What to expect in business in 2015 (probably not the Triumph of Probity, Honour and Prudence)

You might recall a column I once wrote about a party at the Wallace Collection. It took place in late 2008, the host was the US investment bank Morgan Stanley, and I compared the assembled financiers — who saw the crisis then raging as just one more opportunity to make money out of volatility in markets that were bound to swing round again — to the circle of dancers in Poussin’s ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, which hangs in the Great Gallery there. Far-fetched perhaps, but I have a weakness for allegories.

On a pre-Christmas visit to the Wallace, I found the gallery splendidly refurbished and re-hung. The ‘Dance’ — like the banking sector — is in a different place but still emitting the same signals. So is ‘The Laughing Cavalier’, Frans Hals’s 17th-century version of a FTSE fat cat. But the work that really caught my eye in the new arrangement was a French bronze, circa 1700, titled ‘Allegory of Time witnessing the Triumph of Honour, Probity and Prudence over Vice’. The unknown sculptor did not indicate how long Time had to wait — but in the financial world, I fear it will take more than one new year.

Getting the basics right

My call for nominations of major companies that ‘get the basics right’ has finally yielded fruit. Responses were mostly based on personal experience as a customer, rather than holistic overviews, but it’s always interesting to hear — and un-nominated competitors should note — what makes you feel positive. Online white-goods retailer AO.com, for example, was praised for ‘micro-managing delivery to within one hour’, easyJet for ‘communicating well if there’s a problem’ and plastics manufacturer Lakeland for being simply ‘so efficient they should be running the country’.