The City lawyer who argues that banking has become even riskier November 4, 2009 T o David Morley, the phrase “it is better to travel than to arrive” must sound pretty strange, an expression invented only for those unfortunate souls who have not learnt to move at speed. For Morley, who joined top law firm Allen & Overy in 1980 and has led it as senior partner since last [...]
A new Glass-Steagall Act wouldn’t work October 20, 2009 WHEN the Governor of the Bank of England – and if the Tories are elected, the next chief financial regulator – calls for investment banks to be separated from retail banks, everybody should sit up and listen carefully. King seems deadly serious, and George Osborne said last night that he agreed with much of the [...]
City lives in Bruce Wasserstein’s shadow October 14, 2009 ANYBODY who really wants to understand today’s City of London – its culture, its customs and its personalities – needs to acquaint themselves with the life of Bruce Wasserstein, one of the greatest corporate financiers of all time who died last night at the cruelly premature age of 61. He was, of course, a New [...]
RBS APPEASES TAXPAYING PUBLIC BY BRINGING OUT ARTISTIC GEMS October 12, 2009 AFTER being lambasted in recent months by angry taxpayers-cum-stakeholders baying for blood, it appears that the Royal Bank of Scotland is finally about to give something back. The bank – which is thought to own the largest collection of corporate art in Britain, with over 2,200 pieces – is in talks with museums and collectors [...]
Tories detail plans for later retirement October 6, 2009 THE TORY party softened its stance on bringing forward planned rises to the state retirement age yesterday, while the City attacked the cost-cutting plan as insufficient. Shadow chancellor George Osborne addressed the party faithful in Manchester, setting out his proposed measures to tackle what he calls “Labour’s debt crisis”. He confirmed plans, leaked on Monday [...]
Britain’s bosses want to charge students more September 21, 2009 THE CBI yesterday called for students to pay more towards the cost of university, including increased tuition fees and higher student loan interest rates. The CBI also called for cuts to grants and said the savings were necessary to tackle the funding crisis in the higher education sector which it said had been thrown into [...]
The recession is not going to put an end to the online free-for-all August 18, 2009 IF you have spent most of your working life championing the web, it must be hard when it turns against you. But type the name “Chris Anderson” and “plagiarism” into Google, and it provides 50,000 results, most of them from the blogsphere. It seems the editor of Silicon Valley bible Wired and author of cult [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING August 5, 2009 FINANCIAL TIMES FERREXPO SEES IRON MARKET SHIFTFerrexpo signalled that iron ore demand was shifting back to Europe after being heavily reliant on China, as the Ukranian miner unveiled an 81 per cent drop in first-half profits. Ferrexpo reacted to the collapse in demand from steelmakers in Austria by selling iron ore pellets to China, incurring [...]
Meet the deal-maker extraordinaire who hopes the crisis will end in 2010 July 26, 2009 It is hard to escape the feeling that Slaughter and May’s Nigel Boardman is ever so slightly bored. Given that he is London’s top mergers and acquisitions (M&A) lawyer, and that we are still in the midst of a bitter recession which has led to a dramatic reduction in deal-making, this is not exactly surprising. [...]
How the Baker Street brigade are taking on the Big Four accountants June 22, 2009 YOU get the impression when you meet him that Simon Michaels, the managing partner of BDO Stoy Hayward, wants a lot of things – and one of the first is a larger slice of the UK accounting pie. Michaels, at 42 the youngest person to lead the UK’s sixth-largest professional services business, was elected to [...]