Dent

Good morning, you glorious beasts.

This week, Bunce hit 2,000 subscribers. That’s roughly the population of Dent, Cumbria. Though fewer sheep.

We’re touched, grateful, and slightly concerned. Thanks for coming aboard the good ship Bunce.

We trawl through the UK business news so you can sound clever over coffee. If that’s been useful, consider coercing a friend into subscribing here: readbunce.com

- Ed & Joe

P.S. We only need each of you to refer 498 people to hit a million subscribers. At which point we'll buy a Bunce jet ski and you will be allowed a (short) turn.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Don’t believe the AI agent hype

According to Gartner, which predicts that nearly half of all companies using AI agents will cancel them by 2027. They’re forking out too much money for too much risk and very little reward. For one:

AI agents get things wrong 70% of the time

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that AI agents didn’t message colleagues as directed and got confused by pop-ups while browsing. 

And they have “near-zero confidentiality awareness” according to researchers at Salesforce (where AI is already doing 30-50% of the work).

But they’re also deceptive, too.

One agent pretended someone was someone else because they couldn’t find the right person on RocketChat. 

Researchers at Anthropic found that nearly all AI Agents would sooner blackmail employees than be switched off. 

An agent with access to an employee’s emails even threatened to reveal an affair if the employee went through with it. 

A tad concerning, all told

Salesforce reckons 78% of UK organisations already use AI agents. 

Boomer CEOs are obviously excited. And quite possibly confused. 

Companies are slashing graduate jobs left and right - a quarter in one year - supposing that entry-level jobs can be easily done by AI agents. 

But they’ve been deceived

Gartner reckons that barely 5% of all AI agents are actually real AI agents. 

Boomer CEOs are integrating them without the faintest idea of what they actually can (and often can’t) do.

They will rue the day. 

BANKING
Banks can now tell us what to do with our money

Free from having to carry out onerous and expensive risk assessments on us. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) called it a “once in a generation” change. And it’s all because: 

Brits don’t invest

We’re big savers, though — most Brits have at least a few thousand quid squirrelled away for a rainy day. 

7 million of us are sitting on more than £10,000, for heaven’s sake. 

Barclays reckons 13 million British adults hold £430 billion in savings, which is more than the net worth of Elon Musk. 

Blame the FCA

They started this 10 years ago. They meant well (they always do). 

Under the Retail Distribution Review, the FCA stopped financial advisors from giving ‘free’ advice while simultaneously promoting a product they got a commission from.

It also meant that financial advisors had to fork out for expensive ‘suitability’ assessments before actually giving any advice. 

No wonder so few of us invest

Only 23% of Brits invest their money. We’re the least likely in the G7 to invest our money. 

Meanwhile, 61% of Americans invest their money in stocks and shares.

And America is where all our startups are fleeing to. 

God knows we need the money. 

RETAIL
Summer saved Sainsbury’s

The supermarket just posted its strongest growth in one year because we’re all splashing out on paddling pools and fans at Argos. 

It was just like last summer

Sainsbury’s grew 4.4% in the months up to June, thanks to all this hot weather. 

Brits began buying swimsuits, paddling pools, fans, and shorts. 

The last time this happened was one year ago. 

They must be happy, because:

Sainsbury’s is at war with ASDA

The supermarket has slashed prices on 1,500 products in a bid to entice back shoppers. 

And now all the supermarkets are in a price war. 

Sainsbury’s is replacing staff (ruffians who insist on being paid) with self-service checkouts and SmartShop handsets, which let people scan their items as they shop. 

They reckon they’ll save £1 billion, which will help them drive down costs further. 

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🦹 💻️ One quarter of British companies were hacked last year, according to the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors. That’s an 11% rise from the year before. Brits should be concerned. Apparently, some businesses still use Windows 7, which hasn’t been updated in 5 years. Let’s hope those hackers are nice. 

• 🎙️ 💃 Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen gave the British economy £10 billion last year, along with all the other musicians who played live concerts. That’s a record (thanks, partly, to inflation and stupidly high ticket prices). Live music brought in a record-breaking 23.5 million fans, which is up almost a quarter from 2023, possibly driven by a 62% annual increase in ‘music tourists’. Cheers, Taylor, lass. 

• 🔋 🚗 We’re building Britain’s biggest EV factory in Somerset. 1,500 jobs will be created once it’s operational in 2027, with a further 2,500 once everything’s chugging along nicely. It’s all being built by the Tata Group, an Indian multinational.

• 💻️ 👮 A British IT worker was jailed for disrupting his former employer’s business after getting fired. Mohammed Umar Taj was fired but his network controls weren’t removed, so he started changing login names and passwords, costing his ex-employer £200,000 in damages. He then logged his attacks and talked about them on the phone, which the police later used in evidence against him. So if you do plan on taking vengeance on a former employer, don’t shout about it. 

• 🇻🇬 🇧🇲 Britain’s tax havens won’t do as they’re told, according to parliament. 4 out of 5 of these tax havens (think British Virgin Islands and Bermuda) didn’t meet the deadline to introduce corporate transparency measures. This comes after the British Virgin Islands were named as a hotbed for terrorist financing. Not looking good, chaps. 

• 🐕️ 📫️ There’s been a rise in dog attacks on post office workers in the last 5 years. Nearly 2,200 posties got attacked last year, and vets reckon it’s because dogs purchased during the pandemic are a tad antisocial. Or it’s because they’re carrying delicious sandwiches on their person.