By: Will Railton

I'm deputy money editor at City A.M. I focus on personal finance and investing. I'm particularly interested in macroeconomics, pensions and politics. Contact me at william.railton@cityam.com.

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Picking up the Slack: CMO Bill Macaitis on why word-of-mouth is central to the unicorn’s success

June 6, 2016

"We're selling organisational transformation," says Bill Macaitis, chief marketing officer of Slack – Silicon Valley darling and contender for the fastest growing B2B software-as-a-service company in history. Slack is more than a workplace messenger. It is a communication and collaboration tool which facilitates meetings, provides access to shared documents, and breaks down silos between apps by integrating Twitter, [...]
As social media platforms get better at monetising, what should marketers expect?

June 6, 2016

Monetising is a top priority for the world’s leading social platforms like Twitter and Periscope, and recent figures suggest they’re getting better at it. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, the UK’s social media ad spend rose 51 per cent last year to £574m, so what developments should marketers expect from these firms over the coming [...]
David Spencer-Percival explains how he approaches employing over 300 millennials

June 6, 2016

If you're having difficulty attracting younger employees, you’re certainly not alone. Many businesses struggle with hiring and retaining millennials, and many millennials, in turn, struggle to adapt to the corporate workplace. I should know: my company employs more than 300 of them. A recent experiment by Virgin illustrates this quite handily. The company held a “corporate [...]
A family affair: How Ben and Ollie Black built their childcare empire

June 6, 2016

Two minutes with the Black brothers and Laurel and Hardy come up. “You know, ‘another fine mess you’ve got me into’,” says Oliver Black, describing how he initially conceived of working with his brother. “I spent Christmas trying to convince Ollie that I knew about buying a company,” says Ben Black. The pair bought failing childcare [...]
Mental health: First aid could save your company money

June 3, 2016

With knock-on effects like sickness absence, loss of productivity and diminished morale, it is estimated that mental health issues cost the UK economy anywhere between £70bn and £100bn a year. Personal experience of working in a range of occupational health settings has shown me that being at work is actually beneficial for the majority of people [...]
Forget the work-life balance, we need to find the right “blend”

June 2, 2016

It is time to abandon the idea of the work-life balance. Work and life don’t exist in separate, opposing spheres. In a world of 24 hour connectivity, the distinction between the two is increasingly impossible to make out. According to a survey by Willis Towers Watson, our pursuit of this illusive sense of balance is a [...]
Crowdfunding: Why private equity opportunities are ever closer for investors

June 2, 2016

Small business investment has gone mainstream – or has it? While individual private investors looking to back early-stage businesses are spoilt for choice as crowdfunding gathers pace, opportunities for them to provide private equity backing to more established SMEs remain scarce. Investing in such businesses is often more complex, but usually offers a better risk/return [...]
New regulation might be seriously ill-conceived, but there is still hope for equity crowdfunding in the US

June 2, 2016

Ordinary American investors finally got permission to invest in startups and other private businesses last month. Equity crowdfunding, as this form of investment has come to be known, has been a reality in Britain for almost four years. Seedrs, the London-based platform I co-founded, became the first regulated equity crowdfunding platform in 2012. Since then, [...]
Modesty is not a virtue: Why Londoners need to blow their own trumpet more

June 1, 2016

As Brits, we often shy away from shouting about our professional successes. Perhaps we worry about sounding arrogant, or like we’re overcompensating. But new research released by LinkedIn suggests this modesty could be holding Londoners back in their careers. Our modesty problem The global study shows that 70 per cent of the capital’s professionals know [...]
Far from being unprofessional, being emotional at work should be encouraged

May 31, 2016

The celebrated tears shed by Gazza at Italia ‘90 may have foreshadowed a widespread unstiffening of our national upper lip and led us all to be much more Celebrity Big Brother than Brief Encounter, but there is still a stigma attached to showing emotion at work. The word “emotional” is often presented as the polar opposite [...]

HSBC: City market’s top firm turns to Asia and Middle East

Premiership run-in: Saints and Bath will impact top four

Here We Are, National Theatre, review: Stephen Sondheim musical is more Severance than sing-a-long

By: Will Railton

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