London should turbo-charge devolution by creating a Thames City super-region January 28, 2015 Devolution is the flavour of the month, with plans to transfer powers from Westminster to Scotland sparking widespread debate about how else we can fix Britain’s over-centralised system of government. But London will have to take a very different approach to other regions. Yes, the capital desperately needs more fiscal autonomy, but it also needs [...]
Entrepreneurs aren’t lone wolves: Labour will back them for the good of all January 28, 2015 Paul Lindley looked at the range of baby food at the supermarket and thought his daughter’s generation deserved better. So in 2006 he founded Ella’s Kitchen, to create food for kids that appealed to all the senses. Since then, his daughter Ella has grown – but Ella’s Kitchen has grown much faster. It has a [...]
As Tsipras says that Greece won’t default on its debts, is a compromise still likely? January 28, 2015 Dario Perkins, chief European economist at Lombard Street Research, says Yes It’s hard to disentangle rhetoric and bargaining tactics from official “red lines,” but there is still scope for a mutually beneficial deal. The Troika could quite easily cut the future value of Greek debts by extending maturities and lowering interest rates, without imposing immediate [...]
OnTheMarket will need to win the Google battle before it can really challenge Zoopla and Rightmove January 28, 2015 OnTheMarket.com, the new property website from the Agents’ Mutual group of estate agents, launched with much fanfare this week with an apparent threat to the “duopoly” enjoyed by Rightmove and Zoopla. Zoopla, as the less well-visited of the two property portal giants, seemed in particular danger as one of the requirements of OnTheMarket.com meant [...]
Which visual aids should you use in presentations? January 28, 2015 Public speaking or presenting can appear complex. So many sources of "advice" all offering different and often competing points of view. It can be tough deciding what advice to take and what to ignore. I have seen people use multiple trainers and get screwed up as a result – choose one coach and stick to [...]
The City must stand up and be counted at this election: Its future is now at stake January 27, 2015 It must have seemed like a jolly jape, dreamt up behind the Parliamentary bike sheds. The coalition had a brilliant wheeze to stitch up the unions by introducing a spending cap at elections. No longer would Labour have access to limitless pots of cash from their union barons. Better still, the brothers would be forced [...]
Markets are crucial to human progress: We need more of them, not less January 27, 2015 Many outrageous things happened around the world over the course of the last week. But judging by both the level of popular interest in the story and the reaction to it, the most heinous was the decision of a mother to send an invoice to the parents of a boy who did not turn up [...]
UK angel investors are spreading their wings – and fuelling our enterprise revolution January 27, 2015 Yesterday it was confirmed that Britain was the fastest growing major economy last year. New business creation is a big part of that story. With 760,000 more businesses now than in 2010, we are rapidly becoming a nation of entrepreneurs. It’s within our grasp to make Britain the best place in the world to start [...]
After the economy lost momentum in the fourth quarter of 2014, should the UK fear a slowdown? January 27, 2015 Nancy Curtin, chief investment officer of Close Brothers Asset Management, says Yes The figures for the fourth quarter point to UK growth losing pace, and we are likely to see this continue into the first half of 2015. Economic growth remains too imbalanced. While improved consumer spending is supporting a buoyant services sector, production and construction [...]
Why Syriza’s fairy tales will devastate Greece – and the wider Eurozone too January 26, 2015 When I was 16 years old, my family (bless them) scraped together enough money to send me to Europe; the first place I touched down on the continent was Athens. A longstanding – and correct – family joke makes it clear that, in many ways, I intellectually never came back from that first trip. It’s [...]