No smoke without fire in BAT boardroom, Vereker charms the CBI and Nationwide’s 10x deal September 21, 2018 No prizes for guessing what the directors of British American Tobacco (BAT) are smoking – it’s all about next-generation products these days. Still, the owner of Lucky Strike and Dunhill believes there’s enough life in its core portfolio to sound an optimistic note about the future of the business under its next chief executive. Like [...]
The clock’s ticking for Smiths Group to shape its destiny, Big Four accountancy firms’ flaws and Paul Pester’s parting mistake September 7, 2018 The clock is ticking for Andy Reynolds Smith, chief executive of the industrial conglomerate Smiths Group. Talks about a combination of Smiths Medical, which manufactures devices ranging from tracheostomy tubes to chest drainage catheters, with US-listed ICU Medical have been ongoing for the best part of four months. When Reynolds Smith presents the company’s annual [...]
The GKN break-up is a test for Melrose, don’t bank on a tax cut and Marc Bolland is not just any NED June 29, 2018 Vultures. Asset-strippers. Corporate predators. The board of Melrose has had these perjorative labels and more thrown at it in the months since its initial bid approach for GKN. This week’s approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States of the £8bn takeover removed the final obstacle to a deal that elicited greater [...]
Sir Martin Sorrell’s mission: To out-fox former WPP allies, proxy voting pressure and fintech in focus June 1, 2018 It was there in black and white. In his farewell memo to 180,000 WPP staff in mid-April, Sir Martin Sorrell couldn’t have been more explicit: “As a founder, I can say that WPP is not just a mattter of life or death, it was, is and will be more important than that. Good fortune and [...]
The City’s pay schizophrenia will fuel discord March 17, 2017 There won’t be much sympathy on the streets of the City today for the eight dozen-or-so people who chair FTSE-100 remuneration committees. Call it Thumbscrews Day, if you like – because by the close of play, Whitehall will have been deluged with all sorts of funky ideas about how boards should be addressing the Prime Minister’s desired clampdown on [...]
Will fortune favour brave Bob Diamond’s Panmure Gordon takeover, Unilever’s flawed logic and the IoD’s Simon Walker heads back to his PR roots March 17, 2017 He's back – and brave. Conventional wisdom has it that smaller City brokers are destined either to merge or die, so a Bob Diamond-backed move for Panmure Gordon represents a bold bet that he and his partners can forge a fresh path for one of the broking world’s most venerable names. Boldness isn’t a fitting adjective [...]
A pensions Green deal that needs energy to understand March 3, 2017 The Green deal: a government-sponsored scheme eventually discarded after failing to adequately explain its benefits and providing poor value to participants. I’m referring, of course, to a Tory-Lib Dem coalition energy-efficiency programme, but is it a description which applies equally well to Sir Philip Green’s £363m settlement with regulators over the pension crisis at BHS? On [...]
Davos Diary: Prime Minister May’s reception as cold as the weather January 20, 2017 At the very least, this week’s Davos agenda had a weary air of familiarity about it: sustainability, artificial intelligence and income inequality all competing to be hailed the zeitgeistian focus of the world’s power-brokers’ power breakfasts. In that respect, little has changed. But if the Trump presidential machine rolls into town this time next year, I [...]
A big year, but it won’t Trump 2016’s shocks January 6, 2017 2016's events made fools of most pundits, and looking back at my column exactly a year ago, I fared little better. True, I correctly said that Santander UK would re-engage in an effort to buy Royal Bank of Scotland's Williams & Glyn unit, but I was well wide of the mark arguing that the FTSE-100 [...]
Tata leadership race must show open mind December 16, 2016 Trump, May, Modi: protectionism takes many forms, and has many masters (and mistresses). In India, a curious case of economic nationalism is quietly unfolding at the country’s most significant conglomerate. In one sense, that’s unsurprising – India’s track record of foreign ownership restrictions in industries like insurance, banking and technology, is a lengthy one. But at [...]
