Qumulo, the breakthrough leader in radically simplifying enterprise file data management across hybrid-cloud environments, has seen a significant increase in customer adoption among healthcare organizations with over 150% year-over-year growth in its customer roster. As hospitals, biotech companies and medical research facilities around the world continue to dramatically accelerate their digital transformations, they are increasingly turning to Qumulo to store, manage, and build innovative healthcare solutions to improve patient experiences, achieve breakthroughs in managing and treating diseases, and increase their organizational and commercial efficiencies.

Access to unstructured data fuels mission-critical healthcare services, from securely storing and retrieving health records to finding a diagnosis, delivering quality patient care, accurate and timely research, or leveraging innovative medical technologies. The explosion of dense medical imaging increases the demand for file data systems that scale to petabyte capacity without speed or performance degradation and can support healthcare systems and hospitals on their journey to the cloud. Biotechnology and genetic sequencing companies, global healthcare research organizations, and healthcare providers such as Dayton Children’s Hospital, rely on Qumulo’s modern storage system to manage workflows and access to critical healthcare data.

“We want healthcare organizations to focus their time and money on innovations rather than infrastructure. Our customers want to improve the quality of patient care, healthcare research, diagnosis and treatment planning, and with Qumulo, they are able to achieve these goals,” said Bill Richter, President and CEO at Qumulo. “Qumulo is focused on solving the data challenges that impact and ultimately improve patient outcomes.” 

By 2027, the global healthcare cloud computing market is expected to reach $90.46 billion, according to industry sources. Qumulo customers are creating over 1 billion files and performing over 200 billion operations each day, 90% of which take less than one millisecond to execute. 

Across the healthcare industry, Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems, produce immense amounts of unstructured file data that organizations are often not prepared to store, access and retrieve in a fast, secure, and streamlined way.

“We are improving patient outcomes by using Qumulo to provide physicians with fast image retrieval, even in our most urgent and challenging cases,” said Mike Brady, Infrastructure Network Supervisor at Dayton Children’s Hospital.

For Dayton Children’s Hospital (DCH), fast access to imaging data and healthcare information is critical to providing the highest quality care. To help manage its innovative medical imaging files and patient volume growth, DCH needed a high-performance, intelligent data management solution to support its mission-critical PACS and imaging application data. 

When COVID-19 hit, Qumulo played an active role in supporting healthcare providers in their rapid shift to telehealth and telemedicine solutions, enhancing the speed of patient care and diagnoses while improving the quality of services with fast, reliable data access. Global healthcare organizations made drastic changes overnight requiring massive additional data resources. At the onset of the pandemic, global health research organization, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), turned to Qumulo to respond to the new influx of data and create a rapid release cadence of new visualizations while not putting existing projects on hold. With Qumulo® systems, IHME was able to analyze up to 20x more data every day and to respond in just 48 hours to the onslaught of requested COVID-19 projections. 

“Visualizations are core to IHME communications with policymakers for the scientific papers that are rigorously peer-reviewed by journals. Qumulo is critical to enabling us to distill hundreds of millions of data points into a single visualization, which allows policymakers to easily view the results and communicate them to their teams,” said Serkan Yalcin, Director of IT Infrastructure, IHME. 

Speed and scale were also critical to biotech company Progenity, which has generated more than a billion files related to its genetic sequencing work. Today, all of that data is housed on Qumulo software. 

“As a national leader in the NIPT (Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing) and Hereditary Cancer testing market, Progenity has significant regulatory retention requirements. Amazon S3 with Bucket Lifecycle Policies is our top choice for a cost-effective, secure, and compliant environment,” said David Meiser, Solutions Architect at Progenity. “Qumulo is the best choice for managing our data as it enables us to innovate with cloud-native services and applications while also providing the ability to securely store our data in a non-proprietary format while in S3.”

Qumulo helps healthcare customers eliminate legacy systems and complicated storage solutions to embrace the technologies of the future and innovate at an unprecedented pace.  

Key Benefits for Qumulo Healthcare Customers: 

• As hospitals and other care providers simplify their infrastructure, upgrade their PACS, and move from 2-tier to 1-tier storage, they’ll find Qumulo uniquely positioned to deliver cost-effective, fast, and scalable enterprise file data storage.

• Providers have the ability to consolidate data to streamline workflows, and easily scale to accommodate rapid growth, both on-premises and in the public cloud, allowing them to continuously improve patient services and commercial efficiency.

• With the intensive storage demands from today’s medical imaging and exponentially increasing quantities of file data needed for clinical patient care, operations, and research, Qumulo ensures healthcare organizations can manage, store, and access their enterprise file data with radical simplicity.  

• Qumulo gives organizations the ability to adapt and pivot to the sudden growth in both data ingestion and processing demands without the need to re-architect.

Tweet This: Leading #healthcare organizations unlock the value of medical imaging and research datasets with the @Qumulo File Data Platform. The company sees unprecedented growth in global #healthcare customers managing enterprise #filedata https://bit.ly/3deDAHP

New advance pack boosts MSPs’ services by extending Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s essential file sharing service with electronic signatures, blockchain-based notarisation, and compliance-enabling data security

Acronis, the global leader in cyber protection, today announced a new advanced protection pack for its service provider solution, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. The new Advanced File Sync and Share pack builds on the essential file-sharing capabilities included in Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, layering additional data security capabilities such as blockchain-based data notarisation and electronic signatures so service providers can strengthen their workplace collaboration services.

Demand for secure file sync and share services has skyrocketed during the past 18 months as 88% of organisations worldwide required employees to work from home[1] and the same percentage of employees expect to keep working remotely to some degree[2]. As a result, 67% of businesses spent more on remote tools and web conferencing[3].

“At Mindfire Technologies, we are very excited for the new advanced protection pack of Acronis Cyber Product Cloud,” said Mr. Rejeesh Kumar, VP - Technology & Strategies at Mindfire Technologies. “As a business partner, it does not only help us, but also helps provide our clients with the services they need. Cyber protection has become a priority and the advanced file sync and share pack will give them the peace of mind they need when it comes to securely sharing and accessing key data.”

While those trends create opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs) that deliver IT to small- to medium-sized businesses, the challenge is that traditional file sharing solutions do not address the data protection concerns of modern organisations – including control over storage locations, access to data, and what people can do with that data.

“Every survey and trend indicates remote work is here to stay, so MSPs need a way to keep client employees productive and safe when accessing and sharing valuable company data,” said Jan-Jaap “JJ” Jager, Board Advisor and Chief Revenue Officer at Acronis. “Unlike traditional file sharing solutions that are not built for service providers, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced File Sync and Share delivers a secure work collaboration service that empowers MSPs with multi-tiering and multi-tenancy. And since it’s integrated with our full range of backup, cybersecurity, and endpoint protection management, partners can deliver it all through a single management console.”

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud gives essential cyber protection capabilities to managed service providers (MSPs) that they can build their services on – including file sync and share on a pay-as-you-go basis. The new Advanced Files Sync and Share pack empowers them with enhanced data security that traditional work collaboration solutions do not offer:

• File notarisation, powered by the Ethereum blockchain, enables clients to notarise files of any format and type, providing irrefutable proof that a file is original and unaltered. In a world where criminal use of digital editing and deepfake technology for fraud and forgery is rapidly accelerating, such notarisation eliminates the risk of logs, records, videos, or images being altered.
• Electronic signatures, which enable multiple people to sign a document remotely. The simple drag-and-drop feature helps clients along every step of their document flow – from creation to distribution to signature. The eSigning service also creates a blockchain-based certificate to ensure the authenticity of the signature and document.

In both cases, the blockchain-based certificate creates an immutable audit trail, ensuring data authenticity. Combine that with the ability to select where client data is stored, and MSPs have all they need to deliver the compliance, data sovereignty, and performance required by clients in even the most regulated industries.

Additional enhancements announced
The launch of Advanced File Sync and Share is part of the regular monthly enhancements made to Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, which ensure service providers can offer the most complete and up-to-date cyber protection possible. Other improvements announced include:

• Full support and integration with VMware vCloud Director. Cloud providers hosting with vCloud Director can now offer Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud’s full range of cyber protection capabilities, with no client-side deployment and per-tenant reports for flexible billing.
• Proactive notifications after Microsoft 365 data recovery. Clients can react quickly with proactive notifications following the recovery or downloading of backed-up data on Microsoft 365.
• “Restore Operator” role for Microsoft 365/Google Workspace. MSPs can protect client data and prevent accessibility when assigning the “Restore Operator” role, which allows the assignee to recover data on behalf of the client/user without providing access to the content.  
• Advanced audit trail in eSignature certificate. Service providers can know the exact status of a document by viewing a detailed audit trail and tracing the flow of actions within the signature certificate.
• Easily and selectively restore backed-up pictures and videos for Android 2.3.0. Saves time by restoring only the pictures or videos needed by quickly and easily selecting multiple files at once; by days, sequentially.
• Backup slice management for Android 2.3.0. MSPs can view, select, delete, or restore any mobile backup slices of their choice through this intuitive slice management capability.

New third-party integrations
Service providers need to build their offering using the tools that work for them. That’s why, to ease their administrative efforts, Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is integrated with the commonly used RMM and PSA tools IT service providers rely on. As part of the July 2021 enhancements announced, the company also revealed four new integrations, including ConnectWise Command, Jamf Pro, CloudBlue PSA, and Matrix42.

Any service provider interested in learning more about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced File Sync and Share is encouraged to view a demonstration at the Acronis Demo Centre or go to https://www.acronis.com/en-us/products/cyber-protect/.

To learn more about Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, please register to attend the Acronis #CyberFit Summit World Tour 2021, kicking off in Miami, Florida on October 25, 2021.

International travel has long been a part of business dealings. In the distant past, we may have found that only the biggest and wealthiest firms could afford to travel to meet potential clients, suppliers, and customers. But as air travel became cheaper, the internet allowed contact to be made easily across the globe with potential trading partners. Unfortunately, we have seen a little bit of a slowdown in this trend in recent years, firstly due to protectionist tendencies such as the America First notion in the USA and Brexit over in the UK. If we add into the mix a global pandemic, we have seen very little international business travel over the last 18 months, despite it being one of the few exemptions in many territories. So, what is the future of international travel in business? Will we return to the old normal? Or, is there a new culture that will become the new normal? We will dissect and discuss the various issues surrounding business travel going forward.

The Circuit Breaker

As we previously mentioned, much of the world has been in a state of limbo for the past 18 months. We have seen such previously unthinkable scenes, such as empty offices, everyone working from home, and virtually no international travel. But it seems business travelers are keen to return to the skies, with a whopping 96% willing to travel for business and an equally impressive 68% are pushing for a return to business trips.

Flights

Even with travelers willing to return, it doesn't mean everything will snap back to complete normality. What will flying in a post-COVID world look like in reality? The industry will be in a recovery phase for several years; of this there is very little debate. Many commentators, such as McKinsey & Company, predict that vacationers will fuel the recovery. This seems to be at odds with the fact that so many business travelers are willing to travel, with business travel taking until 2024 to reach 80% of pre-pandemic levels. But maybe being ready to travel and being sent on trips are two different things, or perhaps it just shows that nobody knows for sure what will happen. We can be certain of more delays and stricter hygiene measures, meaning earlier arrivals at the airport.

Accommodation

Most accommodation providers have placed special measures, such as closing bars and restaurants, only allowing room service. Remote check-ins and reduced capacity in the building have all been seen. Other than promoting high hygiene standards and strict cleaning routines, it should be expected that most hotels will be keen to return to business as usual, sooner rather than later.

The Use of Video Conferencing

Video conferencing has been available for decades now, but it really came into its own during the lockdown periods. With workers either being stuck working from home or in vastly reduced capacity offices, almost everyone has seen some use of this software. Despite it always being an option, many firms would still default to physical meetings out of sheer habit. What will be interesting to see is if that habit has finally been broken. For most meetings, it has been seen that being in the room may be an overstated luxury.

Working Overseas

We have seen a downturn in migrant workers in recent times, this is true across the board, from low-level occupations such as fruit pickers right up to executive positions. But with everything opening up, we are likely to see a bounce back from this position. Many things will differ at first, such as the examples we have given above. One thing to be particularly mindful of is who to go to for insurance; what you will get for your money will be considerably less than before, so be sure to choose a reputable provider, such as Global Medical Insurance.

Working From Anywhere

It is true that for many, we can work from anywhere, and many may choose to move away from the cities and work remotely from cheaper locations. Will this mean employers offer less in wages or look to hire cheaper labor from foreign markets? Only time will tell.

Large Conferences

Given that we have seen more firms grasping the money-saving opportunity that video conferencing brings, is there any place for large business conferences today? Absolutely yes, is the answer; there are aspects of meeting in person that can never be recreated virtually. This is particularly true of larger events; there is no way you could realize networking opportunities in the same way in an online setting.

New Technologies

In all sectors, we will see new innovations that have been born out of necessity but will become normal. Remote check-in will see an expansion to many more establishments. Even how we pay for travel will become easier, with more diverse options for customers from multiple regions.

Leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform and leading data feed optimization platform combine best-in-class capabilities to help merchants increase cross-channel sales of products everywhere people shop online

Joint functionality streamlines merchant integrations with 100+ global marketplaces and advertising channels, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft Ads, Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Wish, Pinterest and Snapchat, among others

BigCommerce , a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform for fast-growing and established brands, today announced it has acquired Feedonomics in an asset purchase transaction. As a full-service data feed management platform, Feedonomics helps mid-market and enterprise merchants succeed on hundreds of advertising channels and marketplaces by ingesting, unifying, enhancing, and syndicating product data, and then syncing the resulting order data back into existing systems to streamline operations. 

“This acquisition reflects our strong belief that Feedonomics offers the world’s best product feed optimization and syndication solution for merchants looking to optimize their advertising and selling via search engines, ad networks, social media sites and marketplaces. On average, these channels represent ecommerce merchants’ largest non-direct source of sales and one of the largest spending line items,” said Brent Bellm, CEO at BigCommerce. “With Feedonomics, BigCommerce merchants maximize their omnichannel sales and return on ad spend (ROAS) by connecting, transforming and enhancing their product data across hundreds of global channels. The combination catapults our ability to deliver the world’s most powerful ecommerce platform for omnichannel selling.” 

In the US, ecommerce channel ad spending is expected to surpass $41 billion by the end of 2024, representing nearly 15% of all digital ad spend1. Together, BigCommerce and Feedonomics will provide merchants with the ability to seamlessly connect the dots between their back-end operations and their sales, marketing and advertising channels to drive higher ROAS, higher conversion and ultimately, higher GMV.

“Early on in our relationship with BigCommerce, we recognized the amazing synergy between our two organizations, and have found both companies to be completely aligned with respect to our visions, market approach and culture,” said Shawn Lipman, CEO at Feedonomics. “With BigCommerce servicing the critical layer of the ecommerce stack and Feedonomics providing best-in-class technology and service to list products everywhere, merchants of all sizes will be able to take advantage of our true omnichannel ecommerce offerings, to grow their businesses in an increasingly digital-first world.”

“When it comes to data feed manipulation and syndication, no company comes close to Feedonomics – we’ve found it to be the most flexible platform for manipulating data feeds,” said Ryan Garrow, director of partnerships and client solutions at Logical Position. “The joint technology of BigCommerce and Feedonomics, when partnered with an agency to help support feed optimization and management, creates a powerful solution to help improve the effectiveness of their search and ad spend and, in turn, achieve higher site traffic and revenue.”

“The efficiency with which Feedonomics accurately maps our product data to the Google schema and then extends that to other channels has driven significant business benefits for us in recent years,” said Ken Natori, president at Natori. “Combining Feedonomics’ data feed management with the omnichannel capabilities natively available in BigCommerce creates an outsized opportunity for businesses like Natori to leverage enriched product data directly within new marketplaces,/////

 BigCommerce (Nasdaq: BIGC), a leading Open SaaS ecommerce platform for fast-growing and established brands, today announced it has acquired Feedonomics in an asset purchase transaction. As a full-service data feed management platform, Feedonomics helps mid-market and enterprise merchants succeed on hundreds of advertising channels and marketplaces by ingesting, unifying, enhancing, and syndicating product data, and then syncing the resulting order data back into existing systems to streamline operations. 

As a major crackdown on the advertising of financial products and services online begins, to give consumers peace of mind that advertisers are trading ethically and with integrity, Yorkshire based Lead Tech has become one of the first lead generation specialists in the UK to secure authorization from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

It comes as new rules are due to be introduced later this summer to stop unscrupulous operators and scammers posting fake financial adverts online.

From 6th September, any businesses advertising financial-related services on Google’s platforms, including YouTube and its search engine, will have to be authorised by the FCA, unless they fall into a limited number of exempt categories. 

Lead Tech works with FCA regulated financial advisers, from small businesses through to FTSE 100 companies, and connects advisers with approximately 10,000 potential clients every month.

On the back of securing FCA authorisation, Lead Tech, which is based just outside Otley within the highly revered Pool Business Park, is now expanding its 44-strong team and creating 15 new jobs this year across all the company’s departments.

Nigel Borwell, joint CEO at Lead Tech, said: “Becoming one of the first major lead generation companies in the UK to pave the way and secure authorisation from the FCA is a huge achievement for everyone at Lead Tech and cements our position at the forefront of our industry.

“Since Lead Tech was founded 12 years ago, we have always strived to become a driving force to build the ultimate team of experts to deliver an effective consumer journey for anyone looking for financial products online.

“For too long, dishonest lead generators have been using Google to peddle misleading financial adverts and scams, so these changes are extremely good news for UK consumers.

“We have always been advocates of consumer-first marketing and believe wholeheartedly that this will result in a much better and safer experience for consumers, because it will give them the peace of mind that adverts for financial products and services are only from reputable companies.

“We embarked on the journey to becoming FCA authorised back in 2020 and have worked extremely hard and consulted closely with the regulator throughout, to ensure that both our clients, and the consumers we introduce them to, continue to enjoy a completely transparent service.

“It now gives us the perfect platform to build upon as we continue growing our team this year in line with a host of exciting contract wins.”

Borwell added: “Lead Tech’s clients range from small independent businesses through to FTSE 100 companies. Being FCA authorised reinforces the quality of our websites, online advertising, paid search and social marketing, as well as reinforcing the fact the leads we generate have a genuine interest and requirement for our clients’ services.

“Whilst being one of the first lead generation specialists in the UK to secure FCA authorisation may give us a temporary advantage over our competitors, we’re looking forward to seeing other reputable companies within our industry following our example. Ultimately, as more companies follow suit, it will significantly benefit both the industry, its reputation and most importantly, the consumer.”

South African businesses, already under severe economic strain, are now counting the costs of rapidly increasing internal payments fraud. According to Ryan Mer, Managing Director, eftsure Africa, a Know Your Payee™ (KYP) platform provider, the number of recent high-profile cases before the courts only partly reflects the true scale of the problem.

Estimates suggest that it costs the private sector more than R2 billion every year to combat theft and fraud. According to a PWC report, South Africa was ranked as having one of the worst white-collar crime rates in the world. A similar study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found that a typical organisation loses at least 5 percent of its annual revenue to fraud. The same study also found that once victimised, an organisation is unlikely to recover the losses. “Not only do South African businesses have to contend with the threat of external bad actors, but the relatively high likelihood of payments fraud being committed by an entity’s own staff,” says Mer. 

He adds that while the amount of business transactions taking place online is constantly growing and working from home is now commonplace, business controls have not kept pace with digital transformation. This has led to increasing demand for security and anti-fraud solutions.

Positions that involve administering payments to creditors and suppliers, overseeing and processing invoices and electronic payments, and capturing bank statement transactions present a higher risk for businesses. “It’s crucial organisations implement best practice anti-fraud strategies to prevent, detect, investigate and remediate fraudulent activity before it becomes so serious it endangers the very survival of the business.”

Mer points out that a recent case of an East London personal assistant being jailed for 15 years for stealing R11.5 million from her employer highlights that many organisations are too complacent by not implementing enough measures to tackle internal payments fraud. “Often, businesses tighten certain payment approval policies without implementing a longer-term strategy and the necessary technology to truly make an impact. Despite an overwhelming majority of businesses having vendor onboarding, management and payment controls in place, cybercrime and payment fraud is a daily occurrence and a massive challenge for businesses. While the right controls might be in place theoretically, clearly definite gaps that need to be addressed” he says. 

Another hurdle organisations face is that those responsible for reviewing and releasing payments, such as CFOs, financial managers, senior managers, and directors, are under huge time constraints and don’t have capacity to check packs of supporting documents in detail on a regular basis or verify all banking details. At its core, eftsure helps protect organisations against financial fraud by automating manual controls, placing less reliance on the manual and human factor, giving those responsible for releasing payments confidence that processes and controls are in place and working effectively prior to releasing payments.

In addition to understanding the risks of internal fraud and boosting existing security, Mer advises businesses to invest in tech solutions with sufficient audit logs built in so that every action performed is recorded and can be traced back to the staff member responsible. “This is where eftsure’s automated check, with the click of a button, gives those responsible comfort in seconds as to the integrity of the payment information, prior to payment release, he says.”

“People combined with technology and sound business processes are at the frontline of fighting fraud and mitigating risk. By building a culture of security within an organisation that ensures cooperation between employees and technology, it is significantly more difficult for bad actors, both external and internal, to commit white-collar crime,” says Mer.

Robinhood's IPO could turn the trading platform into a 35 billion dollar concept

• US share and crypto trading platform Robinhood is expected to list on the Nasdaq on 29 July
• The company will trade under the ticker HOOD
• Stock expected to be priced between $38 - $42 per share
• Listing would put a value on the company of around $35 billion
• Robinhood is under the regulatory spotlight following the GameStop craze
• UK investors can’t participate in IPO but can buy shares when trading begins

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown

‘’There is likely to be huge interest in Robinhood’s IPO, given the swirling speculation about the company on social media forums and the media coverage the company received as it became a central figure in the GameStop craze earlier in the year.

The company was set up to help further democratise investing in the US and draw more ordinary traders into the Wall Street world. If the stock does list within the range of $38 - $42 per share, this will turn out to be a $35 billion dollar idea. But the company has come under the regulatory spotlight and that could have a big impact on the company’s future potential as an investment.

The app has come under fire for the so called ‘gamification’ of investing with the use of rewards and celebratory notifications to encourage users to trade more. Its strategy is paying off with the number of accounts increasing to 18 million by March this year from 7.2 million in March 2020.

The way that Robinhood makes money has also come under intense scrutiny. Instead of charging investors a dealing commission, it puts clients' trades through certain companies, and in return, these companies pay Robinhood a fee. It’s these charges, called “payment for order flow” that make the company most of its money.

Even though each fee is a tiny fraction of a cent per share traded, it soon adds up. Over the last year Robinhood made $720m from payment for order flow – three quarters of its total revenue. That rose to 81% of revenues in the first 3 months of this year.

But this model is now under review, with the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) planning to look again at the stock market trading rules, which could include payment for order flow.

The concern is that it stops investors from getting the best price for their deals and could create a possible conflict of interest between firms like Robinhood and their clients. Firms promise to trade at, or at better than, current market price. But the question remains about whether, under the system, there are even better prices available with other market making companies, which they don’t use. If rules do change this could be a big worry for the firm’s revenues and future investors in the company. It was enough for Robinhood to highlight a potential ban on payment for order flow as a key risk in its prospectus.

This isn’t the first time Robinhood has come under fire from US regulators. In December last year, Massachusetts securities regulator accused Robinhood of gamifying investing. The case included a customer, with no investment experience, who traded 12,700 times in six months. More recently, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Robinhood a record $70m. It said the company had caused “widespread and significant harm” to investors.

And there could be more storms gathering on the horizon. The Robinhood prospectus named seven US state and federal bodies investigating the company. All this could add up to potential issues down the line, so investors need to take such risks into the equation when they consider investing right from the start of Robinhood’s listed life.

If Robinhood can bat away these issues, or if the SEC decides not to change the current rule book, the groundswell of support among day traders the company has already gathered could potentially accelerate, leading to further growth for the company.’’

How to buy Robinhood shares

UK investors can’t take part in the Robinhood IPO. But HL clients should be able to buy Robinhood shares once they start trading on the US stock market which is expected to be on 29 July. If you believe in the long-term prospects for Robinhood and want to buy the shares, you first need to choose an account to hold the shares in. Once listed on the stock market, you can hold Robinhood shares in a general investment account (Fund and Share Account), ISA or Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP). Before you buy your first US share with HL, you’ll also need to complete a W-8BEN form.

On the first day of trading, it can take several hours to get a live market price. During this time, it isn’t possible to buy or sell the shares. Investors will be able to deal the shares through HL once there’s a live market price, and trading and settlement has been confirmed by the UK clearing and settlement service. This could be after the shares have already started trading on the stock exchange.

The Venture building arm of the international investment firm Digital Horizon announces the sale of a controlling stake in a blockchain platform Factorin to Mobile TeleSystems PJSC, Russia’s largest mobile operator and a leading provider of media and digital services. Factorin, the two year old blockchain-based trade finance platform, was valued at $23 million.

According to the WTO research, Factorin is one of the leading early stage global blockchain projects for trade and the market leader in trade finance solutions in Russia. Factorin’s innovative platform provides a comprehensive solution for supply chain financing by digitizing financial interactions between buyers, suppliers, and banks. The platform provides factoring and other trade finance services for leading Russian retailers and their suppliers, including Magnit and Dixy Group as well as RTC, MTS’s own retail network. More than 40 banks and factoring providers and over a thousand companies – both suppliers and buyers – are connected to Factorin. Since its launch in 2019, Factorin has facilitated the financing of more than 1.6 million supplies worth over $3 billion.

Alan Vaksman, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Digital Horizon, states, “The financial infrastructure of the future will be powered by blockchain-based solutions. In the coming years, distributed ledger technologies will provide the secure rails to advance trade finance, settlements, custody, and payments in general. Factorin is one of the pioneers that are helping to bring that future into today’s business. Factorin’s blockchain technology solves real business problems, while processing millions of transactions in a highly secure and confidentiality-focused environment. I am pleased that MTS shares this vision with us and  embarked on the strategic journey to support the rapid growth of this asset.” . 

Ilya Filatov, MTS VP for Financial Services and MTS Bank CEO, added, “This deal is yet another major step forward in the development of digital products and enhanced services for our B2B customers. Factorin is not only a fast-growing and high-tech trade finance platform, it provides a unique offering that fully leverages all of the advantages of blockchain technology. I am confident that the addition of Factorin into MTS Group will accelerate our growth and further reinforce the company's leading position.”

Andrei Maklin, the Founder of Factorin, comments, "Factorin is leveraging the latest innovations to offer our customers a full spectrum of advanced trade financing solutions. These are fundamentally new products that would be impossible to replicate using traditional technologies. For example, we enable corporate clients to set up their own platforms that provide their suppliers and buyers with attractive offers from a variety of financing providers. In just two years — with the support of Digital Horizon — we have built the largest trade finance platform in Russia. With this deal, we are adding the resources of a powerful partner to help meet the growing market demand as well as unlock additional opportunities and competitive advantages for our users. The combination of MTS’s scale and expertise and Factorin’s blockchain solutions will help us qualitatively transform the entire areas of fintech services for the B2B segment." 

GoCardless, a global fintech in account-to-account payments, has appointed Alexandra Chiaramonti as General Manager of Southern Europe. Chiaramonti will sustain GoCardless' rapid growth in the region by continuing to hire top talent to strengthen and accelerate the company's presence in its existing French market -- where it has tripled its customer base since opening its Paris office in 2018 -- as well as leading its expansion in the region.

Chiaramonti joins GoCardless after serving as CEO at GoBeep, a platform designed to drive incremental in-store and online revenue for retailers. Prior to this, she held roles as Director of Global Sales Strategy at Criteo and Managing Director at Teemo. Her experience in scaling and expanding businesses internationally places her in an ideal position to lead the company's growth.

Chiaramonti said: "I’m thrilled to join a rapidly growing company with an amazing team of talented people all focused on making a difference in the payments world. We have a top-notch product solving one of the biggest headaches for merchants: getting paid on time, in a fast and efficient way. Southern Europe represents a tremendous opportunity for GoCardless and I want us to seize it as soon as possible, becoming the go-to provider when businesses look for a best-in-class payment solution."

Chiaramonti's appointment comes at a time of broader expansion for GoCardless, which is  accelerating its open banking strategy. By combining open banking payments with its global bank debit network, GoCardless is in a unique position to help companies collect one-off and recurring payments through a single platform -- offering merchants a fast, reliable and low-cost alternative to cards by harnessing the power of account-to-account payments. 

Even Walser, Chief Revenue Officer at GoCardless, said: “We are opening up significant new market segments with open banking, including B2C subscriptions, which will further strengthen our growth in the region. Now is the time to bring in a leader who can help us scale the organization in this market and Alexandra is the perfect fit.”