Any other business: Double dip or not, history says morale may take two more years to recover

This week marks the 20th ­anniversary of John Major’s election victory and my debut in The Spectator. The two events were connected: going to press on the eve of a close poll, the editor needed one more non-political feature — and pulled my essay on the follies of the 1980s City out of the pile of unsolicited submissions. In it I observed that the ‘great blaze of swaggering hubris’ which characterised bankers’ boom-time behaviour had given way to grimmer times. The archetypal financier was no longer swanning round the world in first-class luxury but, ‘if he still had a job...

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Any other business: The Chancellor took my advice – but don’t blame me for the VAT on your hot pasty

As lead balloons go, last week’s Budget went down faster than James Cameron’s submersible in the Mariana Trench. The closer the small-print scrutiny afterwards, the worse it got. The pro-business measures were hardly sufficient to justify the claim that ‘this Budget unashamedly backs business’ — certainly no small businessman I met that evening, when I found myself addressing 300 of them, felt either backed or bucked by it. The ‘granny tax’ caught far more media attention than the claim that ‘24 million people earning less than £100,000 a year will gain’ from the increase in the income tax personal allowance...

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Any other business: The big debate after the Budget: how to turn taxpayers’ RBS shares back into cash

 ‘The faster the government starts selling its stake, the better for everyone,’ RBS chief Stephen Hester told the British Chambers of Commerce conference last week. In doing so, he opened up what may become the hottest financial debate after the Budget hoo-hah has died down: when and how should the government’s holding company, UK Financial Investments, start disposing of its 82 per cent stake in RBS and its 41 per cent stake in Lloyds? In the case of RBS, the government bought in at an average share price close to 50 pence against a market level of 29 pence today,...

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Any other business: The FSA and I agree: the HBOS men really were the worst of the lot

I wrote here in November that ‘history may judge the HBOS men to have been the worst of the lot’, and the FSA, in its grindingly slow, bureacratic way, is finally about to catch up with them. The regulator has at last issued a ‘Final Notice’ to the Bank of Scotland arm of HBOS to the effect that its Corporate Banking Division, under the now comfortably retired Peter Cummings, ‘failed to take reasonable care to ensure that [it] adequately and prudently managed high value transactions which showed signs of stress’. In fact — I paraphrase — it seems to have...

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Any other business: A lesson for Osborne from my sailing holiday: ignore the shouting and hold your course

In my early twenties I spent memorable holidays crewing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. One afternoon we were entering the creek-like port of Ciudadella in Menorca when we realised that a departing car ferry was heading straight for us, gathering speed. Our entire crew, including me, began hollering uselessly and pleading with the youthful helmsman to take evasive action, while nearby fishermen gesticulated wildly, possibly to suggest that we throw ourselves overboard and swim for it. But our helmsman, wise beyond his years, ordered us to shut up. ‘I have chosen my course,’ he announced calmly, ‘and I intend...

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The FSA and I agree: the HBOS men really were the worst of the lot

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A lesson for Osborne from my sailing holiday: ignore the shouting and hold your course

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Why ‘the year of corporate giving’ to the arts was never going to happen

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Davos Diary: Back home!

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

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

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)?

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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