Business

Any other business

12th September, 2007

Don’t mind me asking,’ a Geordie lad accosted me on the train, ‘but aren’t you Sid Waddell?’ I looked blank.

The billionaires of Rajasthan

5th September, 2007

‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state.

The debt market crisis

5th September, 2007

Once upon a time there was an investment banker. He was hardly today’s stereotypical WASP smoothie, but an overweight, sweaty trader from the Bronx who shouted a lot, ate pizza at his desk when he wasn’t standing on it, and treated colleagues as imbeciles.

Interview: Stanley Fink

5th September, 2007

You know Kipling’s words, about meeting triumph and disaster? Well, imagine this. You’re in your mid-forties, chief executive of one of Britain’s fastest-growing public companies.

City life: Bangkok

5th September, 2007

Anyone who claims to understand Thailand’s politics should be sectioned. The country is preparing for a national election in December and the leader of last year’s bloodless military coup, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, is retreating on his promise to drive his tank back to barracks.

Any other business

29th August, 2007

I’m back, as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously declared in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. In fact I haven’t really been away, just hovering in cyberspace to leave room for other contributors in our slimmed-down-for-the-beach summer Business section.

Geeks to the rescue

29th August, 2007

Why would anyone choose to spend an afternoon with a self-proclaimed geek in a clip-on tie, who calls himself a ‘field agent’? Carphone Warehouse is betting that many of us will jump at the chance. They’ve brought the Geek Squad over from the US and are offering their nerds to UK consumers and their computers.

City Life

22nd August, 2007

Writing in the midst of turmoil, one is always at risk of being overtaken by events, but I have found myself vaguely approving of the recent market panic.

A farewell to arms?

22nd August, 2007

The fiercer the fighting for our boys in Basra and Helmand, the more important you may think it is that Britain has a thriving arms industry to supply them. The reasons that this isn’t so can be summed up in one Arabic phrase which translates, ironically, as ‘dove of peace’: Al Yamamah.

John Locke’s message

15th August, 2007

If only Alan Greenspan had read John Locke more attentively. The 17th-century philosopher, who doubled as a brilliant economist, was among the earliest exponents of the law of unintended consequences.

Dotcom diehard

15th August, 2007

Judi Bevan meets Simon Nixon, founder of Moneysupermarket.com, who floated his online price comparison business on the day the stock market started to plunge

Privatise Manchester airport

8th August, 2007

It is 12 years since Tony Blair did battle with the socialist dinosaurs and forced them to abandon their commitment to nationalisation with his celebrated ‘Clause 4 moment’ — the very birth of New Labour.

Stamps are getting dearer

1st August, 2007

Joanna Pitman advises investors who are wary of turbulent stock markets to investigate the world of philately, where values have risen steadily for 50 years

Keep equity private

25th July, 2007

Private equity investment, backing venture capital and management buy-outs, has been around a long time. Private-equity takeovers of public companies listed on the stock exchange are a more recent development; and the number and size of such transactions has increased dramatically. Since some identified individuals have made enormous fortunes, inevitably there has been a bit of an outcry.

City Life

18th July, 2007

Peace would be a better business planfor the island of a hundred ministers

The world of work

18th July, 2007

Morgan Stanley has just hosted its first ‘early access’ event for young women: 75 girls from 15 top schools were taken on a tour of the trading floor (I bet there weren’t many traders off sick that day)

The KGB man who spied on the bond markets

18th July, 2007

Jules Evans meets the billionaire Russian banker Alexander Lebedev, who learnt about
international finance as a Soviet spy in London and now dares to criticise the Kremlin

Mind your manners

12th July, 2007

Any other Business

11th July, 2007

Shoppers stay home as rates and floods rise — but there’s a bit of better news for M&S

The power behind Unipart

11th July, 2007

Neil Collins meets John Neill, who turned the spare-parts arm of the sinking British Leyland into Unipart, a world leader in logistics and a model of employee empowerment