Business
Bureaucracy is everywhere
Having grown up in a family business, my earliest exposure to corporate life was often baffling. I remember the first…
Playing nice
On the cult of instant intimacy
No excuse
Covid has become a get-out clause for shoddy service
Never mind the numbers – the gender battle has barely begun
It’s the way the world’s going, but still it looks quite impressive that the number of women directors of FTSE100…
Risky business
Britain needs to rediscover trial and error, serendipity and speed
Neil Woodford could do the washing-up at my fantasy Christmas lunch
It’s the season for kindness and conviviality. In that spirit — and recognising that business, like personal life, rarely follows…
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? Not quite, Monsieur le President, but keep trying
Have you ever tried discussing the merits of gun control with a Texan, or of deregulated labour markets with a…
Tea and honesty
We recently moved -offices from Canary Wharf to Blackfriars bridge. When you move after a long time in one place,…
Barometer
Boss cuts The chief executive of the Co-operative Group, Richard Pennycock, asked for a pay cut, saying his job had…
Credit where it’s due to Tata, our greatest inward investor
If asked to pick the UK’s inward investor of the century so far I would, without hesitation, name Ratan Tata,…
This great commodity rally doesn’t mean that spring has arrived
All in all, this is an odd moment for an outburst of high spirits: not from me — I’m as…
The City says it’s for staying in but I wonder what the big beasts think
‘The City is in no doubt that staying in Europe is the only way ahead,’ declared Mark Boleat for the…
Mr Bear is back: sit tight because he may be with us for a while
Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…
The power of painless payment
I am one of those annoying, mildly claustrophobic people who sit at the end of a row in cinemas. There…
Another banking review is pointless: just carry on naming, shaming and jailing
Was the Financial Conduct Authority leaned on by the Chancellor to scrap its ‘review of banking culture’? Or did it…
The human element: highs, lows and loose ends of 2015
Last year was a bumper year for mergers and acquisitions. Recovering prospects and relatively low price-earnings ratios made the takeover…
Ye who now will bless the poor Shall yourselves find blessing
I thought you might enjoy a little parable for Christmas, so here goes… The boardroom clock said twelve minutes…
The view from my Belfast bus: tribalism as the enemy of prosperity
At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and…
