As EDF’s finance chief quits, will the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant ever be built? March 8, 2016 Alistair Mackie, head of Holman Fenwick Willan’s energy and resources group, says Yes. The stakes are high with these projects, and politics can often influence their progress. Thomas Piquemal’s resignation reportedly came after a heated board meeting, yet it was only last week that the French government confirmed that it would continue to back the scheme. [...]
EU referendum: Ex-British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) boss John Longworth is now a martyr to Brexit cause March 7, 2016 As George Osborne and German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble discussed the perils of Brexit on stage at the British Chambers of Commerce's annual conference last week, the organisation's boss was quietly pulling the pin out of a grenade on Sky News. John Longworth, the mild-mannered head of the BCC, gave an interview from the conference [...]
President Trump would mean the end of the western alliance March 7, 2016 Super Tuesday fulfilled its traditional role of determining the two nominees for the US presidency. While Hillary Clinton’s dreary coronation is all too scripted, astoundingly, Donald Trump must be considered the odds-on favourite for the Republican nomination. Yes, if senator Marco Rubio of Florida and governor John Kasich of Ohio were to win their home [...]
Why the City of London Corporation was right to come out in favour of EU membership March 7, 2016 The outcome of last week’s meeting of the highest primary decision-making body of the City of London Corporation, the Court of Common Council, that we are to support the United Kingdom remaining a member of the European Union, has attracted much attention. While a small number of City figures called on us to maintain our [...]
Jail bankers for failure? The new criminal offence is an unworkable paper tiger March 7, 2016 The FCA was criticised earlier this year for going soft on the banking industry after dropping a probe into banking culture and accusations that it is increasingly acting at the behest of the Treasury. The regulator would no doubt counter, however, that 2016 heralds a step-change in its regulatory approach to the UK banking sector. [...]
Is Facebook’s decision to pay more tax in the UK a victory for the government’s diverted profits tax? March 7, 2016 Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at ACCA, says Yes. It looks as though the Diverted Profits Tax is starting to have the desired effect, as the threat of its higher rate is shepherding multinational corporations back into the corporation tax fold in the UK. But that isn’t working in isolation. The impacts of the OECD’s Base [...]
Just like Tidjane Thiam’s departure from Prudential for Credit Suisse showed us, chief executives are becoming increasingly important to share prices March 4, 2016 You can't put a price on a life – or so we’re told. A new study, published recently in the Strategic Management Journal, begs to differ. Its authors studied 631 deaths of chief executives between 1950 and 2009, of which 240 were considered to be sudden and unexpected; they then monitored the reaction in the [...]
President Trump or Clinton? Both would be a disaster for the American economy March 4, 2016 Donald Trump is not inevitable. Despite his spectacular wins on Super Tuesday, he sits fewer than 100 delegates ahead of his closest competitor, senator Ted Cruz, and still needs to win over 900 more to secure the nomination. But his continuous victories – not only in primaries but across a wide range of demographics – [...]
Canada shows why aspiring to a free trade deal with the EU post-Brexit would be a huge gamble March 4, 2016 Campaigners for Britain to leave the EU won’t say what our trading relationship with Europe would be like after a Brexit. This is in part because they don’t know, but also because they would rather not say. None of the alternatives that have been established by other nations are that appealing. Norway, for example, has [...]
Will Project Fear swing the EU referendum in favour of the Remain campaign? March 4, 2016 Tom Mludzinski, director of political polling at ComRes, says Yes. Negative campaigning works. Voters may say that they don’t like it, but the reason it is employed by campaigns is that it does succeed in influencing the outcome. Negative messages tend to stick in the minds of voters more sharply. A campaign must not be solely [...]