Combination of O2 and Virgin Media set to transform British telecoms market

O2 and Virgin Media’s £31bn merger is one of the biggest examples of virtual dealmaking during pandemic

JPMorgan data show about one in four loans was behind on payments last month

Turmoil in commodity market slashes state colleges’ revenues

The Adventurous Investor senses there could be future value in spinout specialists

An esoteric choice they may be for private investors, but if you’re selective they can add value

Fixed rate that applies in years three to five has been cut

NetSaver easy access account pays 3.16 per cent on savings

Lenders reluctant to count payments as affordability checks tighten

Competitive landscape is unclear as food delivery becomes a utility

Ireland’s richest man O’Brien faces struggle to refinance former cash cow’s debt pile

Pledges to donate Covid-19 test kits pour in from groups including Vale and Petrobras

New rules require banks to stick with a single rate after introductory deals

Private lawsuits are a vital tool for upholding standards in the free market system

Many zombie companies will fail, no matter how much is sprayed around by the Fed

As US health workers suffer from inadequate protection, there are signs of a shifting world order

Happy Saturday and welcome back to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of Equity where we drill into one particular topic. There was so much news this week in our main areas of focus — startup funding rounds, new venture funds, that sort of thing — that we had to exclude earnings from the main […]

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday’s episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week. […]

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners said on Friday it will invest $1.5 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms, joining social conglomerate Facebook and Silver Lake that have also made bets on the Indian telecom giant in recent weeks. The planned announcement, which would give the U.S.-headquartered software-focused buyout firm Vista Equity Partners a 2.32% stake in […]

From Brexit to fiscal policy, the EU’s largest member states have seen the mainstream wrongfooted

Without a co-ordinated response, national stimulus policies will end up increasing imbalances

Some big moves in the payments platform space: Ant Financial Group, the owner of China’s Alipay payment platform, has announced it’s taking a minority stake in Swedish payments platform Klarna . Klarna has a strong European presence and a flagship product that lets shoppers buy now and pay later in interest-free installments (typically 14 or […]

Another week in quarantine. As the world adjusts to working from home under mandatory stay-at-home orders, hackers are keeping busy. Microsoft said this week that coronavirus-related attacks are on the rise but still make up just a fraction of the overall malicious activity. Cybersecurity companies seem to be faring mostly well — in part thanks […]

On the heels of a spate of reports over the weekend, today Intel confirmed its latest move to grow its automotive division. The chip giant is acquiring Moovit, an Israeli startup previously backed by Intel that analyses urban traffic patterns and provides transportation recommendations with a specific focus on public transit. The deal values Moovit at […]

The regulators said “NO” when Telefonica tried to combine its O2 operations in the UK with rival carrier, Hutchison-owned Three, back in 2015. But Telefonica didn’t let go of the idea of divestment, and five years later, in the middle of a health pandemic with related threats of a global economic depression looming over us, […]

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding to the mix. You can catch last week’s show with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas right here if […]

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist. “Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and […]

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies […]

If the UK stock market is in for more of a hiding, the FTSE 100 is likely to outperform the FTSE 250

I own three properties and want to buy another with my new partner

Happy Saturday and welcome back to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of Equity where we drill into one particular topic. There was so much news this week in our main areas of focus — startup funding rounds, new venture funds, that sort of thing — that we had to exclude earnings from the main […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

The Indian government has said that its contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what he […]

Thinking up the most leftwing ideas imaginable is tricky when several were in the last Labour manifesto

Over the past two years, I’ve typed nearly every word I’ve written while traveling on the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard Folio. For more on why, you can see my iPad Pro review here. For the purposes of this look at the new Magic Keyboard, though, you should probably just know two things about the old […]

Politics is about leverage. Startups now have it. They should take advantage of it before things change again.

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies […]

Favourable trends in employment relative to population are not going to be repeated

Britain’s new chancellor would be wise to treat it as a holding operation

Sound industry leader Rode has done an amazing job keeping up with the needs of the fast-moving creator industry, supporting YouTubers, podcasters and Instagram and Tik Tok media mavens with a host of new products at impressive price points. The Rode Wireless GO mic system might be the most impressive of these, taking the quality […]

Earlier this week, Amazon informed staff members at its Staten Island fulfillment center that a worker had died from COVID-19. The news was first noted by The Verge. The employee began to exhibit symptoms in early April, before being placed on quarantine April 11. He never returned to the site. “We are deeply saddened by […]

Apple is providing a data set derived from aggregated, anonymized information taken from users of its Maps navigational app, the company announced today. The data is collected as a set of “Mobility Trends Reports,” which are updated daily and provide a look at the change in the number of routing requests made within the Maps […]

Apple will patch a newly discovered iPhone vulnerability that security researchers say hackers have already used to steal data from their victims’ devices. News of the vulnerability dropped Wednesday by security firm ZecOps. Zuk Avraham, the company’s chief executive, said the firm found the bug last year during a routine investigation. At least six organizations […]

Apple plans to fix an iPhone email security bug, Magic Leap cuts 1,000 staffers and Google is requiring all advertisers to identify themselves. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 23, 2020. 1. A new iPhone email security bug may let hackers steal private data According to security firm ZecOps, the bug is in the iPhone’s […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

The Indian government has said that its contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what he […]

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