City Matters: The City doesn’t exist in a vacuum – its cultural connections span the globe July 21, 2014 Throughout the past month, visitors to the City’s Paternoster Square might have been surprised by the sight of a giant bowler hat sitting proudly in place. This eye-catching venue has played host to a huge range of world class music – from cabaret to ballet to a performance by the Electric Swing Circus – [...]
Why free bank accounts will have to go to spur competition in banking July 21, 2014 The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is consulting on its provisional decision to launch a formal investigation into UK banks. In other words, the CMA wants to increase competition in banking to better meet the needs of consumers. And alongside other issues, it is concerned that the Big Four banks have a 77 per cent [...]
Forget garden cities: This utopian ideal will never give us the houses we need July 17, 2014 Garden cities make for a fascinating debate, and it’s only set to intensify. The shortlist for the 2014 Wolfson Prize was released last month, and five plans for a new garden city edged closer towards winning £250,000. Earlier this year, the government announced that a 15,000-home garden city would be built at Ebbsfleet in Kent. [...]
Don’t politicise takeovers, Vince Cable – you risk putting bidders off Britain July 17, 2014 "I do not want protectionist legislation, but we do need a last resolute national defence,” said business secretary Vince Cable in City A.M. this week. Unfortunately, there is a risk that Cable’s proposals to toughen up the rules governing takeovers could have adverse consequences unless they are refined. Contrary to some of the wilder speculation, [...]
Lib Dem reversal on the bedroom tax should worry welfare reform supporters July 17, 2014 The Lib Dems announced yesterday that they are heavily watering down their support for the “bedroom tax” – or more accurately, the Under-Occupancy Charge. The policy cuts housing benefit payments by 14 per cent for households with one spare bedroom, and by 25 per cent for those with two or more. Perhaps the most controversial [...]
Why emotional investors drive markets – but reason usually prevails in the end July 16, 2014 Like the age-old debate of nature versus nurture, the question of whether markets are driven by emotion or reason elicits the age-old answer: a bit of both. In the long run, markets are driven by all sorts of non-emotional economic and political factors, such as GDP growth, productivity, political stability and all the things that [...]
We must recapture the power of long-termism to restore faith in the market July 16, 2014 Peter Lynch, the great American fund manager at Fidelity, returned an average of 29 per cent a year for his investors between 1977 and his retirement in 1990. An investment of $1,000 at the outset would have grown to $27,000 by the end of that period. That exceptional long-term record shows the huge power of [...]
The shareholder spring is back – but there may be worse to come for CEOs July 16, 2014 This is a rotten year to be a chief executive. The impact of new regulations introduced by the Department for Business has been to rekindle 2012’s “shareholder spring”, with a host of firms feeling the heat as up to 40 per cent of their shareholders opposed policies that could bind pay awards for three years. [...]
After growth picked up in the second quarter, is a Chinese hard landing now unlikely? July 16, 2014 Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, says Yes. The advantage of a state-led system like China’s is that policymakers have plenty of levers they can pull to prevent a slump in growth. We’ve had a little taste of that in recent months. There’s been a burst of spending on infrastructure such as railways, [...]
Risky projects like HS3 are the only way to rescue our languishing regions July 16, 2014 In London and much of the South East, the recovery has been well underway for a considerable period of time. House prices boom and restaurants are packed. The economic data for the UK as a whole looks just as encouraging, with employment now at its highest ever level. Yet there are persistent complaints that the [...]