Don’t stay to the end of every meeting, listen to gossip and make slow choices November 30, 2011 During a 24-year career at McKinsey, John Brady advised chief executives of consumer giants. Here he shares his top ten insights 1. WASTE TIME GOSSIPING Believe in the power of gossip. Most of the really interesting insights I gained as a management consultant happened either when I was chatting in clients’ office doorways at the [...]
Rebuilding UK infrastructure as an engine for growth is a task for private companies November 30, 2011 IN TUESDAY’S Autumn Statement, the chancellor committed an additional £25bn in public spending on infrastructure over the next three years. The importance of this promise isn’t in the Keynesian speed of the payback in employment (in fact modern road and rail infrastructure has long lead-in times), but in the significant benefits of great infrastructure in [...]
Red tape around audit is proving hard to untangle November 30, 2011 THE Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has published proposals to reduce financial reporting requirements for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and subsidiaries. EU rules mean that to classify as small for accounting purposes, a company must comply with two out of three criteria: gross assets of no more than £3.26m; turnover of no [...]
The unions are holding back better pay deals November 30, 2011 IT MIGHT have been the worst general strike for a generation, but it clearly failed to take off. Apart from the closure of my children’s school, and the vast army of police protecting parliament, I honestly didn’t notice much impact from it. As the Prime Minister said, in the end it felt a bit of [...]
RAPID RESPONSES November 30, 2011 Called out on pay Allister Heath suggests several reforms for pay in his recent editor’s letter [Rights and wrongs of boardroom pay, last Wednesday]. Among them, he argues that in his proposed system “pay would be linked very closely to a shareholder value and would go down as well as up.” However, he fails to [...]
How to preserve capital, keep your risks low and hold onto your wealth November 30, 2011 IT IS one of the many paradoxes of life that we tend to save more when times are bad, and less when times are good. The reasoning is simple; when times are good, it does not seem so important to save money, as we feel confident about the future. In the same way, when times [...]
Art investing: Looking at the bigger picture November 30, 2011 PICKING winners in art, as with any investment, isn’t easy – but holding it is a shade more pleasurable than owning shares. Chancellor George Osborne’s announcement in his Autumn Statement that gifts of pre-eminent art to the nation will increase from £20m to £30m in lieu of inheritance tax is an attempt to stimulate gifts [...]
Trying to pour liquidity into a frozen market November 30, 2011 YESTERDAY’S coordinated central bank move flipped the FX markets onto their head, with increased dollar liquidity triggering a sell-off of the greenback, with the euro and the Aussie and Kiwi dollars coming out on top. The announcement came hot on the heals of the news that the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, [...]
The euro is being held up despite the crisis November 30, 2011 AFTER months of deepening crisis across the Eurozone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the euro may have collapsed against other currencies. Indeed, by many forecasts the euro should have collapsed. However, despite continued uncertainty, spiralling yields and political fumbling, the euro has remained stubbornly resilient.weak dollar over euro strength The Federal Reserve has been [...]
Know your Fire from your Vox with our guide to the ultimate e-readers November 30, 2011 People said e-books would never catch on. For some reason, this was quite often backed up by the argument that e-readers don’t smell like real books. But – and this is no slight on the aroma of the works of Mark Twain – these people were wrong. Retailers are rubbing their hands at the prospect [...]
