The boss of a leading UK cloud provider to the financial services sector has said he finds it ‘bizarre’ that many British banks and fintechs partner with big US cloud companies as he announced another successful year of growth.
Gordon McArthur, CEO of AIM-listed cloud firm Beeks, suggested that it was not in the best interests of banking firms to partner with huge multinational tech businesses who are mulling developing rival services.
He tolt UKTN: “I find it quite bizarre that the banks are willing to give their data and infrastructure to three of the most aggressive commercial organisations in the world [that have] all said they want their own financial services businesses.
“Why would you give access to your core data to a company that has already said that? These big banks and big organisations are blindly helping them.
“These single points of failure are so pervasive and affect huge parts of the world’s digital economy so [it is a] very dangerous game for me.”
Beeks posted a 27% jump in sales to £28.5m for the year to end June, as it won a number of new cloud contracts including with one of the UK’s biggest banks.
Pre-tax profits at the Renfrewshire-based business rose 68% to £3.9m as the company cheered ‘material growth’ in its sales pipeline with a number of ‘major international exchanges’ entering the final stages of contracting and early-stage discussions with others.
Beeks shares rose 6% to 270p. The stock has more than doubled in value since the start of the year.
The remarks come as the UK’s competition regulator is investigating the behaviour of some of the world’s biggest cloud companies amid accusations of anticompetitive practices.
The UK’s competition regulator has pushed back the deadline for its report into the state of the UK’s cloud market as it embarks on a deeper probe into the industry.
The Competition and Markets Authority last month said it had extended the deadline for its probe, from its original date of 4 April 2025 to 4 August 2025.
The CMA said it needed more time to investigate more issues of harm in the market and prepare a deeper analysis of the “complex matters raised,” for which the earlier publication date did not allow enough time.
As part of its submission of evidence to the CMA’s investigation, Google issued a rare rebuke against one of its biggest tech rivals after it accused Microsoft of ‘significantly impeding customer choice’ in the UK cloud market.
The search engine giant said Microsoft’s software licensing practices impose restrictions which “risk irreversibly tilting the market in Microsoft’s favour at a pivotal moment” and that “technical barriers are amplifying the effects of these practices.”
Google said that Microsoft’s licensing restrictions prevent it and others from competing for most of this addressable market, adding: “urgent and timely action is necessary to address Microsoft’s practices.”
But Microsoft said it “believes the CMA’s emerging views on the competitive landscape and market outcomes disregard real world evidence that the market is highly dynamic and rapidly evolving.”
McArthur said he didn’t have high hopes for the outcome of the CMA’s investigation. “These big guys have got so much lobbying cash…so I do think it’ll be a bit toothless to be honest.”