Business News

Downtown in Business Birmingham is delighted to announce the shortlist for the City of Birmingham Business Awards 2022.

The City of Birmingham Business Awards (COBBA) was established by Downtown Birmingham in 2017 to acknowledge and celebrate companies and entrepreneurs that have made a successful and significant contribution to economic growth in the city region.

H&M Group is deeply concerned about the tragic developments in Ukraine and stand with all the people who are suffering. H&M Group has decided to temporarily pause all sales in Russia.

The stores in Ukraine have already been temporarily closed due to the safety of customers and colleagues.

The development of a new £24 million Dudley transport interchange has taken another step forward with the submission of a final planning application. Set to be built on the current bus station site, the new Dudley Interchange will link bus services to the tram services on the Black Country Metro extension currently under construction.

New analysis from Social Enterprise UK, commissioned by Access – The Foundation for Social Investment and Big Society Capital, has found that social enterprises in the West Midlands have continued to grow strongly despite the pandemic. Diving into data gathered in 2021 through the biannual State of Social Enterprise survey by Social Enterprise UK, this latest research has found social enterprises in the West Midlands responding strongly to the pandemic and continuing their work to make our society a better place to live.

Wednesfield Library has become one of the first of 170 public sector sites in the City of Wolverhampton to go live on a new gigabit-capable full fibre broadband network.

CityFibre, the UK’s third national digital infrastructure platform, has rolled out the network after the council secured £4.9million government funding from the Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) Local Full Fibre Network project.

Works to improve Birmingham City Council’s CCTV network around the city centre – which would see 24 new cameras installed and 30 existing cameras upgraded are due to begin this month (March 2022).

The expansion follows Cabinet’s approval for the proposals on 14 December to help plug gaps in CCTV coverage and improve the quality and reliability of city centre network, as well as help residents, visitors and workers in the area feel safer.

Westley Group, one of Europe’s largest privately-owned foundry and engineering groups, is set to further invest in new CNC machinery following an eight-figure funding package from HSBC UK. The funding from HSBC UK will support the Group’s UK business plans to add further value to its foundry activities through machining more of the castings it produces for its worldwide customer base.

The University of Wolverhampton’s Business School has secured an award-winning female entrepreneur to speak at a business networking event on International Women’s Day.

Great British Entrepreneur award winner, Fungai Ndemera, will be guest speaker at the free networking event which takes place on Tuesday 8 March from 12.00 midday until 2.00 pm in the University of Wolverhampton Business School, Deanery Row in Wolverhampton. The event has been sponsored by FBC Manby Bowdler Solicitors LLP.

Kaiser is officially open for business online after launching its website in January 2022. The site offers more than 100 built-in and freestanding appliances from its award-winning range. Consumers across the UK get to shop products from this entire Kaiser range plus enjoy amazing perks such as free delivery and installation.

Social enterprises from across Birmingham are being urged to tap into £16.3m of funding that will help their communities recover from the impact of Covid-19.

The Social Enterprise Support Fund (SESF) reopens for applications at 1pm on Monday February 28th, with organisations in the City able to apply for grants of between £10,000 and £100,000 to help them deliver essential services or increase trading in the communities they serve.

National law firm Clarke Willmott LLP has acted on a deal between household cleaning giant HG and a family-run eco-friendly cleaning product manufacturer.  

Netherlands brand HG acquired UK-based Ecozone for an undisclosed sum in a deal led by Clarke Willmott corporate partner Richard Swain, who acted for the selling shareholder Simeon Van der Molen. 

It’s official, Liverpool and Salford are leading the way on levelling up when it comes to the post-Covid property market.

Demand for flats has bounced back so hard that their annual gains have now started to eclipse those of the wider market, having surged as the UK emerges from the pandemic, analysis by property experts James Pendleton reveals.

XPO Logistics, Inc., a leading provider of freight transportation services, has been awarded Carrier Partner of the Year for its less-than-truckload (LTL) performance by GlobalTranz Enterprises, LLC. This is the second year that XPO’s North American LTL business has been honored by GlobalTranz, a technology-driven, third-party logistics provider with extensive industry relationships.

Businesses could be at a heightened risk of cyber attacks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – an expert from cyber security firm CSS Assure has warned.

Ukrainian banking and government websites were knocked offline last week by a spate of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which are designed to crash sites by bombarding them with excessive requests at the same, causing server overloads and shutdowns.

Rackspace Technology, a leading end-to-end, multicloud technology solutions company is extending its Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) with an additional multi-year joint investment to drive customer value and innovation. The expanded agreement comes after Rackspace Technology’s AWS business has grown by 250% over the past 3 years and was named 2021 AWS Migration Partner of the Year (US & Canada). 

Specially trained sniffer dogs are now being used to track down metal thieves who cause major delays to passengers and freight on the Chiltern main line and key West Midlands rail routes. Network Rail has enlisted the canine recruits, provided by Search Dogs UK, to crack down on criminals who steal vital cables and materials from the railway and catch those who illegally sell those items on.