Edinburgh is a city that rarely slows down, especially during the second half of the year. While August is internationally recognized as the city’s biggest festival month, the celebrations continue well into December with cultural showcases, food events, sporting occasions, and magical Christmas festivities.

Whether you’re travelling with family, friends, colleagues, students, or a tour group, planning transport is just as important as planning your itinerary.

If you’re looking for reliable group transport, Edinburgh Minibus Company offers comfortable and convenient travel solutions for every occasion, ensuring everyone arrives together without the hassle of multiple vehicles or public transport delays.

August – Edinburgh Festival Fringe, International Festival & Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

August transforms Edinburgh into one giant stage.

The city welcomes performers, artists, musicians, comedians, and visitors from across the world, making it one of Europe’s busiest cultural destinations.

Why visit?

• Experience thousands of live comedy performances.
• Enjoy world-class theatre productions.
• Watch spectacular music and dance shows.
• Visit the famous Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle.
• Explore pop-up street performances on the Royal Mile.

With packed streets and limited parking, travelling as a group becomes much easier with Minibus and Coaches.

Popular vehicle options include:

• 9 Seater Minibus
• 16 Seater Minibus
• 19 Seater Minibus
• 24 Seater Minibus
• 35 Seater Coach
• 49 Seater Coach

These options are ideal for school trips, corporate outings, sightseeing groups, weddings, festival visitors, and family holidays.

September – Doors Open Days & Edinburgh Art Festival Highlights

Although the major summer festivals begin winding down, September remains exciting.

Visitors can enjoy:

• Historic buildings normally closed to the public.
• Architecture tours.
• Local heritage events.
• Independent art exhibitions.
• Walking tours across Old Town and New Town.

Hiring Minibus and Coaches allows larger groups to explore multiple attractions in one day without worrying about city parking or train schedules.

October – Scottish International Storytelling Festival

October belongs to storytellers.

This unique festival celebrates Scotland’s rich history through traditional storytelling, music, poetry, and folklore.

Festival highlights include:

• Live storytelling sessions
• Family-friendly performances
• Traditional Scottish music
• Literary discussions
• Interactive workshops

Autumn weather can change quickly, making private group transport far more comfortable than waiting at bus stops in the rain.

November – Edinburgh’s Fire Festival Spirit & Winter Events

As winter approaches, Edinburgh becomes beautifully atmospheric.

November events often include:

• St Andrew’s Day celebrations
• Food festivals
• Craft markets
• Whisky experiences
• Seasonal concerts

Groups travelling together can easily move between venues using comfortable minibuses and coaches instead of coordinating multiple taxis.

December – Edinburgh’s Christmas & Hogmanay Preparations

December is magical.

Princes Street Gardens transforms into a festive wonderland complete with:

• Christmas markets
• Ice skating
• Fairground rides
• Seasonal food stalls
• Live music
• Festive shopping

As the month progresses, excitement builds for Edinburgh’s world-famous Hogmanay celebrations.

Whether attending Christmas parties or festive sightseeing tours, hiring Minibus and Coaches keeps everyone together while avoiding winter driving stress.

Travel Statistics: Who Visits Edinburgh?

Edinburgh continues to attract millions of domestic and international visitors each year. Recent tourism patterns show strong demand from both overseas and UK travellers.

Top international visitor markets include:

• United States
• Germany
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Ireland
• Netherlands
• Canada
• Australia
• China

Popular UK visitor origins include:

• London
• Glasgow
• Manchester
• Birmingham
• Leeds
• Newcastle
• Liverpool
• Bristol
• Sheffield
• Belfast

Edinburgh tourism at a glance

• More than 4 million visitors travel to Edinburgh annually.
• Festival season contributes significantly to local tourism revenue.
• August alone attracts hundreds of thousands of additional visitors.
• Hotel occupancy regularly exceeds 90% during peak festival periods.
• International visitors account for a substantial share of tourism spending.
• Edinburgh Airport serves millions of passengers each year, connecting the city with destinations across Europe, North America, and beyond.

Understanding Edinburgh’s Floating Population

During festival months, Edinburgh’s floating population increases dramatically.

A floating population refers to people temporarily staying in the city, including:

• Tourists
• Festival performers
• Students
• Business delegates
• Event staff
• International media
• Conference attendees

The city’s resident population is approximately half a million, yet during major festivals the number of people in the city on any given day can increase significantly, creating congestion on roads, public transport, restaurants, and accommodation.

This is another reason why pre-booked Minibus and Coaches provide a smoother travel experience.

Why Hire a Minibus or Coach?

Travelling as a group should be enjoyable—not an exercise in counting cars at every traffic light.

Benefits include:

• Everyone travels together.
• Lower travel costs when shared.
• No parking worries.
• Professional drivers familiar with Edinburgh roads.
• Comfortable seating with luggage space.
• Ideal for airport transfers, festivals, sporting events, weddings, schools, universities, and corporate travel.
• Flexible pick-up and drop-off locations.
• Reduced environmental impact compared with several individual cars.

Vehicle choices include:

• 9 Seater Minibus
• 16 Seater Minibus
• 19 Seater Minibus
• 24 Seater Minibus
• 35 Seater Coach
• 49 Seater Coach

Whether your group is small or large, there’s a vehicle size suited to your travel plans.

Complete Your Festival Journey

If your itinerary includes airport pickups before heading to Edinburgh—or onward travel after your Scottish adventure—consider Coach & Minibus Hire for Airport Transfers From To Bristol for reliable airport transport connections.

From the excitement of August’s world-famous performances to the festive sparkle of December’s Christmas markets, Edinburgh offers unforgettable experiences throughout the latter half of the year. With comfortable Minibus and Coaches, your group can focus on making memories instead of worrying about traffic, parking, or missed connections. After all, the only thing you should be chasing in Edinburgh is the next festival—not the last train home!

As Greater Manchester channels millions into upgrading its public buildings, SME owners and commercial landlords face a quieter version of the same question on every worn shopfront and faded window frame: is it actually failing, or does it just look that way?

For many businesses across the region, that question ends up in front of Paint While U Wait, widely regarded as the best uPVC window spraying company in Manchester and top rated for window, door and shopfront refinishing work.

Manchester’s buildings are entering an upgrade cycle

Across Greater Manchester, a large-scale refurbishment drive is under way. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has opened a £28 million Public Building Retrofit Fund, running between 2025 and 2028, to help schools, town halls and NHS estates cut emissions through measures such as insulation, low-carbon heating and solar panels, as part of the region’s ambition to reach carbon neutrality by 2038. That programme is squarely about energy performance. But it puts a related, more everyday question on the agenda for smaller commercial operators too: when a building is due an upgrade, which elements should be retained and refreshed, which need functional work, and which have genuinely reached the end of the road?

The commercial pressure to improve existing premises

For SMEs, the condition of their premises isn’t only a maintenance question, it’s a commercial one. A tired shopfront shapes first impressions; a dated office fit-out can make it harder to retain staff or attract tenants at renewal. Landlords feel their own version of this pressure. Manchester’s commercial property market has recently offered a high-profile example of the wider “flight to quality”: Grosvenor’s £40 million repositioning of The Hive in the Northern Quarter, opening later this year with operator x+why, is repurposing elements of the building’s previous fit-out rather than stripping everything back. Few SMEs spend on that scale, but the underlying logic, assess before you replace, applies just as much to a modest shop unit as to a landmark office scheme.

Appearance problems are not always performance problems

The trouble is that appearance and performance are easy to confuse. A window frame faded by the sun, a shutter with a scuffed or dated colour scheme, or cladding that no longer matches a refreshed brand can look like it needs pulling out and replacing. Often, though, the underlying component is still structurally sound and doing its job perfectly well. The issues that genuinely point towards repair or replacement are different in kind: failed glazing units, persistent water ingress, warped frames, significant corrosion, structural movement, or windows and doors that no longer open, close or lock properly. The decision should rest on condition, safety and expected remaining life, not on how dated something looks.

A practical retain, repair or replace framework

A simple framework can help SMEs work through the options methodically:

• Retain and refinish: where a component is structurally sound, safe and working properly, but showing its age cosmetically.
• Repair, then refinish: where a minor fault can be fixed economically and a competent contractor confirms the substrate is suitable for refinishing afterwards.
• Upgrade: where the real issue is energy efficiency, security, glazing performance or accessibility. Refinishing cannot substitute for this kind of work.
• Replace: where a component has reached the end of its useful life, where repair would be unreliable or uneconomical, or where there’s structural damage, recurring water ingress, or a safety or regulatory requirement that can’t otherwise be met.

In every case, the starting point should be a proper inspection and a comparison of clearly scoped, like-for-like quotations, rather than a decision made on appearance alone.

What refurbishment can mean for an SME

Where refurbishment is a genuine option, it can offer a lower initial outlay than full replacement, a shorter project timeline, and less disruption to trading, since work can sometimes be scheduled outside opening hours, which matters for a shop, café or office that needs to stay open. It can also mean retaining components that still have useful life left, or coordinating colours with a new brand or incoming tenant. None of this applies universally: whether it stacks up commercially depends on the condition of what’s already there, and on a genuine, like-for-like comparison with the cost of full replacement.

The resource-efficiency argument

There’s a resource case here too, though a more modest one than is sometimes claimed. Construction, demolition and excavation account for around three-fifths of the UK’s material use and waste generation, and England alone generated 63 million tonnes of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste in 2022, of which the large majority, 59.4 million tonnes, was recorded as recovered rather than sent to landfill. The UK Green Building Council argues that refurbishing buildings and retaining existing components, rather than demolishing and rebuilding, has a role to play in reducing demand for newly manufactured materials. That’s a reasonable case for waste prevention. It isn’t the same as a specific carbon-saving claim for any one job, which would need its own independent assessment.

An outside view: assessing the surface before the colour

Manchester-based spray-finishing specialist Paint While U Wait, known as the best for window spraying in Manchester and top rated for uPVC door and shopfront work, works with commercial and domestic clients on surfaces including uPVC window and door frames, shopfronts, roller shutters and cladding. Its experience reinforces the point that the decision should start with the underlying component, not the colour chart. A spokesperson for the company said (name to be confirmed before publication):

“The first question should not be which colour a client wants. It should be whether the existing surface is sound and suitable for refinishing. Spraying can be a practical option where the underlying component still has useful life, but it should never be presented as a substitute for glazing, structural or performance work that the property genuinely needs.”

That distinction between cosmetic refinishing and necessary functional work is exactly what SMEs need to establish before committing to any single option, and it’s part of why Paint While U Wait has built a reputation as the best at balancing cosmetic refinishing against genuine functional need.

How one Manchester business assessed refurbishment against replacement

A Manchester retail unit with weathered but structurally sound window frames, and a shopfront colour scheme that no longer matched the brand, faced a choice between full replacement and professional refinishing. Because the frames were still sealing and operating correctly, the business brought in Paint While U Wait, booking the company widely known as Manchester’s top rated uPVC spraying specialist, to update its appearance and branding while remaining open throughout, deferring a larger capital replacement decision to a point when the frames’ condition genuinely warrants it.

Questions SMEs should ask before commissioning work

1. Is the underlying component structurally and functionally sound?
2. Does it need cosmetic work, functional repair, or full replacement?
3. What surface preparation is included in the quotation?
4. What coating or repair system will be used?
5. Is the contractor insured and experienced with that specific substrate?
6. What is excluded from the price?
7. Is there a written warranty?
8. How will access, masking, ventilation and disruption to trading be managed?
9. Can the contractor provide comparable commercial references?
10. What maintenance will the finished work need afterwards?

Conclusion: inspect first, replace only when justified

For SME owners, improving commercial premises doesn’t have to start with a replacement order. A condition-led assessment can establish which elements are still serviceable, which need functional upgrades, and which have genuinely reached the end of their useful life. Refinishing, the kind of work firms like Paint While U Wait, best known as Manchester’s best uPVC window spraying company, carry out across the region, won’t be the right answer in every case. But where an existing component remains sound, it deserves a place in the conversation alongside repair and replacement, before any capital is committed.

Steve Hampshire, head of coffee, and Joe Cross, head of operations, take a majority stake in the established firm

Coffee importer, roaster and distributor Cafeology has undergone a management buyout giving senior managers a majority stake in the firm.

The specialist in sustainable and fair trade coffee said the deal secures its long-term future and enables founders , Andy McClatchey and Bryan Unkles, along with shareholder Toni Unkles to realise value in the business. Partial funding for the move came from the South Yorkshire Debt Fund, managed by FW Capital on behalf of South Yorkshire Pensions Authority.

The MBO team is led by Steve Hampshire, head of coffee, and Joe Cross, head of operations; two people said to have been central to Cafeology’s growth and reputation. The founding shareholders will remain involved over the medium term.

Cafeology was set up more than two decades ago, and has become known as a pioneer of fairtrade, ethical and sustainable sourcing. Its customer base includes universities, major sports venues, independent coffee retailers, cafes and restaurants in the UK.

Hart Shaw Corporate Finance advised the shareholders of Cafeology Limited on the sale.

Bryan Unkles, founder Cafeology said: “The partial MBO allows us to continue with the ethical culture created across the business since our formation in 2003 guaranteeing a clear vision for the future. It remained integral that we continue to operate from our home in Yorkshire safeguarding the future of all the amazing people behind the company along with our external stakeholders.

“This exciting new chapter will not only underpin Cafeology’s future as an independently owner operated UK business but also enables sustainable growth with a great involvement of the people who have assisted myself, Andy and Toni over many years. Our journey as a best in class coffee company is far from over and appointing both Steve and Joe to the board will expand our creative thinking further as we continue to build on the solid foundations created over the last 23 years.”

Steve Hampshire, sales director, Cafeology said: “After thirteen fantastic years with Cafeology, I am incredibly proud and excited to have become a Director and shareholder. I’m truly grateful for the opportunities and support I’ve received throughout my journey, and I look forward to contributing to the continued success and future growth of the company.”

Alex Gent, senior investment executive at FW Capital added: “Businesses like Cafeology are a fantastic example of the strength in South Yorkshire. We’re excited to back a highly experienced and ambitious management team and look forward to supporting Steve and Joe’s growth journey moving forward. The South Yorkshire Debt Fund has been designed to improve access to finance and fuel economic growth across the region. This is exactly what the team at Cafeology needed and it is helping them to realise their ambitions and drive forward business success. It was also great to work with the team at Hart Shaw Corporate Finance again.”

Patrick Abel, corporate finance partner at Hart Shaw Corporate Finance said: “We have been delighted to advise Andy, Toni and Bryan on this transaction. It is particularly gratifying given my long-standing relationship with Bryan, dating back to the very early days of the business in 2001. To have been entrusted with guiding the Company through this significant transition is something we are very proud of. We wish Steve and Joe every success as they build on the outstanding foundation Cafeology represents today.”

Andrew Stone, assistant director of Investment Strategy at South Yorkshire Pensions Authority South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, said: “The SYPA team is delighted to be able to support local businesses like Cafeology whilst getting the returns we need to pay our pensioners. We look forward to hearing about the company’s future developments and drinking its coffee.”

Taylor Emmet were legal advisers to the sellers and Dawson Radford were legal advisers to the MBO team.

eBay Inc. on Tuesday agreed to pay roughly $50 million to a Massachusetts couple after former employees were accused of terrorizing the pair of bloggers — sending packages containing live cockroaches and spiders, a preserved fetal pig, a funeral wreath, a bloody pig Halloween mask and a book about surviving the death of a spouse.

According to a 2021 lawsuit, the deliveries were part of a 2019 harassment campaign targeting David and Ina Steiner, who cover the e-commerce industry through their newsletter. 

The lawsuit alleged the employees became angered by the Steiners’ reporting and conspired to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.” The couple said they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats and in-person surveillance.

“I could not conceive that a company I had been covering for the past two decades had tried to terrorize us into stopping our reporting,” Ina Steiner said, according to The Associated Press.

EBAY TO PAY $3M AFTER TARGETING MASSACHUSETTS COUPLE WITH CYBERSTALKING CAMPAIGN

The lawsuit named former CEO Devin Wenig, former Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer and former Senior Vice President Wendy Jones, all of whom have since left the company but were not criminally charged. In 2020, federal prosecutors also charged six other former eBay employees and one contractor in connection with the scheme, all of whom ultimately pleaded guilty to their roles. 

The campaign reportedly lasted several weeks, beginning with threatening direct messages on social media before escalating into anonymous deliveries. 

According to the lawsuit, employees sent pornographic magazines addressed to David Steiner to a neighbor’s home in an attempt to defame the couple within their community. They also tried to plant a GPS tracking device on the couple’s vehicle, the suit said.

Ina Steiner said she did not initially know who was behind the harassment or why they had been targeted.  

GAMESTOP TARGETS EBAY IN $56B TAKEOVER BID, SEES PATH TO RIVAL AMAZON

Under the settlement, the Steiners will receive $48.7 million in compensation, including about $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former CEO Wenig, $500,000 from former executive Jones and $50,000 from former executive Wymer. 

The company will also fund $6 million in charitable donations, while Wenig will contribute an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in Ina Steiner’s name.

The Steiners said they also prioritized a settlement with no confidentiality provision, allowing them to discuss the case publicly. 

“David and I were on the same page that this settlement should and must be made public — as victims who want to prevent something like this from ever happening to anyone else, and as reporters who believe in transparency,” Ina Steiner told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “We hope that this case will serve as a deterrent.”

EBAY CUTS 800 JOBS ACROSS COMPANY OPERATIONS JUST DAYS AFTER DROPPING $1.2B ON TRENDY GEN Z FASHION APP

Tuesday’s agreement follows a tentative settlement reached in February that ultimately fell apart, sending the case toward trial, according to The Associated Press. 

eBay, which previously apologized when the lawsuit was filed in 2021, again acknowledged “the unprofessional tone in internal communications” by former executives tied to the case. 

“What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened,” the company said in a statement Tuesday. “We condemn, in the strongest terms possible, the employees who perpetrated and pled guilty to criminal charges for the misconduct against Ina and David Steiner.”

“We continue to extend our deepest apologies to the Steiners. This agreement is consistent with our commitment to fairly compensate the Steiners and fulfills our efforts to make things right.”

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
EBAY	EBAY INC.	115.30	-2.14	-1.82%

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eBay added that it has since strengthened its policies, procedures and ethics training following the alleged misconduct. 

“The 2019 conduct is not representative of eBay’s culture or thousands of employees around the world today,” the company said. “Since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company and eBay has strengthened its policies, procedures, controls and training consistent with the company’s ongoing commitment to uphold high standards of conduct and ethics.”

In 2024, eBay also agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty after federal prosecutors charged the company in connection with the harassment campaign. 

The Steiners’ attorneys did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

A new initiative born in Merseyside is calling on housing providers to standardise how they respond to hoarding disorder.

Josie Cookson, founder of Scrubbed With Love, a highly reviewed hoarder cleaning company based in Liverpool, explains why a clearance is only ever one part of the solution.

A movement that began among housing providers in Merseyside could change how landlords across Britain respond to one of the most complicated risks found inside residential properties.

Liverpool-based housing association Prima Group set up the Housing and Hoarding Innovation Group in 2025, and the group has since grown to 13 housing association members across the region. Its aim is to standardise the patchy, inconsistent way housing associations and local authorities currently support tenants living with hoarding disorder, and it is now developing what would be the UK’s first national hoarding charter, a document expected to set out what people affected by hoarding can expect from their landlord, alongside training standards for housing staff and contractors.

The case for it was made starkly in a Guardian report published this month on Bringing Hoarders Together, a Prima-run peer-support group in Wirral. Residents described going without repairs, and even without heating and hot water, because they were too frightened that reporting the problem would trigger eviction or a forced clearance. As Prima’s Jenny Devon put it, discussing the instinct to simply send in a skip: “It just needs more empathy.”

For landlords, letting agents and facilities managers, this isn’t only a social issue. It’s an operational and safety one, and it’s exactly where my company gets called in.

Hoarding disorder is not untidiness

Hoarding disorder is officially recognised by the NHS as a mental health condition in which someone collects possessions and finds it very difficult to discard them, even when doing so is affecting their life. Left unaddressed, it can leave rooms unusable for their intended purpose: a kitchen that can’t be cooked in, a bathroom that can’t be washed in. Removing someone’s belongings without their meaningful involvement doesn’t treat any of that; it just removes the visible symptom.

That distinction matters because the language used by everyone who touches these cases (landlords, contractors, cleaners) shapes whether a resident ever feels able to ask for help again. “Hoarder” carries a stigma. “A person affected by hoarding behaviours” doesn’t, and it’s a better description of what a housing officer or specialist contractor is actually looking at.

The hidden risk for property professionals

Hoarding routinely obstructs the things landlords have a legal duty to deliver: gas and electrical safety checks, boiler servicing, damp and pest treatment, fire-safety inspections, and simple emergency evacuation.

The fire risk in particular is significant. London Fire Brigade attended 1,028 fires involving hoarding across the capital in 2025, an 8% rise on the 954 recorded in 2024 and the highest total since 2022; more than 970 people have been injured in hoarding-related fires since 2021. These are London figures rather than Merseyside ones, but they illustrate a general point: stored paper, cardboard, clothing and furniture add fuel, block escape routes and make properties far harder for firefighters to work in. Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service offers residents a free Home Fire Safety Check covering exactly this kind of risk.

In the most serious cases, this tips into safeguarding territory. Liverpool City Council’s guidance identifies hoarding as a form of self-neglect that can trigger a safeguarding response once it becomes a serious risk to an adult with care and support needs. Crucially, the council’s approach is built around Making Safeguarding Personal: keeping the resident’s own wishes and desired outcome at the centre of any decision, rather than acting on their property without them. Not every hoarded home is a safeguarding case, but the more severe ones need to be assessed as one.

Why “send in a skip” doesn’t work

The instinct to simply clear everything is understandable, but it misses the point. Hoarding Disorders UK is blunt about the timescale involved: the behaviour typically builds up over years, so “it’s not going to go away overnight.” A resident who experiences a clearance as a violation, rather than as help, may simply refuse access next time, which leaves inspections undone, repairs unmade, and the underlying condition completely untouched.

That doesn’t mean urgent action is never justified. Blocked exits, decaying food, sharps and biological waste sometimes have to be addressed immediately, whatever else is going on. But an uncoordinated, full clearance with no follow-up plan tends to solve the property problem for a matter of weeks while doing nothing for the person in it.

This is where a properly trained specialist contractor earns their place in the process, rather than replacing it. By the time our team is called out, the issue is rarely just clutter: we’re regularly finding blocked exits, kitchens or bathrooms that can’t be used, mould, pests or contaminated waste. Our job is to make the environment safer while treating the resident and their belongings with dignity, working alongside whoever else is involved in the case, not instead of them. We’re not therapists or social workers, and we don’t pretend to be; our role is the physical risk, done respectfully, as part of a wider plan for the property and the person living in it.

Liverpool is already showing what that wider plan can look like. Alongside the hoarding pledge, Prima Group and Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust have launched Healthy@Home, a pilot connecting housing data with health and wellbeing support so that changes to someone’s home can be linked back to their health outcomes. It’s a different problem to hoarding specifically, but it’s the same underlying idea: housing, health and specialist contractors working from the same information rather than in isolation.

A practical starting point for landlords

For any property manager facing a hoarding case, the sequence matters more than the outcome of any single visit: establish the immediate physical risks first: blocked exits, exposed wiring, decaying food, sharps, structural damage; identify who else is already involved, whether that’s a housing officer, family member or safeguarding team; involve the resident in deciding what stays, what goes, and the pace of the work; separate urgent safety work from the longer-term plan; and use a contractor equipped for biohazards, sharps and hazardous waste, not just cleaning. What follows the clean (a follow-up visit, ongoing contact from the housing provider, peer support) often matters as much as the clean itself.

Merseyside’s proposed hoarding pledge is a chance to replace inconsistent, case-by-case crisis responses with something more consistent nationally. Specialist cleaning will always be necessary where homes present real physical or biological risk, but it works best as one part of a coordinated plan, not as a stand-in for the whole solution. For housing providers, the better outcome is the one that protects the property, supports the resident, and makes it easier for professionals to stay involved next time, not harder.

Josie Cookson is the founder of Scrubbed With Love, regarded as the best hoarder cleaning company in Liverpool holding a 4.9/5 rating from 69 Google reviews, alongside a 4.6/5 ThreeBestRated score and a 100% recommendation rate on Facebook. Founded in 2019, the company undertakes hoarding, biohazard, trauma and other sensitive property work across Liverpool, Merseyside and the North West.

The Fed’s widely expected decision to leave the benchmark interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range drew dissents from three of the 12 members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee ‌who “preferred” a quarter-percentage-point ⁠hike at this ⁠meeting.

The benchmark S&P 500 hit its lowest level in a month, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down about 9% from its June record high.

Investors had mostly expected the Fed to keep rates unchanged. Inflation has been running above the central bank’s target for more than five years, and up until last month it was accelerating as the war in the Middle East pushed up global fuel and food prices.

“The Fed held pat, as expected. The bigger question now though becomes, how much pressure will they have to hike in September? Inflation is running hot and with surging crude oil, the market ⁠expects the ‌next hike to indeed be in September,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group.

Microsoft and Meta Platforms are set to report quarterly results after the bell. Their shares are down in 2026 ⁠as investors question the sustainability of their AI spending boom. Investors worry that major U.S. companies are deepening a web of AI-linked investments and continuing to funnel billions into the emerging technology at the expense of free cash flow. Meanwhile, competition from China has been heating up, both in the race to develop advanced chips and as Chinese firms roll out cheaper AI models.
Speaking to reporters, Fed chief Kevin Warsh said spending on AI was laying the groundwork for future growth.
AI-related chipmakers added to recent losses after a sixfold jump in SK Hynix’s quarterly profit fell short of lofty investor expectations. The South Korean company’s shares fell 10%.

AI infrastructure company ‌Vertiv slumped after missing quarterly revenue expectations.

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 111.36 points, or 1.50%, to end at 7,317.42 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 420.02 points, or 1.68%, to 24,460.08. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,129.03 points, or ⁠2.14%, to 51,618.29.

Analysts on average expect S&P 500 aggregate second-quarter earnings to jump 40% from a year ago, with AI-related stocks accounting for much of that growth, according to LSEG I/B/E/S.

Strong earnings forecasts and Wall Street’s recent decline have left the S&P 500 trading at about 20 times expected earnings, just above its 10-year average of 19, according to LSEG data.

Ford Motor gained after raising its annual profit outlook for a second time this year. Lennox tumbled after the HVAC solutions maker lowered its annual profit forecast.

Visa rose after the company beat estimates for quarterly profit, helped by World Cup-fueled travel demand.

Operator

Good day and welcome to the BrightSpire Capital Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to David Palame, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

David Palamé
Executive VP, General Counsel & Secretary

Good morning and welcome to BrightSpire Capital’s Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference call. We will refer to BrightSpire Capital as BrightSpire, BRSP or the company throughout this call.

Speaking on the call today are the company’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Mazzei, President and Chief Operating Officer Andy Witt, and Chief Financial Officer Frank Saracino.

Before I hand the call over, please note that on this call, certain information presented contains forward-looking statements. These statements, which are based on management’s current expectations, are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Potential risks and uncertainties could cause the company’s business and financial results to differ materially. For a discussion of risks that could affect results, please see the risk factors section of our most recent 10-K and other risk factors and forward-looking statements in the company’s current and periodic reports filed with the SEC from time to time.

All information discussed on this call is