Industry | Common News Update

Apr92021 by adminNo Comments

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sues federal government over cruise industry shutdown

Business

April 8 (UPI) -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday a lawsuit against the federal government over the cruise industry shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tens of thousands of Floridians depend on the cruise industry for their jobs, DeSantis said at a news conference at the Port of Miami, where he announced the lawsuit while flanked by cruise employees. Advertisement "So, today's a day for us to fight for them, to fight for our friends and our neighbors, who just want to go back to work," DeSantis said at the press conference. Monica Sebata, a former employee of Cruiseport Destinations in Miami, said cruises were initially ordered to shut down for two weeks in March 2020. At that point, they were able to connect through Zoom, and they had hope things would improve, she said, b...

Apr42021 by adminNo Comments

How Instagram’s influencers changed the model industry

Technology

Evolve/Victoria Magrath/Models1Alexina Graham has been a successful fashion model for more than a decade - appearing in glossy magazines and walking the coveted Victoria’s Secret catwalk.But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, her work stopped.“I didn’t work at all in March and April,” she told BBC News.Over the past year, models have been asked to create their own content - shooting photos and promoting brands on personal social-media accounts.MODELS1“Social media is one of the main aspects of our job now,” Ms Graham said. “To shoot content every week, edit it all together and get it out there takes a long time.”L’Oréal’s brand ambassador, actress Eva Longoria, even filmed herself dying her own hair in lockdown.“It was a first for us to shoot a campaign with one of our spokesmodels in this...

Mar282021 by adminNo Comments

Used-car ‘unicorns’ Cinch and Cazoo in £10bn race to reshape industry

Business

Britain's two fastest-growing online used-car marketplaces are racing to raise staggering sums of capital as they seek to reshape an industry boasting €400bn (£343bn) in annual sales across Europe.Sky News can reveal that Cinch, which is part of the private equity-backed Constellation Automotive Group, is in talks with a syndicate of global blue-chip institutions to raise approximately £500m of new funding. The discussions, which are said to be at an advanced stage, could value Cinch on a standalone basis at more than £5bn, according to analysts and bankers.That would be a stellar result for a business which launched just five months ago, but which has shown what insiders describe as "exponential growth" to turn it into a leader in the market.Constellation, which was then called BCA Market...

Mar222021 by adminNo Comments

After reaching pre-Covid levels, we will now focus on surpassing industry growth: SBI Cards Boss

Finance

Rama Mohan Rao Amara, MD & CEO, SBI Cards, discusses the growth of digital transactions over the year due to pandemic and the target strategies for credit-card penetration in India. Edited excerpts from an interview given to ET Now:ET Now: Given the kind of recovery we are seeing, can we say spends are inching towards pre-Covid levels? Rama Mohan Rao Amara: I think in Q1, due to lockdown and a very limited economic activity, we noticed that savings were more than the consumption but Q2 reversed the pattern and witnessed rise in consumption demand. The Q3 numbers suggest that we have come out of the economic downturn strongly. India Inc has returned to Pre-Covid levels in November 2020, while we at SBI Cards were able to achieve the same in October itself. If you look at the contributi...

Mar162021 by adminNo Comments

The U.S. solar industry posted record growth in 2020 despite Covid-19, new report finds

Finance

Peter Cade | Stone | Getty ImagesU.S. solar installations reached a record high during 2020 as favorable economics, supportive policies and strong demand in the second half of the year offset the impacts from the coronavirus pandemic.Installations grew 43% year over year during 2020, reaching a record 19.2 gigawatts of new capacity, according to a report released Tuesday from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenize.During the fourth quarter alone, the U.S. added slightly more than 8 gigawatts of capacity — a new quarterly record. To put the number in context, during all of 2015, 7.5 gigawatts were added. One gigawatt is enough to power roughly 190,000 homes. The U.S. currently has 97.2 GW of total solar capacity installed, enough to power roughly 17.7 million homes.Calif...