‘The faster the government starts selling its stake, the better for everyone,’ RBS chief Stephen Hester told the British Chambers of Commerce conference last week. In doing so, he opened up what may become the hottest financial debate after the Budget hoo-hah has died down: when and how should the government’s holding company, UK Financial
I wrote here in November that ‘history may judge the HBOS men to have been the worst of the lot’, and the FSA, in its grindingly slow, bureacratic way, is finally about to catch up with them. The regulator has at last issued a ‘Final Notice’ to the Bank of Scotland arm of HBOS to
In my early twenties I spent memorable holidays crewing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. One afternoon we were entering the creek-like port of Ciudadella in Menorca when we realised that a departing car ferry was heading straight for us, gathering speed. Our entire crew, including me, began hollering uselessly and pleading with the youthful
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s declaration that 2011 would be ‘the year of corporate giving’ to the arts was never likely to be fulfilled, given how tough it is to stay in business these days. Trying to shift the onus on to companies to replace cuts in state arts funding was an obvious political manoeuvre, but
One consequence of the Greek crisis — in which default remains a strong possibility despite the latest bail-out, and either way the Greek economy will be dead for a decade — must surely be a wave of Greek migrants looking for work across the EU. And since they won’t find a welcome between Macedonia and
Time for one of my periodic round-ups of relatively good news, as the last of the snow melts and confused bluebell and daffodil shoots that appeared in mild December begin to raise their heads once more. On Tuesday morning you could almost hear them squeaking, ‘Look out, here comes Ed Balls again’, as the shadow
There’s something peculiarly cynical about a political strategy that involves alienating pockets of your own core support in order to attract larger numbers of floating voters. Thus, we’re told, Conservative enthusiasm for High Speed 2 is partly based on the calculation that threats by foxhunting landowners to desert the Tory interest will provoke an uptick
Amidst the gunfire generated by Stephen Hester’s bonus — on which I’m glad to say he took my advice and did the decent thing, so like Stephen Wraysford at the end of Birdsong he deserves a few days’ rest — I was intrigued by the week’s other RBS story. Hester is reported to be selling
‘Always frightfully keen on the money,’ mutters a City grandee who watched Stephen Hester build his career at Credit Suisse, Abbey and British Land before taking over the helm of the sinking Royal Bank of Scotland from Sir Fred Goodwin. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong (let’s remember) in wanting to prosper alongside your shareholders. But as
‘A John Lewis economy’ was a strong soundbite from Nick Clegg, even if it failed to resonate with Netto shoppers lower down the social scale than the Cleggs. The Deputy Prime Minister is ‘pushing for real, early, radical action’ to make this ‘the decade of employee share ownership’, and no one can deny he’s picked
I set out my argument on the unfairness of soaring executive pay back in November, when I pointed out that ‘in all the years I’ve been writing about the socially divisive nature of this trend and the impossibility of justifying it performance terms, the fat cats have multiplied their take more than fourfold’. So I
I thought editors came on a bit strong with the ‘Jailbird Honours’ headlines in response to New Year gongs for ex drug-dealer Chris Preddie (OBE) and former HMP Ford inmate Gerald Ronson (CBE), the property tycoon who was convicted of theft and false accounting in the Guinness share-support scandal in 1990. But what was interesting
About ten years ago, over a good lunch, I had a debate with the late Giles Worsley about Battersea power station. The distinguished architectural writer said Battersea was an industrial icon that should certainly be conserved but — like its sister station turned gallery at Bankside — found a new purpose. If an industrial icon
A consolation of the financial crisis is that it is producing a bumper crop of fiction, the best of which will be read long after all the hefty works of investigative non-fiction have been forgotten. Last year I praised Sebastian Faulks’s A Week in December, and my Christmas reading this year will include Justin Cartwright’s
I am very fond of the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, because I once saw Mr and Mrs Bibi Netanyahu breakfasting there, and they had a moody teenage son who skulked, and Bibi was powerless over the skulking. It is not brown like the Savoy and, unlike the Dorchester, it has never mistaken me for a
I’m picturing you reading this in your armchair beside a blazing log fire on Friday evening, Christmas tree lights twinkling over your shoulder, spaniels steaming at your feet, beaker of mulled wine in your hand. ‘Quite exciting while it lasted,’ I hear you say, ‘but thank God it’s all over. Here’s to Angela and Nicolas
I admire the Chancellor for his clarity of mind and his coolness under fire, but I don’t believe a word of his forecasts. I didn’t even believe the forecasts he read out on Tuesday from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and I’ll hazard a guess that the Chancellor wasn’t really putting much faith in
I wrote here in July that I was hoping to see history reversed at Northern Rock. Shortly after that, Swiss boffins declared that time travel really might be possible, after discovering they could fire neutrinos through an Alpine tunnel at a fraction faster than the speed of light. But the idea of propelling the privatised
The Bank of England was expected this week to slash its growth forecast for the current year and next to around 1 per cent, down from previous forecasts of 1.5 and 2.1 per cent — but that’s still optimistic according to a European Commission report which projects no better than 0.7. Official figures were also
What are bond markets saying about Italy? With my usual proviso that markets are best understood as shoals of piranhas, communicating moods of panic, indifference, bloodlust and satiety rather than coherent ideas, the relatively clear message earlier this week was that Italian government bond yields were perilously close to the threshold of panic. That threshold