Any other business
I know how ineffective sanctions are – but these ones just might work
‘Sanctions,’ said Kofi Annan, ‘are a necessary middle ground between war and words.’ Neither the EU nor the US will deploy troops or missiles to defend Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists,… Read more
Forecasting is a mug’s game – but I was right about the economic revival
‘Perhaps I should shift my prediction to 23 July 2014,’ I wrote in April 2012. ‘That’s the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and we must all start thinking… Read more
Any other business: trouble spots in European banking
‘1914: Day by Day’, the Radio 4 series by the historian Margaret MacMillan, is a gripping reminder that significant global events often arrive not in a single eruption but in… Read more
Gold-fixing is the last ghost of the old City. It won't be around much longer
In a season obsessed with sport and personal misbehaviour — separately or in combination — the word ‘fixing’ immediately brings to mind ‘match-fixing’, as in ‘Two World Cup referees suspected’… Read more
‘Dark pools’ are just another conspiracy of bankers against the public
It was at the Mansion House dinner last year that a City gent two seats away announced himself to be the custodian of one of London’s ‘dark pools’. The phrase… Read more
George Osborne’s cynical grab for northern votes (and why I’m for it)
When John Prescott used to wax garrulous about a ‘superhighway’ from Hull to Liverpool, everyone assumed it was a wheeze to spray southern taxpayers’ money across the region he saw… Read more
The return of oil price anxiety is a timely reminder to get fracking
‘Iraq turmoil sends crude oil prices to nine-month high’ is the sort of headline that used to send shivers down economists’ spines, especially if it appeared on the same page… Read more
The internet is broken – and we can no longer do without it
‘The internet is broken,’ a corporate chieftain told me last week. It was an arresting remark, but he did not mean that his home Wi-Fi hub had gone down and… Read more
I salute the wisdom of young Scots on independence (they're voting no, by the way)
It’s a constant theme of this column that today’s young need to stop whingeing about their prospects and get on with making their own future. But a quick north-of-the-border tour… Read more
Fight Thomas Piketty or face a mansion tax
The postman at the door is stooped by his burden like an allegorical statue of Labour Oppressed by Capital. His wearisome, low-waged task is to deliver a copy of Thomas… Read more
Forget about saving British big pharma – it's little pharma we should be helping
Readers in all sorts of places — at the club bar, over a birthday lunch, even along the church pew — had been telling me I was wrong not to… Read more
Are we killing investment banking? And if we are, should we care?
Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous zeal? By ‘we’ I mean politicians, regulators and public opinion,… Read more
Pfizer’s already beaten Ed Miliband. Now it just needs to offer the right price
Pfizer will almost certainly have to offer more than its second bid of £50 a share for rival drug giant AstraZeneca, but the American predator seems to be winning the… Read more
Why the bankers’ bonus debate is not going away
A bouquet to Alison Kennedy, ‘governance and stewardship director’ at the Edinburgh-based pensions provider Standard Life, for leading the rebellion of Barclays shareholders against the bank’s decision to pay increased… Read more
George Osborne is entitled to look smug
The popular pastime for financial commentators this season is sticking pins in George Osborne. To those on the left who hate everything about him, to those on the right who… Read more
Should the Co-op be preparing for its own funeral?
‘Care, respect, clarity and reassurance’ are what the Co-operative funeral service says it offers the bereaved, and the parent Co-op Group may soon find itself in need of just such… Read more
Don’t blame ministers for the Royal Mail sell-off. Beat up the bankers!
Vince Cable and Michael Fallon, ministers responsible for the Royal Mail sell-off, have been summoned for another select committee grilling after Easter. Meanwhile, Labour’s irritatingly smug business spokesman Chuka Umunna… Read more
Is full employment just another of George Osborne’s political stunts?
‘Full employment’ usually means the lowest achievable rate of unemployment — somewhere south of 5 per cent compared with 7.2 per cent today, or to put it in numbers, fewer than… Read more
Why I’ll join the silver stampede to cash in a pension
At the beginning of the last decade, a young man who claimed to be my ‘premier banker’ paid me a visit. He was accompanied by his boss, evidently there to… Read more
HS2’s boss is right – it’s push on or be rubbed out
I’m sure HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins is right to argue that if we’re serious about building a new north-south rail network, we should get on with it. The greater… Read more
Any other business: Turn down those token directorships, girls, and tell them you want to be chairman
Last Saturday was International Women’s Day, but we celebrated early in Helmsley when my Yorkshire home town was featured in national news last month as a beacon of recession-beating female… Read more
Any other business: Britain’s chaotic energy policy puts us in Putin’s hands
To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon hardly makes me Nostradamus — but sure enough, the tension… Read more
Any other business: Why a trillion dollars of dividends is a milestone worth celebrating
Dividends paid by listed companies around the world passed $1 trillion for the first time last year, we learn from a report by Henderson Global Investors. The total is 43… Read more
Any other business: The friends of Putin taking home gold from the Sochi Olympics
Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter Olympics themselves. ‘Yeesss!!’ Ed Leigh might have yelled, ‘That’s the… Read more
Where I’m looking for the next great banking blow-up
A reader likens me to Dr Pangloss, the quack philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who insisted that ‘all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ even after… Read more
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Cartoons
‘What’s happened to us? We never says LOL any more.’
‘That’s Pope Innocent X — he was framed.’
