Share Sounds

Women make up nearly half of the UK workforce, but this number drops to just a fifth when it comes to the technology sector. The Government's recent green paper on industrial strategy showed that more technical education is needed to boost diversity in the sector. Last week, financial advisory firm KPMG launched IT's Her Future, a campaign aimed at encouraging more women to consider a career in technology. Share Radio's Sara Macham spoke to Nigel Slater, KPMG's head of management consultancy.

Next has reported its first fall in profits in eight years, although the shares are up 5% this lunchtime. Share Radio's Ed Bowsher spoke to Neil Wilson, Senior Market Analyst at ETX Capital to find out more.

Salaries and investment into UK companies are higher than ever as digital continues to fuel the UK economy. The UK technology industry continues to be extremely lucrative for its workers, according to the Tech Nation 2017 report from Tech City UK. To find out more Sue was joined by tech journalist and consultant Chris Green.

Wednesday's attack in Westminster was an "attack on democracy", according to the former chairman of Parliament's security and intelligence committee. It's been confirmed that the police has made seven arrests throughout the night in London, Birmingham and elsewhere. Share Radio's Ed Bowsher was joined on the line by Emily Winterbotham, Senior Research Fellow at RUSI - the Royal United Services Institute.

Sue Dougan was joined by Hannah Maundrell, Editor in Chief at Money.co.uk this morning. Today on the agenda, they discussed how the state pension age may be increased to 68 by 2039. Plus they look into why men spend more money on Mother's Day than they do on their lovers on Valentine's Day. All these stories and more on The News Review.

Sue Dougan was joined by Josh Lowe from Newsweek to look at some of the biggest political stories of the day. And a sad day for London and the UK yesterday. The number who died has been revised down by police to four this morning. Overnight, police have arrested seven people. Clearly they think the attacker wasn't acting alone? And the House of Commons will return as normal today. Plus the Scottish Parliament debate on whether to seek a second independence referendum is to resume next Tuesday.

Nigel Cassidy joined Sue Dougan to discuss the main market headlines of the morning, starting with the terrible news from yesterday. How do these sort of events impact the markets? Plus we've heard company announcements from Next, Ted Baker and IG Group.

While Donald Trump's controversial travel ban continues to be blocked by courts, there's one visa category he might successfully target - the tech industry-favoured H-1-B. The visa, designed for specialist workers, has come under fire for its use by foreign outsourcing firms within the US. But CEO of US-based cyber security firm Vectra Networks, Hitesh Sheth, warns scrapping the whole visa programme could hurt competitiveness in the US. Mr Sheth spoke with Share Radio's Peta Fuller about the issue.

Almost half of young people in the UK think it's harder than ever before to get on the property ladder. A fifth have told a survey by Halifax they'd be prepared to leave the country in order to buy their own home. Just over a quarter of 18 to 34-year-olds think they'll never have their own property, and one in eight reckon they'll be renting forever. So is home-ownership really out of reach for young buyers? Or is this just pessimism from the younger generation? Martin Ellis, Halifax housing economist spoke to Nigel Cassidy to explain the results.

Safestyle UK, the AIM-listed replacement windows and doors business has released their full year results today. We remain concerned with current headwinds across the wider building products sector, including input cost inflation, the UK consumer and the general economic outlook, but believe Safestyle is better placed to deal with these than most and will continue to drive organic growth in FY17. Steve Birmingham, CEO of Safestyle UK joined Nigel Cassidy to discuss how is the company doing.