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Saturday 4 February 2012

Tesco’s big drop may indicate a shopping revolution

Is Standard & Poor's playing politics?

Credit agency warns of eurozone downgrades

Credit crunch is at our door, shows BOE move

The profitability of pandas

Docile bears a wily agent of Chinese soft power

Any other business: Third time lucky? Hoare Govett is the history of the modern City writ small

4 February 2012
Martin Vander Weyer

Amidst the gunfire generated by Stephen Hester’s bonus — on which I’m glad to say he took my advice and did the decent thing, so like Stephen Wraysford at the end of Birdsong he deserves a few days’ rest — I was intrigued by the week’s other RBS story. Hester is reported to be selling the troubled bank’s corporate stockbroking arm, Hoare Govett, to Jefferies, a US securities house. This will be the third change of ownership in 30 years for a firm whose name is so redolent of the pre-Big Bang era that many of us had forgotten it...

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Any other business: Capping Hester’s bonus is far more important than stripping Goodwin’s knighthood

28 January 2012
Martin Vander Weyer

‘Always frightfully keen on the money,’ mutters a City grandee who watched Stephen Hester build his career at Credit Suisse, Abbey and British Land before taking over the helm of the sinking Royal Bank of Scotland from Sir Fred Goodwin. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong (let’s remember) in wanting to prosper alongside your shareholders. But as I wrote in July 2009, hiring a troubleshooter for RBS whose first instinct was to negotiate his own £1.2 million salary and £6 million share package was a missed opportunity ‘to set a public benchmark for more moderate City pay scales, which most of us...

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Any other business: Have you wondered why there’s only one John Lewis Partnership, Mr Clegg?

21 January 2012
Martin Vander Weyer

‘A John Lewis economy’ was a strong soundbite from Nick Clegg, even if it failed to resonate with Netto shoppers lower down the social scale than the Cleggs. The Deputy Prime Minister is ‘pushing for real, early, radical action’ to make this ‘the decade of employee share ownership’, and no one can deny he’s picked a potent theme at a time when conventional capitalism seems hellbent on self-destruction. But having bagged a headline, he should pause to ask himself this: if John Spedan Lewis invented such a brilliant business model — which he did — then how come it hasn’t...

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Any other business: The ‘non-partisan’ High Pay Commission that’s there to prove ‘the left can win’

14 January 2012
Martin Vander Weyer

I set out my argument on the unfairness of soaring executive pay back in November, when I pointed out that ‘in all the years I’ve been writing about the socially divisive nature of this trend and the impossibility of justifying it performance terms, the fat cats have multiplied their take more than fourfold’. So I welcome the Prime Minister’s sudden interest in the subject: I hope he really intends to empower investors to do more about it, and is not just mouthing concern in order to upstage Ed Miliband on the only issue on which the failing Labour leader threatens...

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Any other business - Which is worse: theft, drug-dealing, profiting from falling shares or giving cash to Tories?

7 January 2012
Martin Vander Weyer

I thought editors came on a bit strong with the ‘Jailbird Honours’ headlines in response to New Year gongs for ex drug-dealer Chris Preddie (OBE) and former HMP Ford inmate Gerald Ronson (CBE), the property tycoon who was convicted of theft and false accounting in the Guinness share-support scandal in 1990. But what was interesting about responses to the list was that by far the largest helping of hostility was aimed at the hedge fund manager Paul Ruddock — who was knighted for donating large sums to the V&A museum and other charities, but damned for making £100million (for his...

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Davos Diary: Back home!

Tuesday, 31st January 2012
6:59pm
Carole Stone

Just back from Davos — and it took every bit of energy I could muster to do it justice. At every turn, there was a blizzard of choices: whether to go to another discussion about which countries will drive global growth this year, or meet up with that economics expert you slid past on the icy roads between the Congress Centre and the Belvedere hotel. More than exhausting, it’s extremely stressful.

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Davos Diary: Day 1

Friday, 27th January 2012
12:51pm
Carole Stone

Want to get by in Davos? Then technology is what you need. I only arrived yesterday, and have already realised how woefully short of technical nous I am. There are basic gaps in my understanding all the way: from finding the right adaptor plugs in my bedroom to adding the Davos apps to my iPad. I had to engage the assistance of both the hotel porter and my longstanding friend Lindy just to get by.

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Tesco’s big drop may indicate a shopping revolution

Friday, 13th January 2012
2:50pm
Clarissa Tan

Poor Tesco. It wanted a Big Price Drop – just not in its shares. The giant grocer saw its stock price plummet 16 per cent yesterday, a £5 billion wipe-out in market value, after warning that its UK profits may fall this year. If Tesco does eventually report a decrease in earnings, that would be its first time in three decades. It would also be tangible proof that the way we are shopping is changing, perhaps irrevocably.

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Is China the new England (only bigger)?

Thursday, 12th January 2012
4:40pm
Clarissa Tan

Some time last year, China became a predominantly urbanised nation – more than 50 per cent of its people now live in towns and cities. The Middle Kingdom today, in fact, looks a lot like the England of the 1890s, says Stephen Green of Standard Chartered. He’s issued a report saying the two entities are remarkably alike – except in China, it’s all happening on a far, far bigger scale. One thing that China needs to emulate from England, though, is ‘market-friendly institutions’ free of political control.

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High-speed IT may outstrip need for high-speed rail

Tuesday, 10th January 2012
7:18pm
Clarissa Tan

We’ve trundled along this territory before, but given the latest news that the £32 billion high-speed rail route has received the green light, expect everyone to flag their favourite talking points again.

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The EU’s new vulnerability: central Europe

Thursday, 5th January 2012
7:54pm
Clarissa Tan

As if there weren’t enough fires to put out already within the eurozone, there’s another one flaring up outside the common-currency area, in Hungary. Budapest may well be the first EU government to default, pipping Athens to the dubious honour.

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