Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK today.
Aberdeen bar owner launches £200,000 crowdfunder
An Aberdeen bar owner has launched a new £200,000 crowdfunding campaign for his cocktail in a can company.
Whitebox Cocktails wants to use the cash to accelerate its global expansion, expand inventory and boost its marketing.
Ben Iravani, owner of city-centre cocktail bar Orchid and 99 Bar and Kitchen, launched Whitebox alongside partners including Alex Lawrence, Pietro Collina, Jack Wareing and Josh Rennie in 2021.
Since launching the crowdfunder on Monday, it has raised nearly £168,000 from 139 investors so far.
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Long-term sick should be forced to seek work, says Labour adviser
The long-term sick must be required to look for jobs to deal with unsustainable welfare costs and reduce the country’s “toxic” reliance on immigration, a government health adviser has urged.
Alan Milburn, a former health secretary, found that seven out of ten of the economically inactive want to work but few have any help or requirement to do so, and said there should be fundamental reform of a “crazy” system.
In a report he presented alongside Liz Kendall, the work and pension secretary, he said that dealing with record numbers outside the workforce was the “only route to higher levels of economic growth”.
While praising Milburn’s “brilliant report”, she stopped short of backing his plan to impose conditions on sickness benefits, saying the priority was better health and employment services.
Alphabet profits jumps 29% as cloud computing sales boom
Growing cloud computing sales and search engine advertising have powered a rise in second quarter profit at Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Alphabet beat market expectations as it reported a 14% in revenue to $84.7billion, lifting net income, or profit, by 29% to $23.6billion.
The search giant’s results, the first among the big American technology companies to report earnings this season, revealed a boost in sales for services powered by artificial intelligence.
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Almost half of new businesses started by women for first time
Women in Scotland are now starting new businesses at almost the same rate as men, researchers have found.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) said a record 8.6 per cent of working-age women were setting up or already running an early-stage business last year.
That was slightly lower than men, at 9.8 per cent, although the report said the difference is no longer “statistically significant”.
Scotland is said to be one of the best performing nations globally under that measure.
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Tesla profits down by almost half amid slump in electric car sales
Tesla’s second-quarter profit fell 45% compared with a year ago as global electric vehicle sales continued to tumble despite price cuts and low-interest financing.
The Texas-based company said on Tuesday that net income between April and the end of June was $1.48billion compared with $2.7billion in the same period a year ago, making it the second-straight quarterly profit decline.
The electric carmaker said profit was partly lower due to an “increase in operating expenses largely driven by AI projects” and “restructuring charges”.
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