An online service promising impartial financial advice for Bath firms on funding options has been launched by Business West, the region’s largest business organisation. According to Business West, which runs Bath Chamber of Commerce, its Finance Hub will be free from confusing jargon or any hard sell, enabling businesses to decide what sort of...
Business groups have cautiously backed the reduction of many coronavirus lockdown restrictions announced earlier this week by the Prime Minister. But they also warned that other measures to boost the economy were still needed to avoid widespread business failures and job losses. In a major boost to the West of England’s vital tourism and...
A surprise fall in the number of corporate insolvencies could herald the ‘calm before the storm’, the South West branch of insolvency and restructuring trade body R3 has warned. Figures published by the Insolvency Service show a 30% drop in companies going bust at the height of the coronavirus crisis in May compared to...
Unemployment has soared by 145% in the West of England since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to figures published today, with just nearly 40,000 people claiming jobless benefits. At the same time, around 22% of the region’s workforce – 132,600 people – have been furloughed while job vacancies have fallen sharply, down...
Bath-based travel tech start-up Tickitto has booked itself onto a period of expansion after receiving $700,000 (£563,850) in funding. The firm, which aims to help travel retailers access tickets to events and travel-related experiences through one single connection, will to use the money from the pre-seed round to scale its engineering team and build...
Bath-based financial planning group Fidelius – one of the city’s fastest-growing businesses – has struck a significant strategic partnership with a major investment firm that will take its assets under advice to £1.8bn. The link up with Pacific Asset Management (PAM) has involved it acquiring Fidelius’s discretionary fund management (DFM) arm Parallel Investment Management. ...
MDS Technologies, which supplies cloud and insfrastructure services to the government, has merged with a managed IT services firm as both benefit from increased demand linked to home working during the lockdown. Chippenham-head MDS supplies managed cloud and infrastructure packages to a number of primarily large public sector organisations requiring a high level of...
Somerset-based upmarket fashion brand Mulberry is planning to shed hundreds of jobs as it struggles to overcome the massive cost of the Covid-19 pandemic on the business. The firm, best known for its luxury leather bags, employs 1,140 staff in the UK – around half of them at its head office and factory at...
A bakery chain based near Bath is to reopen its 45 branches after securing £1m in funding through the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS). The Cornish Bakery, which has its headquarters at Paulton and an outlet in Abbey Churchyard in Bath, closed the doors of its bakeries to customers on March 23 and...
Small and medium-sized Bath businesses investing in digital innovation to address challenges arising from Covid-19 can access grants of between £10,000 and £40,000 under a new scheme started by UWE Bristol. The university’s £1m Digital Innovation Fund is aimed at helping firms ranging from start-ups and micro businesses to more established organisations as they...
