Don’t ignore the City in the great Brexit debate January 12, 2016 Although there is much we don’t yet know about the forthcoming referendum of Britain’s membership of the EU (such as when the vote will take place and what the terms will look like), we do now have some clarity on the issue of how much freedom the PM intends to give his own ministers to [...]
The 21st century NHS revolution that will cure more for less January 12, 2016 With every year that passes, medicine is slowly entering a fundamentally new era. While almost every week brings news of breakthroughs and cures, history suggests that a genuine revolution will only be with us when costs start to decline. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people started to leave their local communities as transport and [...]
A sugar tax would only make the UK tax system more incoherent January 12, 2016 Rumours abound that the government is secretly quite keen on imposing a new tax on sugary drinks, to attempt to combat obesity. There are strong arguments against such a proposal. These taxes hit the poor hardest and will probably only have a marginal impact on obesity levels. Plus, so-called “sin taxes” of this kind have [...]
Reasons to be cheerful: One, two, three (and 4) January 11, 2016 The New Year has not been especially happy, so far, in the world of business and finance. The FTSE is down, China is chaotic, oil is plumbing new depths, and even desperate retailers are replacing their top execs or trying to snap up rivals. But it’s worth remembering that there are two sides to every coin, [...]
Saudi-Iran schism: The West should cut its losses in the Middle East January 11, 2016 The most annoying intellectual pathology of the western foreign policy elite must be its singular insistence that action, however mindless, beats informed inaction; that doing more is always better than doing less. I saw this intellectual disease time and again in the aftermath of the utterly disastrous Iraq War. Smart opinion was divided between those [...]
The City must work with the rest of the capital to keep London on top January 11, 2016 The City and the boroughs of London are intimately connected. Not only do around 400,000 Londoners travel to work in the City every day, but many also come to visit the Square Mile’s bars, shops, museums and galleries throughout the week. On Thursday, 100 of the top figures in London government, including the mayor of [...]
What M&S’s new boss Steve Rowe can learn from Sir Alex Ferguson about crafting a winning business January 11, 2016 "It's a bit like being asked to be England football manager… you don’t turn it down.” These were the words of one analyst when Marc Bolland, soon to be former Marks & Spencer chief executive, took the retail hot seat back in 2009. Now, like so many England managers, he departs with a sense that adversity [...]
After one of the worst starts to a year on record, will 2016 prove a poor year for stock markets? January 11, 2016 Paul Markham, Newton’s global equities portfolio manager, says YES For equities overall, it is clearly too early to tell whether a bad start to the year is a sign that 2016 will be challenging. However, it is true that leadership of markets in recent months has been ever narrower, with a small number of large-cap stocks [...]
Corbyn, business and the diplomatic dance January 8, 2016 Hands up: who was gripped by Jeremy Corbyn’s reshuffle this week? By normal Westminster standards this wasn’t exactly a swift and decisive event. It started late on Sunday night and is just about wrapping up now. Westminster watchers were in overdrive, camped outside the office of the Leader of the Opposition, live-blogging every twist and [...]
Why financial markets matter for the real economy January 8, 2016 Much like Jose Mourinho’s second spell at Chelsea, 2015 turned out to be a false dawn for the stock market. After breaking through 7,000 in April, the FTSE 100 ended the year barely over 6,000. The rollercoaster was even bumpier in China, where the market rose by 54 per cent by mid-June, only to lose [...]