Coeure calls for limited national control on bloc’s banking union September 30, 2013 EUROPEAN Central Bank (ECB) board member Benoit Coeure argued in favour of limiting Eurozone nations’ discretion over new bail-in rules during a speech yesterday. Coeure said: “The degree of discretion national resolution authorities will have in applying the bail-in rules… in my view should be as constrained as possible.” Some leaders have dragged their feet [...]
The US is busy reinventing its future – the rest of the world isn’t so lucky September 29, 2013 I'VE always been a John Steinbeck/ Bruce Springsteen sort of American. I share their common mantra, "Aren't things terrible here, but I wouldn't want to be anyplace else." Being clear-eyed about the US's failings, while remaining romantic about it at heart isn't easy. But America's extraordinary capacity to right its ship – to reinvent itself [...]
Current account swapping edges up on seven-day switch system September 26, 2013 THE FIRST 10 days of the new seven-day switching system saw 35,000 current account customers move to a new bank or building society, the Payments Council revealed yesterday. That is an increase of six per cent on the level of switching in an average 10-day period through 2012. New systems were introduced in an effort [...]
Lessons from Italy: What happens when businesses are forced to move abroad September 25, 2013 THE 42 employees of Firem, an Italian heating systems maker, returned from their August holidays to find the plant where they worked had relocated to Poland. Firem is not the only recent Italian escape act. Italy’s entrepreneurs, facing the second-to-worst business climate in the developed word, on World Bank figures, are leaving. And union power [...]
Miliband’s lurch to left is a recipe for disaster September 25, 2013 WE NOW know what Labour’s strategy to win the next election will be: shift to the left, bash business, stoke envy and jealousy, attack the City and come up with a raft of populist policies. It might even work. New Labour is well and truly over, an experiment now deemed an obsolete, almost shameful failure [...]
Miliband’s lurch to left is a recipe for disaster September 24, 2013 WE NOW know what Labour’s strategy to win the next election will be: shift to the left, bash business, stoke envy and jealousy, attack the City and come up with a raft of populist policies. It might even work. New Labour is well and truly over, an experiment now deemed an obsolete, almost shameful failure [...]
Labour pledges to raise UK corporation tax September 23, 2013 IN BRIGHTON ED MILIBAND will today announce a raid on the profits of large UK businesses, as he commits to reversing the coalition’s planned corporation tax cut. The Labour leader will tell his party’s annual conference in Brighton that his government would scrap plans to reduce corporation tax – the charge levied on companies’ profits [...]
Innovation Diary: Why designing the right marketing strategy could ultimately cut costs September 22, 2013 WHILE the digital economy has vastly increased the ability of startups to upscale in a cost-efficient way, attracting customers has not necessarily become any easier. In research published in the Sloan Management Review last year, for instance, David Bell, Jeonghye Choi, and Leonard Lodish noted that, although internet firms theoretically have “‘unlimited’ trading areas”, and [...]
Innovation Diary: Three things we can learn from the high growth small business gazelles September 15, 2013 OVER 350,000 new firms have been launched in the UK this year, and confidence is rising. Aldermore Bank research, released on Friday, saw small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) confidence in the economy climb for the fourth consecutive quarter. Yet this tells us little about what it takes to succeed as a UK startup. As Mark [...]
High Jinx can land Doncaster Cup glory on wet Town Moor September 12, 2013 THE WEATHER up at Doncaster has completely changed the complexion of the Ladbrokes St Leger meeting and, as we’ve seen over the last couple of days, it generally pays to stick with horses proven on a slower surface. We were hit with a raft of non-runners yesterday but today’s feature, the Group Two Doncaster Cup [...]