New look for PR Week
June 27, 2008
PR Week has undergone a revamp, reflecting the need to provide more detail and analysis to news breaking between issues.
New home for SW Business Insider
June 26, 2008
South West Business Insider magazine has moved to:
Maxet House, 28 Baldwin Street, Bristol BS1 1NG. Tel: 0117 925 7342
Airbus rolls out military transport
June 26, 2008
Airbus today rolls out the A400M military transport aircraft. Its wings are designed and built at Filton almost wholly from composite materials rather than metal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7473838.stm
‘RSS feeds now an integral part of communication’
June 25, 2008
Research finds that more than half of adults in the USA are now relying on text messaging, blogging and other Web 2.0 tools to communicate with friends, family or colleagues.
One in ten US adults publishes a blog - double the figure of a year ago - and “RSS feeds, which make reading blogs easier, have become an integral part of the way people communicate and exchange content,” according to Universal McCann.
Watershed recruiting
June 25, 2008
Watershed, that hive of innovation on Bristol Harbourside, is looking for a Communications and Marketing manager.
eflow Set For Growth Following Investment From South West Ventures Fund
June 25, 2008
A Wells-based company which develops software for the banking and financial industry has secured £330,000 from the YFM Group managed South West Ventures Fund. The funding will enable eflow (UK) Limited to take advantage of a growth in demand for specialist software by financial traders following the introduction of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID).
eflow’s TransacTzar software provides evidence that a trading firm has achieved ‘best execution’ and has complied with the new European MiFID regulation. It does this via a comprehensive transaction monitoring platform that re-creates and stores the market conditions, trade by trade. The software is considered by Thomson Reuters (a shareholder and partner in the business) to be a unique product in terms of its flexibility and functionality. TransacTzar can be deployed in the five main asset classes: equities, foreign exchange, money markets, commodities and derivatives.
The MiFID regulations cover all companies trading financial instruments, including banks, investment banks, broking houses, market data companies, trading platforms and exchanges. The Directive requires all financial institutions to adhere to a code of best execution – taking into account price, venue, cost and speed – and to demonstrate transparency, retaining concise details of every trade for a period of five years.
eflow was founded in 2004 by Marsha Parker, who developed the successful PATH (Peer Application Transaction Hub) technology, which carries out much of the workflow between trading and settlement systems. Users include the Co-operative Bank and Hypo Vereinsbank; PATH has enabled Hypo Vereinsbank to move from 800 trades a day and 20 back-office staff to more than 6,000 trades a day and just five staff.
TransacTzar uses PATH technology to create a trades-based data model which sits alongside the trading software used by financial institutions, ‘listening’ to and recording all transactions to create a detailed record and to match this against real-time pricing data. The software then reconciles each trade and measures whether the transaction achieved best execution, ensuring compliance with the MiFID regulations and the creation of a full audit trail for FSA purposes. The results are displayed on a ‘dashboard’ that highlights any exceptions; the trader will note on the system the reason for the exception, which is then passed to the treasurer for authorisation or further action.
The technology is delivered by a hosted application service provider via the internet on a fee-per-transaction basis and as such is suitable for both small and large users.
Marsha Parker said: “eflow deals with and supports blue chip clients in the City with Mission Critical system. YFM Group’s funding will enable us to roll out the software platform to other blue chip institutions across the city. eflow recently completed an implementation with MF Global (Man Securities) in London. MiFID is in its infancy and MF Global believe that TransacTzar provides the best solution of MiFID compliance, particularly as the directive evolves over time.”
Julian Dennard, Senior Investment Manager at YFM Group, managers of the South West Ventures Fund, said: “The market has grown as a result of the MiFID regulations. Tier 2 and lower financial institutions do not have the systems or infrastructure to record and store the information required to be compliant. Many do not have the resources necessary to implement a solution in-house, creating demand for TransacTzar’s ‘off the shelf’ solution.”
The professional team advising in respect of this deal included Andrew Betteridge, of Ashfords Solicitors in Bristol, and Alan Cottle, of Pegasus Funding Resources. Due diligence was performed by Richard Plunkett at Milstead Langdon.
For interviews or further information, please contact Hannah Roberts at Montage Communications: hannah@montagecomms.com / 0845 644 5404
Gnodal Secures Funding From YFM Group To Scaleup Development Of Data Centre Technology
June 25, 2008
Bristol-based Gnodal, which is developing a revolutionary technology for use in high performance data centres, has secured finance from the YFM Group managed South West Ventures Fund as part of a £1.1 million funding round. Adrian Beecroft and NESTA were co-investors in the round and a second closing saw the YFM Group managed Finance South West Growth Fund also investing in the company.
Gnodal, which is located in the SETSquared business incubator at Bristol University, has developed technology that gives an order of magnitude improvement in data centre performance and power efficiency.
With rapidly increasing volumes of information, data centres are growing in size and power consumption. Traditional technologies have become inefficient as data centres have increased in size.
At present, these problems principally affect the very largest users of high performance computing facilities, but are increasingly experienced in enterprise and Internet data centres. With the advent of virtualisation, web 2.0 and sophisticated corporate applications, this is becoming more of an issue.
The Gnodal solution, offering a unique combination of high performance, low cost and low power, enables the construction of even larger scale data centres and higher performance computing systems. The market research company Dell ‘Oro predicts that in 2011 Gnodal’s addressable market will be worth $4.8 billion.
Fred Homewood, CEO of Gnodal, said: “Our products will offer performance levels significantly exceeding those found today in large data centres. We will be offering a range of products to satisfy the smallest systems to the largest server clusters and storage arrays.”
Julian Dennard, Senior Investment Manager at YFM Group, said: “Gnodal has developed an innovative solution for a high growth market. Fred Homewood has put together a highly qualified and experienced team and we look forward to working with them.”
For interviews or further information, please contact Hannah Roberts at Montage Communications: hannah@montagecomms.com / 0845 644 5404
Camelot launches 2012 scratchcards
June 25, 2008
With Beijing 2008 fast approaching, the six most popular British Olympic Games gold medallists are to feature on a new National Lottery Scratchcard, Olympic Champions, to raise funds for London 2012. The campaign to launch this includes research from MORI into the most popular Olympians.
The Olympic Champions - a dream team of sporting greats, who have notched-up 12 gold medals between them, spanning seven successive Olympic Games from 1980 to 2004 - are Sebastian Coe (1500m: Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984); Jonathan Edwards (Triple Jump: Sydney 2000); Duncan Goodhew (100m Breaststroke: Moscow 1980); Sally Gunnell (400m Hurdles: Barcelona 1992); Dame Kelly Holmes (800m and 1500m: Athens 2004); and Sir Steven Redgrave (Coxed Four: Los Angeles 1984; Coxless Pairs: Seoul 1988, Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996; Coxless Four: Sydney 2000).
The six sporting legends are identified as the favourite British Summer Olympic Games gold medallists of all time, in research commissioned by The National Lottery and conducted by Ipsos MORI. There will be a different Olympic Champions Scratchcard for each of the six sporting heroes, who are pictured either in action or celebrating a winning performance.
With overall odds of winning any prize of just 1 in 4.67, the Olympic Champions Scratchcard costs £2 and offers players the chance to win a whole range of instant cash prizes from £2 to £60,000**. The Olympic Champions Scratchcards will be available to all 26,000 lottery retailers UK-wide from 3 July 2008.
The research also looks at the greatest performances by British competitors and the most memorable moments of all time from Summer Olympic Games, including but not confined to British moments. On both counts, Dame Kelly
Holmes’s achievement at Athens 2004 - becoming the first British female ever to win double gold at the same Olympic Games - and Sir Steven Redgrave’s record-breaking fifth consecutive Olympic Games rowing gold medal at Sydney 2000, come out on top in the findings.
National Lottery funding will contribute almost £2.2bn to the public funding package for the London 2012 Olympics, of which £750m will come from specially designated lottery games such as the draw-based game, Dream number, some scratch cards including Olympic Champions and interactive instant win games online.
The launch of the Olympic Champions will be supported by an in-store media push, utilising new installed National Lottery media screens.
For interviews and comment on the 2012 scratch cards please contact the Camelot press office:
Liz Parker, Head of Special Projects: 020 7632 5746 / 07866 450287
Camelot Press Office: 020 7632 5711
Lamppost protest escalates to hunger strike
June 24, 2008
As a resident of St Andrews I must say I am on the side of ‘people power’ here. Some 15 years or so ago, we found that they were trying to ’steal’ the paving stones from our street and transport them to Clifton. Fortunately, the ward boundary ran down the middle of the street, allowing us to ‘target’ two sets of councillors. Elections weren’t far away and they caved in pretty quickly.
As a PR professional, I would also advise the city council that this is an unwinnable battle. Oddly, the council spokesman is quoted as saying that the lighting provided by these lamppost was “poor and did not meet environmental and safety standards.” So why put them in conservation areas?
In other words … if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7470674.stm
High-speed Bristol-London rail link?
June 23, 2008
It’s on the drawing board then - a 186mph railway link between London and Bristol. It’s pretty unlikely that it will go to Temple Meads though. The engineering works through the Box tunnel to Bath would surely be prohibitive. The smart money must be on the route to Bristol Parkway since the journey time from Paddington is already nearer 1hr 20min (on a good day) and it’s a more direct route to South Wales.
Picture: Courtesy of Rich Easton
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