News

Standard Life Investments Property Income Trust (SLIPIT) has acquired 1,447 hectares of upland rough grazing and open moorland in the Cairngorm national park for £7.5 million. The site, acquired as part of the company's carbon strategy, supports 956 hectares for planting with natural broadleaf

Fraser Irvine Sheriff Officers LLP has appointed Melissa Rigby to the position of regional enforcement manager at its recently-opened Edinburgh office. Ms Rigby, who is responsible for service delivery, is a qualified and experienced messenger-at-arms and sheriff officer and joins from Scott & C

A biomass power generator built by Aviva Investors should be torn down because of planning irregularities, a council has ruled. Vale of Glamorgan Council said that it would issue a legal enforcement notice against the Barry Biomass site requiring that “the plant and all buildings are removed f

Glasgow-based not-for-profit lender DSL Business Finance Ltd provided over £5.6 million to Scottish SMEs and social enterprises in a record year despite the Covid-19 pandemic. The alternative finance provider saw its funding increase by nearly 25 per cent from £4.5 million in 2019 as it

There are signs of emerging economic recovery and renewed optimism in the Highlands and Islands, according to the latest Business Panel survey undertaken in the region. More than half (57%) of businesses in the Highlands and Islands are now operating at pre-pandemic levels or beyond.

Scottish fintech Origo has been appointed to deliver parts of the central digital architecture for the UK government's Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP). The contract for delivery of the PDP's central technical architecture has been awarded to Capgemini, which will partner with Origo to deliver th

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined Glasgow-based company DialADeal Scotland Ltd (DDSL) £150,000 for making more than half a million nuisance marketing calls. The unsolicited calls were about non-existent Green Deal energy saving schemes including boiler and window repl

Retail stores in Scotland are closing at a faster rate than Great Britain as a whole, largely because it spent longer in lockdown, according to new research by PwC and the Local Data Company (LDC). A total of 780 chain stores closed in the first half of 2021 compared with just 344 openings, a net lo

Stuart MacPherson, business services manager at Meston Reid & Co, considers the tax challenges for hospitality businesses emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. The UK’s hospitality sector has been harder hit than most by the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequent restrictions.

Bitcoin has controversially become legal tender in El Salvador, the Central American country which gave up its own currency in favour of the US dollar two decades ago. The cryptocurrency can now be used by citizens to shop, pay taxes and buy land, FT reports.

A shopkeeper has been arrested on suspicion of stealing a customer's winning lottery ticket and then attempting to flee the country. The man, who has not been named, was caught by border police at Rome's main airport, The Guardian reports.

Glasgow-based venture capital and private equity firm N4 Partners (N4) has announced that it has appointed former KPMG partner, Phil Charles to its advisory board. Mr Charles has spent over two decades working at KPMG where he was latterly a Senior Partner, leading the global accountancy firm’

Drinks giant Diageo has launched its landmark Johnnie Walker Princes Street visitor experience store. Four and a half years in the making, Johnnie Walker Princes Street is the centrepiece of the firm's £185 million investment in Scotch whisky tourism in Scotland.

Aberdeen tech start-up CryptoDramz is set to be the first in the world to sell limited-edition Scotch whisky collections using digital Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) to verify the provenance and future history of each example. An NFT representing the first of 20 custom-made whisky sets in its first coll

Rod Read, a Lewis man who recently moved to Shetland and set up Windswept and Interesting Ltd, has been awarded £40,000 from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to help make kite energy a reality. Mr Read set up Windswept and Interesting Ltd in 2012 when he started developing kite turbines.