Ocado’s share price is back where it started. Are its robots just too fancy?

That’s quite a stock market journey: from 180p at listing 15 years ago to the mighty heights of £29 during the locked-down Covid year of 2020 and now – oh dear – all the way back down to 180p. Welcome to Ocado, which looked like the future of grocery retailing once upon a time but now seems to be struggling to convince its most important customer of the virtues of robots and automation.There is no positive gloss to put on news that Kroger, the US supermarket chain, is closing three of its eight warehouses that use Ocado’s technology. Kroger was the client that put a rocket under the UK group’s share price in the first place in 2018 by signing a partnership deal. If Ocado could prove the worth of its kit in the world’s largest consumer market, went the bulls’ argument, valuation doubts would disappear

Visma approaches City grandee to act as chair if €20bn London listing goes ahead

Visma, one of Europe’s biggest software companies, has approached a leading City grandee to become its chair if it goes ahead with a blockbuster €20bn (£17.6bn) listing in London next spring.Sir Ron Kalifa, a former boss of payments group Worldpay and a director of the Bank of England, is considered the leading candidate for the potential role after a round of interviews in recent weeks, the Guardian understands.However, sources close to the process cautioned that London was not yet certain to land the sought-after listing of the Norwegian company, which has been backed by the UK-based private equity company Hg Capital for almost two decades.Stockholm has emerged as a rival because Visma is better known in Scandinavian markets, and because the Swedish bourse last month hosted the successful €13

Meta wins major US antitrust case and won’t have to break off WhatsApp or Instagram

Meta defeated a major challenge to its business on Tuesday when a US judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking.The case, brought by the US Federal Trade Commission, could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, with the former FTC chair accusing the company of operating a “buy or bury” scheme against nascent competitors. The tech giant bought WhatsApp for $19bn in 2014. Losing either the image-based social network, which generates an estimated half of Meta’s revenue, or the world’s most popular messaging app could have done existential damage to Meta’s empire.The US district judge James Boasberg issued his ruling on Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May

What is Cloudflare – and why did its outage take down so many websites?

The internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare suffered an outage on Tuesday, making many websites inaccessible for about three hours.Cloudflare is a global cloud services and cybersecurity firm. It provides datacentres, website and email security, protection from data loss and defences against cyber threats, among other things. It describes itself as providing an “immune system for the internet”, with technology that sits between its clients and the wider world that blocks billions of cyber threats daily. It also uses its global infrastructure to speed up internet traffic

Stephanie Gilmore to return from hiatus and surf on next year’s world tour at age 38

Stephanie Gilmore may have achieved more than any other woman in surfing, and has spent recent years on sponsor-funded wave odysseys, playing guitar at gigs to adoring crowds, developing apparel collabs and launching her own tequila, but she will turn back the clock in 2026.The 37-year-old, who turns 38 in January, will return to full-time competition on the elite tour after accepting a season-long wildcard to surf the World Surf League’s Championship Tour.“The last few years, I’ve enjoyed time off to do some exploration and other things, but I’m looking forward to heading back to the CT in 2026, and seeing how I compete against the young talent on the tour,” she said.Gilmore made an appearance on tour in May, when she was given a wildcard at the Gold Coast Pro. She progressed to the quarter-finals by overcoming defending world champion Caitlin Simmers, but was ultimately defeated by another teenager in Canadian Erin Brooks

‘It just went boom’: NZ model shows others how to capitalise on sports betting surge

The first payment was a surprise, given it was almost double the entire annual budget of Table Tennis New Zealand. The next year, however, the money kept coming.“Over the past 18 months [Table Tennis New Zealand] has had to adapt to a set of challenges that is virtually unheard of, not just to table tennis in NZ, but among all but the largest sporting organisations,” its annual report said.It was not talking about Covid-19, which would only emerge a year later. There was no existential risk due to concussion