Budget week also turned out to be a week of notable deals. PSA, French owner of Peugeot and Citroën, went ahead with its €2.2 billion takeover of Vauxhall and Opel from General Motors, creating ‘a new European giant to challenge Volkswagen’, according to the spin, and new fears for those who foresee post-Brexit attrition of the British motor industry. By way of reassurance, PSA boss Carlos Tavares said a hard Brexit is an ‘opportunity’ — to beef up the domestic supply chain while reducing component imports from the EU — and that ‘I trust Vauxhall workers’ to improve their productivity. That last bit sounded to me more like a threat to their jobs.
Then came the agreed merger of Aberdeen Asset Management and Edinburgh-based Standard Life to create what really will be a European giant of the investment sector, with £660 billion under management. Chaired by wily Whitehall veteran Sir Gerry Grimstone, Standard Life has moved a long way from its 19th-century origins but steered a steady course since its 2006 demutual-isation. Emerging markets specialist Aberdeen, by contrast, is the mercurial creation of entrepreneur Martin Gilbert, and has had more downs than ups in recent years. Together, even after cost-saving job cuts, they will form the pre-eminent financial institution north of the border — but don’t expect them to move into the space left by Scottish banks that formerly competed for that title. One of Standard Life’s few strategic mishaps was to start a bank of its own in 1998; the unhappy venture was sold a decade later to Barclays, which demolished it.
Taxing the gig economy
As for the Budget, what caught my eye was the Chancellor’s move to claw bigger National Insurance contributions from the growing multitude of self-employed, as a step towards catching the so-called ‘gig economy’ in the tax net.
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