US shareholders have slashed CEO pay by 38pc since 2000 May 10, 2012 IT is often said that the problem with the pay of UK CEOs is that they are becoming too much like their American counterparts. The argument is that – supposedly – US bosses have seen their pay spiral out of control, especially in recent years, and that their British counterparts are now following suit. But [...]
Coalition behaving as if we were in normal economic times May 9, 2012 IT was impossible not to be reminded of Roman history yesterday, as Britain’s politicians argued over the Queen’s speech, fiddling while the economy burnt. Cameron, like a modern version of the ill-fated Roman emperor Nero himself, was busy discussing his plan to set up another five or so quangos, including one to police supermarkets, and [...]
It sometimes appears as if the euro was designed to fail May 8, 2012 REMEMBER those debates about whether the Eurozone was an optimal currency zone? Everybody knew it wasn’t when the euro was launched, yet the EU’s politicians disregarded the economics and went for it anyway. They then compounded their recklessness by expanding the Eurozone’s size, bringing together increasingly disparate economies under the European Central Bank’s one size [...]
Eurozone elections will precipitate Greek exit May 7, 2012 A FRESH Eurozone crisis was always inevitable – the question was over its timing. At least now we have some clarity. What angry voters in France and Greece have done is to precipitate the next stage of the slow unravelling of Europe’s flawed structures. Greece would have gone bust and quit the euro regardless of [...]
City pay revolt: Long live this most capitalist of revolutions May 3, 2012 OFF with their heads: the message from shareholders is becoming louder and angrier by the day. “Listen to us”, they are rightly telling company boards, “you work for us. We pay you. Stop behaving as if you own the place.” And that’s exactly the point: CEOs are merely shareholders’ paid hands. The real capitalists are [...]
Mervyn King should have hiked rates to deflate the bubble May 2, 2012 SIR Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, is not one for mea culpas. His speech last night was an extraordinary defence of his record in office – and a largely unfair attack on his detractors, ignoring their intellectual arguments and questioning their motives. He did admit that he should have done more [...]
Why Boris Johnson is by far the best choice for Londoners May 1, 2012 TOMORROW is decision time for Londoners. Our great city is at a crossroads: it must choose who to elect as its mayor at a time of extreme economic uncertainty and just months before the Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on London. Having carefully examined all the candidates, this newspaper believes that [...]
It’s time for supporters of the single currency to apologise April 30, 2012 SOME of the stories coming out of the Eurozone are heart-breaking. Greece’s retail sales are down 13 per cent over the past year, a tragic and all too painful collapse for millions of families. Economists sometimes compare the UK’s recession with the great depression: while technically true in various narrow, statistical ways, such a parallel [...]
Secret collapse in corporate profits is hurting UK’s recovery April 29, 2012 IF you repeat a myth often enough, it eventually becomes the received wisdom. That is as true in the City as it is politics. Take the supposedly well-established “fact” that profits are booming despite the recession. That is certainly the story in America and in emerging markets. But while most large UK-based quoted firms are [...]
Shareholder activism is vital for a properly functioning City April 26, 2012 OWNERS of publicly listed companies need to behave as proprietors. They shouldn’t micromanage firms in which they invest – that is their executives’ jobs – but they should ratify some key decisions, including the pay of their top staff. In his 1970 polemic Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Albert O Hirschman explained that members of any [...]