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Global Counsel, the political advisory firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, is cutting ties with the former Labour minister after his dismissal as Britain’s US ambassador following revelations about his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
The firm, which advises some of the world’s largest companies on regulatory and political risk, has begun selling Mandelson’s multimillion-pound stake and expects to complete the process within two months.
Mandelson, a key figure in Tony Blair’s government who resigned twice from ministerial posts before returning as Northern Ireland secretary, co-founded Global Counsel in 2010 with Benjamin Wegg-Prosser. He stepped back from the business after being appointed by prime minister Keir Starmer as ambassador to Washington in December, but Companies House filings show he still holds a 21 per cent stake. He resigned as a director in May last year.
The pressure to cut ties intensified after emails surfaced detailing Mandelson’s close relationship with Epstein, whom he once described as his “best pal”. The correspondence included a suggestion that Epstein’s first conviction should be challenged. A photograph of Mandelson in a white bathrobe with Epstein has further fuelled the controversy.
Global Counsel counts JP Morgan, Barclays, OpenAI, Anglo American, Shein and TikTok among its clients, and its vice-chair is Marks & Spencer chair Archie Norman. The firm declined to comment on the developments.
Mandelson also declined to comment when approached by Bloomberg and the Financial Times.
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Global Counsel cuts ties with Peter Mandelson amid Epstein revelations

In the world of enterprise transformation, conventional wisdom suggests that change should be measured, gradual, and carefully paced to avoid disrupting operations or overwhelming employees.
But Athalie Williams, a transformation executive with over three decades of experience in complex organisational change, believes this approach often leads to failure.
“I think that it has to be slow, that it has to take multi-year decades,” Williams says, identifying what she sees as outdated thinking about transformation timelines. “I think that applies to enterprise transformation and cultural change, both.”
Her experience working on major transformations at global organisations like BHP and BT Group (British Telecommunications) has led her to a counterintuitive conclusion: sometimes you need to speed up to succeed.
The Problem with Measured Change
Williams has observed a consistent pattern in organisations that attempt gradual transformation. “Some organisations try to drip feed change and not go too fast because it’s very disruptive,” she explains. “But I find the organisations that try to do it in that paced and measured way really stumble and often stall.”
The issue isn’t that these organisations lack good intentions or sound strategy. Rather, they fall into what Williams calls the comfort trap – believing that slower change will be less disruptive and more sustainable. In reality, she argues, this approach often creates more problems than it solves.
“If you are trying to be very planned and measured and go at the right pace where people don’t feel too uncomfortable, I think often that is the rational and logical way to look at change,” Williams acknowledges. “But where I’ve seen organisations be really disruptive, rip the band-aid off and put bold, big change in, and yes, it’s going to be bumpy, and you acknowledge that for a period of time. It usually settles and you surprise yourself at how much progress you can make through working in that way.”
Why Speed Creates Clarity
Williams’ perspective on speed isn’t about rushing for the sake of it – it’s about creating the conditions that enable transformation to take root. When organisations move quickly, several critical dynamics come into play.
First, speed forces clarity. When transformation timelines are compressed, organisations must become ruthlessly focused on what matters most. “How do you ruthlessly prioritise?” Williams asks. “With all the good intent in the world, you can have this really long list of things you need to do and go after, but having too big of a laundry list, spreading yourself too thin, can kill a transformation agenda.”
Second, fast-moving change creates alignment by necessity. When everyone understands that change is happening quickly, it becomes easier to align leadership and workforce around common priorities. The alternative, gradual change over years, often leads to mixed signals and competing priorities that undermine transformation efforts.
Cultural Change: The Speed Surprise
Nowhere is the speed paradox more evident than in cultural transformation. “I think in particular, people think cultural change takes a long time,” Williams observes. “And I do think it is ongoing and it inevitably takes a long time, but I also think you can achieve a lot much more quickly than you think is possible when leaders are aligned, when the signals are really, really clear.”
Her experience suggests that culture can shift dramatically in months rather than years, but only under specific conditions. “I’ve seen teams transform in months, not because of a grand plan, but because someone was willing to lead differently and set a new tone,” she notes from her broader experience.
The key is creating what Williams calls “really, really clear” signals from leadership. When leaders are aligned and sending consistent messages about new behaviours and priorities, cultural change can happen with surprising speed.
The Risk Management Balance
Williams is careful to note that speed doesn’t mean recklessness. “You need to be sensible. You need to bring a risk lens to it,” she emphasises. “You don’t want to do anything so disruptive that it fundamentally breaks something critical in the organisation.”
The approach requires identifying what she calls the “handful of things you need to protect” – critical business functions, key relationships, or essential capabilities that cannot be disrupted. Everything else, however, becomes fair game for bold transformation.
“I think there’s a handful of things you need to protect, and the rest you can be far bolder in the changes that you’re going to make and back yourself,” Williams explains.
Practical Applications
Williams’ speed-first approach has practical implications for how organisations should structure transformation efforts. Rather than creating elaborate multi-year roadmaps with gradual rollouts, she advocates for:
Compressed timelines that force decision-making and prioritisation
Clear leadership alignment before beginning any transformation effort, coupled with regular check-ins to confirm alignment and course correct when needed
Bold initial moves that signal serious commitment to change
Acceptance of short-term disruption in service of long-term transformation
This approach requires what Williams calls “courage” from leadership—the willingness to embrace discomfort and uncertainty in service of meaningful change.
The Human Element
Importantly, Williams’ emphasis on speed doesn’t diminish her focus on people-centred transformation. “Organisations hire fabulous people and then they forget to bring them along with them on the journey,” she observes.
The speed paradox actually enhances the human element of change. When transformation happens quickly with clear signals, employees understand what’s expected and can adapt accordingly. The alternative, prolonged uncertainty with gradual changes, often creates more anxiety and resistance.
“Organisations hire really smart people who care deeply about the customer and who come to work every day wanting to do a good job,” Williams notes. “How do you create that north star and the thread that everyone can follow so they understand how they can contribute their bit to where the organisation’s heading?”
Looking Forward
As organisations face increasing pressure to adapt quickly in response to technological disruption, market changes, and competitive pressures, Williams’ perspective on transformation speed becomes increasingly relevant. The traditional approach of gradual, measured change may no longer be sufficient in rapidly evolving business environments.
Her experience suggests that organisations willing to embrace the speed paradox – moving faster than feels comfortable whilst protecting critical functions – may find themselves better positioned for sustainable transformation success.
“Sometimes you need to speed up to speed up,” Williams concludes – a principle that challenges conventional wisdom but reflects the realities of modern organisational change.
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The Speed Paradox: Athalie Williams on Why Slower Change Often Fails

Sotheby’s has posted a steep increase in annual losses as the world’s art market continues to struggle, compounding pressure on the auction house owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi.
Filings from parent company Bidfair Luxembourg show losses more than doubled to $248 million (£184 million) in 2024, compared with $106 million the previous year.
Revenues fell 18 per cent to $813 million as commission and fee income was hit by a marked decline in high-end collecting, reflecting weaker demand from wealthy buyers against a backdrop of global geopolitical uncertainty and trade tensions. The downturn has added to the challenges facing an industry already sensitive to fluctuations in confidence and liquidity among the ultra-wealthy.
Sotheby’s financial results were further dented by a sharp rise in severance costs, which rose to $29.2 million last year from $11.4 million in 2023. Despite the scale of the payouts, the company’s headcount dropped by just 24, leaving its global workforce at 2,218.
The auction house, founded in London in 1744 as a rare book dealer, now operates in 40 countries and has expanded beyond art and books into luxury categories including wine, jewellery and diamonds, as well as financial services that fund art acquisitions and provide loans against collections. Drahi, who acquired Sotheby’s in a £3.7 billion deal in 2019, has sought fresh capital for a turnaround strategy, striking a deal last year with Abu Dhabi’s ADQ sovereign wealth fund, which acquired a 24 per cent stake in return for a $1 billion investment.
While Drahi has become a prominent figure in the art world through his stewardship of Sotheby’s, the French-Israeli businessman remains best known for his telecoms empire Altice, built through a string of leveraged acquisitions. The scale of Sotheby’s losses underlines the challenge of reviving profitability in a market still recovering from pandemic disruption and shifting global wealth dynamics.
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Sotheby’s losses more than double to $248m as global art market weakens

London North Eastern Railway (LNER) has warned passengers to remain vigilant after a cyber-attack on a third-party supplier exposed customer contact details and some journey history.
The operator stressed that no financial data, passwords or ticketing systems had been compromised and that train services continue to run as normal.
The breach, which LNER said it was treating “with the highest priority”, highlights the growing risk of cyber-attacks on UK transport operators and their supply chains. While the company confirmed that the supplier involved had no access to bank or payment records, it urged customers to be alert to unsolicited emails or messages, particularly those requesting personal information.
The incident is the latest in a string of high-profile hacks to hit UK businesses and transport services. Transport for London suffered a cyber breach last year affecting financial data for 5,000 customers, while earlier this month production at Jaguar Land Rover was halted by a ransomware attack. Retailers including Marks & Spencer, Harrods and the Co-op have also been targeted this year.
LNER said it is working with cybersecurity experts and the supplier concerned to establish the full scale of the breach and implement additional safeguards. Updates will be provided as investigations progress.
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LNER warns customers after passenger details exposed in cyber-attack

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is tightening control over the government’s economic strategy by strengthening a cross-government Budget Board that will shape the Autumn Statement on 26 November.
The board, which will meet weekly, is designed to ensure closer coordination between No 10 and the Treasury after criticism of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first Budget, which drew backlash from business groups over steep tax rises.
The new structure will be co-chaired by Torsten Bell, pensions minister and former director of the Resolution Foundation, and Minouche Shafik, Starmer’s recently appointed chief economic adviser.
The committee will also include Katie Martin, Reeves’s chief of staff, tasked with managing relations with business; Varun Chandra, No 10’s business envoy; Darren Jones, the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury; and Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
Both No 10 and No 11 communications chiefs will sit on the board, alongside Tim Allan, Starmer’s newly appointed comms director and a veteran of Tony Blair’s government.
Government insiders said the expanded line-up was designed to align economic and political messaging while injecting a stronger business perspective into budget discussions.
Pressure on Reeves as fiscal rules tighten
Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces growing pressure ahead of November’s Budget, with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expected to downgrade forecasts. To stay within her self-imposed fiscal rules, she may need to find £25bn–£50bn in additional tax rises, according to independent estimates.
Reeves was criticised after her last Budget for raising employer national insurance contributions by £25bn, a move business leaders said increased hiring costs and fuelled inflationary pressures.
Rain Newton-Smith, director-general of the CBI, has urged the government to pursue “radical tax reform” rather than more tax hikes, pointing to stamp duty and VAT thresholds as areas in need of overhaul.
The Institute of Directors (IoD) welcomed the creation of the Budget Board but called for greater business representation.
Anna Leach, IoD chief economist, said: “It is positive that the government is putting renewed energy into the growth agenda, with a particular focus on business. But to succeed, the Budget Board must deliver a statement that works for enterprise, with swift action to remove barriers to growth from the tax and regulatory system.”
She added that incorporating independent business voices into the board would help “constructively challenge” government thinking and bring specialist expertise to budget planning.
The strengthened Budget Board underlines Starmer’s determination to centralise economic decision-making and avoid the political missteps of recent months. But with sluggish growth, falling business confidence and difficult fiscal choices ahead, the test will be whether this new forum can balance Labour’s fiscal discipline with a pro-growth agenda that reassures enterprise.
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Starmer strengthens grip on economic policy with new Budget Board

Smart glasses that help people with severe depression complete daily tasks and AI-powered filter apps designed to make therapy for anxiety more approachable are among 17 pioneering projects receiving government support to transform mental health care across the UK.
Science Minister Lord Vallance announced the investment today, with £3.6 million in funding from Innovate UK’s Mindset programme. The projects are aimed at delivering real-time, scalable mental health support, reducing costs for the NHS and easing pressure on resources.
The backing comes amid a 40 per cent rise in people accessing NHS mental health support in England since before the pandemic. The technology will be developed and trialled over the next 12 to 18 months, offering potential breakthroughs in how patients manage complex conditions such as depression, anxiety, psychosis and PTSD.
Among the innovations is a lightweight smart glasses system developed by CrossSense in London. The glasses use AI to help users with severe depression and memory loss by recognising household objects and providing real-time prompts through a connected app.
The technology can guide vulnerable individuals through everyday tasks – from issuing safety warnings such as “stay away from boiling water on the hob” to reframing negative thought patterns. It adapts over time to the wearer’s needs, helping prevent cognitive decline and enabling people to live more independently despite complex mental health challenges.
Immersive therapies and AI-powered tools
Other projects backed include:
• Play Well for Life, working with the University of the West of England, is developing an augmented reality board game that helps children improve communication, problem-solving and social skills in a supportive, interactive setting.
• Life Process Program, based in Northern Ireland, is building a customisable virtual coach for individuals recovering from substance abuse, simulating real-life therapy sessions.
• EcoGPX in West Yorkshire is linking extended reality with physical activity to connect people with nature and reduce anxiety.
• Photography Based Therapeutics, with the University of Surrey, is creating the world’s first app combining AI and AR to help young people use photo-editing filters to reduce distressing elements in images, replacing them with calming features. These visuals can then be used in therapy sessions to aid communication.
Lord Vallance described the programme as an example of science driving life-changing solutions: “From smart glasses helping those with debilitating depression to games helping children build social skills, we are supporting teams across the UK to build cutting-edge tech that unlocks opportunity, supports the NHS and grows our economy.”
Minister for Mental Health Baroness Merron added: “By embracing new tech, we’re improving lives and reducing pressure on the NHS to make healthcare fit for the future, as part of our Plan for Change.”
The funded projects cover a wide range of conditions including ADHD, autism, depression, occupational stress and addiction recovery. They form part of the government’s wider 10 Year Health Plan, which pledges an additional £688 million for mental health services, more staff, expanded talking therapies and enhanced access via the NHS App.
By investing in extended reality (XR) – including VR, AR, mixed reality and haptic technologies – the government aims to put the UK at the forefront of digital mental health solutions. These tools could be available via the NHS following clinical approval, or through regulated private channels, offering patients new ways to access personalised, effective care.
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Smart glasses and AI apps backed to transform mental health care in the UK

Sir Nick Clegg has never been short of vantage points from which to view power. After five years as Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government, he spent almost seven at the heart of Big Tech as Meta’s president of global affairs.
Now, in a recent conversation with Wilfred Frost on The Master Investor Podcast, he offered a bracing diagnosis of Britain’s malaise, a withering assessment of Silicon Valley’s culture, and a pragmatic take on how artificial intelligence and free speech should be handled in the years ahead.
Clegg’s fondness for Britain is undimmed, but his verdict on our current mood is stark. The UK, he argues, is “remarkably creative” for a “soggy, muddy island”, yet something has curdled. “It’s as if the country has fallen out of love with the future,” he says, lamenting a pervasive habit of talking down people and ideas. By contrast, Americans “celebrate success” in a way many Britons find “a bit frothy” — but which, he insists, creates its own momentum.
That cultural divergence is reinforced by economics and geography. When he was in Downing Street, Clegg notes, the GDP of Europe and the US was broadly comparable. Today, he observes, the American economy is perhaps 1.5 to 1.7 times larger — the product of faster rebounds after the financial crisis and the pandemic, stronger demographics, and the structural advantages of a continent‑sized market. Europe, for all its virtues, is a “trickier” neighbourhood.
Silicon Valley’s self‑pity
From Westminster’s rough and tumble to California’s wealth and influence, Clegg was struck by an unexpected phenomenon: thin skins in high places. “There’s this odd culture of very rich, successful men who feel terribly sorry for themselves,” he says of parts of the Valley. Many celebrate their role as disrupters, yet complain when disruption brings criticism. “Either be a disrupter — and take the flak — or don’t,” he shrugs, adding that the recent vogue for conspicuous “bro” bravado sits uneasily with a streak of “simpering self‑pity”.
His discomfort grows when political and corporate power get too cosy. Clegg worries that tech leaders and Washington are binding themselves together around a single idée fixe: beating China in AI. The rhetoric — and the spending — can sound like a reprise of the Cold War, with an assumption that the United States can outspend its rival to a decisive victory. That, he argues, misunderstands both the technology and the geopolitics. “AI is too versatile and too dispersed to deliver a single knockout blow,” he says. China is “far too powerful and technologically adept” to be treated as a foil in a winner‑takes‑all race. For Clegg, the smarter path is renewed partnerships with allies, not tariffs and chest‑beating.
Zuckerberg’s big swings — and AI realism
What of Meta’s own arms race? Clegg defends Mark Zuckerberg’s taste for outsized bets — Instagram and WhatsApp looked expensive at the time, he reminds us, and proved prescient. Even the metaverse, much mocked, may pay off over the long run as we migrate from hand‑held screens to new interfaces. But he injects a note of sobriety into the AI hype cycle. As each new model arrives, the step change can be less than the marketing suggests. “We were told [a next‑generation model] would be the moment we walked through the looking glass,” he says. “It’s a great improvement — but an incremental one.” If the industry is now “squeezing more out of the same paradigm”, he asks, will the revenue ultimately justify the capital outlay?
Meta can fund experimentation because its ads machine keeps humming, Clegg says, but none of the giants can rely forever on growth by capex alone. For their part, the AI specialists have begun to earn real money from enterprise tools and APIs — welcome, but not yet transformative at the scale of investment being made.
Clegg, for his own part, has moved on cleanly. After leaving Meta, he sold his remaining shares — not as a market call, he insists, but as a way of turning the page between distinct chapters of a career that has taken in Brussels, Westminster and Silicon Valley.
Free speech, the law — and a necessary reset
Asked about claims from figures such as Elon Musk and US senator JD Vance that Britain lacks robust free speech, Clegg’s response points in two directions. First, he bristles at lectures from Washington: “Just butt out,” he says, noting what he sees as a striking double standard in the way the current US administration deals with dissent. Yet he also believes the UK has indeed tilted too far towards criminalising online speech. Citing reports that police make dozens of arrests each day for social‑media offences using pre‑digital statutes, he argues that a free society must tolerate “ghastly, offensive” speech unless it incites imminent harm.
The pendulum, he suggests, has swung widely over the past decade. In the late 2010s, he found corporate America “humourless and earnest” about speech — a climate that hardened further under the pressures of the pandemic. With hindsight, he concedes, platforms over‑corrected as they tried to contain harmful misinformation during a period of acute uncertainty. Today the backlash risks going too far the other way, towards an absolutist, “cardboard‑cut‑out” libertarianism that few truly practise. “Free expression becomes ‘free expression for stuff I like’,” he says of some of Musk’s interventions.
Clegg is unapologetic that platforms enforce community standards which go “well beyond” the letter of the law — a reality often overlooked when politicians and commentators complain they are not going further still. Private companies, he points out, are being asked to act as philosopher‑kings in a space where democratic consensus is elusive.
The coming shift, in his view, is even more consequential. For two decades, social networks could plausibly argue they were conduits for speech created by others. Generative AI complicates that defence. Increasingly, users will engage directly with AI agents or avatars — “the sharp arrowhead” of technology built and deployed by the companies themselves. Liability, therefore, will evolve. Clegg worries about interactions between these systems and children, teens and vulnerable adults, and about the sophistication with which AI will impersonate human conversation.
He also observes a strategic realignment at Meta and its peers. The firm’s original advantage was its “social graph” — the map of relationships among friends and family. Now, like TikTok and YouTube, its services are pipelines for algorithmically recommended entertainment, increasingly including synthetic content. In that world, responsibility and risk look different. It may yield a “cleaner” internet if companies are forced to take more direct accountability — but it will also demand more scepticism from users. “One of the ways we will have to live with the online world is by fostering society‑wide scepticism,” Clegg says, especially among the young, because so much more of what we see will be AI‑generated slop.
On the question of past harms, he defers to the coroner’s findings in the Molly Russell case, while stressing that the company changed policies and systems to make a repeat of her experience less likely. It does not make the internet risk‑free, he says soberly, but it is “very, very different” from the era in which she was online.
What leadership really demands
Clegg closes with a defence of politics as a craft. Leadership, he argues, is harder in government than in business: the trade‑offs are “dizzying”, accountability more relentless. British ministers, however senior, face constituents every week — a discipline that keeps them close to the real world. By contrast, he has seen chief executives take umbrage at a critical adjective on page 13 of the FT. The lesson for both spheres is the same: resilience matters, and so does perspective.
If Britain is to regain its optimism, Clegg implies, it will need to rediscover the confidence to build — and the generosity to celebrate those who try. And if Silicon Valley wants to lead responsibly, it must shed its self‑pity, temper its absolutism on speech, and accept that AI’s future will be collaborative, not imperial.
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Nick Clegg urges Britain to rediscover optimism and tells Silicon Valley to drop the self pity

Lord Alan Sugar has become the latest high-profile business leader to attack remote working, insisting that young people “just want to sit at home” and need to get their “bums back into the office.”
Speaking to the BBC, the 77-year-old entrepreneur and star of The Apprentice said workplace culture had suffered in the years since hybrid and flexible policies were introduced during the pandemic.
“I’m a great advocate of getting them back to work,” Sugar said. “The only way an apprentice is going to learn is from his colleagues. It’s small things, like interaction with your more mature colleagues, that will tell you how to do this, how to do that. That is lacking in this work-from-home, Zoom culture.”
Sugar, whose property group Amsprop owns a large portfolio of central London office buildings, said he recognised that some roles could be exceptions. “Software writers who get up at three o’clock in the morning with some kind of brainstorm,” he noted, might be better off at home, as well as people with disabilities.
His intervention comes as the debate over the future of work continues to divide corporate Britain. Official data from the Office for National Statistics shows that as of October, 28 per cent of the workforce is hybrid – splitting their time between home and the office. Another 44 per cent commute every day, while 13 per cent are fully remote. Many respondents to the ONS survey said hybrid work improved their rest, exercise and wellbeing.
The Labour government is preparing to legislate to make hybrid working a right for employees unless their employer can demonstrate it is unreasonable. The Employment Rights Bill will extend flexible working options across the economy, although many of Britain’s largest firms are already moving in the opposite direction. Amazon, JP Morgan and others have ordered staff back to offices full-time, arguing that face-to-face contact boosts collaboration and productivity.
Landlords have warned that the hybrid trend has made commercial properties harder to lease and less lucrative. Sugar’s comments underline the concerns of those invested in Britain’s office sector.
His intervention follows that of fellow business veteran Lord Stuart Rose, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer and Asda, who earlier this year declared that working from home is not “proper work” and has set the country back “20 years” in productivity and wellbeing.
For Sugar, the problem is most acute for younger workers and apprentices, who he says risk missing out on informal learning opportunities. “They’ve got to get their bums back into the office,” he repeated, warning that Britain’s work culture is at risk of permanent change if remote working becomes the norm.
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Lord Sugar: young people need to get their ‘bums back into the office’

The Lord Mayor of London, Alastair King, has recognised four standout British businesses for their role in powering growth, innovation and social purpose across the UK economy.
Aspect Capital, Tide, Neighbourly and Guavapay were each awarded the prestigious Lord Mayor’s Award, reflecting the breadth of the UK’s fast-growing business ecosystem — from fintech and quantitative investment to social impact platforms and global payments infrastructure.
The awards are part of the Lord Mayor’s Growth Unleashed programme, which is designed to revive the UK’s appetite for responsible risk-taking, channel institutional investment into high-growth sectors and ensure scale-up companies remain rooted in Britain. The programme includes flagship initiatives such as the Scale Up Showcase, connecting tech firms with investors, and the Mansion House Accord, under which 17 of the UK’s largest pension providers have pledged to invest at least 10 per cent of their default funds into private markets by 2030.
Speaking at the awards, King said: “These companies represent the very best of British innovation — forward-thinking, impactful and globally ambitious. From fintech to social tech, their work aligns with my mayoral programme Growth Unleashed. I am proud to celebrate their achievements and the role they play in strengthening the UK’s position as a global leader in financial and technological excellence.”
Aspect Capital was recognised for growth optimisation, with chief executive Anthony Todd highlighting its recent expansion into the Chinese market. “This marks a significant milestone for Aspect Capital and reflects our long-term commitment to delivering innovative quantitative investment solutions in one of the world’s most dynamic financial markets,” he said.
Tide, the digital business banking platform, was honoured for empowering SMEs with innovative financial tools. Chief executive Oliver Prill said the award acknowledged Tide’s mission to save small businesses time and money: “With over 13 per cent market share in the UK and 1.5 million members worldwide, our commitment to helping SMEs thrive is stronger than ever. We look forward to working with the Lord Mayor and the City of London to ensure the UK remains a global innovation leader.”
Neighbourly, which helps businesses channel resources to local charities and communities, was praised for its pioneering role in social impact technology. Chief executive Steve Butterworth (pictured) said: “Our platform was built to make it easy for companies to give back with purpose, scale and integrity. This recognition is not just for our team, but for every local charity, volunteer, store manager and business leader who’s helped us build something genuinely impactful.”
Guavapay, a payments company operating across international markets, was recognised for its contribution to financial inclusion and digital connectivity. Group managing director Elkhan Nasibov said: “At Guavapay, we embrace the white heat of technology to drive payment digitisation, expand global financial connectivity and ensure everyone can access the financial tools they need to grow. We are inspired to continue contributing to the City’s bold vision for growth.”
With the City of London keen to maintain its reputation as a hub for fintech, AI and high-growth enterprise, the awards underscore the role of innovative businesses in driving long-term competitiveness — and highlight how closely technology, finance and social purpose are now intertwined.
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Lord Mayor honours UK trailblazers driving growth, innovation and social impact