Category: 3. Business

E-invoicing can cut costs, reduce errors, and speed up payment cycles, delivering benefits from day one. Government figures show e-invoicing can reduce late payments by 20%, save small firms £11,300 a year and deliver a 3% productivity lift. Yet more than half of UK invoices remain non-digital, costing businesses time and money.

Even partial adoption improves cash flow and strengthens customer relationships. With a government roadmap due in 2026, businesses that act now will avoid last-minute disruption and gain immediate advantages through automation, streamlined workflows and flexible digital channels.

Proven solutions for UK firms

Tieto, a leading Nordic technology and software company, is helping UK businesses modernise using its Multichannel platform — already proven in the Nordics where more than 80% of invoices are processed digitally.

“Companies can no longer afford inefficiency,” says Steve Tait, Sales Manager at Tieto Indtech. “Multichannel helps businesses speed up payments, reduce operational costs and strengthen customer loyalty, all while futureproofing their communication strategy.”

Tieto’s Multichannel platform centralises communication, automates document handling, and integrates payment options, enabling faster payments and lower costs in one unified solution.

Key benefits for UK businesses:

• Lower costs: One partner for all communication channels reduces complexity and overhead.
• Faster payments: Integrated payment options encourage quick customer response.
• Higher efficiency: Automation cuts manual work and speeds up processes.
• Better customer experience: Customers choose their preferred communication channel.

For further information, please contact:

Tieto Communications, tel. +358 40 570 4072, news@tietoevry.com

Tieto is a leading software and digital engineering services company with global market reach and capabilities. We provide customers across different industries with mission-critical solutions through our specialized software businesses Tieto Caretech, Tieto Banktech and Tieto Indtech as well as Tieto Tech Consulting business. Our around 15 000 talented vertical software, design, cloud and AI experts are dedicated to empowering our customers to succeed and innovate with latest technology.

Tieto’s annual revenue is approximately EUR 2 billion. The company’s shares are listed on the NASDAQ exchange in Helsinki and Stockholm, as well as on Oslo Børs. www.tieto.com

The 2025 edition puts the emphasis on the value of the alliances, stressing the role of organizations that support, promote and implement diversity policies with inclusion as an ethical principle and a driver of innovation. In this sense, BBVA has demonstrated its unwavering commitment through its LGBTI+ diversity policies, the creation of mentoring and support programs for those who need them and by cultivating an inclusive corporate culture that recognizes and values the plurality of identities and experiences.

“For BBVA, diversity and inclusion are not a one-off initiative or a temporary project. They’re part of our corporate culture. We firmly believe that organizations prosper when people can be themselves, without fear or barriers, without their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression limiting their professional development,” said Carlos Pérez Beruete, Head of Culture and Engagement at BBVA. “This award recognizes precisely this commitment: creating work environments where each individual finds a safe space to grow; where equal opportunities are not an aspiration, but a tangible reality; where talent is not labeled, but valued.”

The executive expressed his gratitude for the recognition, underlining the value of our internal networks, those who develop outreach, training and support initiatives, those who dare to tell their stories and those who work every day – visibly or silently – to build a better place.

A role model for inclusive leadership

TORONTO, CANADA (December 11, 2025) – Boats Group (“the Company”), a global provider of online marketplaces for boats and yachts, today announced a strategic growth investment from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (“CPP Investments”) and General Atlantic, a leading global investor. CPP Investments has committed USD $600 million and will have a co-control interest in Boats Group. As part of the transaction, existing investor Permira has partially realized its investment in Boats Group and will retain a significant minority shareholding, continuing its successful partnership with the Company.

Headquartered in Miami, Florida, Boats Group operates the world’s most trusted online marketplaces for buying and selling boats, including Boat Trader, YachtWorld, and boats.com. For over 30 years, Boats Group has connected boat buyers and sellers at scale. Throughout that time, the Company has consistently been first to market with innovations that move the industry forward.

Sam Blaichman, Managing Director and Head of Direct Private Equity at CPP Investments, said: “Boats Group is a category-defining leader in a market still early in its digital and AI-led evolution. As a long-term investor, we see a compelling opportunity to back a mission-critical platform with strong network effects, a customer-centric business model that delivers clear value to buyers and sellers, and significant runway to broaden its offering and expand globally. We look forward to partnering with General Atlantic, Permira and the management team to support Boats Group in its next phase of growth and believe it will deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns for CPP contributors and beneficiaries.”

In recent years, Boats Group has invested in products and technology that make discovering and buying a boat more effortless and enjoyable, while helping sellers succeed. From a more immersive marketplace to new mobile experiences and intuitive dealer tools, the Company is reimagining the entire journey from discovery to purchase. With AI-powered merchandising, clearer reporting, and smarter workflows, Boats Group is creating a more connected, efficient, and inspiring experience for boating enthusiasts and the broader marine community.

The transaction is expected to close in H1 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.

About CPP Investments

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments™) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Canada Pension Plan Fund in the best interest of the more than 22 million contributors and beneficiaries. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, we make investments around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure, fixed income and alternative strategies including in partnership with funds. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, São Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm’s length from governments. At September 30, 2025, the Fund totalled C$777.5 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram or on X @CPPInvestments.

Around the start of the new year, Kaczyński convened a meeting with his colleagues. They knew how they’d fallen out of client inboxes, but not how to get back in. With another holiday season over the horizon, Kaczyński’s team agreed it was time to ask a third-party deliverability agency for help. The agency performed an audit, then recommended some tough but necessary changes.

Bouncer would need to turn loose subscribers who had stopped engaging. They would create separate subdomains for marketing, transactional and corporate emails so that spam issues in one communication channel couldn’t cascade to others. And instead of blasting out mass emails, they would drip-feed non-time-sensitive sends across multiple days.

Within two or three weeks, the company was able to start communicating with its audience again, and after a few months, it was back to sending at its usual volume. The real test would come in the leadup to Black Friday 2025, when it finally had a chance to recover the sales it had missed out on the previous year.

While some companies revamp their sending strategy to chase better deliverability, others choose the path of least resistance. OutVoice, for example, simply weathered the storm and waited for anti-spam algorithms to move on to another unsuspecting victim. 

After a few months, Study Hall miraculously began appearing in subscribers’ inboxes again—without the phishing warnings that had haunted its previous sends. Diao was relieved that subscribers had stuck around through the rough patch, but he never got the closure he had hoped for. “I’m hoping it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “I don’t know that we’re any more prepared for it than we were before.”

Diao understands that mailbox providers err on the side of caution because they want to protect their users from harm. But he thinks there should be more mechanisms for well-intentioned companies to talk to those services during deliverability emergencies. Ideally, he said, senders would have more avenues—a helpline, for example—to make their case and compel mailbox providers to listen. “If they had the power to just destroy businesses like that, there should really be an appeals process that happens quickly,” he said. 

Still, separating well-meaning senders from bad actors is complicated, Iverson said. Independent anti-spam blocklists and email giants alike are struggling to keep up with spammers, who increasingly use AI and other emerging technologies to evade algorithms. While anti-spam filters sometimes overcorrect and block well-intentioned senders, the alternative might be a return to the early 2000s, when inboxes were flooded with junk. “It does take a lot of work to keep email usable as a good communication ecosystem,” he said. “Even though you can’t see the underside of the duck, there is furious paddling happening to keep this ecosystem working.”

Besides, anti-spam filters might be the wakeup call some organizations need to rethink their sending strategy. “Sometimes I find that they’ve actually done you a service by ringing the alarm,” said Bonar, the deliverability summit cofounder. “Each of those spam complaints or unsubscribes, because you’re doing something wrong, is actually cutting into your bottom line.”

In the crucial weeks ahead of this year’s holiday season, Kaczyński’s spam folder remained refreshingly empty. After cutting its subscriber list by almost half and promoting a sale nearly identical to last year’s—and with the holiday season only half over—the startup had already registered 35% year-over-year growth, compared to 5% the year before. All told, it took nearly a year of scrappy experimentation to get back on track.

“In 2024, we just missed the wave,” Kaczyński said. It’s a completely different picture this time. “All the knowledge, experience, safeguards and routines that we have right now, plus really good, stable base deliverability, will let us ride the wave during the busiest time of the year.”

The chief executive of GSK yesterday declared the US to be the best place for pharmaceutical companies to invest.

Emma Walmsley said the US led the world in launches of drugs and vaccines and, alongside China, was the best market for business development.

She is the latest boss of a leading UK drugmaker to talk up business opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic, after AstraZeneca’s Pascal Soriot hailed the “vital importance of the US”.

The UK government, which has been trying to strengthen the phramaceutical sector, confirmed on Wednesday that the proportion of revenues from new medicine sales that companies need to pay back to the NHS would fall next year – from 22.5% to no more than 15%.

Reducing the record clawback rate was a central demand of the sector but negotiations broke down in late August. Several large companies, including AstraZeneca and US company MSD/Merck, then cancelled or paused major UK investments.

The government has also been pressed into spending 25% more on new NHS medicines as part of a zero tariff deal with the US administration.

Donald Trump, the US president, has criticised other rich countries for paying too little for drugs, leaving the US to shoulder much of the cost of medicines. US prices have historically been much higher, partly because of a complex system of intermediaries.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which assesses drugs for use on the NHS, will for the first time raise the price threshold at which new medicines are considered to be cost-effective.

However, in a consultation document published on Tuesday, the Department of Health went further and said it wanted to give ministers a limited power to set the cost-effectiveness threshold for new drugs.

Spending on medicines could increase by about £1bn over the next three years, according to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI). This has raised concerns of there being less money to pay for health staff and equipment.

The government says the revenue clawback rate for new medicines will drop to 14.5% next year but payment rates for older, branded medicines will remain unchanged at between 10% and 35%.

“It’s good that the amount of revenue companies will need to pay to the UK government has come down in 2026,” said Richard Torbett, the chief executive of the ABPI.

He also said the proposed 15% cap should give companies more certainty but it was just a first step in making Britain more competitive: “Payment rates remain much higher than in similar countries, and there is work to do to accelerate the NHS’s adoption and use of cost-effective medicines to improve patient care.”

In her interview with the BBC, Walmsley said GSK would not “shy away” from its interests in the US, where it makes half of its revenues. GSK recently outlined plans to invest $30bn (£23bn) in the US by 2030.

The States of Guernsey has confirmed it has been talking to EasyJet about potential new routes to the island.

The BBC understands the destinations could include Liverpool and Luton airports.

When contacted by the BBC, the airline neither confirmed nor denied the talks were ongoing.

In a statement, it said: “EasyJet is always looking at new opportunities to expand its network and choice of destinations, however, we have not confirmed any new routes at present.”

The Committee for Economic Development confirmed it was in discussion with new airlines, including both EasyJet and LoganAir.

However, it said the conversations were confidential.

President for the committee Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller said: “At this stage, we cannot comment in any more detail.”

She added it was the role of the committee to have discussions and explore options to improve the island’s’ connectivity.

“As we explore developing a new air policy framework, I think it would be more surprising if we were not having these conversations,” she said.