Business News Round Up (14/01/2025)
UK tech sector is now a £1 trillion economy
The UK tech sector is worth £1 trillion, according to the latest report from HSBC Innovation Banking UK and Dealroom. The analysis marks a 20% jump since 2023, and a nine-times increase in the last decade. Half of this enterprise value lies in pre-exit companies which signals potential for significant untapped value realisation in the form of acquisitions or public listings in 2025 and beyond. Startups with headquarters in the UK now employ over 1.8m people, double the level of 2020. The UK remains Europe’s leading ecosystem and is the third largest in the world, behind the US and China. The UK tech sector is worth more than the French and German ecosystems combined. UK startups raised $16.2bn in 2024, compared to $8.2bn for Germany and $7.8bn for France. The largest amount of funding was secured at the breakout stage, with series B and C rounds accounting for over $6.5bn.
https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/uk-tech-sector-is-now-a-1-trillion-economy
Scottish private sector activity softens in December as businesses declare more modest expectations for 2025
The Scotland Growth Tracker – a seasonally adjusted index that measures the month-on-month change in the combined output of the region’s manufacturing and service sectors – fell below the neutral level of 50.0 for the first time in a year, recording 46.9 in December, down from 51.1 in November. The decline was sharp and marked the most significant drop in activity since October 2023, with both manufacturing and services sectors reporting a decrease in output. After 22 consecutive months of growth, employment in Scotland’s private sector declined in December. Contributing factors included reduced business activity, redundancies and the non-replacement of voluntary leavers. The outlook for activity became more restrained in December. Although the respective index remained above the neutral level of 50.0, it fell to its lowest point in two years. Recent policy changes, particularly regarding employment, along with the current economic environment, contributed to this tempered outlook.
Retail complex enjoys busiest Christmas trading period in six years
Liverpool One, the city centre shopping complex, has reported its most successful festive shopping season since 2019, once again bucking national retail trends. The run of success began with Black Friday week, with the site experiencing a 14% growth in footfall and a 28% increase in sales during the period, reflecting the trend of consumers buying in-store and doing so early to kick-start Christmas. The positive performance was sustained throughout December, with footfall up 10% in comparison with a 2.2% decline for the UK, according to data from the British Retail Consortium, and a strong uplift of seven per cent in overall sales. In addition, during the period between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, Liverpool One reported a 26% year-on-year increase in footfall as significant volumes of consumers continued to visit the destination.
Scotland’s coastal areas in line to benefit from UK Government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan and commitment to ‘AI growth zones’
The UK Government’s newly published AI Opportunities Action Plan has been ‘hugely welcomed’ by leading technology bodies in Scotland, including the national innovation centre for data and AI and Scotland’s main supercomputing hub. Under the proposals, a series of AI Growth Zones would be created around the UK, including in post-industrial towns and coastal areas of Scotland, where there are significant energy resources to supply power-hungry AI data centres. The first will be the Culham Science Centre, the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s headquarters in Oxfordshire, which has access to significant power and land. Such developments will ‘lay the foundations to enable AI’ and catalyse the UK economy, the Prime Minister said in a video recording announcing the government’s plans to support a sector that has attracted £25 billion in investment. The UK Government accepted all 50 recommendations in the report, which were set out by entrepreneur and founder Matt Clifford.