New podcast episodes!
The business news that matters
Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Off to Lunch…
I am delighted to say that we will be launching new podcast episodes this week.
Business Leader is the new name for the Business Studies podcast. For existing listeners of Business Studies, you can expect more of the same, only better, with episodes now all year round.
We will take a second look at big business stories and ask - did these stories really happen the way we think they did and what can we learn from them today? We will speak to the leading figures in business about stories of extraordinary success, failure, deals and much more.
Each episode will be less than 40 minutes long because I know how busy everyone is and that there is growing frustration with loading up a podcast episode to find it is 1 hour and 30 minutes. That won’t happen here. You will get remarkable stories, expertise and ideas (from our guests, not me) packed into less than 40 minutes.
I can’t wait to share the new episodes with you.
The new name reflects the coming together of Off to Lunch, Business Studies and Business Leader magazine into one business media powerhouse for the UK. To listeners of The Business Leader Podcast in the past, hello and welcome. I hope you enjoy the new sound and please let me know your thoughts and ideas for the future. We have thought carefully about how to bring everything together and are keen for any feedback.
The new episode will go live on Thursday morning and will be sent directly to all newsletter subscribers. Future episodes will go live every Tuesday morning.
I will share more details about the guest and episode tomorrow…
Other stories that matter…
1. It’s the Autumn Statement tomorrow, with Jeremy Hunt due to speak at 12.30pm. There will be a special edition of Off to Lunch sent out after the chancellor has finished speaking, which will round-up the announcements that matter. It is looking like there will be tax cuts for households and businesses in the Autumn Statement. This could include changes to income tax or national insurance, a cut to inheritance tax and full tax relief on investment that would allow businesses to offset all spending on plant and machinery against their profits. You can find a round-up of all the potential tax cuts being considered by the chancellor in a Guardian piece here. Business Leader has a list of what to expect from the Autumn Statement, and what businesses are asking for, here
2. Where to start with OpenAI? The maker of ChatGPT is in chaos after announcing on Friday night that chief executive Sam Altman had been forced out. Around 750 of the company’s 770 staff have signed a letter threatening to quit unless the board reinstates Altman, according to the Financial Times. Altman, meanwhile, has agreed to join Microsoft, the leading investor in OpenAI. The tweet below from Ilya Sutskever, who is the chief scientist at OpenAI and helped to oust Altman as part of the board, rather sums up the mess…
OpenAI is the world’s leading maker of artificial intelligence technology right now and looked on course to be the next Silicon Valley tech giant. But it has an unorthodox management structure that is somewhere between a corporate and not-for-profit organisation. One of the lessons of this story is surely that the much-maligned corporate PLC board structure has many strengths, including accountability for all directors and how it acts as a bridge between a company and its investors. These pieces from Platformer and TechCrunch look at what the chaos at OpenAI could mean for governance in the future. You can read those pieces here and here
3. A big ruling on employee rights and the gig economy in the UK: Deliveroo riders are not employees of the company, the Supreme Court has said this morning. More from the BBC here
4. Germany wants to become a more attractive place to start a business and grow its tech industry by offering generous tax breaks on employee share ownership. New laws were passed in Germany last week that are the “biggest reform in the history of the German startup scene”, according to quotes in a piece by Sifted here. The UK, the leading start-up hub in Europe, may need to respond…
5. Apparently a popular phrase among chief executives at the moment, particularly in the US, is “choiceful”. This refers to how consumers are willing to splash out on certain items despite trying to cut back spending overall. More from CNBC here
Thanks for reading. If you enjoy Off to Lunch then please share it with others and spread the word. If this newsletter was shared with you then please sign-up below to get Off to Lunch sent directly to your inbox
Best
Graham