The BBC acted too hastily on Three – Editor’s Letter January 20, 2015 Public companies are rightly criticised whenever they turn down a takeover bid point blank, leaving no room for negotiation. Their board members, however cushy or fascinating their jobs are, have a fiduciary duty to the shareholders of the group to do the best for them, and for the group’s employees. Yesterday the public service broadcaster [...]
The politics of fear is a risky game – Editor’s Letter January 15, 2015 The Prime Minister criticised online encryption this week, on the back of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, in words that appeared to threaten a ban. In the words of tech Twitter guru @SwiftOnSecurity “Politicians: The kind of people who think they can ban math.” But to many businesses this was no joke. One City FinTech startup, [...]
Retail investors stage a comeback – Editor’s Letter January 12, 2015 After a year of being virtually ignored by those organising fund-raisings on the London stock market, the retail investor is heading back to the stock market. As we report today, the tool hiring specialist HSS intends allocating a tranche of its shares in its forthcoming flotation to retail investors. This follows Trainline.com’s decision to do [...]
Takeovers kick off with Rangers bid – Editor’s Letter January 5, 2015 Football is a funny old game, and a funny old business too. Yesterday, just as one Glasgow Rangers director made the club a £500,000 emergency loan to keep it in business, the famous old institution became one of the first companies of this New Year to become subject to a City takeover bid. The [...]
Happy Christmas to all our readers – Editor’s Letter December 22, 2014 So we come to the end of another year, and 2014 has been eventful enough, dominated politically in the UK by the debate over the future of Scotland and elsewhere by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Oil prices have crashed, causing major implications for producers and consumers alike and in some countries interest rates have [...]
Santa doesn’t know what to get you – Editor’s Letter December 18, 2014 It's a funny thing about Santa Claus: he knows whether you’ve been bad or good, but you still have to tell him what you want to see under the tree. Friends with children have been telling me about the latest Christmas fad: a doll designed to be posed around your home, accompanied by [...]
#Selfiemania and the giving season – Editor’s Letter December 11, 2014 Good news: 2014 has been the year of the selfie, according to Twitter. Ellen DeGeneres’ digital self-portrait on Oscar night proved the most shared message ever on the microblogging platform, where the word has been mentioned more than 92m times – a 500 per cent increase on the year before. I can well believe it, [...]
Davis report into FCA insurance fiasco: Good intentions are not enough – Editor’s Letter December 10, 2014 John Griffith-Jones, the chairman of the FCA, said last night that the regulator’s botched briefing to one media organisation, which went disastrously wrong and resulted in causing mayhem on the stock market last March, was well-intended. It’s a view that is backed by Simon Davis, the Clifford Chance lawyer commissioned to write a highly detailed [...]
WPP awaits a new era on its board – Editor’s Letter December 9, 2014 By the time the last of the chocolates have been foraged from the Advent Calendar, or thereabouts, WPP, the giant advertising group run by Sir Martin Sorrell, will very likely have chosen a new chair for the company’s board. The group, which has had regular spats with shareholders over the scale of its executive pay, [...]
The going is tough – but so are we – Editor’s Letter December 4, 2014 The nights may be drawing in, but this time of year is still about hope shining in darkness. The latest Autumn Statement seemed the other way around: thick with uncomfortable truths beneath Osborne’s despatch-box bravado. Yet despite a stubbornly high deficit, warning lights flashing across the global economy, and business getting attacked for the sake [...]