Salomon bond salesman to acclaimed author October 4, 2011 MICHAEL Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics. When he was twenty-four he started working at Salomon Brothers. Finding the experience preposterous he stumbled out three years later in 1988. His bestseller, Liar’s Poker is widely considered the book that defined Wall Street in the [...]
Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour October 4, 2011 IN HIS latest tour de force, Michael Lewis looks at “why Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers”, the reasons “Greeks wanted to turn their country into a piñata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack,” and “why the Irish wanted to stop being Irish” and [...]
Chrysler’s Ypsilon does premium October 4, 2011 While scrolling through the radio, inside the new Chrysler Ypsilon I’m driving, I find one of the station presets tuned to Radio Italia. It’s an unusual choice and a reminder of this car’s roots. It’s possible you haven’t heard of the Ypsilon. It has never been sold in the UK, and elsewhere it wears a [...]
CAR TALK October 4, 2011 SKODA CITIGO Škoda has unveiled its new small, four-seater Citigo city car. Powered by a 1.0-litre, three-cylinder petrol engine with a choice of two power outputs – 60PS – (62.8mpg, 105g CO2/km) and 77PS (60.1mpg, 108g CO2/km), it comes with three or five doors. Sales begin in the UK next year. LIMITED EDITION MINIS Mini [...]
Stellar Keller: French Laundry gives a taste of US’s very best October 4, 2011 AS someone whose job description includes reviewing restaurants, I admit it: I’m spoiled. Sure, it’s not all perfect foie gras and caviar washed down with Dom Perignon. But over time, you clock up a lot of great food because inevitably, the job includes eating at the very best as well as the not-so-good. I tell [...]
GOING OUT October 4, 2011 AUTUMNAL launches have continued apace and you can now go one better than Patrick Bateman by dining at Dorsia, inspired by its unbookable namesake from Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. Brainchild of ex-Boujis boys Fraser Carruthers and Nick Andreen, this impressive new South Ken members club is spread over three floors of the (ex-Firehouse) Georgian [...]
Osborne to inject billions into firms October 3, 2011 GEORGE Osborne, the chancellor, yesterday unveiled plans to inject tens of billions of pounds worth of government cash into small firms, as he sought to silence critics who say he is not doing enough to promote economic growth. The so-called “credit easing” scheme will see the government finance companies by buying their debt in the [...]
Chelsea in stadium move plot October 3, 2011 CHELSEA Football Club last night gave the clearest indication yet that it intends to leave Stamford Bridge, in a move that could trigger two huge west London property deals. The club has made a formal proposal to buy back from supporters the freehold on which its home of more than a century sits. Owning the [...]
Global stocks fall on Greece October 3, 2011 SHARES in US and European banks were pummelled yesterday after Greece’s admission that it may miss deficit targets set out under its bailout plan increased fears of another global recession. The STOXX Europe 600 Banking Index fell 2.8 per cent, with French banks BNP Paribas and Société Générale among the worst hit. FTSEurofirst 300 index [...]
Tory plan could fuel sub-prime debt October 3, 2011 FORTUNATELY, nobody really expected a flurry of pro-growth reforms in George Osborne’s keynote speech yesterday, which means that few will have been disappointed by the notable lack of new supply-side policies. The doubling of the qualification period for unfair dismissal claims had been widely trailed. There was a softening of the war against carbon, which [...]
