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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Any Other Business

These days, Vesco the fugitive fraudster would have had a top job on Wall Street

Another asset Robert Vesco managed to take into exile with him was the Boeing 707 he had fitted out with a sauna and a discotheque. If it’s serviceable, it could still command a decent price. An American friend of mine who makes her living designing interiors for refurbished private jets tells me the bottom has by no means fallen out of that market despite current financial mayhem. Quite the reverse, in fact: demand for new private jets is so strong that would-be owners are frustrated by the waiting lists. So the smart guy buys a ‘pre-owned’ Gulfstream for $15 million and spends a couple of million more having it customised — a stylish bargain at half the price of a new model. As I always say loudly when picking a secondhand suit off the rack in Help the Aged, it’s so much easier than waiting for a new one from my man in Savile Row.

That last item is an example of my current policy of scouring the horizon for reasons to be cheerful as the economic news gets worse — which it does by the day, particularly on the inflation front. So here’s a few more, rather loosely strung together.

A recent event that made me smile was the Bull and Bear Banquet in Canary Wharf, where I met a bunch of Russians who were enjoying their new wealth so unashamedly you just had to like them: I particularly warmed to Igor, who turned out to be Moscow’s biggest Ford and Hyundai dealer, and his PR lady, a dead ringer for the young Kim Basinger. One thing that pleased them about their visit to London, I gathered, was the discovery that the creepy, cold-fish autocrat who runs their own country has a far stronger economic grip than the one who runs ours.

They’re not wrong, but if we’re in for a grim couple of years as Brown’s government sinks under a tide of rising prices, repossessions and bankruptcies, then (according to my policy) we should at least take stock of the good things left behind by the boom years — such as the City architecture of this decade, which will stand the test of time far better than so much that went before. Take Paternoster Square, beside St Paul’s Cathedral: an elegant, human-scale development that respects its setting and obliterates all trace of its brutal 1960s predecessor. Then again — you may think I’ve packed enough cheerfulness into this column already, but I’ve just read about huge price rises from British Gas, so I’d better keep going — I would also argue that the boom years have opened up amazing choices for young people, despite my snootiness about ‘uni’. This thought occurred over cocktails at the Ritz to celebrate a glamorous goddaughter’s 18th birthday: I thought, how marvellous to be launching into adult life now, compared to the dismal depth of the Heath era as it was for me, or much worse, the middle of a world war as it was for my parents’ generation.

Finally, let’s remember the saying that a downturn or a recession is often a good time to start a new business — or even a new magazine. If the first issue of Spectator Business hasn’t come your way yet, call Axis Media on 0141 335 9062 for an introductory subscription, another stylish bargain at only £18.

More articles from: Martin Vander Weyer | this section

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