Business

Safer savings and clearer consciences?

17 October 2009
Janice Warman

The credit crunch left most of our major banks in disarray, not to say disgrace. But it has been remarkably good for some of their smaller competitors. ‘Ethical banks’ might once have been dismissed by the high-street giants as a benignly unthreatening fringe, just as ethical share investment was considered by mainstream investors to be little more than an eccentric luxury for trustafarians. But in terms of cash savings, as opposed to equities, the opportunity cost of choosing to go ethical varies widely — and may actually be zero. As a result, savers disenchanted by City greed, or simply disconcerted...

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Islamic finance stakes its claim

17 October 2009
Edie Lush

The clash of civilisations between the Muslim world and the West takes many forms. Even on the financial front, there are deep differences of philosophy in relation to money, debt and profit. But at a time when the Anglo-Saxon mode of banking is flat on its back after the credit crunch, its Islamic counterpart is gaining wider acceptance, and even laying claim to be a more stable alternative.

The requirements of Islamic finance — lower proportions of debt to equity, a condition that the lender share profits and losses with the borrower, and a focus on transactions based on tangible...

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Investment: stock markets

17 October 2009
Matthew Lynn

You might think yourself a fairly cautious investor. Maybe you dabble in a few shares and unit trusts, probably in major, well-established markets such as the US, Japan or Germany, as well as London. Emerging markets, and in particular the wild frontier that is China, you might reckon best left to professionals. And if you do occasionally take a few exotic punts, you’re very likely to restrict them to 10 per cent or so of your portfolio.

But if you believe your exposure to the great Eastern dragon is modest or negligible, you’re wrong. It turns out that we’re all...

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Twenty-five years on, the game begins again

17 October 2009
Richard Northedge

In the autumn of 1984, solicitors were allowed to advertise for the first time, but if the public failed to spot their modest announcements it was probably because the newspapers were awash with a much more unusual publicity blitz. The government was selling half of British Telecommunications, as the phone company was then called, and it needed the help of people who had never previously owned a share. The BT flotation was the start of a phenomenon that was as much a part of the decade that followed as Bros, the Pet Shop Boys or Wham! Buoyed by a bull...

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In the boardroom

10 October 2009
Richard Northedge

ITV shareholders did not wait for Sir Crispin Davis to be appointed chairman before saying publicly they didn’t like him. No wonder people are thinking twice before putting themselves forward to head our major companies. Even salaries of £500,000 plus share options have left supply well short of demand in the ‘C-suite’. A large number of companies have been searching for a chairman this summer but the pool of candidates seems noticeably small: the same names are touted for each job and the rejects join the next shortlist as soon as one vacancy is filled.

Davis, former chief executive...

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Last orders for the British pub

10 October 2009
Dominic Midgley

The sounds of merry-making could be heard from the street as 300 journalists, suppliers and associated hangers-on gathered at The Northcote pub in Clapham last month to toast the opening of Geronimo Inns’ latest outlet. Geronimo’s founder Rupert Clevely, the amiable former marketing director of Veuve Clicquot champagne, was on hand to dole out wine and press the flesh as he celebrated his sixth opening of the year.

All in all, it was like a scene from a film set in a happier world before the term ‘credit crunch’ had been invented. In fact, the British pub — an institution...

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