the beneficiaries of a 1 billion European Union (EU) grant that will be used to fund research into the development of graphene.

The sum has been awarded by the EU's Future and Emerging Technology (FET) research programme, which recently announced plans to give European researchers 1 billion to develop commercial applications for graphene.

The material has been touted by the electronics industry for several years now as a possible replacement for silicon in computer chips.

The material has been touted by the electronics industry for several years now as a possible replacement for silicon in computer chips.

The material is made from a one-atom thick layer of graphite and is renowned for being exceptionally strong, lightweight and flexible, and for its ability to conduct electrons faster than silicon.

Nokia, through its involvement with the Graphene Flagship Consortium was selected by the FET to receive the funding, and claims to be "flying the flag" for the use of graphene in mobile devices.

Henry Tirri, executive vice president and enterprise vice president and chief technology officer of Nokia, said the company has been working with graphene since 2006 and has already identified "multiple areas" where it can be applied in modern computing.

"We've done some very promising work so far, but I believe the greatest innovation have yet to be discovered," said Tirri.

"Graphene happens to be an area where we, in Europe have all the important players in the value chain who are ready to use it in application...[so] this is a very efficient and promising way of doing research investments for Europe."

Jani Kivioja, research leader at the Nokia Research Centre, said graphene will not only open up new technology opportunities, but has the potential to create jobs across Europe.

"Not only does creating a graphene research consortium open up new research possibilities, it will also create work and jobs across all of Europe," said Kivioja.

"This kind of research is also an investment to the people that live within the EU, from an economy perspective."

The EU funding news follows on from the announcement last month that a UK Government-backed graphene research facility is to open in Cambridge later this year.

Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee has fended off a lawsuit by estranged family members demanding he hand over billions of dollars of shares.

Lee and Samsung Everland, a de facto holding company for the country's largest conglomerate, were defending against three lawsuits by Lee's relatives seeking nearly $4 billion in assets in Samsung Life Insurance, which sits at the heart of the web of Samsung group shareholdings, and Samsung Electronics, the group's crown jewel.

The lawsuit was unlikely to have deprived Lee of his control over Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips.

This is a totally unexpected ruling and we'll decide whether to appeal after discussing with our clients.

But a ruling against him would have diluted his holdings and could have forced a reshuffling of the intricate shareholdings across the Samsung group if he were to retain his grip.

A judge at the Seoul Central District Court ruled that Lee could retain more than $1 billion in Samsung Electronics shares and another $1 billion in shares of Samsung Life.

Samsung Everland, a small zoo operator, was also allowed to keep its $1 billion stake in Samsung Life. Lee will remain Samsung Life's biggest shareholder with a 20.76 per cent stake.

The lawsuits accused Lee of hiding from his siblings billions of dollars in shareholdings inherited from his father, Samsung's founder, while Lee countered that as his father's chosen successor, he had free rein to transfer group company shares.

Happy together?

"This is a totally unexpected ruling and we'll decide whether to appeal after discussing with our clients," Cha Dong-eon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters.

Lawyers for Lee, who has been travelling abroad since early January, said the ruling was reasonable.

Shares in Samsung Life closed nearly 3 per cent higher after the ruling, while Samsung Electronics sagged 0.5 per cent. Seoul's benchmark Kospi fell 0.2 percent.

The trial, which exposed family intrigues behind South Korea's powerful chaebol, coincides with rising public resentment towards the conglomerates, stirred by their dominance in the economy and widening wealth gaps in society.

The ruling comes only a day after Chey Tae-won, chairman of South Korean chaebol company SK Holdings, was sent to prison on embezzlement charges, as the country seeks to level out the playing field between big business groups and the "economically weak".

Lee, South Korea's richest man, was worth an estimated $8.3 billion as of March 2012, according to Forbes Magazine.

He owns less than 4 per cent of Samsung Electronics, but through family stakes in Samsung Everland and Samsung Life he exercises substantial control over the electronics firm and the other 80 or so Samsung companies, which operate in industries from construction to hotels to fashion.

The ownership of hidden assets came into focus in 2011, after a tax probe into Lee that followed the transfer of shares from nominee accounts to his own name. He was later indicted on tax evasion charges but pardoned by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

Before delivering his verdict, the judge said he wished for a happy ending to the family dispute.

"Regardless of the truth of what happened or the final outcome of this case, I think it may also have been one of the late founder's wishes that both parties have a happy life together with no quarrels," the judge said.

Hardware giant Dell is nearing an agreement to sell itself to a buyout consortium led by its founder and CEO Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, it has been claimed.

Sources close to the situation report the deal could be announced as soon as Monday.

Michael Dell is expected to take majority ownership of the world's third-largest personal computer maker, which currently has a market value of $23 billion, while Silver Lake and Microsoft would become minority investors, another source claimed.

The final price the group is expected to pay Dell shareholders could not be immediately learned. The deal would mark the largest leveraged buyout since the global financial crisis.

The transaction is set to be finalised over the weekend but the buyout consortium is working on last-minute details and the timetable could still slip, the sourced added.

The investment group, which held negotiations with Dell's camp in New York on Thursday, has secured up to $15 billion of debt financing to take Dell private from four investment banks - Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital, it is understood.

Barclays is also advising Silver Lake on the transaction, along with Perella Weinberg Partners, said two of the people. JPMorgan Chase & Co is advising Dell.

Representatives for Dell, Microsoft and Barclays declined to comment. Silver Lake and Perella Weinberg could not be immediately reached for comment.

As part of the transaction, Michael Dell will contribute his existing stake of almost 16 per cent in the company toward gaining majority ownership, sources close to the matter have said.

Going private would allow Dell, which has been trying to become a one-stop shop for corporate technology needs as the PC market shrinks, to conduct that difficult transition away from public scrutiny.

Dell has formed a special committee of its independent directors and hired Evercore Partners Inc to assess whether the company is getting the best deal for shareholders and not one that is just in the best interest of Michael Dell, several people familiar with the matter have told Reuters previously.