As leading stock markets erase their 2016 losses, was panic about recession earlier in the year absurd? March 21, 2016 Mick Grady, senior economist and strategist at Aviva Investors, says Yes. “I think it’s a myth that expansions die of old age”, said Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen in December last year when asked if the US was likely to see a recession in the near term. And yet soon after that, fears of US recession [...]
How the courts are punishing corporate offenders for fraud, bribery and corruption offences March 20, 2016 We have seen a spike in legal activity relating to bribery and corruption offences in recent months, with a bank, printing business and a large international property company all being subjected to fines and other penalties thanks to allegations of this kind. One long-standing problem with assessing such cases has been in identifying the role [...]
Budget 2016: With the appointment of Lord Heseltine to lead Thames Estuary Growth Commission is the government finally taking the Thames Estuary’s potential seriously? March 18, 2016 Asking someone to agree on the parameters of the Thames Estuary, one of the largest inlets on the coast of the United Kingdom, is almost as hard as asking someone to decide on the best way to unlock its economic potential. The 146 mile Estuary, once the launching place of England's great ships of exploration [...]
EU referendum: A Brexit would consign George Osborne’s Budget plans to the bin and put in jeopardy hopes of future growth. March 18, 2016 George Osborne’s Budget this week was mostly welcomed by the business community. But, his Budget plans for this year and beyond will be blown out of the water by Brexit, which the Office for Budget Responsibility warns is the biggest risk to the UK’s future prosperity, shattering its growth forecasts. And Brexit is increasingly likely [...]
Regardless of changes to pensions and retirement ages, no country can duck its demographic destiny March 18, 2016 Facing up to demographic reality is never likely to be a vote winner, but over the course of the next four decades the UK will gradually increase the state pension age to 68 for both men and women. Governments all over the world are waking up to the necessity of such a move, driven as [...]
Break-up a bitter pill for Witty not GlaxoSmithKline, Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe’s dealmaking and Smith & Williamson’s owners consider a sale March 18, 2016 If Sir Andrew Witty is casting around for an epithet to sum up his tenure at GlaxoSmithKline, it would probably be: breaking up is hard to do. Yesterday’s announcement that he will retire in 2017 was the City’s worst-kept secret, but it affords GSK the opportunity to contemplate the sort of radical change that tends [...]
George Osborne’s tinkering has made the UK tax system more complicated than ever March 18, 2016 After eight Budgets and six Autumn Statements, we have a pretty good idea of what kind of chancellor George Osborne is. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s policy measures database, before Wednesday he had made 585 separate tax policy changes at these so-called “fiscal events”. There had been 165 income tax changes, 107 corporation [...]
Donald Trump can still be stopped – if Republican elites remember they’re conservatives March 18, 2016 Marco Rubio is gone; another campaign “suspended” after facing the full force of the Trump phenomenon. The senator must have known it wasn’t looking good in his home state of Florida. Appearing tired and dejected on camera just a few days before the primary this Tuesday, he then experienced a crushing, double-digit defeat (which not [...]
Why London’s technology sector is united against Brexit March 18, 2016 The upcoming EU referendum could redefine what it means to do business in Britain, and the City has emerged as a powerful campaigning voice in the debate. The chief executives of Numis Securities and CMC Markets have called for the UK to leave, opposing the views of the City of London Corporation and 36 FTSE [...]
As the UK is said to be the twenty-third happiest nation on earth, is happiness economics a waste of time? March 18, 2016 Tim Worstall, senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes. All too many of its practitioners chafe at the restriction that economics is a positive subject (describing what is) rather than a normative one (what ought to be). This is the explanation for the World Happiness report, where two distinguished, elderly and shockingly right-on economists, [...]