FTI Consulting News Bytes – 29th July

This week’s news

Prime prices up

Amazon announced this week that it would be increasing prices for its Prime membership scheme across its key European markets, BBC News reports. The news followed an increase in fees for US customers earlier in the year in a move to offset rising operating costs. For UK customers, prices for an annual subscription will increase 20% to £95 per year, or a £1 increase to £8.99 for those paying monthly. The changes will come into effect on 15th September. This marks the first increase in prices for Prime users in the UK since 2014. A spokesperson for Amazon said the move came because of increased inflationary pressures and operating costs. Penetration of the UK population by Amazon Prime exceeded 50 percent in 2021, according to research group Insider Intelligence, with at least 27 million Prime users in the UK today.

Big Tech under scrutiny

Elsewhere, Big Tech’s push into the buy now, pay later (BNPL) market hit a significant stumbling block this week. The top US consumer finance regulator, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), warned that the entrance of Big Tech risked “undermining competition” and raised questions about the use of customer data in the nascent sector, according to the Financial Times. The news followed Apple’s decision to launch its own BNPL service earlier this year as part of a broader trend of Big Tech moving into the financial services space. Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, said that Apple’s decision raised a host of issues including the handling of customers’ financial data and whether this would be combined with browsing history, geolocation data, health and other apps to “dominate the digital wallet.” Chopra said he was wary of the US lurching towards a similar payments system to China, dominated by AliPay and WeChat Pay with over two billion combined users. He concluded that the US tradition of separating banking and commerce is “becoming murkier and murkier” as Big Tech continues its push into financial services.

Crown Court televised for first time

For the first time, broadcasters have been allowed into the Old Bailey to report sentencing remarks, The Guardian reports. The decision comes after a long campaign by broadcasters to allow Crown Court sessions to be recorded, and Sky News have been permitted the rights for now, with a dedicated YouTube channel which will stream proceedings at a 10-second delay. Other broadcasters will be allowed to apply to senior criminal judges for permission to film future sentencing remarks in any crown court in England and Wales. The UK government hopes the change will improve transparency in the legal system and provide the public with a better insight into how judges make their decisions. John Battle, head of legal and compliance at ITN, and chair of the Media Lawyers Association called it “a landmark moment for open justice”. He said: “Court reporting is vital to democracy and the rule of law and this long overdue change is welcomed.” The Times reported on Thursday about the first live Crown Court sentencing, which was handed to 25-year-old Ben Oliver for the killing of his grandfather.

Study finds no link between gaming time and mental health

A study from the University of Oxford has found that there is no link between the amount of time a person spends gaming and their mental health, The BBC reports. The study follows on from a previous one in 2020, which suggested a positive link between gaming and mental health. This time around, there was no significant link made. These results arrive since China introduced a 3-hour-per-week time limit on gaming for young people, amidst fears of a ‘video gaming addiction’ endemic. Researchers from the Oxford study noted that excessive gaming behaviours are often just a result of pre-existing negative emotions. As Prof. Andrew Przybylski puts it: “If players were playing because they wanted to, rather than because they felt compelled to, they had to, they tended to feel better.”

Google’s DeepMind AI achieves proteins breakthrough

From a London-based lab, Google subsidiary DeepMind have developed an algorithm which can now predict the structure of nearly all known proteins. That includes all of the proteins in the human body, as well as proteins found in animals, plants, bacteria and many other organisms. Until now, analysing the structure of these proteins has been challenging. In a piece by The Wall Street Journal, Dr Matthew Higgins from the University of Oxford discusses the problems this posed in the  development of a malaria vaccine:  “We were never able to see in sufficient detail, despite many years of work, what this molecule looks like. We got a very fuzzy view of it,” his research team is now equipped with a full 3D model of the malaria protein, courtesy of DeepMind AI.

Top Tweets of the Week

• Greg Isenberg, CEO, Late Checkout: “Instagram is one major product feature away from being pretty irrelevant. IG has evolved into an app to please advertisers (video-based) and creators (not friends). People want friends’ photos, not TikTok reels.”
• Deepmind: “Today in partnership with @emblebi, we’re releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the #AlphaFold database by over 200x – from nearly 1 million to 200+ million structures”
• TechCrunch: “Apple’s services revenue growth slows to $19.6B in Q3, reaches 860M paid subscriptions”

Number of the Week

11 – The percentage by which Amazon shares jumped in after-hours trading on Thursday, despite the company facing recent cost pressure.

What’s coming up?

• 30 July: MCM Manchester Comic-Con begins
• 31 July: England v Germany Women’s European Championship final at Wembley
• 5 August: Edinburgh Fringe Festival begins

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