THE DAILY BRIEFING
■ SALES FATTEN Food delivery group Deliveroo has reported another year of soaring sales, but losses also ballooned as the food delivery firm invested in expansion.
Revenue rose 116pc to £277m in 2017 but pre-tax losses widened from £129.1m in 2016 to £184.7m as Deliveroo counted the cost of what it called ‘major investments’ which totalled £100m.
■ TOUGH TALK Former UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli must face the consequences of his actions as he battles to avoid deportation, his former boss Oswald Grubel said.
Grubel was forced to resign as the bank’s chief executive after Adoboli lost £1.5bn through illegal trades.
Adoboli went to prison for fraud and is now seeking to avoid deportation to his native Ghana, where he has not lived since the age of four.
■ PAPER FREE The owner of the New York Stock Exchange is betting on the growth of online mortgage documents as paper firms become a thing of the past.
Intercontinental Exchange is preparing to take full control of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (Mers), which looks after the details of nearly 30m US homes.
The mortgage industry is seeking to ditch paper, and ICE is betting Mers will hoover up vast amounts of business in coming years.
■ MORALE BOOST Tech firm Sage Group is relaxing pressure on staff by axing a controversial system where its 13,795 workers were ranked by performance to try and make them hit targets. The switch comes after boss Stephen Kelly left last month.
■ JOBS TAKEOVER Staffing and training group Staffline is buying rival Passionate About People, for an undisclosed sum.
■ BERLIN BUY Engineer RollsRoyce has bought a stake in Berlinbased energy storage start- up Qinous, with plans to help develop ways to store energy.
■ PROFITS GUSH Oil and gas explorer Kuwait Energy – which is being bought by United Energy Group for £376m – said profits have soared more than 300pc to £30m.
■ EASTERN DELIGHT Dividends awarded by companies based in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, soared to a record high of £222.6bn in the year to July, a 15.9pc rise, according to asset manager Janus Henderson – much higher than the 5.5pc rise across the rest of the world.