Business
Business is the only area of human activity where you get paid to change your mind
In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name,…
What I learned from piercing ears at Claire’s Accessories
I was 17, studying for my A-levels in Great Yarmouth. Looking to defy my parents’ instruction to get a part-time…
UK business investment has nosedived – what’s to blame?
Business investment in the UK declined in all four quarters of 2018 to complete a year-on-year dive of 2.4 per cent,…
Watch out comrade: big business is turning communist
Is it me, or is business becoming a teeny-weeny bit Stalinist? Common features include 1) Paranoia about political ideology; 2)…
Running a bank’s tough. That’s no reason to start handing capital back
A mixed bag of annual results from the big banks. RBS, still 73 per cent owned by the taxpayer, recorded…
iAddicts
For many years The Spectator employed a television reviewer who did not own a colour television. Now they have decided…
The City still leads the financial world but faces a fight on all fronts
Should we place faith in a survey, conducted in June but published this week, that says London is still the…
Hollande equals Thatcher? If only
Have you ever tried discussing the merits of gun control with a Texan, or of deregulated labour markets with a…
Why it makes sense to buy your banker lunch
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
The chief executives who volunteer for pay cuts
Boss cuts The chief executive of the Co-operative Group, Richard Pennycock, asked for a pay cut, saying his job had…
Why Ratan Tata is still Britain’s greatest inward investor
If asked to pick the UK’s inward investor of the century so far I would, without hesitation, name Ratan Tata,…
Don’t believe the recession hype – or this commodities boom
All in all, this is an odd moment for an outburst of high spirits: not from me — I’m as…
The City’s real players may be voting ‘out’ in the EU referendum
‘The City is in no doubt that staying in Europe is the only way ahead,’ declared Mark Boleat for the…
The bears are here to stay – but we’ll survive
Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…
How contactless cards will change the world (much more than you think)
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
We don’t need research to change banking culture. We need jail sentences
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
Any Other Business
Last year was a bumper year for mergers and acquisitions. Recovering prospects and relatively low price-earnings ratios made the takeover…
A Christmas parable from the Spectator’s business editor
I thought you might enjoy a little parable for Christmas, so here goes… The boardroom clock said twelve minutes…
The micro-businesses that give me hope for Belfast
At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and…
Perfectionism isn’t the same as integrity – as VW has shown
Not that I was much of a boy racer, but the sexiest car I ever owned was a 1982 Volkswagen…
Our terrified central bankers have sat on interest rates long enough
When news broke last Thursday evening that the US Federal Reserve had decided to keep interest rates on hold, I…
Don’t weep for Costa – but the Living Wage punishes small businesses that need our support
What is George Osborne’s Living Wage? Is it a ploy to shift cost from the taxpayer to the employer by…
How Britain still gets boardrooms wrong
Sir Adrian Cadbury, who has died aged 86, is remembered as the author in 1992 of a first stab at…
The good economic news that we forgot in the China panic
Home from the hot Aegean, huddled by the fire as rain ruins the bank holiday weekend, I’m thinking: what gloom…
Forget Greece: China's economic slowdown is the biggest story of the year
I stood alongside the chairman of the board of a state-owned enterprise in eastern China. The factory floor, partially open…
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