How to change Europe for the better – Editor’s Letter October 23, 2014 Britain wants change in Europe, but we have to think harder about what change is worth having. Polling by YouGov this week showed that if David Cameron could secure a major renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the EU, 55 per cent would vote to stay in. The trouble is, such change is almost unimaginable, especially [...]
One door closes, while others open – Editor’s letter October 21, 2014 Investment bankers are a bit like accountants. They see opportunities from every eventuality. Accountants thrive in the good times and the bad, with the big firms’ restructuring departments jumping into action when the economy turns sour. Yesterday as BCA Marketplace, owner of the webuyanycar.com website, pulled its stock market flotation in London, I asked one [...]
Why we need to talk about business – Editor’s Letter October 16, 2014 Business bashing is in vogue. This week we’ve seen regulators with self-defeating plans to rein in bankers’ pay deals, protesters at the Mipim property conference attacking international investors who buy in London (a protest better aimed at our broken planning system) and a political attack on Lord Freud for using poorly-chosen words to point out [...]
Aldermore IPO cancelled: Sadly, we got it right – Editor’s Letter October 15, 2014 After days of fending off suggestions that its £800m flotation was in trouble, the challenger small business bank Aldermore finally succumbed to the inevitable yesterday. The decision to call off the Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a pity for Aldermore and for the market as a whole. London’s IPO market performed tremendously well during the [...]
Ukip must show it can scale like Uber – Editor’s Letter October 9, 2014 In Silicon Valley, tiny businesses with big ambitions get a surprising piece of advice: start things that don’t scale. The journey to grow a disruptive giant such as AirBnB begins in a small market, doing things that baffle the outside world, winning customers with strategies that could never work across a whole country. The trick [...]
Martin Wheatley undermined China effort – Editor’s Letter October 8, 2014 As the advisers to the Jimmy Choo flotation announce they have enough support to proceed, there is much to be delighted with in the way the new issues market has gone this year. Up to the August break and then pausing until the uncertainty over the Scottish referendum lifted, there has been a constant stream [...]
When the job isn’t worth the candle – Editor’s Letter October 7, 2014 Who would want to be a bank director in London these days? Not Alan Thomson, a member of the audit and risk committee at HSBC Bank who, according to fellow columnist Mark Kleinman, has tendered his resignation. Maybe not John Trueman, who is said to be considering his position as deputy chair of the legal [...]
Business leaders want more from Ed Miliband – Editor’s Letter October 6, 2014 When I put it to one left-leaning businessman yesterday the notion that the former postman Alan Johnson might stand against Ed Miliband as Labour leader, he responded: “That would be lovely.” Some of Labour’s business supporters are running out of patience with Miliband. They feel the party’s pro-European stance is pretty popular with business, but [...]
Changing, growing …exciting times at City A.M. October 2, 2014 City A.M. will be 10 years old next year and until now it has had just two editors. Yesterday it got its third with my elevation to that role, with Marc Sidwell working alongside me as executive editor across all the company’s platforms. Having both worked for this group for some time, Marc and [...]
Scottish independence referendum: Politicians have failed to inspire, but the union must survive September 17, 2014 There have surely been better political campaigns than the Better Together one that has been arguing the case for Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom, 307 years since the 1707 Act of Union. Admittedly, the Better Together side started with a bad hand, taking the No position in the whole debate. Arguing for something not [...]