The company is leading the race to develop an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft

A Bristol-based company working to develop a ‘flying taxi’ has secured a fresh $100m cash injection. Vertical Aerospace said it would use the finance package to carry out a design review, open a new energy centre for battery production and retrofit the firm’s third prototype for hybrid-electric flight testing in the first half of 2027.

The New York-listed company is also planning to fund a production facility in the UK in future.

The finance package included $40m from US-based Mudrick Capital Management and a $25m issuance from Yorkville Advisors – two major current stakeholders – as well as a $35m equity investment from new and existing investors.

It is understood the deal is being managed by bankers at Jefferies.

Stuart Simpson, chief executive of Vertical Aerospace, said: “We are focused on converting operational progress and partner engagement into continued advancement of our certification and commercialisation strategy.

“The support, reflected in these financings via new investors alongside further commitments from existing investors, demonstrates strong confidence in Vertical’s market position and progress, providing near-term flexibility to execute the next phase of our plan.”

Vertical Aerospace was set up by Ovo Energy founder Stephen Fitzpatrick a decade ago and is based on Chapel St in Bristol. The business floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 and is leading the race to develop an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft.

The latest injection of capital follows a period of operational and commercial momentum for the company which earlier this year became only the second firm of its kind to complete a piloted transition flight in a full-scale tiltrotor eVTOL.

In July, Vertical also carried out a number of demonstrations at Farnborough Air Show, including the first public piloted eVTOL flight, showcasing how its aircraft will operate in real-world environments.

Last year, the company said its aircraft could be ready for commercial use by 2028 if it secured financing. Vertical is planning to build a factory at Cotswold Airport, near Kemble in Gloucestershire, next to its existing flight test centre.

The business is already in advanced discussions with the UK government about a grant worth up to £10m to support the development of production facilities in Britain. It said this week it had also received “confirmed interest” from the Ministry of Defence in its hybrid-electric and autonomous capabilities.

Manual invoice checking often works well when a business is small and transaction volumes are predictable. The trouble starts when the same two or three people are approving supplier invoices, reconciling payments, answering internal queries and reviewing shipping charges at the same time.

Carrier invoices are particularly difficult because the final billed amount can contain adjustments that were not present when the shipment was created. A reviewer may confirm that the invoice total looks reasonable without ever testing whether the individual shipments were billed correctly.

Reviewers Start Looking for Big Errors and Miss Repeated Small Ones

After checking several pages of an invoice, people naturally begin focusing on numbers that look unusual. A $400 discrepancy attracts attention; an extra $3.80 usually does not. Yet carrier billing problems often live in those smaller adjustments.

Canada Post, for example, can reweigh and remeasure parcels during processing, with resulting corrections appearing on the bill. A small accounts team checking invoices visually may approve dozens of minor weight or volumetric adjustments because each seems plausible individually. The real problem becomes visible only when those adjustments are grouped by package type, service or shipping location. What looked like harmless rounding can turn out to be a recurring measurement or billing issue.

The Invoice Gets Checked Against Itself

One of the biggest weaknesses of manual review is surprisingly simple: the invoice often becomes its own source of truth. An employee checks the subtotal, confirms taxes, scans the shipment descriptions and makes sure the final figure adds up. Mathematically, everything works. That does not establish that the charges were correct.

A proper Canada post shipping audit needs a second version of events: shipment records, declared dimensions and weight, service selected, origin and destination information, and applicable rates or contract terms. That distinction matters because Canada Post can base charges on its own audit and place resulting price adjustments on a current or later invoice. Without shipment-level comparison, an accounts employee may verify the carrier’s arithmetic rather than verify the carrier’s billing.

Yesterday’s Exception Becomes Tomorrow’s Normal Charge

Small finance teams develop useful shortcuts. They remember that a particular surcharge appears frequently, that one warehouse tends to generate heavier parcels, or that certain shipments usually cost more. The danger is that familiarity gradually replaces verification.

Suppose the same package repeatedly receives a volumetric adjustment. Canada Post calculates parcel pricing using the greater of physical weight and volumetric equivalent, and its systems can verify parcel dimensions after induction. After seeing that adjustment for several weeks, a reviewer may simply expect it. But repetition could point to oversized packaging, inaccurate warehouse measurements or a discrepancy worth investigating. Manual checking is particularly weak at distinguishing a legitimate recurring cost from a recurring problem.

Final Thoughts

The weakness of manual invoice checking is not that accounts staff are careless. It is that carrier invoices contain more variables than a person can reliably compare line by line while handling the rest of a busy finance workload. Weight corrections, volumetric adjustments and later billing changes can all look perfectly ordinary on an invoice. For small teams, the better approach is to make review exception-driven: compare carrier charges with original shipment data, identify recurring patterns and spend human attention on discrepancies that actually need investigation.

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LONDON — Meghan Markle is expected to join Prince Harry on a return trip to the United Kingdom for the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham, according to a royal commentator, despite ongoing public division over the Duchess of Sussex in Britain.

The prediction follows Harry and Meghan’s recent family visit to Highgrove House, King Charles III’s private residence in Gloucestershire, where the couple met with the king as part of what has been described as an effort toward reconciliation between Harry and the royal family. The visit came as Harry continues preparing for the next edition of the Invictus Games, the international sporting competition he founded in 2014 for wounded, injured and sick military service members and veterans, which is set to take place in Birmingham from July 10 to 17, 2027, marking the first time the Games have returned to the U.K. since the inaugural 2014 London event.

Jennie Bond, a former BBC royal correspondent and longtime commentator on the royal family, said Meghan remains a deeply polarizing figure in Britain but is unlikely to let that criticism keep her away from future public appearances alongside her husband. “Her critics and her fans are equally vocal and passionate,” Bond said, adding that Meghan is likely aware that a significant portion of the British public blames her, at least in part, for Harry’s estrangement from the rest of the royal family.

Bond said that awareness means Meghan will understand that any public appearance tied either to the Invictus Games or to commemorations marking the 30th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, which also falls in 2027, carries a real risk of renewed public criticism. Even so, Bond suggested Meghan had already signaled her willingness to join Harry at UK events this year before a separate security-related controversy disrupted those plans, and said there is every reason to expect her to attend the Birmingham Games regardless of the backlash she might face.

According to Bond, Meghan’s attendance at the Invictus Games has become something of a fixture for the couple, making her presence at the 2027 edition a near-certainty barring unforeseen circumstances. She noted that Meghan remains well regarded within the broader Invictus community itself, even if her public image in the U.K. more broadly remains contentious. Bond expressed hope that Meghan would be able to attend the Games without facing excessive public criticism, given her standing as Harry’s wife and her personal popularity among Invictus competitors and their families.

Harry has continued to publicly emphasize his commitment to the Birmingham Games as preparations intensify. Following the recent selection of South Korea to host the 2029 Invictus Games in Daejeon, Harry issued a statement reflecting on the broader growth of the Invictus movement since its founding, saying the event has demonstrated the power of sport to support recovery, challenge perceptions of disability, and build a global community rooted in resilience, service and hope. Turning to the 2027 Games specifically, Harry said organizers’ focus has shifted to Birmingham, describing it as the city that helped shape the broader Invictus community.

Speculation over the future of the Birmingham Games flared earlier this year amid reports that the event faced funding uncertainty following the loss of some sponsorship support, including from aerospace giant Boeing. Invictus Games organizers subsequently moved to dispel those concerns, confirming that discussions with Boeing and other partners regarding the Birmingham Games remained active, even as the company has continued its separate support for Invictus editions in Germany and Australia.

The Birmingham Games will be staged at the National Exhibition Centre, with the bid having been backed by the UK government through a funding commitment made via the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Birmingham was selected over Washington, D.C., in a competitive bidding process, with organizers citing the city’s strong ties to the armed forces community, including its Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which specializes in treating military casualties and hosts the Royal College of Defence Medicine.

Harry and Meghan stepped back from their roles as senior working royals in 2020, a decision that followed public statements from the couple describing tensions within the royal family, and the two have since built an independent life based in Montecito, California, with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. Despite that separation from official royal duties, the Invictus Games have remained one of the few consistent threads connecting the couple to public life in the United Kingdom, with Meghan having appeared alongside Harry at previous editions of the Games in cities including Sydney, Düsseldorf and Vancouver-Whistler.

With the 2027 Invictus Games now over a year away, further details on Meghan’s planned involvement, along with broader questions about the extent of any continued reconciliation between Harry and the rest of the royal family, are expected to become clearer as preparations for the Birmingham event continue. Neither Buckingham Palace nor representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have issued formal public comment on Meghan’s specific plans to attend the 2027 Games.

Business activity rose in 10 of the UK’s 12 nations and regions in July, up from just three in June, according to the latest NatWest UK Regional Growth Tracker.

The survey, compiled by S&P Global from responses to its UK PMI surveys, attributed the improvement to reduced cost pressures and a general pick-up in business confidence at the start of the third quarter.

The Tracker’s headline measure is the Business Activity Index, where any reading above 50.0 signals growth and higher readings indicate faster expansion.

London topped the rankings in July with a reading of 55.3, ahead of the South East on 53.2 and Northern Ireland on 51.4. Scotland, at 47.3, and Yorkshire & Humber, at 49.1, were the only areas to record decreases in output.

The July figures mark a step change from June, when growth was confined to London (54.1), the South East (50.9) and the North East (50.8), and Northern Ireland posted the sharpest fall in output at 43.9.

Cost pressures eased in all 12 areas in July, the survey found, leading to generally slower rises in prices charged for goods and services. Growth expectations for the year ahead also recovered further across most parts of the UK.

Sebastian Burnside, NatWest chief economist, said: “Most areas of the UK enjoyed a positive start to the third quarter, seeing output levels rise as price pressures eased further from their recent highs.

“Business activity growth widened to encompass all but two of the 12 UK nations and regions monitored in July, supported in most cases by improved trends in underlying demand. Moreover, firms in most areas were increasingly upbeat about the outlook, raising the prospect of stronger growth in the second half of the year.

“Rates of increase in business costs fell sharply across the board, which reduces the upside risks to headline inflation and thereby the chances of an increase in interest rates in the coming months.

“Adding to the positive news, there were further signs that labour market conditions are beginning to stabilise, with July seeing workforce numbers fall at slower rates in most cases and even rise in some parts.”

The Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75 per cent at its meeting on 30 July, with the Monetary Policy Committee’s next decision due on 17 September. Expectations for rate cuts this year have shifted repeatedly as energy prices and inflation forecasts moved in response to the Middle East conflict.

The Tracker’s findings on sentiment follow separate survey data showing UK business confidence at a nine-month high as trade tensions eased.

On the labour market, the survey’s signal of slower falls in workforce numbers comes after recruitment industry data pointed to a slowing decline in UK job vacancies, led by growth in the services sector.

The NatWest UK Regional Growth Tracker covers Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and nine English regions. Survey responses are collected in the second half of each month and indicate the direction of change compared with the previous month.

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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Prince William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, reportedly felt blindsided and upset after King Charles III held a private meeting with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last month, according to a royal commentator, though neither Buckingham Palace nor Kensington Palace has publicly confirmed the reported reaction.

The claims stem from a report by Emily Andrews, a British royal journalist writing for Woman & Home magazine, who said she understood the Waleses’ reaction to the meeting to be one of shock and hurt. “Betrayed and possibly even humiliated,” Andrews wrote of what she described as William and Catherine’s response to the King’s outreach toward the Sussexes.

According to Andrews’ reporting, Harry and Meghan met privately with King Charles and Queen Camilla at Highgrove House, the King’s private residence in Gloucestershire, during a family trip to the United Kingdom and Portugal last month. The couple’s two children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, were also present for the reunion, marking a rare instance of the full Sussex family appearing together with senior royals since Harry and Meghan stepped back from official duties in 2020.

Andrews reported that William and Catherine were informed of the planned meeting only shortly before it took place, and that Queen Camilla herself was said to have learned of the details on a similarly short timeline. She also reported that the King had reportedly offered Buckingham Palace as a place for the Sussexes to stay during a future UK visit, a detail Andrews suggested added to the sense of surprise felt by the Prince and Princess of Wales. None of these specific details have been confirmed on the record by representatives for the King, the Wales family or the Sussexes.

The reported fallout has since been described in some coverage as having prompted what were characterized as “crisis talks” between William, Catherine and the King, reflecting what Andrews and others have portrayed as a continued rift over how the family should handle its relationship with Harry and Meghan. Separate reporting citing unnamed palace insiders has claimed William and Catherine believe they should maintain minimal further involvement with the Sussexes and had encouraged Charles to keep his distance from the couple, though there has been no on-the-record confirmation of that specific position from William, Catherine or their representatives.

Holly Baird, a crisis management expert with the firm MediaSourcePR, cautioned against reading too literally into terms like “crisis talks” when they appear in royal coverage. Baird said such language can simply indicate that “an institution recognizes a narrative has reached the point where it requires active management,” rather than necessarily implying panic or dramatic internal conflict. She said royal-related crisis discussions typically focus on more practical questions, including messaging strategy, the timing of public appearances, and whether to respond directly to a story or allow it to pass without comment.

Baird also pushed back on the framing of the reported meeting as a clear-cut loss for William and Catherine. She argued that treating any reconciliation between Charles and the Sussexes as inherently damaging to the Wales family’s position reflects a particular narrative choice rather than an inevitable read on the situation, noting that a less confrontational storyline centered on family reconciliation could ultimately serve the broader royal family’s public image. She said unresolved family tension tends to create what she called “an evergreen narrative” that continues generating media coverage regardless of how the underlying relationships actually evolve.

The reported meeting adds to years of public estrangement between the Sussexes and other senior royals, a rift that has played out extensively across television interviews, the couple’s Netflix documentary series, and Harry’s 2023 memoir, “Spare,” all of which detailed the couple’s account of tensions within the institution before their departure from royal duties. That history has left international media coverage highly attentive to any sign of a shift in the relationship between Charles and his younger son, with commentators noting that any apparent warming between the King and the Sussexes tends to immediately raise questions about where that leaves William’s position within the family dynamic.

Despite the volume of coverage surrounding the reported meeting, the underlying claims remain rooted in commentary from royal journalists citing unnamed sources rather than statements from the individuals involved. Neither William, Catherine, King Charles, Queen Camilla nor representatives for Harry and Meghan have issued on-the-record confirmation of the specific reactions attributed to the Wales family, and the full scope and substance of any internal palace discussions remain unclear from publicly available reporting.

Baird noted that managing a genuine shift toward reconciliation, if one is indeed underway, would likely require all parties to resist turning what was reportedly a private family meeting into a public competition played out through dueling media narratives. Whether the Highgrove House meeting ultimately represents a meaningful step toward reconciliation between Charles and the Sussexes, or simply another chapter in an ongoing and highly publicized family rift, remains something that cannot be established definitively based on the reporting available so far.

For now, claims describing William and Catherine’s reaction as one of betrayal or humiliation, along with reports of internal “crisis talks,” should be understood as accounts attributed to unnamed sources and royal commentators rather than confirmed statements from the royal family itself.