There is a particular kind of dinner I have, every couple of months, in a particular kind of place, a Soho members’ club that lets you bring more than three people without an interrogation, in this case, with a particular kind of British technology founder.

He is, by his late thirties, on his third successful company. He has, between them, raised something north of £180 million in venture capital. He has, currently, about 220 employees in London, with another fifty due to be hired in the coming twelve months. He has, last week, sold a further $40 million tranche of his Series C to two American funds.

And he has, somewhere between his second and third glass of red, told me that he is moving the company’s headquarters to New York. Not on principle. Not on tax. Not on regulation. Not even, despite the obvious temptation in this column, on the Chancellor. He is moving because the next $200 million he needs, in 18 months, is in New York, and the practical day-to-day life of a CEO in a series of monthly trips to a city eight time zones from his children is, frankly, too painful. So he is moving the family. The London office will remain. It will, over time, get smaller. A version of this conversation has happened, by my count, with at least twelve British founders I know personally in the last two years.

Britain does not, in 2026, have a start-up problem. We start-up exquisitely. We have, by any international comparison, more new technology businesses per capita than nearly any other developed economy. Cambridge is, on its own, one of the great clusters of the world. London’s software and fintech ecosystems are deeper than Berlin’s, deeper than Paris’s, comparable to New York’s on most measures, with a couple of exceptions. We have brilliant universities, a working tax-incentive regime in EIS, a meaningful angel community, and a steady flow of seed and Series A capital.

What we have is a stay-at-home problem.

The numbers are visible if anyone bothers to look. UK technology IPOs, by listed value, are running at less than 12 per cent of US listings adjusted for relative GDP. UK Series C and onwards rounds are dominated, by deal count, by American lead investors. The proportion of UK technology companies founded in 2018 that have, by 2025, relocated their corporate domicile overseas, to the US, to Delaware, to Ireland, to Singapore, is now over 22 per cent. The proportion of all UK-founded unicorns that listed on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, rather than the London Stock Exchange, is over 80 per cent for the last decade. Eighty.

Why? It is not, despite the City lobbying, primarily a tax problem. American capital gains rates are not, in any meaningful sense, more friendly to founders than British rates. It is not, despite a great deal of Treasury-led discussion, a corporate-tax problem. The US corporate tax rate, when you blend federal and state, is comparable. It is not, despite the political mood music, a regulatory problem in the technology sectors that matter, the FCA, where it counts for fintech, is a notably more friendly regulator than its American equivalent.

It is, primarily, a depth-of-capital-pool problem. The UK pension system, despite the most articulate efforts of the Edinburgh Reforms and the Mansion House Compact and a half-dozen subsequent initiatives, allocates an embarrassingly small proportion of its £3 trillion of assets to growth-stage British equities. Canadian pension funds are, statistically, more invested in British scale-ups than British pension funds. This is the absurdity of the present situation: the world’s ninth-largest pension industry, hosted in Britain, is not investing in British growth, and is being out-deployed, in British growth equity, by Canadians, Australians, and Americans.

Fix the depth, and the rest of the problem largely goes with it. There are about three things to do. First, get UK Defined Contribution pension money, which is, by the way, growing at over £100 billion a year, into a properly structured British scale-up vehicle, at a meaningful target allocation, with a proper governance overlay. Second, restore the pre-2008 status of the London Stock Exchange as a competitive listing venue for technology businesses, by reforming the dual-class share structures and the listing-rules architecture that has kept it stranded in the era of utilities and miners. Third, make the EIS reliefs permanent, generous, and unfussy at the seed stage, so that the early-stage capital remains the easiest tier to raise.

None of this is impossible. None of this is even, in the international context, particularly bold. The Australians did most of it in 2008. The Canadians did most of it in 2014. The Singaporeans built theirs in around six years. We are, in 2026, still pondering it.

And in the meantime, my Soho friend will, in the autumn, leave. He will take the family. He will keep the London office. The American round will close. The next British unicorn, and there will be a next British unicorn, will, on present trajectory, list, again, in New York. The Mayoral candidates will, on the day after, all denounce the loss to “Brand London”. And the bottle of red, in our particular Soho members’ club, will be uncorked, again, by someone else.

We start-up brilliantly, in this country. We just need, finally, to learn how to keep them. The May locals, it turns out, are not the only thing on the ballot.

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Britain doesn’t have a start-up problem, it has a stay-at-home problem

Tomorrow is May Day, and somewhere in the middle of the country, a married couple in their early forties is opening up a small bakery for the third Friday in succession on which they have not, between them, drawn a salary.

They started the business in 2022. They re-mortgaged the house. They missed two of their daughter’s school plays last term, including the one where she had a line. They have not, for nineteen months, taken a day off. They are, on the official ONS labour-market classification, “self-employed”, which is to say they are not, technically, considered workers at all.

I would like, on this particular May Day, to suggest that they are.

There is a particular sleight-of-hand in British political language that has, over the last fifty years or so, produced an increasingly narrow definition of the word “worker”. A worker, in current usage, is someone who is paid by an employer in return for doing a job, ideally with a contract, a payslip, and a pension contribution. The “workers’ movement”, in modern parlance, is the political and industrial movement representing exactly that figure. Anyone outside the definition is, by implication, something else, an entrepreneur, an investor, a self-employed person, a small-business owner, a family-firm founder. They get other ministries, other sympathies, other adjectives. They do not, on the whole, get celebrated on May Day.

This is, frankly, ridiculous. The bakery couple work, on the broad numbers, more hours than any of their employees. They take home, on average, less per hour than their employees. They have less holiday, less protection, less pension, less sick pay, less of everything. Their economic risk is total. Their political clout is somewhere between negligible and non-existent. Their public image, in much of British political discourse, is closer to that of the tax-avoiding non-dom than that of the sympathetic NHS porter, which is, when you actually meet either, a perfect inversion of reality.

There are, by the latest ONS estimate, just over 4.3 million self-employed workers in the UK. Of those, around 600,000 run businesses with employees of their own. They collectively contribute approximately £303 billion to UK GDP, which is more than the entire UK financial-services sector. They pay corporation tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax, employer NICs, business rates, VAT, and insurance premium tax. They keep more than three million Britons in PAYE jobs. They are, in any meaningful definition, the productive backbone of the country.

And, for at least the last decade, they have been treated by every successive UK administration with a mixture of mild benign neglect and occasional, almost incidental, cruelty. IR35 was a cruelty. Making Tax Digital is a cruelty. The narrowing of business property relief on inheritance tax has been a cruelty. The withdrawal of various small expenses and reliefs has been a cruelty. None of these things has been done because anyone in Whitehall actively dislikes the small-business owner; it is rather that, in the present political configuration, the small-business owner is too small to matter, too dispersed to organise, and too busy to march. The civil servants drafting the SI get the headline figures right, and the headline figures, individually, are small.

May Day, in its original conception, was a workers’ holiday, but, as anyone with any knowledge of the period will tell you, the “workers” it commemorated were not, exclusively, the wage-labour pay-packet figure of present-day usage. They were the broader productive class: artisans, shopkeepers, mechanics, makers, the journeymen in the literal sense who worked with their own tools to produce something useful. A baker in Walsall, in 2026, getting up at 4am to mix the dough, fits that older definition perfectly. The fact that she has, technically, incorporated herself as a private limited company should not, surely, exclude her from the holiday.

I do not, please understand, wish to undermine the more familiar version of May Day. The march, the bunting, the speeches, the flag, they are part of a recognisable British political tradition that I rather enjoy. I just would like, this year, to make a small modest plea for the inclusion in it of the people whose labour is no less skilled, no less hard-won, no less honest, and considerably less protected, than the labour the day was originally meant to celebrate.

So if you are in the bakery this morning, or the small workshop, or the family-run pub, or the consultancy that lives at the kitchen table, or the farm that has been in your name for thirty years, happy May Day. The country is, despite the available evidence, better off because of you. Take five minutes off, if you can. Drink a coffee. Watch the bunting. And, before you go back to it, remember that whatever the textbook says, and whatever the marching song goes, the work you do is, exactly, work.

Read more:
On May Day, spare a thought for the workers who took the risk and built the bloody company

I wrote, last year, about how worried I was for the British rural economy, and a few of you wrote back to ask, kindly, what I thought we should do.

The honest answer, I have realised over the intervening twelve months, is that the most important and most fragile thing we could do is keep the village pub open. I have been thinking about this, since the spring, almost every day. So allow me, this week, the personal column. I think it is the right week for it.

The pub I am writing about, and yes, of course it is a particular pub, is in a small village in Suffolk, on a road that the satnav lies about. It has been there in some form since the 17th century. The current building is largely Georgian, with a Victorian extension and a 1990s kitchen that I would generously describe as character-building. The current tenant has been in place for eleven years. The previous tenant for twenty-three.

It is, by the present trade body’s definition, a “community wet-led” pub. About 60 per cent of its trade is drinks; 30 per cent is food; the remainder is the upstairs rooms, which were converted in the 1990s for the kind of weekending Londoners we used to call “townies” and which we now call, less affectionately, “zoom refugees”. It employs four full-time and seven part-time staff. The full-time staff include the chef, who came up from Hackney during the pandemic and never left, and a young lad of 22 who started as a glass-collector five years ago and has just qualified as cellar-master. The part-time staff are mostly women from the village, two of whom would, in a different country, be working in a primary school that closed in 2019.

It is the wettest, most stubbornly British piece of social infrastructure I know, and it is, on the present rates revaluation, in a kitchen-equipment-replacement cycle that nobody saw coming, and in a year of unusually aggressive energy contracts, about £42,000 a year away from solvency. This is not a private detail. The publican, when I rang him on Monday, told me himself.

There are, in our village, no shops. There has been no post office for fourteen years. The bus runs twice a week. The primary school, in 2019, lost its Year 6 cohort permanently. The doctor’s surgery closed for new patient registrations in 2018 and is, now, more of a dispensing arrangement than a clinic. The church holds services once a fortnight. The mobile library, which had one stop here on a Tuesday afternoon, was wound up in the funding round of 2022. The pub is, in any meaningful sense, what the rest of the village now is.

Were it to close, the geography of village life would not be replaced by something else. There is no shop ready to take over the “community” function. There is no village hall with a working kitchen, it lost its Aga in 2017 and the trustees never raised the £6,200 to replace it. The Cubs, who use the pub’s back room on Wednesdays, would, on past form, drift to a town six miles away and, on past form, shrink. The Sunday lunches, which give an unmarried woman of 78 her main weekly social contact, would not happen. The wakes, and we have had four, this year, in a village of 273, would have to be held in someone’s living room.

I am aware, as I write this, of the metropolitan eyebrow being raised. The countryside has been moaning, the eyebrow says, for as long as anyone can remember, and the countryside is not what it once was. Both of those things, technically, are true. They are also evasions. The countryside is materially different from any other part of England in one specific respect: when its institutions go, there is, almost without exception, no replacement. London has, in any one square mile, three public houses, four cafés, a couple of pubs that aren’t very good, several restaurants and a handful of community spaces that do roughly the same social work between them. Suffolk does not. The English village, almost uniquely in the British Isles, has put all of its community infrastructure into a single building, and that building, increasingly, is the pub.

What would I, accordingly, do? Almost everything I have already proposed in this magazine: VAT at 12.5 per cent for hospitality; a community-pub-specific multiplier on rates; the “asset of community value” reform with the burden of proof reversed onto developers seeking to flat-pack a Grade II listed pub. Plus one more, which I have been quieter about until now: a small, ring-fenced national fund, perhaps £150 million a year, to provide low-interest loans to community pub buyouts in areas where the only alternative is closure. We have such a fund for cinemas. We have a far larger one for football. We do not, anywhere in our policy stack, have one for the rural pub.

We will know, in two or three years, whether we kept these places open. I’ll be in the Suffolk one as long as it’s open. So will, on present form, the village. The country, very quietly, would be better for the same.

Read more:
I worry for the rural pub, and yes, this one is personal too

There is a particular kind of silence that descends on a once-busy restaurant when last orders have come and gone, the candles have guttered, and the chef is out the back having a cigarette and contemplating bankruptcy. It is the sound of a small dream dying. And right now, across Britain, that silence is becoming deafening.

I have just returned from dinner at a perfectly nice neighbourhood bistro in west London, where the owner, a man who quit a comfortable banking job to chase the romance of feeding people, confessed somewhere between the burrata and the lamb that he is closing in September. Not because nobody comes. They come. They eat. They tip. They order the second bottle. But the maths, he sighed, no longer mathses.

The story is the same in every postcode. UKHospitality reckons we lost roughly one pub or restaurant every single day last year. The Hospitality Rising figures are grimmer still: chefs walking away, dining rooms going dark, sites being flogged off to coffee chains and vape shops. And yet our Chancellor has decided that what this fragile, brilliant, world-beating sector really needs is a thumping great kicking.

Let us count the bruises. From April 2025, employer National Insurance jumped to 15 per cent. The threshold at which businesses begin paying it was slashed from £9,100 to £5,000, which is a fancy Treasury way of saying that every waiter, every glass-polisher, every Saturday-morning kitchen porter is now considerably more expensive to employ. Throw in the National Living Wage rising to £12.21 an hour, business rates relief shrivelling from 75 per cent to a measly 40 per cent, and a stubborn refusal to cut hospitality VAT to anything resembling our European competitors, and you have what UKHospitality calculated as an additional £3.4 billion annual hit on the sector. Three-point-four. Billion. With a B.

To which Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer have essentially shrugged and said: tough. Get on with it. Be more productive. Use AI. Yes, really, the Prime Minister actually suggested artificial intelligence was the answer to the front-of-house labour crisis. Has the man ever tried to get a chatbot to recommend the Picpoul de Pinet over the Sancerre, or to deal with a four-top of accountants splitting the bill seventeen ways?

I am not, as a rule, a conspiracist. But I am beginning to wonder whether this is plain incompetence or something darker. Because if you sat down with a clean sheet of paper and deliberately tried to design a policy package guaranteed to incinerate independent restaurants, you would land more or less exactly where this Government has landed. Hammer the labour costs. Hammer the property costs. Refuse the one tax cut, VAT, that would actually move the needle. Drive away the high-spending non-doms who used to keep Mayfair humming, propose extending the smoking ban to pub gardens and pavement tables, then make it harder still to recruit from abroad. Magnifique.

The rationale, presumably, is that restaurants are a luxury, frequented by people who can afford it, staffed by people who do not vote Labour. Easy political target. Wrong, of course. Our sector employs 3.5 million people, more than half of them under 30, many in their first proper job, learning skills no classroom ever taught, graft, courtesy, and how to charm a furious German tourist out of a complaint about the size of the prawns. Killing restaurants does not punish the rich. It punishes the kid from Croydon who wanted to be a sommelier, the Polish chef who built a life here, and the landlady whose pub still kept her village alive.

And here is the bit Reeves seems incapable of grasping: hospitality does not just feed us. It powers tourism, it props up high streets, it fills supply chains from Cornish dairies to Yorkshire breweries to the Kentish vineyards her colleagues love being photographed at. When a restaurant closes, the butcher feels it, the laundry firm feels it, the cab driver feels it, the florist feels it. You do not just lose a place to eat. You lose an entire ecosystem.

I had hoped, fool that I am, that this Labour Government might understand that. Many of its members, after all, claim to enjoy the occasional supper out, although one suspects most of theirs arrives by Deliveroo on the public purse. But policy after policy has revealed either profound ignorance of how a small business actually functions, or active hostility towards anyone who took a punt on themselves rather than waited patiently for a public sector pay rise.

The lights are going out across our high streets. The chairs are being stacked. The wine is being sold off at cost. And our Chancellor, when asked, musters only the platitude that growth takes time.

So does dying, Rachel. So does dying.

Read more:
Last orders for British hospitality: Are Reeves and Starmer trying to kill the UK restaurant sector?

Britain’s distillers have been handed an unexpected fillip after Donald Trump announced the removal of all US tariffs and restrictions on whisky imports, a concession the president attributed directly to the influence of King Charles and Queen Camilla’s four-day state visit to America.

The decision, revealed on Trump’s Truth Social platform shortly after the royal couple departed for the UK, brings to an end a punishing 10 per cent levy that the Scotch Whisky Association estimates has been costing the industry roughly £4m a week, some £150m over the past year, at a time when distillers were already bracing for a further 25 per cent charge on single malts due to return this spring.

For an industry that counts the United States as its largest export market, with shipments worth close to £1bn annually, the timing could scarcely have been more welcome. Trump told reporters in Washington that the King and Queen “got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking”, adding that he had moved “in honour” of his royal guests.

Buckingham Palace responded with characteristic understatement. A spokesperson said the King had conveyed his “sincere gratitude” to the president and would be “raising a dram to the President’s thoughtfulness”.

The decision also unlocks renewed commercial co-operation between Scotland and the Commonwealth of Kentucky, two regions historically intertwined through the trade in used bourbon barrels. The Scotch industry imports roughly £200m-worth of these casks from Kentucky each year, using them to mature its single malts and blends. Trump noted the linkage explicitly, describing both as “very important industries” in their respective territories.

Graeme Littlejohn, director of strategy at the Scotch Whisky Association, told Business Matters the industry was “delighted” by the move. “Distillers will breathe a sigh of relief now that these tariffs are off,” he said. “It’s really thanks to the huge amount of negotiation that’s been going on over many months, at a very senior level. Perhaps the state visit has been the catalyst for getting this over the line, and the King’s added that little bit of royal sparkle to make the deal work.”

Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, hailed the announcement as “tremendous news for Scotland”, noting that “millions of pounds were being lost every month from the Scottish economy” under the previous regime. He paid particular tribute to the monarch’s behind-the-scenes role.

The UK government confirmed that the removal applies to all whisky tariffs, including those affecting Irish whiskey producers, a clarification that will be welcomed by distillers on both sides of the Irish Sea. Peter Kyle, the Business and Trade Secretary, called the breakthrough “great news for our Scotch whisky industry, which is worth almost £1bn in exports and supports thousands of jobs across the UK”.

For SMEs across the sector, from craft distillers in Speyside to family-run bottlers in the Highlands and Islands, the lifting of tariffs offers a tangible reprieve. Single malts, which command premium prices in the American market, have been disproportionately affected by the Trump-era levies, and smaller producers without the balance-sheet depth of multinational rivals have felt the squeeze most acutely.

The development represents a rare instance of soft power translating directly into hard economic gain. Whether it heralds a broader thaw in transatlantic trade relations remains to be seen, but for an industry that has spent the better part of a year absorbing the costs of protectionism, the immediate message is clear: the dram is back on.

Read more:
Whisky tariffs lifted as Trump hails royal state visit

Bristol and Edinburgh are emerging as the unlikely engines of Britain’s innovation economy, posting the country’s fastest-growing workforces among technology firms, university spin-outs and patent holders, according to fresh research that lays bare the persistent funding gap with the so-called golden triangle.

Headcount at innovative companies in Bristol jumped 65 per cent between 2019 and 2024, with Edinburgh up 43 per cent over the same period, comfortably outpacing Oxford on 40 per cent and Cambridge on 26 per cent, the analysis of nearly 40,000 businesses reveals.

The study, conducted by the research firm Beauhurst, classifies an “innovative” company as one that is either a university spin-out, the recipient of an innovation grant of £100,000 or more, the holder of a patent, or a technology business that has secured equity investment.

Yet despite the workforce surge in regional hubs, capital remains stubbornly concentrated in the south-east. Some 80 per cent of venture capital invested in the UK still finds its way to London, Oxford or Cambridge, the report finds, a figure that is likely to reignite debate over whether Whitehall’s levelling-up rhetoric is being matched by private-sector reality.

Karim Bahou, head of innovation at Sister, the Manchester-based innovation district that commissioned the study, said the work was designed to shed light on the structural reasons behind the funding gap that continues to dog regional cities.

Manchester itself, Bahou’s analysis found, is punching well above its weight. On a per-capita basis the city is on a par with the capital, with each boasting two innovative companies for every 1,000 residents.

Bahou is now urging cities outside the golden triangle to forge so-called “innovation corridors” between themselves rather than continuing to orbit London. The corridors, established networks linking regions that routinely collaborate on funding and company-building, allow capital, talent and intellectual property to flow more freely across the country.

Scotland’s central belt is leading the way. The Edinburgh-Glasgow corridor has already racked up 448 partnerships, including 378 investments and 70 research grants, making it the most deeply integrated city-to-city innovation network in the UK.

“Up in Scotland we see some really strong links between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This is where we think there is an opportunity to apply a Scottish model to the rest of the country,” Bahou said.

The report goes on to recommend devolving research and development tax incentives to regional authorities, establishing dedicated regional investment funds to unlock deal flow beyond the capital, and developing physical innovation districts, Sister itself is cited as an example, to keep intellectual property and talent rooted locally.

“We’ve got the Northern Powerhouse Fund, and that’s brilliant. We should be doubling down on funds like that, that focus on specific regions and the strength they bring,” Bahou said. “But investors themselves need to come and see what’s happening up in the north, we’ve got some incredible businesses here.”

Read more:
Bristol leads UK innovation jobs boom as the regions close the gap on London

Britain’s reputation as Europe’s cleantech powerhouse is being undermined by a brutal funding drought at the very bottom of the pipeline, with new figures showing investment in the country’s youngest low-carbon and renewable energy companies has collapsed to its lowest level in five years.

Research published by Cleantech for UK (CTUK) reveals that the value of early-stage deals halved in 2025, while the number of transactions plunged from 188 in 2024 to just 94 last year. The slump comes despite the broader sector pulling in £7.2 billion of investment overall, comfortably outstripping Germany’s £1.7 billion and France’s £1.4 billion.

The headline figure may flatter to deceive. Strip away the late-stage mega-deals and a far more uncomfortable picture emerges of an industry whose seed corn is being eaten before it has chance to germinate.

“If we allow the pipeline to dry up now, it means we’ll have no new innovation in cleantech coming through in five years’ time,” warns Sarah Mackintosh, director of CTUK and a former head of innovation at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. “Funders will be sitting there waiting for scale-ups and none will come.”

CTUK, established in 2023 to bridge the gap between Whitehall and the venture community, attributes the early-stage collapse to what it terms a “triple squeeze”: punishingly high industrial energy prices, the quiet closure last year of the Government’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio without a successor, and investor caution rooted in higher interest rates.

Westminster’s recent decision to decouple gas and electricity prices, severing the link that has long allowed expensive gas to set the price for cheaper renewables, is expected to deliver what Mackintosh calls a “fairly immediate impact”. Yet it does little to address the underlying reality that British industrial energy costs remain among the dearest in Europe, a particular handicap for the capital-hungry sectors at the heart of the energy transition such as battery manufacturing and carbon capture infrastructure.

To these domestic headwinds has been added a fresh geopolitical shock. The US-Iran conflict and tensions around the Strait of Hormuz have rekindled fears of an oil and gas price spiral, with the International Monetary Fund warning that Britain faces the sharpest growth downgrade in the G7 and one of the highest inflation rates as a consequence.

Mackintosh notes that higher rates and the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions have also dulled the appetite of venture capital firms, whose money, she says, “doesn’t go as far as it used to”.

The picture is rather rosier further up the funding ladder. Total equity investment in cleantech rose by 58 per cent year-on-year to £3.9 billion, though the bulk of that capital flowed to software businesses and proven, late-stage operators. Among the standouts was a £750 million raise by Kraken, the energy technology platform owned by Octopus Energy Group, and a £130 million round for energy infrastructure specialist Highview Power. The total nevertheless sits well shy of the £11.9 billion peak struck in 2023.

CTUK is now urging the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank to deploy their firepower more aggressively to help young firms cross the so-called valley of death between a laboratory breakthrough and a commercial factory. The National Wealth Fund signalled in January that it intends to channel up to £5 billion a year of taxpayer money into green energy projects, but the question for SMEs is whether any of that will reach companies still trying to prove their technology at scale.

Mackintosh points to British innovators such as battery-tech firm Anaphite, materials specialist Immaterial and carbon-removal venture Supercritical as the sort of “world-leading” businesses now in jeopardy. “These are the sorts of companies that are going to put the UK on the map,” she says. “It would be a travesty if we didn’t even start the ideas because they haven’t got the backing to scale up.”

For a Government that has staked much of its industrial strategy on green growth, the warning lights are flashing. Without urgent intervention to rekindle early-stage investment, ministers risk presiding over a clean-energy economy that imports tomorrow’s breakthrough technologies rather than exports them.

Read more:
Britain’s green start-ups face ‘triple squeeze’ as early-stage funding crashes to five-year low

Christina Ong’s Como Group has emerged as a key shareholder in the lossmaking SL6, the holding company behind The Fat Duck and the Hinds Head, handing the celebrity chef the firepower to expand.

The Singaporean billionaire long credited with turning London’s Bond Street into a luxury catwalk has set her sights on a rather more idiosyncratic British institution: the country kitchen of Heston Blumenthal.

Christina Ong, the 78-year-old fashion mogul and hotelier dubbed the “Queen of Bond Street”, has emerged as the new financial backer of the celebrity chef’s lossmaking restaurant empire. Filings lodged this week show that her family’s Como Group has become a key shareholder with significant control of SL6, the holding company behind Blumenthal’s culinary ventures.

The deal hands the Ong family a foothold in one of British gastronomy’s most distinctive brands and offers the chef the financial muscle to push into new markets. It is understood the cash injection will underpin the expansion of Blumenthal’s award-winning operations, headed by The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, the three-Michelin-starred restaurant that almost single-handedly placed British “molecular gastronomy” on the world map when it opened in 1995. Blumenthal, 59, also operates the nearby Hinds Head pub close to Maidenhead.

“Como’s international experience in the hospitality sector opens up new doors for what comes next,” Blumenthal said, adding that the partnership would allow the group to “explore new possibilities”.

The investment arrives at a delicate moment for SL6. In its most recent set of accounts, the company conceded it was in talks with potential investors to secure long-term funding “to help overcome the current economic challenges [and] provide a foundation for future growth”. For the 12 months to the end of May 2024, revenues fell to £8.9 million from £9.5 million while pre-tax losses widened to £2.1 million, up from £1.4 million the previous year.

A spokeswoman for the company sought to balance the picture, insisting that demand for reservations across both restaurants remained robust and that the Hinds Head had delivered consistent month-on-month growth over the past 18 months, putting it on course for a record year.

Ong’s arrival comes only weeks after Blumenthal confirmed the closure of Dinner by Heston, his two-Michelin-starred ode to historical British cookery housed within the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. The London site, which opened in 2011, will shut once the hotel tenancy expires, although a sister Dinner by Heston, opened in 2023 inside the Atlantis The Royal hotel on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, continues to trade.

For Como Group, the deal extends a hospitality and lifestyle empire that already spans 15 countries. Headquartered in Singapore and controlled by the Ong family, it operates 11 restaurants, the bulk of them in its home city, alongside a portfolio of 19 luxury hotels and resorts in markets including London, Italy, France, the Maldives, Bali, Australia and Thailand. The group’s first foray into food and beverage came in 1989, when it opened the Armani Café in London.

Ong herself is a fixture of British retail and luxury. She founded the Club21 fashion boutiques in 1972 and, through Challice, the investment vehicle she runs with her 80-year-old husband Ong Beng Seng, holds a 56 per cent stake in Mulberry, the British leather goods house. Her interests also include a string of fashion franchise stores running brands such as Emporio Armani.

“We see this partnership as the beginning of something very special,” Ong said. “We look forward to supporting that continued evolution of these iconic restaurants, while unlocking new opportunities for thoughtful growth in the years ahead.”

The deal also marks a public reappearance for the Ong family on the corporate stage. Last year, Ong Beng Seng was fined S$23,400 after pleading guilty to a charge linked to a gift scandal involving a former Singaporean government minister. He had faced a maximum penalty of seven years’ imprisonment, but a judge granted “judicial mercy” in light of his poor health.

For Blumenthal, who has spent three decades coaxing Britons into eating snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream, the message to the dining public is more prosaic. With Como’s chequebook now within reach, the chef has the runway to refresh, and quite possibly enlarge, an empire that, for all its critical acclaim, has been struggling to make the books balance.

Read more:
Singapore’s ‘Queen of Bond Street’ takes a seat at Heston Blumenthal’s table

A Leader Shaped by Early Responsibility

Otto Bohon didn’t grow into business. He was raised in it.

Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, he started working in his family’s restaurant at just nine years old. While most kids were focused on school and sports, Otto was learning how a business runs behind the scenes.

“I was bussing tables at first,” he says. “But I was also watching everything—how people got hired, how money moved, how systems worked.”

By age 12, he was already learning payroll. That early exposure gave him a rare advantage. He wasn’t just working. He was studying operations in real time.

His father, an immigrant, built a restaurant group from the ground up. That example left a lasting impact.

“I saw what it takes to build something from nothing,” Otto says. “That sticks with you.”

From Athlete to Business Builder

Growing up, Otto was also highly athletic. He played football and trained in martial arts. For a time, he dreamed of becoming a baseball player.

But business kept pulling him back.

“I always had that competitive mindset,” he says. “It just shifted from sports to business.”

He attended the University of Arizona, where he earned a degree in Psychology. He later completed an MBA with a focus on Finance and Marketing.

That mix of education helped shape how he approaches leadership today.

“Understanding people is just as important as understanding numbers,” he explains.

How Otto Bohon Built a Career in Finance

Otto’s entry into finance started in a familiar place—at the bottom.

He joined Wells Fargo as a teller during college. But he didn’t stay there long.

“I moved up quickly because I was always focused on learning the system,” he says.

He eventually became a Private Banker. That role gave him exposure to high-level clients and complex financial structures.

But Otto wanted more control over his path. So he left to become an independent Financial Advisor.

That decision changed everything.

Over time, he built a practice managing around $500 million in assets. Along the way, he earned multiple industry awards, including three Quantum Leap awards and a top MVP honor in 2019.

Still, something didn’t feel right.

“I realized my strength wasn’t just advising,” he says. “It was building systems and teams.”

Why He Walked Away From a Successful Practice

In 2020, Otto made a bold move. He sold his financial practice.

For many, that would be the peak. For him, it was a pivot.

“I knew I could make a bigger impact on the operational side,” he says. “That’s where I saw the real gaps.”

He shifted into consulting and executive leadership. His focus became clear: help companies scale by building better systems.

He served as Chief Operating Officer at SIM and later took on a Senior Advisor role with Affinex Capital.

There, he helps guide operations across multiple companies.

“My job is to make sure the people running these companies have the tools and structure to succeed,” he explains.

Building Systems That Scale

One of Otto’s key strengths is turning ideas into systems.

At Affinex Capital, he has helped raise around $500 million by improving internal processes and training.

He also developed a training program designed for people with no industry experience.

“The goal was simple,” he says. “Make it possible for anyone willing to work hard to succeed.”

Beyond that, he has built CRM systems and operational frameworks that help companies grow faster and more efficiently.

In the last five years alone, his work has helped create over 500 jobs.

“That’s something I’m really proud of,” he says. “Not just growth, but opportunity for others.”

Leading Through Mentorship and Culture

Otto Bohon sees leadership differently than most.

“I prefer to lead, not manage,” he says. “There’s a big difference.”

For him, leadership is about mentorship and development. He has helped many people get their first real opportunity in the industry.

“I’ve seen people go from zero experience to building strong careers,” he says. “That’s what drives me.”

His background in psychology plays a role here. He focuses on how people think, learn, and grow.

“Systems matter,” he says. “But people matter more.”

Community Impact and Personal Life

Otto’s work extends beyond business.

In 2017, he was named “Man of the Year” by the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s 40 Under 40. The award recognized his community involvement and philanthropy.

He has served on boards like the Arizona Blind and Deaf Children’s Foundation and St. Miguel. He has also volunteered with Habitat for Humanity and supported fundraising efforts for the Southern Arizona Diaper Bank.

“Giving back has always been important to me,” he says. “I wouldn’t be where I am without my community.”

At home, he focuses on family. He and his wife have four daughters.

“I try to spend as much time with them as I can,” he says. “That’s what keeps everything grounded.”

He also enjoys exploring art and managing his growing collection of collectibles.

What Defines Otto Bohon’s Leadership Today

Looking at his career, one theme stands out: building.

From restaurants to finance to consulting, Otto has always focused on creating structure and opportunity.

“I like building things that last,” he says.

Today, he continues to work behind the scenes, helping companies grow and leaders improve.

His path hasn’t been linear. But it has been intentional.

“I’ve always followed where I can make the biggest impact,” he says.

Read more:
Otto Bohon: From Family Roots to $500M Builder

Fintech stocks came under broad pressure in the first quarter of 2026, as investors pulled back from growth names in a more uncertain macro environment.

The valuations across the sector fell sharply, with fintechs significantly underperforming the broader market. One notable exception was Freedom Holding Corp., whose shares rose nearly 17% over the period. The move was supported by its more diversified ecosystem business model, which extends beyond financial services into telecom, travel, and other lifestyle segments.

A decline in fintech valuations was highlighted in a report titled “Fintech’s rapidly melting market cap,” published in mid-April by PitchBook, a leading provider of financial data and analytics. “The public fintech sector entered 2026 with momentum, but the first quarter turned sharply as the Iran war drove energy inflation, reversed rate-cut expectations, and pushed investors into a risk-off posture. With 18% of the sector’s market cap being wiped out and median cohort returns ranging from -13% to -35.3%, fintech significantly underperformed the broader market in Q1,” according to the report. Not that fintech companies suddenly got worse, rather investors became less willing to pay high valuations for growth stocks in a more uncertain, inflation-sensitive environment.

Fintech Under Pressure

Declines were widespread across nearly all segments of fintech, spanning credit-focused Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) providers, brokers, and payment platforms.

BNPL stocks came under pressure as investors pulled back from high-growth, credit-sensitive business models amid rising inflation concerns and fading expectations for interest-rate cuts. Klarna Group (KLAR), a provider of flexible payments that earns revenue from consumer installment lending and merchant fees, fell 54% in Q1 2026. Affirm Holdings (AFRM), which offers transparent installment plans and consumer lending products with no hidden fees, lost 38% over the first three months of the year.

Even the traditional lending segment, typically seen as less risky than consumer credit, was not immune. Upstart Network (UPST), an AI-driven lending platform that uses proprietary machine-learning models to underwrite personal, auto, and home equity loans, fell 44% over the period. Retail brokerage and investing platforms also came under pressure. Robinhood Markets (HOOD), the operator of the pioneering commission-free trading app Robinhood, fell 40% over the quarter.

Digital payments and money transfer fintechs held up better but still saw a decline in market cap. Shares of PayPal Holdings (PYPL), one of the most established global payments fintechs operating across roughly 200 markets, declined 22%. The stock of Block Inc. (XYZ), which runs Square, Cash App, and Afterpay and spans payments, merchant services, peer-to-peer transfers, and BNPL, fell 8%.

The downturn also extended to the neobank and consumer financial platform segment. SoFi Technologies (SOFI), which is building an all-in-one ecosystem spanning savings, banking products, lending, investing, and wealth protection within a single app, saw its market capitalization fall 42%. Even Nu Holdings (NU), one of the largest digital financial services platforms and a global neobank pioneer, serving approximately 131 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia through its branchless model, declined 16% in Q1.

Freedom Holding: A Different Story

Shares of Freedom Holding Corp. moved in the opposite direction in Q1, gaining nearly 17% from $124.23 at the start of January to $144.88 on March 31. The stock continued higher into April, breaking above $160 mid-month. Freedom’s market capitalization has surpassed $9.5 billion. The growth has been supported by a series of positive corporate developments, including continued expansion into international markets, ongoing integration of Freedom Holding’s ecosystem, and strong financial results.

Revenue for the quarter ending December 31, 2025, rose to $628.6 million from $526.1 million in the previous quarter, while net income nearly doubled from $38.7 million to $76.2 million. Over the first nine months of the fiscal year, the group generated $1.69 billion in revenue and $144.5 million in net income. These numbers reflect the growing investments in further development of Freedom’s ecosystem, which integrates financial, telecom, and lifestyle businesses and is available to clients through the holding’s SuperApp, which now serves 11 million users.

In its core market of Kazakhstan, the group operates a leading brokerage, a top-ten bank by assets, and maintains strong positions in insurance. It is also strengthening its domestic banking presence through additional acquisitions

In neighboring Tajikistan, the group based on Freedom Bank Tajikistan is replicating the model, which has been previously tested and refined in Kazakhstan. As Freedom Holding sees the banking business as a locomotive for the entire multi-industrial ecosystem, it is acquiring new banks in Georgia and Turkey. Recently, the management also announced plans to buy banks in Armenia and France.

Besides that, in Europe, the group is actively developing its travel segment services, such as ticketing, bookings, and events. Freedom Holding Corp’s travel-focused subsidiary plans to cover all traveler needs, from a global hotel aggregator set to launch in May 2026, to transfers, excursions, curated tours, visa support, and more. With this, the holding seeks to compete with those of the largest international platforms, such as Booking.com and Airbnb.

In technology, the group is investing in proprietary AI tools and assistants and plans to develop a national AI hub in partnership with Nvidia to support the broader adoption of artificial intelligence across up to 70% of the Kazakhstan population.

To finance all these movements, Freedom Holding is considering a potential secondary share offering outside the United States, in Kazakhstan, and possibly in Hong Kong.

The Ecosystem Advantage

Analysts point to the company’s more diversified business model, which extends beyond financial services. Unlike many fintechs that rely mainly on lending, payments, or brokerage activity, Freedom has multiple revenue streams, which have helped support its share price growth during the sector-wide decline.

“The era of stand-alone financial services is coming to an end. The future lies in super-apps that integrate financial services into everyday life – from grocery shopping to travel planning. Banking will increasingly become an invisible layer embedded within these ecosystems,” says Saurabh Tripathi, Senior Partner and Global Leader of the Financial Institutions practice at Boston Consulting Group.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global fintech market was valued at $394.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $1.76 trillion by 2034, implying a CAGR of 18.2%. Much of that growth, however, is increasingly expected to come from embedded financial services integrated into broader digital ecosystems rather than delivered as standalone products.

Read more:
Freedom Holding Corp. Rises as Global Fintech Stocks Fell in GL 2026

Choosing the right business law firm is one of the more important decisions you will make as an SME owner. It shapes how you handle risk, manage transactions, and deal with issues as they come up.

If you want a clear way to assess your options, focus on five things:

• Breadth of legal services under one roof
• Commercial understanding, not just legal knowledge
• Transparent and predictable fees
• Relevant transaction and sector experience
• Easy access to consistent, experienced advisers

Get these right, and everything else tends to follow.

Does the Firm Cover All the Legal Areas Your Business Needs?

Most SMEs do not deal with legal issues in isolation. Employment, contracts, property, and corporate work often overlap, sometimes within the same transaction. If your firm only covers part of that, you end up managing multiple advisers. That usually means higher costs, slower progress, and more chances for gaps.

Rubric Law provides legal services across corporate, employment, commercial, and dispute resolution, giving SMEs a single, consistent point of contact as different issues arise. This matters most when legal areas connect.

An acquisition with TUPE implications, or a business sale linked to a property transaction, needs joined-up advice. If teams are not aligned, issues tend to surface later, when they are harder and more expensive to fix.

When comparing firms, ask which areas they handle in-house. If work is referred out, it adds time, cost, and another layer to manage.

Does the Firm Offer Commercial Insight?

Legal accuracy should be a given. What actually makes a difference is whether the firm can explain what that legal position means for your business.

Think about it this way. You are not just asking, “Is this clause enforceable?” You are really asking, “What does this mean for me, and what should I do next?”

A good adviser will talk in terms of risk, options, and likely outcomes. They will connect the legal detail to your commercial reality.

You can usually spot this early. In initial conversations, pay attention to the questions they ask. A strong firm will want to understand:

• Your business model
• Your objectives
• Your appetite for risk

If they skip that and go straight into technical explanation, that is often how they will approach the rest of the work.

Fixed Fee vs Hourly Billing Structure

Fees are where a lot of SME frustration comes from, usually because of uncertainty rather than the cost itself.

The billing model makes a big difference to how well you can plan:

Fixed fees work well when the scope is clear, things like shareholder agreements, employment contracts, or standard conveyancing.

Hourly billing tends to fit situations where the scope is less predictable, such as disputes or more complex transactions.

Some firms default to hourly billing for everything. That can make routine work more expensive than it needs to be, and it makes budgeting harder than it should be.

It is worth asking a few direct questions upfront:

• Which services are offered on a fixed fee basis?
• Which are billed hourly?
• Can you provide typical cost ranges for the work I am likely to need?

Clarity here saves a lot of friction later.

Does Their Transaction Experience Match Your Sector?

Not all corporate experience is equal. There is a difference between general corporate advice and hands-on transaction experience.

For example, a management buy-out involves specific deal structures and negotiation points. A share sale requires careful handling of disclosures, warranties, and completion processes. These are not things you want a firm learning as they go.

Sector experience matters just as much. If your business operates in a regulated space like healthcare, financial services, or food production, there are compliance requirements that directly affect how deals are structured.

A firm without that background may still get there, but it often takes longer and carries more risk.

Ask for specific examples of completed transactions in your sector and deal size. General statements about experience are less useful than real, recent examples.

Accessibility and Relationship Continuity

Good legal advice is only helpful if you can get it when you need it. There will be moments where something urgent comes up, a contract issue, an employee problem, or a decision that cannot wait. In those situations, slow responses are more than frustrating; they can affect outcomes.

Different firms handle this in different ways. Larger firms may introduce you to a senior partner, then pass the day-to-day work to junior team members. Smaller firms may offer a more personal service but struggle with capacity on more complex matters.

What most SMEs need is consistency. You want to know who you are dealing with, and you want that person to stay involved.

Before you instruct a firm, ask:

• Who will handle my work day to day?
• Will that person stay involved throughout?
• What are your typical response times?

It sounds basic, but it makes a real difference once work starts.

Checklist, Questions to Ask Before Instructing a Business Law Firm

If you are comparing a few firms, these questions help you cut through the surface-level differences:

• Which practice areas do you handle in-house, and which do you refer out?
• Can you provide examples of work completed in my sector?
• How do you structure fees for the type of work I need most?
• Who will manage my matter day to day?
• What are your standard response times?
• How do you explain legal risk in commercial terms?
• Have you advised businesses at my stage of growth or transaction size?

Get the Legal Support Your Business Needs

Choosing a business law firm is worth doing properly. When you take the time to assess service breadth, commercial understanding, fee clarity, experience, and accessibility, you reduce the risk of problems later.

If you are about to instruct a firm, use the checklist above and have those conversations early. It will give you a much clearer sense of whether they are the right fit for your business.

Read more:
What Should SMEs Look for in a Full-Service Business Law Firm?

Leadership does not always start in a boardroom. Sometimes it starts in a classroom. Sometimes it starts on a construction site in rural West Virginia.

For Schuyler Tansey, it started early in New York City.

Born and raised in midtown Manhattan, Schuyler grew up surrounded by energy, culture, and opportunity. Today, she is a sophomore at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, majoring in elementary education. Her focus is clear: serve, teach, and build strong communities through education.

Her path has not been linear. It has been intentional.

Early Life in New York City

Schuyler attended Loyola School in New York City. While there, she was part of the Mock Trial Cheering Squad — a small but spirited group that supported classmates during competitions.

Growing up in Manhattan exposed her to a wide range of people and perspectives. That diversity shaped her interest in service.

Her early experiences built confidence and curiosity. They also planted the seeds for her career choice.

Why Did Schuyler Tansey Choose Elementary Education?

After high school, Schuyler enrolled at Tulane University. Over time, she realized she wanted to pursue elementary education — a program Tulane did not offer. She made a difficult decision to transfer.

“I had to be honest with myself,” she says. “If I wanted to teach, I needed to be in the right program.”

She transferred to Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is now a sophomore majoring in elementary education.

That shift reflects a leadership trait often overlooked: course correction.

Her academic focus centers on building strong foundational skills for children. Research consistently shows that early childhood education impacts long-term academic performance, income potential, and community stability.

Schuyler understands that.

“Elementary school is where everything begins.”

Global Perspective Through Study Abroad

Schuyler also attended Richmond University in London for a semester abroad. Studying overseas expanded her understanding of global education systems.

“It reminded me that education is both local and global.”

Community Service as a Core Commitment

Outside of academics, Schuyler’s resume reflects deep involvement in service.

She volunteered in Mingo County, West Virginia, helping build for people in need. She worked at the Romero Center in Camden, New Jersey. She has served at St. James Church in New York and participated in the Ines tutoring program at her time at the Loyola School.

These are not short-term activities. They are ongoing commitments.

Housing insecurity remains a challenge in many parts of the United States. Service projects like these expose volunteers to economic realities beyond their own communities.

“Service takes you out of your bubble,” she says. “It teaches humility.”

At the Romero Center and other organizations, she worked directly with cleaning up and beautifying the community.

How Service Shapes Her Leadership Style

Schuyler views teaching as more than lesson plans and grading.

“Kids notice when you’re present,” she says. “They notice when you care.”

Her volunteer work has strengthened her patience and listening skills. Those are practical leadership tools in a classroom.

Research shows that strong teacher-student relationships improve attendance and academic outcomes. Schuyler sees that as common sense.

“If a child must feel cared for and is treated properly, to learn better,” she says.

She believes service prepares future educators for real-world classrooms.

A Career Still in Progress

Schuyler is still a full-time student. Her career is in development. But her direction is clear.

Education remains one of the most important sectors in society. Teachers influence workforce readiness, civic engagement, and community health. According to national education data, teacher shortages persist in many regions, especially in early childhood education.

Her leadership does not come from title or tenure. It comes from action. From transferring schools to pursue the right major. From building homes in West Virginia. From tutoring younger students.

Success, for her, is about making the world better, even if it is one community at a time.

“I want to be the kind of teacher students remember,” she says.

Schuyler Tansey represents a new generation of educators who blend academic focus with community service. Her career is just beginning. But her foundation is strong.

And in education, foundation is everything.

Read more:
Schuyler Tansey: A Future Leader in Education and Service