WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING May 12, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES INDIAN TELECOMS GROUPS HIT OUT AT CHARGES Telecoms companies in India have raised alarm over a threat of retrospective charges for users of mobile spectrum that analysts warn could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. The move by the Indian telecoms regulator has provoked interest from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar. MICROSOFT [...]
New politics even worse than the old May 9, 2010 IF that’s the new politics, I already miss the old kind, warts and all. What we witnessed yesterday was embarrassing: groups of exhausted men meeting in secret locations in Whitehall; behind-the-scenes discussions about the future of the country, with everybody tearing up their manifesto promises; and all the while Gordon Brown, who has been humiliatingly [...]
The girl that’s helping City ladies sparkle May 6, 2010 LAUREN Adriana could have taken the easy route of gliding, It-Girl style, through her twenties. At 24, she is fashion aristocracy, being the grand-daughter of designer Paul Smith and the child of fashion world insiders. She’s friends with all the right people (including the world’s most famous jeweller Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known as JAR) and [...]
Inside the tortured mind of a murderer April 21, 2010 BLUEEYEDBOY BY JOANNE HARRIS Doubleday, £18.99 THE colour of murder is blue, he thinks. Ice-blue, smokescreen blue, frostbite, post-mortem, body-bag blue. It is also his colour in so many ways, running through his circuitry like an electrical charge, screaming blue murder all the way.” So begins this chilling, elegant thriller about a blue-eyed boy that [...]
Rickie’s return just misses the mark April 15, 2010 Film CEMETERY JUNCTION Cert: 15 HAVING proved he can make it in Hollywood, Ricky Gervais has brought a whole load of Tinseltown gloss back with him for this tale of small-town kids in the Seventies. Written and directed by Gervais and old mucker Stephen Merchant, the film is polished, conventional and formulaic to the degree [...]
PROPERTY BARONS PAY TRIBUTE TO THEIR SAGE April 13, 2010 IT WAS a hop, a skip and a jump over to the Dorchester yesterday lunchtime for the slap-up annual lunch hosted by Gerald Ronson, the seasoned chief of property group Heron International. Ronson’s list of invitees reads like a who’s who of the upper echelons of property and high finance, including ex-Lloyds chair Sir Victor [...]
Banks slam plan to shake up takeovers April 12, 2010 LABOUR manifesto proposals to make mergers between companies more difficult to complete came under fire from the City’s investment banking community yesterday. The government controversially said all takeovers – whether hostile or not – should require the approval of 66 per cent of shareholders rather than the current straight majority. It also said a “public [...]
HIP TO BE SQUARE March 30, 2010 IN recent years cubic cars have proved a hit with design-savvy car connoisseurs and have created something of a trend in car design. For a while Nissan’s Cube was the leader in boxy cool – a toy-like, distinctively Japanese design created to be an extension of your home first, your mode of transport second – [...]
LAWYERS MAKE A KILLING IN COURT SPAT March 18, 2010 YESTERDAY saw sighs of contentment all round at inter-dealer broker Tullett Prebon, as judge Justice Jack ruled in its favour after almost a year of wrangling with rival BGC about a staff poaching operation. Though of course, after seven months of advisory work and a trial lasting the best part of four months, it’s the [...]
A gritty tale of love and intrigue in 1930s London March 17, 2010 AT THE CHIME OF A CITY CLOCK BY DJ TAYLOR Constable, £12.99 by Zoe Strimpel “If he had looked back, he would have seen her walk off not in the direction of the bus stop but away east towards Barnsbury. Only he didn’t look back. He hurried on, thinking of the office in Finsbury Pavement, [...]