The Anglican Communion, trying to hold itself together in Dar-es-Salaam, is like the Commonwealth. Indeed, it exists for the same reason — the inheritance of the British Empire. Like the Commonwealth, it began as a white-dominated organisation, and has gradually ceased to be so. The Episcopal Church of the United States stands in relation to
Dominic Prince says you’d have to be potty to buy a racehorse as an investment — unless your name happened to be John Magnier or Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum Owning and breeding a thoroughbred racehorse can be a mouth-wateringly profitable enterprise. Sir Percy, winner of last year’s Epsom Derby, cost a piffling 16,000 guineas when
With the endless talk about private equity these days you could be forgiven for thinking it must be the only sensible investment out there. Not so. In fact some of private equity’s biggest players (think Guy Hands) have recently been putting their money into something much more prosaic — trees. Until a few years ago,
Twelve years ago, on a rainy afternoon when nothing much else seemed to be happening, I abandoned my desk in Canary Wharf for a few hours in order to track down a new and obscure betting operation somewhere off the Mile End Road. The managing director was a large, florid man in his late forties.
Elliot Wilson explains how to navigate India’s rigid investment rules and buy into a dazzling growth story Sweat was pouring off the commodities broker sitting next to me in the sauna of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. ‘India is shining,’ he thundered. ‘You must invest in it — everyone in England must. The economy
In his annual meeting with foreign journalists in January, President Putin enthused over his country’s record on initial public offerings: ‘Without any doubt, 2006 can be called the year of IPOs, because it was the first time that Russian companies carried out … IPOs worth dozens of billions of dollars on international and Russian exchanges….
When Charles Prince, the chief executive of Citigroup, announced two weeks ago that he was getting rid of his bank’s rather likeable corporate logo, a red umbrella, I feared that he might be tempting the household gods. And the gods have duly stirred. The Financial Times has reported grumblings from some big shareholders that the
I admire the late Steve Irwin, the Australian crocodilaphile who, coming from nowhere, contrived to make £2 million a year sporting with these ugly, dangerous and tremendous beasts, and was then killed by a miserable stingray. I say ‘ugly’ but that is a matter of opinion. I love drawing them more than any other creature
