• Amazon is seeking to exclude a proposal on workers’ rights from their next Annual General Meeting (AGM).
• The proposal was submitted by activist investor platform Tulipshare on behalf of retail investors, and asks Amazon to commission an independent audit of the working conditions that Amazon workers face.
• Shareholders hope to leverage new SEC rules to engage with Amazon and, if successful, it could be the first time a retail investment platform has successfully had their voice on the ballot of an Amazon AGM for the first time.

Pierre Bergamin (VP of Engineering) and Roger Almeida (Head of Product) will support InDebted’s scaling and expansion into new markets in 2022

InDebted, the fast-growing global fintech aiming to transform the consumer experience of debt, has today announced the appointments of Pierre Bergamin as Vice President of Engineering and Roger Almeida as Head of Product.

• 77% of start-ups that are recruiting are actively seeking diverse candidates
• Three quarters (74%) cite a barrier to hiring diverse talent, including lack of applications and candidates
• Start-ups say diversity improves innovation (73%), recruitment (58%) and commercial performance (56%)

 Fifteen million UK borrowers have a ‘poor understanding’ of how to compare loan costs • 40% who took out personal loans did not compare the rate available with other  providers, and 23% did not know the “rough” APR on the loan they had taken out • Freedom Finance matches people to loans they are eligible for at the best possible  rates  

Businesses – especially financial and insurance companies – invest a lot of resources in gathering data from a wide variety of sources. They also strategize and implement processes that utilize the collected data for making decisions, calculating risks, and forecasting profits. 

 British Patient Capital has invested in Microbiotica, a personalised medicine specialist, as part of a £50m Series B funding round.

The investment has been made via Future Fund: Breakthrough, our £375m programme where we co-invest with private sector investors in innovative, R&D-intensive UK companies. The round was led by Flerie Invest and Tencent, and included Cambridge Innovation Capital, IP Group and Seventure Partners.

• 2 in 5 men and women believe it costs more to be a woman because of the ‘pink tax’
• The majority of survey respondents believe it costs more to be a woman because women are under more pressure to consume than their male counterparts (46% female and 41% male)
• 14% of female respondents believe that life being more expensive as a woman is a key barrier women experience when saving for retirement, compared to 9% of male respondents

Vodafone, and its African subsidiaries Vodacom and Safaricom, are today, marking the 15th anniversary of M-Pesa, the service launched in March 2007 to enable money transfers between people using 2G feature phones.

Sberbank has announced it has been forced to pull out of the European market, after it said it faced large outflows of cash in the region as well as threats to the safety of its employees and branches.

The bank, Russia’s biggest lender, said its European subsidiaries had faced “abnormal cash outflows”, meaning it could no longer supply them with liquidity. However, Sberbank said it had sufficient capital to be able to make payments to all of its depositors.

UK EV battery manufacturer invests in Infor CloudSuite Automotive for £3.8bn 38GWh Gigaplant

Infor, the industry cloud company, today announced that battery pioneer Britishvolt, the UK’s foremost investor in battery cell technologies and research and development, has selected Infor CloudSuite Automotive to manage business operations at its £3.8 billion, 38GWh Gigaplant in Cambois, Northumberland, UK.