1 What could be next for Uberisation (Simon Jack on
BBC) Uber is not just a taxi-hailing app which has been baked into the lives of
hundreds of millions of passengers and millions of drivers worldwide. Uberisation
has come to mean the turning of traditional service industries on their head,
by providing a technological platform to match users and providers on a massive
scale.
It is the biggest company in the so called
"gig" economy, in which short-term contracts or freelance work
replace permanent jobs. Depending where you stand, that is either a great
flexible working environment or a form of exploitation with little protection
for workers.
Transport for London's decision not to renew its
licence may come as a shock to the 3.5 million customers and 40,000 drivers who
have built this model into their urban lives. But there is no shortage of
groups who will be punching the air in celebration.
Uber has been dogged with a bewildering range of
controversies. It's charged with failing to do proper background checks on its
drivers and then providing them with poor working conditions, both of which
Uber denies. Irate black cab drivers blame it for a rise in congestion and
collisions and it's been accused of a failure to report sexual offences, which
Uber also contests.
Given that rap sheet, no wonder the company didn't
pass the "fit and proper" test, many will say. For the business
community, revoking the licence of a tech giant from a global capital city
sends a message that some entrepreneurs have described as unhelpful.
Others will see it as an important halt to a
creeping revolution that threatens the pay, conditions and even dignity of
work. It is widely thought that human drivers are only a temporary part of
Uber's business plan. Uber is a company that is looking towards a driverless
future.
London is not the first city to ban Uber: several
countries, states and cities have done the same. But coming from a truly global
city and a hub of technology, this is perhaps the biggest red light Uber has
been shown.
2 Marks & Spencer gets into online food
delivery (Zoe Wood in The Guardian) Marks & Spencer has launched an online
grocery service that will enable shoppers to have their dinner delivered to
their front door within an hour.
The first trial is based at its Camden store in
north London and offers home delivery within one- and two-hour slots within a
three-mile radius. The minimum order is £10. Until now, selling food online has
not made sense for M&S as its customers do not typically spend enough on
each visit to make the service viable.
But the trial is tapping into a food home delivery
boom as Britons increasingly use app-based services such as Deliveroo, Just
Eat, UberEats to have meals delivered. There is no delivery charge for orders
which are being handled by gig economy courier firm Gophr.
M&S boss Steve Rowe concluded it could no longer
ignore the fastest growing section of the UK’s £180bn grocery market as new
delivery services, such as AmazonFresh, which allows shoppers to order
groceries at lunchtime and get the delivery in time for dinner, revolutionise
the way Britain buys food. The high-street store is different from other food
retailers as it stocks just 7,000 products, compared with Tesco’s 40,000. It
also focuses on own-brand goods with only a limited number of big-name brands.
It is not clear how the retailer would overcome these hurdles if it offered
customers a full grocery outlet in the future.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/sep/22/marks-spencer-launches-online-food-delivery-service
3 L’Oreal heiress is richest woman (Gulf News) The
death this week of L’Oreal SA’s founding family matriarch is putting the
spotlight on a reclusive 64-year-old heiress who now finds herself as the
richest woman in the world.
Francoise Bettencourt Meyers has shunned the
glittering social life that her late mother, Liliane Bettencourt, once
embraced. Bettencourt Meyers is known for playing piano for several hours a day
and has written two books — a five-volume study of the Bible and a genealogy of
the Greek gods.
Her seclusion will be harder to maintain as the head
of Europe’s fourth-largest fortune. Through family holding company Tethys, she
takes charge of her family’s 33 per cent stake in the cosmetics maker, which
lies at the heart of a net worth the Bloomberg Billionaires Index values at
$43.3 billion.
Bettencourt Meyers steps into the spotlight at a
time of increasing discussion about the future of the family’s stake, as well
as the 23 per cent of L’Oreal held by Swiss food-giant Nestle SA. The
billionaire heiress has shown less interest in L’Oreal matters than her mother
did, despite her role as a board member for more than two decades.
In addition to music and study, the bookish and
austere Bettencourt Meyers has involved herself in charity work. Her $43.3
billion net worth puts her $5.4 billion ahead of Alice Walton, an heiress to
the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fortune, and at the top of the list of 64 women
featured on the Bloomberg index, a daily ranking of the world’s 500 richest
people. Of the 64 billionaires, 58 are stewards of an inheritance.
Bettencourt Meyers had a difficult and at times
contentious relationship with her mother. After the death of her father, French
conservative politician Andre Bettencourt, in 2007, she spent years battling
her mother in court, claiming she was mentally unfit and had been manipulated
by her entourage.
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