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Veuve Clicquot unveils bold woman award shortlist for 2026

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Veuve Clicquot unveils bold woman award shortlist for 2026

The chief executive of PizzaExpress, the founder of MOBO Awards and the co-founder of one of Europe’s fastest-growing matcha brands are among the finalists for the 2026 Veuve Clicquot Bold Awards.

Now in its 54th year, the awards are the longest-running international honours dedicated to celebrating women in business. Founded in tribute to Madame Clicquot — who took over the Champagne house at 27 and defied the conventions of her era — the programme recognises women who combine commercial success with bold, transformative leadership.

The awards are split into two categories: the Bold Woman Award, honouring established leaders, and the Bold Future Award, spotlighting emerging entrepreneurs shaping the next generation of enterprise.

Among this year’s senior leaders is Paula MacKenzie, chief executive of PizzaExpress. Since taking the helm, MacKenzie has overseen a nationwide refurbishment programme, introduced new concepts including the PizzaExpress Pod, and expanded the brand both domestically and internationally. Under her leadership, the company has achieved record customer satisfaction levels and launched PX Records, its own record label, while raising more than £1m for charity.

Kanya King CBE, founder and CEO of the MOBO Group, is also shortlisted. Over three decades, she has grown the MOBO Awards from a niche celebration into a globally recognised cultural platform. In recent years she launched House of MOBO in South London and introduced MOBOLISE, a UK-first initiative aimed at equipping 100,000 Black talents with AI literacy and career development opportunities. The MOBO Awards mark their 30th anniversary in 2026.

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Completing the trio is Smruti Sriram OBE, CEO of Bags of Ethics under parent company Supreme Creations. Sriram has positioned the business as a global leader in reusable packaging, working with brands including Dior, Harrods and Nike. Her vertically integrated supply chain model, which employs an 80% female workforce, has helped eliminate more than 30 billion single-use items worldwide while delivering consistent double-digit growth.

The Bold Future Award highlights ambitious founders building high-impact ventures.

Alisha Fredriksson, co-founder and CEO of Seabound, has developed a modular carbon capture system that can retrofit existing ships and reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 95%. In under four years, she has taken the business from concept to commercial deployment with major shipping operators, building a specialist team and securing £8.5m in funding.

Josephine Philips, founder of SOJO, has modernised the clothing repair sector by integrating proprietary technology, logistics and in-house operations. The platform now partners with brands including Ralph Lauren, Selfridges and Marks & Spencer.

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Marisa Poster, co-founder of PerfectTed, rounds out the shortlist. At 28, she has helped scale the matcha-based drinks brand to a reported £50m in annual recurring revenue, with distribution in more than 30,000 retail and café locations across over 50 countries.

Previous winners of the awards include Julia Hoggett, Professor Sarah Gilbert and Anne Pitcher, reflecting the breadth of sectors represented, from finance and science to retail and culture.

Thomas Mulliez, president of Veuve Clicquot, said this year’s shortlist reflects the pioneering spirit of Madame Clicquot. “They are redefining what business can be — from tackling plastic pollution and fashion waste to cementing Black music at the heart of British culture.”

Sian Westerman, board member of the British Fashion Council and a judge for the awards, said the finalists exemplify resilience in the face of structural barriers that continue to challenge women in leadership and entrepreneurship.

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The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 20 May, bringing together senior figures from across business, culture and industry to celebrate audacious female leadership.


Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.

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Noel Tata’s tough ask on IPO stalled vote on Chairman tenure

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Noel Tata’s tough ask on IPO stalled vote on Chairman tenure
An early agenda item for Tata Sons Pvt.’s six board directors when they convened at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday at Bombay House the group’s storied headquarters was expected to be straightforward: approving a third term for Natarajan Chandrasekaran as chairman.

Within two hours, the conversation had veered off course. What had looked like a done deal, with Tata Trusts itself recommending the reappointment just months ago, quickly unraveled.

Noel Tata, the head of Tata Trusts, began pressing Chandra — as he’s widely known — with tough questions. Most critically, Noel sought assurances that the group’s holding company could avoid a public listing, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named as the discussions were private. Tata Trusts is a collective of 13 charities, which together control two-thirds of Tata Sons.

Noel also laid down several conditions: restraining debt levels, stemming losses — especially at Air India, and reaching a swift settlement with Tata Sons’ largest minority shareholder, the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, the people said. The SP Group, which owns about 18.4%, was locked in a corporate and legal battle with Tata Sons for years and is still looking to monetize a part of its stake.

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While some of Noel’s demands were negotiable, discussions hit a wall when Chandra said he couldn’t guarantee a waiver from India’s banking regulator on the listing issue since that decision lay outside his control, the people added.

Noel Tata’s tough ask on IPO stalled vote on Chairman tenureETMarkets.com

Tata Sons’ potential listing stems from a regulatory classification. In 2022, the Reserve Bank of India designated the company as an “upper-layer” non-banking financial institution — a category that requires firms to go public within three years to enhance transparency and governance. That meant a deadline of September 2025 for Tata Sons to list its shares. There has been no update from the RBI or Tata Sons on the state of play on this front.
Despite the mandate, Tata Sons has made no immediate preparations for this share sale. Its leadership believes the regulator will extend the deadline, and after recent engagements with officials, expects formal communication from the RBI granting more time.
Chandra has made clear that while he personally favors keeping Tata Sons private, he cannot offer an absolute guarantee. Should the RBI insist on a listing, compliance would take precedence over internal preferences, the people said, citing Chandra as having informed the directors.
That uncertainty weighs heavily on the Shapoorji Pallonji Group. Any delay in an IPO effectively closes off a potential liquidity window for the debt-laden conglomerate, which has struggled with financial stress exacerbated by the pandemic. Its stake in Tata Sons remains illiquid, making a resolution critical to its debt-reduction plans.

While Chandra enjoys strong support from the Indian government — earned through execution of high-stakes national projects such as semiconductor fabrication and mobile manufacturing — Noel Tata draws strength from a different source: the deep-rooted confidence and blessings of the Parsi community whose members have controlled the Tata Group since its inception in 1868.

Appointed in 2017 to steady the ship after the ouster of Cyrus Mistry, Chandra has done more than just restore confidence. Under his leadership, revenue for the group’s 15 largest listed entities has nearly doubled while their profits have more than doubled.

His tenure is also defined by high-stakes ambition, from launching India’s first homegrown semiconductor plant to navigating TCS through the volatile rise of artificial intelligence to turning around the unprofitable carrier, Air India.

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“Nothing changes,” Chandra said Tuesday, when asked about the immediate impact on Tata Group’s leadership, before his car pulled away.

Noel Tata’s tough ask on IPO stalled vote on Chairman tenureETMarkets.com

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Shurgard Self Storage Ltd (SSSAF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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OneWater Marine Inc. (ONEW) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Shurgard Self Storage Ltd (SSSAF) Q4 2025 Earnings Call February 26, 2026 4:00 AM EST

Company Participants

Caroline Thirifay – Director of Investor Relations
Marc Oursin – CEO & Director
Thomas Oversberg – Chief Financial Officer
Isabel Neumann – Chief Investment & Operating Officer

Conference Call Participants

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Jonathan William Coubrough – Deutsche Bank AG, Research Division
Andres Toome – Green Street Advisors, LLC, Research Division
Valerie Jacob Guezi – Bernstein Institutional Services LLC, Research Division
Vincent Koppmair – Banque Degroof Petercam S.A., Research Division
Aakanksha Anand – Citigroup Inc., Research Division
Ana Taborga – Morgan Stanley, Research Division
Roy Külter – ODDO BHF Corporate & Markets, Research Division

Presentation

Caroline Thirifay
Director of Investor Relations

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Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today, both in person and virtually for the management presentation of our full year results 2025. I’m here with Marc Oursin, CEO; Thomas Oversberg, CFO; and Isabel Neumann, Chief Investment Officer and Chief Operating Officer.

Before we begin, we want to remind you that all statements other than statements of historical fact included in this management presentation are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected by the statements. These risks and other factors could adversely affect our business and future results that are described in our earnings release and in our publicly reported information.

With that, I will hand over to Marc.

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Marc Oursin
CEO & Director

Thank you, Caroline. Hello, good morning to all of you. Thank you for being here. So let’s start with this page, Page #2. So you can see that we have, at the end of ’25, close to 350 properties in Europe and reaching almost 1.8 million square meter of footage.

Regarding the performance of the year, we have delivered another very strong one. Our revenues grew

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AI, functional energy drinks influencing beverage innovation

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AI, functional energy drinks influencing beverage innovation

Webinar also addresses Chinese coffee shops in US.

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Where billionaire family offices placed their bets before the new year

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Where billionaire family offices placed their bets before the new year

Leon Cooperman.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.

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Private investment firms of the ultra-wealthy capped off 2025 with equity bets ranging from airline stocks to bitcoin ETFs, according to fourth-quarter securities filings analyzed by CNBC.

Some of the investments made headlines. Leon Cooperman’s family office, Omega Advisors, for example, attracted attention last week for disclosing that it had upped its stake in Manchester United last quarter. Omega Advisors’ shares of the publicly traded English soccer club are now worth $46.5 million, per InsiderScore.

(Manchester fans fearing a takeover by the hedge-fund billionaire can rest easy. Another filing disclosing Cooperman’s 5.2% stake in the club stated that his holding is a passive investment.)

While it generated less buzz, Omega Advisors’ biggest move last quarter was buying more than $375 million worth of shares in mortgage lender Rocket Companies. The new position is now the firm’s largest holding valued at nearly $407 million, per InsiderScore.

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Some other moves by billionaire firms have already paid off. David Tepper’s family office Appaloosa tripled its position in Micron to $428.1 million, making it the firm’s top holding. Shares of Micron, which produces memory chips that power artificial intelligence data centers, have surged by roughly 50% since the start of 2026. During the same quarter, Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office initiated a new position in fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, which is up more than 100% year to date.

Bets on cryptocurrency have been less fruitful thus far this year. WIT LLC, an investment vehicle for the Walton family’s namesake family office, made a $4 million allocation to iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF, which has sunk 21% year-to-date. The new position makes up less than 1% of WIT’s portfolio. Duty-free mogul Alan Parker’s Kemnay Advisory Services increased its shares of Coinbase by nearly 44% last quarter. Shares of Coinbase have sunk 18% since the beginning of the year.

Last quarter’s filings highlighted major investors’ diverging approaches on trading the Mag 7. Duquesne, for instance, upped its Amazon holdings by 69% to roughly $170 million and exited its Meta position. Meanwhile, Longbow SA, an investment firm of the billionaire Rausing family, downsized its positions in Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Meta.

Ray Dalio, who has repeatedly warned of an AI bubble and a potential capital war for months, has taken a striking approach, according to the latest filing for Dalio’s Marino Management. The firm disclosed a $438.5 million position in SPDR Gold Trust that makes up nearly 90% of its portfolio.

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“I think people make the mistake of thinking, ‘Is [gold] going to go up and down, and should I buy it?’” Dalio told CNBC in early February. “Instead … perhaps central banks or governments or sovereign wealth funds should say, ‘What percentage of my portfolio should I have in gold?’ [and] keep a certain percentage, because it’s a very effective diversifier to other poor parts of the portfolio.”

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US Refreshment Beverages propel Keurig Dr Pepper

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US Refreshment Beverages propel Keurig Dr Pepper

Coffee continues to be a headwind for the company.

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Dow Jones Futures Rise; Nvidia Climbs In Buy Zone After Strong Earnings, Guidance

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Dow Jones Futures Rise; Nvidia Climbs In Buy Zone After Strong Earnings, Guidance

Dow Jones futures rose slightly early Thursday, along with S&P 500 futures. Nasdaq futures were little changed. Nvidia (NVDA) climbed slightly after the AI giant reported accelerating earnings growth and bullish guidance. FTAI Aviation (FTAI), Salesforce.com (CRM), Snowflake (SNOW) and Sterling Construction (STRL) were among the many notable other earnings reports. The stock market rally saw tech-led gains Wednesday heading into…

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Instagram to alert parents if teens search for self-harm and suicide content

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Instagram to alert parents if teens search for self-harm and suicide content

Meta says it will help parents support their children – but safety campaigners have accused them of “passing the buck”.

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Aero Velocity partners with HMT for tank inspection services

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Aero Velocity partners with HMT for tank inspection services

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Apartment developer Bozzuto is deploying $1 billion toward older buildings

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Apartment developer Bozzuto is deploying $1 billion toward older buildings

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Zscaler’s AI-Powered Security: A Compelling Case For Aggressive Growth Investors (NASDAQ:ZS)

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