London has been riding high on IPOs but must find favour in its post-Brexit status April 28, 2022 Against all the odds, the London IPO markets boomed in late 2020 and 2021, defying the uncertainties of Brexit and the pandemic to bring 126 new companies to market: 60 on the main market and 66 on AIM. In addition to the sheer volume of deals, there was an encouraging pivot to technology, as a [...]
Up in West Cumbria, the battle for coal has yet to find a winner April 27, 2022 In West Cumbria, a long stretch of coast right by the green hills of the wealthy Lake District, people have been worrying about jobs for a long time. So when the plans for the first new deep mine since the 1980s were first announced, most locals rejoiced. Fast forward to today, the plans haven’t yet [...]
Letters: Small businesses still losing out April 27, 2022 [Re: CBI president: UK needs to tap into fintech’s ‘flotilla of benefits’, April 25] Lord Bilimoria and the CBI aren’t wrong. Businesses need all the support they can get against a backdrop of slow post-pandemic economic growth. The UK has one of the most advanced fintech ecosystems in the world and we’re proud to run [...]
Explainer-in-brief: A mass exodus or sticking around for Twitter anarchy? April 27, 2022 Elon Musk has officially bought Twitter – or as some put it, free speech – for USD$44bn. Not everyone is happy: several high-profile users have promised they will leave the platform, worrying that with no checks in place it will become a place rife with hate, misogyny and offensive content. Because it’s currently such a [...]
Elon Musk wants free speech on Twitter? Time to meet Nadine Dorries April 27, 2022 If Musk thought finding financing would be the most complicated part of the Twitter deal, he hasn’t met Nadine Dorries.
We need to stop comforting ourselves with the myth of the all-powerful central bank April 27, 2022 Inflation continues to be a major problem for policy makers. The annual rate of price increases hit 7 per cent last month and could be in double figures later this year. This projection is far from being a fantasy. On some measures, annual inflation in America is already over 10 per cent. Rather bizarrely, the [...]
If the Conservatives want to survive, they need to regain their economic credibility April 27, 2022 Now, people’s money is counting for less and less as inflation pushes prices up. And a YouGov poll put Labour ahead of the Conservatives on six out of seven economic trackers. For the first time, the same number of people think a Labour government led by Keir Starmer would be better at managing the economy as those believe the same of a Boris-Johnson led Conservative government.
Emmanuel Macron has cast himself as France’s defender against extremism April 26, 2022 You can tell a lot about a person by what they place in their study, their “room of one’s own”, as novelist Virginia Woolf put it. The clues of who a person is – and what they value – are often in plain sight. Newly re-elected French President Emmanuel Macron is no exception to this [...]
Letters: Time to go back to school April 26, 2022 [Re: Most women don’t ‘feel financially independent’ as cost of living crisis bite, yesterday] The results from the Fidelity International survey show that less than half (45 per cent) of women feel financially independent. During a time where people are likely to be facing rising costs, it seems challenging to control and improve finances, and [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Whitehall’s 19th century work-from-office edict April 26, 2022 Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the last bastions of a bygone era in Parliament, has demanded civil servants return to their desks with a reminder of everything they’ve been missing – passive aggressive notes from colleagues. The minister for – and read this slowly – government efficiency left notes for civil servants not at their desks [...]