A wholesale improvement is the only way for UK banks to weather the Eurozone storm December 21, 2011 FOR the past fifteen months, the Bank of England (BoE) has been backpedalling. Instead of coasting, the UK economy has stalled. The government’s bold and sensible plans for budget deficit reduction are broadly on track for the next few months, but will not remain so unless the central bank shapes up to the challenge of [...]
Much racism has been booted out but don’t give up December 21, 2011 AS FOOTBALL settles down to the news that two of its stars are being disciplined over racist epithets hurled on the field of play, it could seem like a return to the bad old days, when clear racism was a regrettably commonplace part of the game. The decision by an independent regulatory commission of the [...]
Banking reform should rule out more bailouts December 21, 2011 THE rescue of Northern Rock, and the subsequent injections of taxpayers’ money into RBS and the forced merger of HBOS and Lloyds, stemmed from a clear failure of Ed Balls and Labour’s tripartite regulatory structure for financial services. And when a Liberal Democrat trade secretary and a Conservative chancellor came together to try to agree [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 21, 2011 Move on accounts Surveys demonstrate that individuals and small businesses alike are often dissatisfied with their bank, and yet they are still overwhelmingly unlikely to change provider. Genuine account portability would radically improve matters. Sir John Vickers has called for the formation by September 2013 of a free current account redirection service, that allows the [...]
This Christmas, let’s all lift a glass to mark the birth of Homo sapiens urbanus December 20, 2011 MORE than half the world’s population now lives in cities. And with 1m people every week migrating to emerging cities, all developing regions, including Africa, are expected to have more people living in urban than rural areas by 2030. Across the planet, Homo sapiens will have become Homo sapiens urbanus. In this, the largest migration [...]
Plan to ringfence banks will leave us all in the dark December 20, 2011 THE government has announced it will implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB). The two headline proposals are to “ring fence” the retail banking parts of universal banks from their supposedly riskier investment banking parts, and to roughly double banks’ regulatory minimum equity ratios. Many bankers are complaining. They claim the ICB [...]
RAPID RESPONSES December 20, 2011 Europe’s agenda Roland Rudd is a respected enthusiast for the European project [The City of London needs a Europe strategy that does not lead to it being sidelined, Monday]. But he is mistaken in our relationship with Europe and it is time for fundamental review. Rudd highlights Margaret Thatcher’s acceptance of qualified majority voting, driven [...]
2011 saw an Arab Spring and the euro in crisis – get ready for even more drama in 2012 December 19, 2011 IT’S been quite a year: the Eurozone is in crisis and the US lost its AAA credit rating from S&P. But economists warn that next year could be worse. There might be a repeat of 2008 – a credit crunch and another recession. Worse, the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde warns of a “lost [...]
HMV’s last stand has new toys but not much future December 19, 2011 SIX years ago, David Cameron famously taunted Tony Blair in the House of Commons by saying “He was the future once”. And at that point, ahead of Christmas 2005, the HMV Group seemed to have a future. Annual profits were still well over £100m, the age of digital downloading seemed a distant threat and HMV’s [...]
Santa’s red coat hides true Christmas magic December 19, 2011 THIS Christmas, my wife and I plan to watch a DVD of The Polar Express with our baby. It is a well-crafted, charming and magical film that we first saw in 2004. As we came out of the cinema into a cold, snowy Christmas Eve she asked if I’d enjoyed it. “Yes”, I said, “but [...]