Chris Blackhurst
When Kraft said it wanted to buy Cadbury – and the chocolate maker rejected the opening offer – a dance not seen in the City for many a year began. Investment bankers from both sides assembled their teams. Lawyers and accountants were drafted in. PRs were let loose to win hearts and minds. Rival food companies and their advisers studied the action carefully. Fund managers did their sums. The Takeover Panel, that most august of City bodies, was on alert. The tactics meetings, conference calls, briefings and counter-briefings began in earnest.
It was exciting, exhilarating even: the sort of blood-and-guts...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
3 October 2009
Patagonia
Lucinda Baring
Arriving in Patagonia, the region spanning Argentina and Chile at the southernmost tip of South America, I really felt I’d reached the end of the earth. The journey is an epic but rewarding one – this was the most spectacular scenery I’d ever seen. My destination was Hotel Explora in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. This small enclave of comfort, surrounded by wide green lagoons and sheltered by snow-capped mountains, is designed specifically to cosset you after a day spent amongst the elements. Windows span the length of every room and with no...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
|
Comments (0)
Fraser Nelson
The recession is over in Britain. This won’t be declared for a while, but when it is, Gordon Brown will want to soak up as much credit as he can.All the signs are that our economy has returned to growth. It may be anaemic growth – and dole queues will keep lengthening until the middle of next year. But consumer confidence is up, mortgage approvals have almost doubled since November’s low, and green shoots are once again in the political undergrowth.
So how should politicians respond? Baroness Vadera, until recently Gordon Brown’s personal praetorian guard and trade minister, made the...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
Simon de Burton
Credit crunch notwithstanding, the autumn represents the start of boom time for watch retailers as they look forward to an influx of pre-Christmas buyers. This is their busiest period of the year and it is also around now that many of the new models introduced at the major spring shows (Baselworld and Geneva’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) finally make their way onto the market.
But with literally thousands of different luxury timepieces available it can be a hard task to choose just the right one. Do you really need a minute-repeating tourbillon with moon phases, perpetual calendar...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
Neil Collins
When Godfrey Bloom caused shock and awe by daring to heckle Adair Turner in mid-speech at a Mansion House dinner last month, he might have thought he was striking a blow for the audience. Turner was pursuing his crusade against bulging bankers’ bonuses. Bloom, a UKIP member of the European Parliament and former fund manager, invited him to consider the bonuses at the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which Turner chairs. He swatted Bloom away, and even won a smattering of applause, but the inconvenient truth is that many of the diners would hardly consider it worth getting out of bed...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
Sally Jones
You are a sponsorship manager of one of the handful of blue chip firms still feeling moderately bullish when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on Gordon Brown. You have a few cherished clients you want to entertain, memorably but with a measure of elegant economy to avoid any hint of snouts-in-the-trough triumphalism when so many are suffering.
Where do you take them? The Test? Bit samey, goes on for hours and they may hate cricket. Glyndebourne? Redolent of privilege and featuring the peculiarly English dowdiness of its female clientele and the picnicking is an exercise in...
Continue reading...
Email to a friend |
Permalink
Previous
