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Spending on team lunches, socials and spot bonuses gets a raised eyebrow in most budget reviews. Fair enough. It is discretionary, it looks soft, and nobody ever got promoted for a well-run pizza afternoon. Price the alternative, though, and the picture changes. Take a UK salary of £80,000. Gallup puts the cost of employee turnover, meaning the price of replacing a leaver, at between half and two times their annual salary. Building it up for this role, the CIPD gives an avera

Banking Weekly 2026-10-11 – 2026-10-18 European bank consolidation took its biggest step in years just as U.S. regulators landed their largest-ever AML penalty on a major bank. The Big Three 1. Italy's UniCredit wins ECB approval to control Germany's Commerzbank The ECB has cleared UniCredit to raise its Commerzbank stake above the 30% control threshold, ending a prolonged regulatory review. The decision clears the path for what would be the eurozone's largest cross-border ba

Banking Weekly 2026-10-04 – 2026-10-11 This week showed scale being pursued on three fronts at once — fintech valuations, cross-border bank M&A, and card infrastructure consolidation. The Big Three 1. EU Antitrust Decision on UniCredit-Commerzbank Deal Due by Nov 16 EU antitrust regulators must rule on the proposed UniCredit-Commerzbank combination by November 16. The deadline puts a concrete date on one of the largest cross-border bank consolidation attempts in Europe in yea

Banking Weekly 2026-09-27 – 2026-10-04 Digital bank consolidation moved from speculation to real deal talk this week, with Nubank's pursuit of Monzo and renewed Commerzbank-HVB merger chatter both signaling that scale, not just growth, is now the industry's priority. The Big Three 1. Monzo weighs sale to Nu as Advent eyes minority stake Reports put a potential Nubank bid for Monzo at $13 billion, which would be the Brazilian fintech's largest-ever deal, while private equity f

Banking Weekly 2026-09-19 – 2026-09-26 The week belonged to a possible £10 billion Nubank-Monzo tie-up, with stablecoin rulemaking and bank-hyperscaler AI deals filling out the rest of the story. The Big Three 1. Monzo in talks on sale to Nubank at about £10 billion valuation, Sky News reports Sky News reports that UK digital bank Monzo is in talks to be acquired by Brazil's Nubank at a valuation of up to £10 billion. If confirmed, it would be one of the largest neobank M&A t

Every hiring process I've sat in claims to be looking for the best candidate. Ask "best against what" and you mostly get a blank look, because nobody's actually defined it. They're ranking people against each other on a shortlist, not against the team those people are meant to join. I think about it more like finding product-market fit than finding the smartest person available. You can build something brilliant and still watch it die because nobody wanted it. Hire someone br

Tech salary convergence is real, but only for senior roles. Here's the UK, Eastern Europe and India data on exactly where geography still decides pay in 2026.

Three engineers. Same team. Same tools. Three completely different stages. Most organisations are spread across the AI adoption curve without knowing it, and the big numbers only appear at the end.

Reading every single comment and message has taught me something: interviews are making everyone miserable. Candidates, hiring managers, recruiters, the lot. And the data backs this up in a way that's honestly quite grim.

At the end of every interview, I ask the candidate if they'd like feedback on how it went. And then—here's the controversial bit—I actually give it to them. Not the sanitised HR-approved version three weeks later after they've already assumed the worst. Not the vague "we've decided to progress with other candidates" email that tells them precisely nothing. Honest interview feedback. Right there in the room. I tell them what went well. I tell them what didn't. I'm authentic a

I see a lot of people laser-focused on the next step up. Head of to Director. Director to VP. Fair enough—ambition's important. But I reckon we've got the entire thing backwards. The best career move I ever made wasn't a promotion. It was a lateral move—a sideways shift that made absolutely no sense on paper. Less prestige, steeper learning curve, completely different domain. My mates thought I'd lost it. Turned out to be the thing that set everything else in motion. The Foun

How exactly 5 moves—like the keystone in an arch—hold your entire plan together You're staring at a whiteboard covered in arrows, boxes, and question marks. Your team has been "brainstorming solutions" for 90 minutes. Everyone's knackered. And you're no closer to knowing what to actually do on Monday morning. Sound familiar? Here's the thing: we've got brilliant problem-solving frameworks. The 5 Whys for root causes. Wardley Maps for strategic positioning. Blue Ocean for com

A concept art-style illustration of an AI assistant made of glowing blue light, sitting at a desk surrounded by floating digital...

If Marcus Aurelius had to navigate the Northern Line at rush hour, he would have written a very different book of Meditations—probably one w

If you've always assumed philosophy was just for bearded academics or Instagram influencers posing with Marcus Aurelius quotes they don't un

Feeling overwhelmed at work? This ancient Stoic principle offers a surprisingly effective approach to reducing anxiety and improving focus.

Discover the power of IT leadership in fostering success. Learn how IT leadership archetypes can transform engagement and drive change.

Struggling with IT prioritisation? Discover effective strategies to tackle IT prioritisation challenges and make better resource allocation

Discover the 8 essential aspects of product alignment for successful product teams. Learn how product alignment can drive innovation and val

Discover why a daily standup is crucial or when it might be redundant. Learn how daily standup meetings impact business agility today.