FTSE 100 and Wall Street bounce back after week of turmoil February 12, 2018 The FTSE 100 and companies on Wall Street rose today after a week of big losses following global stock market turmoil. London’s blue-chip companies gained more than 1.2 per cent by the mid-afternoon, with highs just short of the 7,200 points mark. The S&P 500, the US benchmark, rose by 1.2 per cent at the [...]
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Shoot Them: We went on safari with Kenya’s top photographer February 2, 2018 Normally at hotels I’m rather picky about who joins me for breakfast, but this time I made an exception. Or as much of an exception you can claim to make when a herd of wild Rothchild’s giraffes wander over uninvited to pop their necks through the lodge’s windows in search of a bite to eat. [...]
It’s getting hot out there, and investors need to protect themselves February 2, 2018 In a previous incarnation, I was a theoretical astrophysicist. In that role, I worked on a team that tried to parse how much of global warming could be attributed to the sun and how much to human causes. As someone who worked directly with climate change data, I can assure you: Climate change is real. [...]
More and more pets are taking to the skies to join us abroad, but what happens to our four-legged friends when they fly? January 25, 2018 Air travel, it’s easy to forget, is arcane magic. We strap ourselves into big metal tubes to be voluntarily catapulted thousands of feet into the sky, a place where there’s free sour cream and onion flavoured pretzels and tiny bottles of vodka, and where we’re furious when the wifi doesn’t work. It is only the [...]
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 [...]
Populists have hijacked the concept of ‘inequality’ for their own political aims January 19, 2018 Jeremy Corbyn’s rise in power and popularity has gone hand-in-hand with an increased focus on inequality – a word that, these days, has fully negative connotations. According to the Momentum brigade, “neoliberalism” has created an impenetrable divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, the fat cat boss versus the company’s janitorial staff, the tech entrepreneur [...]
Forget bitcoin and dogecoin, there’s joke cryptocurrency based on Theresa May, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron January 16, 2018 Bitcoin might be on a downward turn (for now at least), but Theresa May coin is on the up. Yes, the Prime Minister has been minted into the cryptocurrency world in another example of the craze. Who wouldn’t approve of going to all that effort just for a pun about being strong and stable? Read [...]
The Labour danger: Pricing in the possibility of a Corbyn-led government December 12, 2017 It has been 18 months filled with political surprises, and at a time when nothing seems to be off the cards, the possibility of a Corbyn-led government perhaps isn’t as farfetched as some of us imagined. While many businesspeople are praying this never comes to light, it’s still a risk that can’t be ignored. [...]
Uber has been behaving like a tech teenager – it’s time to grow up November 27, 2017 When Dara Khosrowshahi was ushered in as the new broom at Uber in August, he can’t have realised the full extent of the mess he had been tasked with clearing up. Damaging claims of sexual harassment that came to light in February were superseded in September by the dramatic decision to strip Uber of its [...]
Following in the tyre tracks of legendary rock stars through Morocco in a Bentley Bentayga November 1, 2017 As I steer off the ferry from Spain and burble through the customs gate, I catch sight of the Grand Mosque’s rectangular minaret that greeted Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg in 1967. I’m in Tangier, exactly 50 years later, on a mission to Marrakech and, like Keith and Anita, my girlfriend and I have arrived [...]