By: Eliot Wilson

Eliot Wilson is a writer, commentator and contributing editor at Defence On The Brink. He was formerly a clerk in the House of Commons and writes regularly on politics, defence and international security, and Parliament and the constitution, including for The Spectator, The Hill, The i Paper and CapX

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Has Jack Ma made IPOs a weapon of corporate warfare?

October 29, 2020

Ant Group is not a household name. An affiliate of Chinese tech wizard Jack Ma’s Alibaba, it operates the digital payment platform Alipay, which serves more than a billion users and is China’s largest such enterprise. This week, Ant Group announced the pricing of its listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s Star [...]
Deal or no deal, reports of London’s death are greatly exaggerated

October 23, 2020

London has for many years enjoyed the reputation as the world’s leading financial centre. Only New York has ever come close to challenging the capital’s crown — and since 2015 London has generally topped all the rankings. In that time, though, every paean to London’s preeminence has carried the gloomy caveat: “until Brexit”. The received [...]
Mayor 2.0: London deserves a leader who can punch at the capital’s weight

October 14, 2020

It’s more than 20 years now since we saw the creation of an elected mayor of London with executive power over the whole city. Devised at a time of widespread devolution, public response to the role was lukewarm, with only around a third of voters bothering to express a preference either way. It was somehow [...]
Investing in a greener future: How do we make the sums add up?

October 7, 2020

By 2030, the UK will produce enough wind from offshore sources to power every home in the land. That was the pledge the prime minister made to the Conservative Party Conference this week, promising to turn us into the “Saudi Arabia of wind” (a subtle joke? One can never tell with Boris). Household appliances, he [...]
Andrew Neil’s GB News will test whether there is appetite for a Fox News-style news channel in the UK

October 2, 2020

The announcement this week that Andrew Neil, the doyen of political broadcasters since David Dimbleby quit the stage, was to be chairman of GB News and anchor its flagship evening show four times a week breathed new life into a story that had become a little stale. It was momentous for a number of reasons: [...]
Who speaks for business? Government advice in a crisis

September 25, 2020

It has been another week of regulations and restrictions, another round of measures to try to beat the Covid-19 spread which has started to creep up again as we move into autumn. On Monday, the government sent its top boffins, Professor Chris Whitty and Professor Sir Patrick Vallance, to face the press unchaperoned. This, surely, [...]
A New Look for high street retail? Here’s what matters in the Covid-19 world

September 16, 2020

It has been what Sir Alex Ferguson used to call “squeaky bum time” for fashion retailer New Look these past few days. On Monday it was being reported that British Land and Landsec, two of the chain’s biggest landlords, were preparing to vote against the proposed company voluntary arrangement (CVA) which would have switched the [...]
London transport freedom passes for all – but at what cost?

September 11, 2020

Earlier this week it was reported that senior London business figures were pressing the mayor and Transport for London (TfL) to offer free travel on public transport to encourage the public, in their guise as potential consumers, to venture into the city and make free with their hard-earned pounds. Ewan Venters, CEO of Fortnum and [...]
HSBC’s looming pensions crisis: will the bank win the battle but lose the war?

September 4, 2020

A business of any reasonable size should have members of its team scanning the horizon for potential problems, like Frederick Fleet in the crow’s nest of RMS Titanic. The most dangerous crises, though, are those which fall on a company from an apparently cloudless sky: those which hit unprepared, and leave a business scrabbling for [...]
From the modern Babylon to the city of canals: Eurostar goes to Amsterdam

August 26, 2020

From October this year, passengers will be able to take the Eurostar from St Pancras right into the heart of Amsterdam, the great Gothic Revival Station Centraal on Stationsplein. It’s an eye-catching headline, and one which conjures up images of connectivity, of grand continental train journeys, comfort, ease and relaxation. It’s true that the London-Amsterdam [...]

Greggs profit flakes as baker faces lukewarm start to year

Cadillac to leverage US identity to grow F1 sponsorship portfolio

Psst… This is how to ski Les 3 Vallées without the crowds

By: Eliot Wilson

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