InMarketing Today

Revolut founder Nik Storonsky has confirmed for the first time that Europe's biggest fintech is exploring a dual listing on the London Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, telling French newspaper Les Echos that any listing needs to be anchored in the US because it offers “a gigantic market with a huge number of buyers who will compete fiercely for our shares.” Revolut was recently valued at $115bn in a private secondary share sale — enough to make it worth more than FTSE stalwarts including Barclays, BP and GSK.

Storonsky isn't hedging his positioning. He has spent four years publicly needling the London Stock Exchange over stamp duty and liquidity, and this is simply the next instalment — delivered with a specific comparison rather than a vague preference. That's the model: when explaining a decision that will disappoint part of your audience, in this case British ministers and UK investors, naming the actual mechanism (a 0.5% stamp duty, “a small market with few buyers”) reads as considered rather than dismissive.

If your organisation is about to explain an unpopular structural decision — relocating, restructuring, dropping a product — resist the urge to soften it with generic reassurance. Name the specific factor driving it. A reader can disagree with a number; they will always distrust an unexplained feeling.

FNZ chief executive Blythe Masters has stepped down after just over two years in the role, with executive group chair Stephen Welch assuming interim CEO responsibilities while the board runs a search for a permanent replacement. FNZ said Masters, who joined in August 2024, will stay on in an advisory capacity for six months, and pointed to assets on its wealth management platform now exceeding $2.5tn.

The announcement leans almost entirely on comfort words: “substantial progress”, “strong business”, “clear strategy”, “next chapter”. None of it explains why the change is happening now, mid-transformation, with a caretaker rather than a named successor. For a platform business whose entire pitch to clients and shareholders is operational stability, an unexplained leadership change is the one thing that tests that pitch directly.

When you can't yet say why someone left, say clearly what happens next: who owns which decision, on what timeline, and how clients will be told if anything changes for them operationally. A named interim with a defined remit closes more of the credibility gap than another paragraph of reassurance.

OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT Ads into 31 European markets, with Volkswagen and Vodafone confirmed as the first brands testing the format via ad-tech partner Adform, using the same infrastructure they already run for display and social. OpenAI says ads will appear only for users on the free and lower-cost Go plans, with Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscribers staying ad-free, and has stated that “ads in ChatGPT are always clearly labelled and separate from ChatGPT's answers” and never influence them.

The entire commercial case for advertising inside a conversational AI rests on a promise most advertising doesn't have to make: that the ad cannot be mistaken for the answer. Vodafone's own framing of its test — measuring “clicks or conversions” against existing campaign measurement, not whether the format works at all — is a tell. Brands are treating trust in the format as unproven, which is the correct instinct when you're advertising inside a tool people use to get an honest answer.

Before running your own test in a channel built on this kind of promise, define what would make you pull out — a labelling complaint, a measurement discrepancy, a drop in the tool's perceived neutrality — before the first campaign goes live, not after.