Anti-capitalist slogans have real costs: Don’t put down a goose that lays golden eggs November 27, 2011 A COTTAGER and his wife had a hen that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the hen must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed it.” The protesters in the City understand Aesop’s fable as a warning against the greed of [...]
Back to basics is not the way to resolve high pay November 27, 2011 EXECUTIVE Pay is out of control – official. That’s the message from last week’s High Pay Commission report, which claims that “excessive top pay is deeply damaging to the UK as a whole, and action is urgently required to address it.” However, on the subject of long-term incentives, in particular, it is just plain wrong. [...]
Like Terry or Lampard, City stars are worth it November 27, 2011 THE publication of the High Pay Commission’s report last week prompted much comment when it found that remuneration for heading one UK bank has increased dramatically more than average wages over 30 years. Coming on the back of last month’s Income Data Services report, which drew attention to the increase of total earnings for directors [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 27, 2011 From bad to wurst In Friday’s City A.M., Allister Heath quoted economic research concluding that if a restaurant bill is split equally among diners it is on average 36 per cent more expensive than if people paid individually only for what they ordered, pointing out by extension the obvious moral hazard of Eurozone pooled debts, [...]
Physicists are hunting for a so-called God particle, but their faith is dwindling fast November 24, 2011 EVER since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was nearing completion at Cern, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, particle scientists have been earnestly explaining that it really doesn’t matter if the huge accelerator fails to snare its main quarry, a particle called the Higgs boson. Maybe it exists; maybe it doesn’t. It’s interesting [...]
Lehman lawyers think insolvency regime too weak November 24, 2011 THE high profile failure of MF Global has once again highlighted the intractable problems that arise when an investment firm fails. The latest reports suggest that the shortfall on client funds may be as much as $1.2bn (£0.7bn). Staggeringly, that represents a quarter of all the funds that the firm was supposed to be holding. [...]
There’s no middle way: Stretch or be squeezed November 24, 2011 THE Oxford English Dictionary has declared Ed Miliband’s phrase “the squeezed middle” its word of the year. Yes, it’s a phrase, not a word, and let’s set aside how tricky writing the definition must have been, given that Miliband’s concept of the middle appears to reach over the whole population except for far extremes of [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 24, 2011 Safer than some Allister Heath writes, “the main reason why UK gilt yields hit record lows yesterday is that the Bank of England is monetising the entirety of the government’s borrowing” [Even Germany is feeling the pressure, yesterday]. That would explain why gilts were strong, but sterling has been strong against Asian currencies, suggesting foreign [...]
Regulations sprouting from Brussels will damage the UK’s corporate governance November 23, 2011 In recent days, the implications of the EU regulatory reform agenda for the City of London have been widely reported. However, the financial sector is not the only area of vulnerability to future EU directives. Of wider concern is the growing risk that the UK’s distinctive model of corporate governance – underpinned by “comply or [...]
Democracy is in: Here comes the activist investor November 23, 2011 SOME of this year’s biggest news stories, such as the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements in London and New York, have a common underlying narrative. “The many” are unhappy about the actions of “the few”. Democracy is in vogue. A similar narrative is emerging from some of the biggest business stories of the year. [...]