Post Office has attributed the record amount for personal cash withdrawals at its 11,500 branches to more staycations in the U.K. and people using cash to manage their budgets.
Gannet77 | Getty Images
LONDON — Fujitsu‘s role in the U.K. Post Office scandal, dubbed the “most widespread miscarriage of justice” in British history, has analysts wary of what the fallout could look like for the Japanese IT giant.
Between 1999 and 2015, a fault with the company’s Horizon computer software used by the Post Office, a state-owned private company employing thousands of people across the country, resulted in more than 700 sub-postmasters being subjected to false prosecutions. Thousands more were driven to destitution, illness and in several cases, suicide.
The U.K.’s High Court ruled in 2019 that the Horizon software was at fault for the misreported losses at Post Office branches throughout the country, and a public inquiry was ordered by the government to take place in the following year.
However, the scandal has been re-ignited following the airing of a TV docudrama earlier this month, which showed that despite the acknowledgment, the sub-postmasters had never received adequate compensation for the financial and emotional damage inflicted.
The British government has introduced legislation to exonerate all convicted sub-postmasters and set aside £1 billion ($1.27 billion) in compensation for the victims, saying it will pursue Fujitsu if an ongoing inquiry finds the company is to blame.
Despite the furor in the U.K., Fujitsu shares are only down around 2% since the turn of the year, having suffered an initial drop after the company’s European co-CEO Paul Patterson said compensating Post Office victims was a “moral obligation,” before recovering over the past week.
Former subpostmasters celebrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, on April 23, 2021, following a court ruling clearing subpostmasters of convictions for theft and false accounting. – Dozens of former subpostmasters, who were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system, have finally had their names cleared by the Court of Appeal. (Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Tolga Akmen | Afp | Getty Images
Patterson later told U.K. lawmakers at the Business and Trade select committee on Friday that the company had “clearly let society down” and that there were “bugs errors and defects” with the Horizon software “from the very start.”
In a statement Thursday, Fujitsu said it regards the matter with the “utmost seriousness and offers its deepest apologies to the sub-postmasters and their families.”
“The U.K. statutory public Inquiry, to which our U.K. subsidiary is providing full cooperation, is examining complex events that have unfolded over many years, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to this cooperation,” the company said.
“Based on the findings of the Inquiry, we will also be working with the UK government on the appropriate actions, including contribution to compensation.”
Fallout could have ‘more negative consequences’ for Fujitsu
Tim Morse, founding partner of Asymmetric Advisors, told CNBC last week that while Fujitsu may not be on the hook for the entirety of the £1 billion compensation fund, it will have to shoulder a “reasonable financial burden,” and the company becoming persona non grata for future government contracts is “certainly a possibility.”
A spokesperson for Fujitsu wasn’t immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
“The name of Fujitsu has been tainted, but don’t forget that Fujitsu — and previously to Fujitsu, ICL, which was very close to the U.K. government and was bought by Fujitsu in the early nineties — they’re very well embedded in U.K. government IT contracts, so actually replacing Fujitsu could be very expensive,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
He suggested the greater fear is that there could be further frailties identified in government-contracted programs, with issues already identified in Japan relating to ATM systems and national ID cards, along with an outage on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2020.
Mio Kato, founder of LightStream Research, told CNBC last week that he was surprised by the relatively “tepid” reaction in the stock price so far, because although the compensation payment may not be the “end of the world” for a company of Fujitsu’s size, the “reputational consequences could be more severe.”
“You do have these little issues cropping up attached to Fujitsu and while it’s impossible to completely iron out all bugs, the frequency is a bit of a concern considering that Fujitsu tends to supply their clients with really mission-critical software and systems,” he said, noting that the company may need to increase spending on quality control.
“So while this event may be quite U.K.-specific, what’s really concerning to us is the length of time over which it persisted, and the fact that even after certain evidence did seem to emerge suggesting that there were problems with their Horizon system, it wasn’t addressed in a timely manner.”
Kato suggested potential Fujitsu clients would have “significant concerns” about this aspect of the allegations.
“While this case hasn’t necessarily attracted massive attention outside of the U.K. yet, as it drags on, this could have more negative consequences for Fujitsu, so I’m still relatively cautious about the short- to medium-term outlook until we see exactly what the total fallout is,” he added.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.