Inside Track: Reflections on Standard Chartered’s boardroom turmoil January 9, 2014 WHEN there’s as much background noise coming out of a boardroom as there has been from Standard Chartered’s in recent weeks, it’s a fair bet that changes are on the horizon. Yesterday the emerging markets bank dropped the bombshell that its finance director for the past seven years, Richard Meddings, was leaving. Meddings, so chief [...]
London Report: Banks lift FTSE as new leverage rules welcomed January 13, 2014 ARALLY in banking shares helped the FTSE 100 rise to a two-month closing high yesterday as investors welcomed the prospect of lighter rules on leverage for the sector. Supermarket WM Morrison was the top FTSE gainer on speculation it may sell some property and return some of the proceeds to shareholders, while oil and gas [...]
The Iranian deal is truly historic – but not because it resolves nuclear crisis November 25, 2013 THE HISTORIC interim agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and (primarily) the West over the former’s nuclear ambitions is the real deal – an actual current event that lives up to the “historic” tagline far too easily given out by breathless commentators. However, on its immediate merits, the best that can be said of [...]
How the West should best the crumbling Kremlin March 4, 2014 AN UNLIKELY source holds the key to how the West should respond to Russia’s takeover of the Crimea. While researching for my book Ethical Realism (which I co-wrote with the rightly celebrated Anatol Lieven), I came across a startling fact. Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the US’s best-known twentieth-century political thinkers, was also the author of [...]
3 things Putin probably hadn’t bargained for March 4, 2014 It seems Vladimir Putin, upon whom everyone’s been keeping more than half an eye, is backing off. Following the beating the Russian stock market and currency took yesterday, the Russian leader's been speaking at a news conference. He told reporters this morning that there’s no – current – need for military force in Ukraine, that [...]
HMRC not doing enough to tax big businesses December 18, 2013 THE PUBLIC accounts committee has accused HM Revenue and Customs of failing to pursue big businesses for tax payments, resulting in a £35bn tax gap between what is expected to be collected and what actually comes in to government coffers. Chair of the committee Margaret Hodge MP highlighted further flaws in the way this figure is [...]
Inside Track: Jenkins should settle Barclays’ £50m fine so he can move on February 12, 2014 RAISE £6bn from investors and hand more than half of it back to employees and investors six months later: as a formula for managing a corporate balance sheet, there’s a certain novelty in Barclays’ approach. But for someone who has choreographed efforts to rehabilitate a company’s image as carefully as Antony Jenkins, this has been [...]
Davey plans criminal laws for energy price-fixing October 31, 2013 ENERGY firms found guilty of manipulating the markets could face criminal prosecution, according to new government reforms proposed by Ed Davey yesterday. In his annual statement, the energy secretary also confirmed plans for a yearly competition review “to make sure the energy market is operating properly” and said he wanted to make it easier for [...]
The winners and losers from Iran nuclear deal November 25, 2013 While oil prices may decline and safe havens could lose favour, not everything hinges on diplomacy The Iranian nuclear agreement, struck in the early hours of Sunday morning, has been hailed as historic – laying the foundations for a more comprehensive deal in the next year. And markets have bought in to this optimism. Brent [...]
Ofcom rules for BT Openreach to improve service December 19, 2013 OFCOM has proposed a set of stricter rules for BT’s Openreach division that will require 80 per cent of fault repairs to be made within two working days, regardless of factors such as severe weather conditions. Sky and TalkTalk – who offer phone and internet services to their customers over BT’s network infrastructure – have [...]