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The tech giant’s first physical UK store will open in Regent Street on 11 July, just a one minute walk away from Apple’s London flagship branch.

The branch near Oxford Circus will feature “immersive video walls” throughout and an “answer deck”, offering tech support, training, repairs and advice.

Free tech, coding and Stem learning workshops and programmes will be offered at the store’s community theatre.

John Carter, who has been appointed Microsoft Store manager, said: “This will be more than just a store. Customers will have the chance to explore and get hands-on with technology.

“We’ve got a passionate group of store associates ready to bring the experience of tech alive for customers. Unique to any job in retail, there will be many ways for us to give back to our communities, help them build connections, and grow.”

Microsoft already runs three gaming studios in the UK, as well as startup hub Reactor London and a research lab in Cambridge.

This new flagship store builds upon Microsoft’s significant track record of investment in the UK,” said Cindy Rose from Microsoft UK.

“More importantly, located in the heart of central London it will serve as a vibrant hub – for both visitors to our great city as well as a variety of different local communities – to come and play, learn, create and discover.”

Read More – www.cityam.com

The space race is still alive and well—at least when it comes to VC funding and global satellite internet.

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by celebrity billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has raised an additional $704.74 million across two previously declared rounds, according to filings reviewed by PitchBook on Friday. Both rounds have now raised a combined total of $1.02 billion since January. With the new funding, SpaceX now holds an estimated $31.5 billion valuation, with previous investors such as Sherpa Capital, Alphabet and Founders Fund adding to their stakes in the company. SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The funding announcement comes a day after the Los Angeles-area company launched 60 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit, en route to an eventual goal of the 800 satellites needed to reliably provide significant high-speed internet coverage worldwide. The Starlink project, initiated in 2015, is expected to be fully operational in 2020, with the possibility for up to 12,000 satellites entering orbit, per regulatory filings SpaceX submitted to the Federal Communications Commission. Its competitors include global satellite internet aspirations from OneWeb, which is backed by Virgin Group and Qualcomm Ventures, and from Samsung, among others.

Elon Musk has previously declared his goal is to use revenue from Starlink’s projected operations to fund Starship, an initiative to build advanced rockets and spaceships to bring human civilization to Mars. Currently, Starship’s vehicles are being constructed in Boca Chica, Texas, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, with Musk regarding the locations as “competing” to see which site is more efficient.

Legal challenges abound

While the promise of exploring space and colonizing Mars someday may sound dreamy, the journey isn’t always glamorous, and SpaceX has had its share of difficulties.

The new funding also comes on the heels of the company’s lawsuit against the US Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, filed in mid-May and unveiled on Wednesday by CNBC. In the lawsuit, SpaceX claims the center “wrongly awarded” $2.26 billion last fall in development contracts “to a portfolio of three unproven rockets” built by its competitors, while rejecting SpaceX’s bid.

Namely, Blue Origin received $500 million, United Launch Alliance scored $967 million, and Northrop Grumman banked $792 million. Meanwhile, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets were kicked to the curb, with the Air Force concluding that certain elements of the company’s Starship vehicle broadly labels its entire fleet as “high risk.”

Since the filing was largely redacted to protect proprietary and competitively advantageous information, it is not clear what the specific factors that were deemed “high risk.” Without greater details, it is difficult to speculate regarding the merit of the complaint.

However, the lawsuit may simply be an indication of the unwillingness of SpaceX and Elon Musk to concede defeat. As part of a broader ethics investigation into Acting US Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, an April 25 report revealed that Shanahan and Musk met privately on December 6 to discuss SpaceX’s failure. During the meeting, Musk expressed his opinion that SpaceX had submitted a lousy contract proposal that “missed the mark.”

In addition to Musk’s stated opinion on the proposal quality, Bloomberg reports SpaceX has won nine federal contracts since 2015, including a recent $297 million launch contract from February. All such contracts were in direct competition with ULA, among others, arguably contradicting perceptions of institutional favoritism working against SpaceX.

While the $1.02 billion in funding SpaceX has garnered this year may be coincidental, it could reasonably be an unenthusiastic replacement for what would have been a grant from the Air Force, considering the timing and a similar amount to what the Air Force was dishing out.

Regardless, such a refusal to concede defeat is far from unusual in the world of Elon Musk, where themes of stubbornness and denial abound. There was his infamous “funding secured” tweet and subsequent unwillingness to adhere to SEC monitoring, as well as his long-standing but never-fulfilled repetition of Tesla’s ever-imminent resolution of cashflow and production issues.

In perhaps the most dramatic example, Musk has steadfastly refused to settle the defamation lawsuit filed against him after he called Vernon Unsworth, one of the divers who helped rescue a Thai soccer team from a cave in 2018, a “pedo guy” on Twitter after Unsworth disparaged Musk’s offer of a submarine to aid in the rescue as a PR stunt. The suit reportedly seeks damages for some $75,000, equivalent to less than 0.00005% of Musk’s net worth, but in a familiar denial, Musk maintains his innocence and regards his comments as an “imaginative insult” protected by the First Amendment.

As SpaceX’s lawsuit seeks to recover its missed Air Force grant by challenging the reasons the company’s bid was not chosen, it remains debatable whether the Air Force truly did cheat SpaceX—or Musk & Co. are simply unhappy to admit that they lost.

Read More – www.pitchbook.com

Painkiller brands Panadol and Anadin will be bought under one roof under a giant deal between drug firms GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.

The firms are combining their consumer healthcare businesses into one firm with annual sales of £9.8bn ($12.7bn).

Other brands involved in the deal include Aquafresh toothpaste and Chapstick lip balm.

The deal still needs approval by shareholders and regulators. Shares in GSK rose 7% on the news.

GSK’s consumer healthcare division used to operate as a joint venture with Swiss firm Novartis, but it acquired full control of the business nine months ago.

GSK, which will have 68% of the new business, said the deal was a “compelling opportunity” to build on that earlier buyout of Novartis and deliver stronger sales.

“Through the combination of GSK and Pfizer’s consumer healthcare businesses, we will create substantial further value for shareholders,” said GSK chief executive Emma Walmsley.

“Ultimately, our goal is to create two exceptional, UK-based global companies, with appropriate capital structures, that are each well positioned to deliver improving returns to shareholders and significant benefits to patients and consumers.”

The joint venture will go by the name of GSK Consumer Healthcare. Apart from GSK’s Nigerian subsidiary, which is excluded from the deal, it will operate in all countries where GSK and Pfizer have a presence.

GSK will have six directors on the board, while Pfizer will have three. The new firm will be spun off and listed separately on the London stock market within three years.

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever said its CEO Paul Polman was retiring less than two months after a damaging row with shareholders, and would be replaced by the head of its beauty unit Alan Jope from January 1.

Polman’s exit comes after the maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was forced to scrap a plan to move the company headquarters to the Netherlands in October, following an investor revolt.

Jope, 54, is the boss of the beauty and personal care division which is Unilever’s largest, accounting for almost half of group annual profits. He is also a former leader of its China business and has long been seen as a successor to Polman.

“Our global footprint includes strong positions in many important markets for the future and our focus will remain on serving our consumers, and our other multiple stakeholders, to deliver long‐term growth and value creation,” Jope said.

Read More – https://uk.reuters.com

Britain’s competition watchdog indicated it may block credit data company Experian’s takeover of rival ClearScore and warned the deal could stifle development of digital products that help customers understand personal finances.

Experian, a FTSE 100 company, wants to expand in Britain with the purchase of ClearScore, which provides free access to credit reports and scores, and introduces consumers to personal financial products.

Experian, the world’s biggest credit data firm, said it was disappointed by the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) provisional findings.

The CMA said its Phase II investigation had found the 275 million pound ($352 million) deal announced in March would potentially harm the development of digital products.

“At this stage, the CMA’s view is that the only effective remedy is prohibition of the merger,” the watchdog said in a statement, adding that it currently believes that no other structural or behavioural remedy is likely to be effective.

Read More – https://uk.reuters.com

Unilever (ULVR.L) has emerged as the leading bidder in a tight contest for GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK.L) Indian Horlicks nutrition business, three people familiar with the situation told Reuters on Wednesday.

If it is able to clinch the deal, Unilever will trump fellow European consumer giant Nestle (NESN.S), the other main contender to buy Horlicks and other GSK consumer healthcare assets in India.

One source said Unilever had been given “preferential treatment” to complete the deal but did not have exclusivity in negotiations, so it was possible GSK might re-open talks with Nestle if it could not agree terms with Unilever.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Unilever and GSK, which owns 72.5 percent of Indian business GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GLSM.NS), were in exclusive talks, citing people familiar with the sales process.

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

Energy firm SSE has admitted there is “some uncertainty” that its merger with rival Npower will go ahead.

The announcement comes after the companies delayed the tie-up due to the incoming energy bill price cap of £1,137 a year for “typical usage”.

It means suppliers will have to cut the price of their default tariffs to the level of the cap or below it.

The SSE-Npower merger, which has been cleared by the regulator, would create the UK’s second-biggest energy company.

However, Perth-based SSE has revealed it has been hit by widened losses for its household gas and electricity supplier.

It has also reported the loss of another 460,000 SSE customer accounts as competition takes its toll.

In its half-year results, SSE said: “There is now some uncertainty as to whether this transaction can be completed as originally contemplated.

“Nevertheless, the board believes that the best future for SSE energy services, including its customers and employees, will continue to lie outside the SSE group.”

The two firms had been hoping to seal the merger of their retail operations in the first quarter of 2019.

But they said talks over the new terms of the deal will take several weeks and will probably see the deal delayed beyond the first quarter.

They still insist, however, that work to complete the merger continues and they plan to update by mid-December.

SSE reported a 41% fall in underlying pre-tax profits to £246.4m, stripping out its energy services division.

On a bottom-line basis, SSE posted pre-tax losses of £265.3m for the six months to 30 September against profits of £409.3m a year earlier.

Its energy services arm, which is split out from the main numbers due to the Npower deal, saw operating losses widen to £62.1m from £7.1m a year ago.

Read More – www.bbc.co.uk

Earlier this month, Nested, an online real estate agency which provides cash advances to help buyers purchase new homes before selling their old ones, hauled in £120 million in funding from investors including Northzone and Balderton Capital. This was the largest round the company has raised, and it’s also by far the biggest VC investment of the past five years in a European startup focused on real estate technology—or as it is increasingly being referred to, proptech.

Having watched startups disrupt old-fashioned industries like taxis and finance, venture capitalists have homed in on real estate as one of the next big opportunities. More and more companies are cropping up that use technology to buy and sell houses, not to mention tackling areas such as pricing, mortgages and building management.

This year, VC investors have participated in 52 deals worth a combined €335 million in European proptech startups, per the PitchBook Platform, with Nested’s aforementioned funding accounting for more than a third of the capital raised. This is more than 10x the amount raised in 2014, continuing a steady five-year rise.

Here’s a look at the 10 most active VC investors in the European proptech sector since the beginning of 2014, per PitchBook data, including their deal counts:

1. Global Founders Capital
2. Pi Labs
3. Seedcamp
4. Seaya Ventures
5. Bpifrance
6. HOWZAT Partners
7. Passion Capital
8. LocalGlobe
9. Picus Capital
10. Piton Capital

Read more – www.pitchbooks.com