Theresa May should let Boris be Boris from the backbenches June 26, 2018 Is Boris Johnson such a good foreign secretary that the rules of cabinet collective responsibility simply need not apply to him? Is he such a skilled diplomat that the rules must bend to excuse him from a vote on the vital issue of our country's future aviation strategy? Is this country so in need of [...]
Editor’s Notes: Without the UK, the EU can resume its march to ever closer union, Nex’s Michael Spencer backs British bubbly and Lady Wilson remembered June 15, 2018 Earlier this week I chaired a discussion at TheCityUK’s annual conference, where several people, including the lobby group’s chairman, John McFarlane, stressed the point that “there’s life beyond Brexit”. It can’t be said often enough, given how much of our national attention and energy has been sucked into the black hole of Brexit: the uncertainty, [...]
BT’s investors lost faith in Gavin Patterson June 11, 2018 When BT announced last month that it would cut 13,000 jobs, many wondered if it would in fact end up as 13,001. Investor patience had been wearing thin, and chief executive Gavin Patterson had been standing on thin ice for a while. From a peak of nearly 500p in November 2015, BT's share price has [...]
Italy’s populists will take advantage of this chaos for all it is worth May 29, 2018 As a spectator sport, Italian politics rarely disappoints. The spectacle of the radical, anti-establishment 5 Star Movement stitching together a plan for government with the far-right League has been gripping and alarming in equal measure. How would sweeping tax cuts sit alongside a massive expansion of welfare? How would markets react to a debt-laden economy [...]
Editor’s Notes: Time to wake up to your own online data dump March 23, 2018 Having spent the past decade pouring my every opinion and interest on toFacebook, I find myself outraged to discover that the data generated by my self-obsessed oversharing has been used to try and sell me things. Worse, political campaigns have been using my deep data footprint to try and target me with campaign messages. This [...]
‘Trump could be the best president since Reagan’: US ambassador Woody Johnson on trade deals, tariffs, Brexit and London’s ‘surprisingly good’ restaurants March 13, 2018 Six months into his term as Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UK, and newly installed south of the river in a fortress-like embassy, Woody Johnson is enjoying himself. “I’m loving it,” he tells me, in his first interview with a business newspaper since arriving in London last August. At a reception for journalists in the [...]
Editor’s Notes: MPs should summon the hedge funds if they want to understand Carillion, Carney’s catty comment and RBS’s robot February 23, 2018 In their quest to find out what happened to doomed outsourcing giantCarillion, MPs are asking the right questions but they’re not necessarily addressing them to the right people. This week the committee investigating Carillion’s collapse grilled accountancy firms KPMG andDeloitte, but while the beancounters can provide valuable insight into the final hours of Carillion’s life, [...]
Editor’s Notes: Business leaders are more relaxed about Brexit than you think, the UK is still attracting international students and we should all tune in to Positively Noel February 16, 2018 Businesses seem to be reasonably well represented in the Brexit debate, thanks to the muscle of groups such as the CBI, IoD and British Chambers of Commerce. However, the problem these organisations tend have is that they to settle on a single position despite representing firms of different sizes, spanning different sectors and with a [...]
Editor’s Notes: The City has its Brexit optimists – are they complacent or correct? February 2, 2018 This week I attended a small dinner at which some of the most significant financial institutions in the City were represented. Over the course of the evening, and to my surprise, it became clear that all but one of the 12 guests was an enthusiastic Brexiteer. Many of them worked at companies whose public interventions [...]
Editor’s Notes: Theresa May can benefit from taking on Corbyn’s anti-business agenda, Trump’s thumbs up to data and the ONS’ telecoms glitch January 19, 2018 Theresa May has never been an enthusiastic defender of free-market capitalism, much to the frustration of many in business. However, to give credit where it’s due, the PM pushed back quite hard against Jeremy Corbyn’s latest assault on private business, which was sparked by the collapse of Carillion. After the Labour leader stumbled his way [...]
