Online investors have moved swiftly after Ardnamurchan Distillery linked with WhiskyInvestDirect, an online marketplace where private investors can buy and sell Scotch whisky as it matures and gains value in the barrel.

The deal provides Ardnamurchan with working capital in return for 50,000 Litres of Pure Alcohol (LPA, the Scotch industry's standard volume unit) of its ground-breaking new malt.

Take up from investors has been quick, with 85% of the stock already reserved prior to launch on today.

Launched in September 2015, WhiskyInvestDirect today cares for more than nine million LPA for its users. Worth over £30m at current wholesale prices, that's enough spirit to make almost 25m bottles of Scotch once mature.

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"Ardnamurchan is producing a superb new spirit," said Rupert Patrick, of WhiskyInvestDirect. "The distillery offers both a peated and unpeated version and I'm intrigued to follow the maturation of both types. They both show outstanding potential."

"This deal is excellent for Ardnamurchan as we reach the second phase of production with the launch of our own single malt later this year," said Alex Bruce, of parent company Adelphi. "It helps us continue to plan and invest for the long term.

"Scotch whisky needs time to mature and there are no short cuts to producing top quality whisky."

Users of WhiskyInvestDirect can now buy young Ardnamurchan spirit online and own it – stored in first-fill bourbon barrels held in a bonded warehouse with no VAT or duty to pay – alongside well-established names like Caol Ila from Islay, Tullibardine from the Highland region, and Glen Moray from Speyside.

The typical investor owns £10,000-worth of maturing spirit. Historic data show maturing Scotch, kept in the barrel, has appreciated over the past decade by more than 8% per year after costs and inflation.

"It's really satisfying to play an important part in one of Scotland's newer and smaller distiller's stock build," Mr Patrick aid.

"The Scotch whisky industry is seeing marked growth in the premium and super premium categories, and I've no doubt that Ardnamurchan will become a highly sought-after single malt."

Unilever has revealed it is to end its Anglo-Dutch structure and combine its legal headquarters in a single base in London less than two years after an ill-fated plan to move to Holland.

The consumer goods giant said the decision - which scraps a structure that has been in place since 1930 - will give it "greater strategic flexibility".

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Unilever - the group behind household names such as Marmite and Ben & Jerry's ice cream - gave assurances that its "strong presence in both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom will remain unchanged", with no plans for staffing, operations or activities to be affected.

But the move will see it ditch its legal base in the Netherlands, with London instead becoming the single site for its legal and corporate HQs.

It comes after Unilever was forced into an embarrassing U-turn on previous plans to switch its headquarters from London to Rotterdam in 2018 following widespread shareholder anger.

The group's former chief executive, Paul Polman, and previous chairman, Marijn Dekkers, both quit soon after the botched plan.

Unilever said that, following the switch to a single legal structure, it will have its primary stock market listing in London, with a secondary listing in the Netherlands and the US.

It hopes to remain in the European indices despite no longer having a primary listing in the Netherlands.

The group - one of the biggest on London's FTSE 100 Index - hopes the single legal structure will allow it to be more nimble for takeovers as well as demergers.

"It is also clear that the Covid-19 pandemic will create a business environment in which having as much flexibility and responsiveness as possible will be critically important," the group said.

Chairman Nils Andersen said: "Unilever's board believes that unifying the company's legal structure will create greater strategic flexibility, remove complexity and further improve governance.

"We remain committed to the Netherlands and the UK and there will be no change to Unilever's footprint in either country as a result of the proposed change to Unilever's legal parent structure."

Unilever employs around 6,000 people in the UK and some 2,500 in the Netherlands.

It is split into three businesses - the home care and beauty and personal care divisions, which are based in the UK, and the food and refreshment arm in the Netherlands.

Families are gathering around their video games as lockdown speeds up the switch to more online entertainment, the head of TalkTalk has said.

Tristia Harrison said that gaming is continuing to grow while the pandemic forces people to stay inside.

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"Gaming has seen a huge uplift, whether it is Call Of Duty, Fortnight, these big game downloads we're managing on a very regular basis," she said.

"I think gaming with families has become even bigger than it was before, and it really shows no sign of slowing down."

The chief executive was speaking as TalkTalk showed it has swung into a profit in its most recent financial year, largely thanks to the sale of Fibrenation to CityFibre in January.

Pre-tax profit hit £146 million in the 12 months ending March 31, from a loss of £5 million the year before, on revenue of £1.57 billion, a 4% rise.

TalkTalk said it had made a £127 million profit on disposal by selling Fibrenation, a business that installs the physical infrastructure needed for fibre broadband.

Ms Harrison said that customers have been upgrading their broadband packages during lockdown, as many people work from home, or turn to streaming services to stay entertained.

"I think the whole market slowed a little towards the end of March and most of April. Through May and certainly in June the market is back again, we're actually seeing quite a lot of pent up demand from customers who are really looking for faster lines.

"I think this flexible homeworking trend is here to stay, which means that the quality of your line and connectivity into your home becomes ever more important."

Customers have been moving from eight megabits per second to 40, and "increasingly up to 80", Ms Harrison said.

Within the next 12 months households will also start moving on to "fibre to the premise" packages, which can provide up to one gigabit, or 1,000 megabits.

"We will look to migrate as many customers as possible on to those lines," she added.

TalkTalk added 605,000 customers in the last financial year, up from 490,000 the year before.