Finance
Will Nvidia stock keep going up?
It more than doubled its sales. It unveiled a new line of microchips. It promised to keep rolling out new…
Secrets of the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street
Anne L. Murphy provides a vivid picture of clients, clerks and couriers, pay and perks, cases of fraud and incompetence and the underappreciated threat of fire and violence
Levelling up is failing
First the good news: the Office for National Statistics figures released today show that pay is rising at its fastest…
Scorn at Unilever’s GSK bid highlights the perils of ‘purpose’
‘Tell me we’re winning the media battle!’ I imagine Unilever boss Alan Jope barking at his team on Tuesday, following…
It’s time to reform the Big Four accounting firms
It has been exactly 20 years since the Enron scandal upended the reputation of global accountancy firms, leading to the…
The Liberal Democrats have a dangerous vision for the City of London
Liberals have always set great store by laws and declarations. It was joked about Lord Loreburn, the liberal Lord Chancellor…
The clever radical who led the City’s transformation
It’s a vivid example of unintended consequences that the swimming-pool builders of southern England should owe so much to Sir…
The EU’s debt bondage expansion
In the global market for government debt, worth an estimated $92 trillion (£66 trillion), it amounts to little more than a…
Will Western economies be ‘turning Japanese’ after Covid-19?
Japan has announced a colossal stimulus package (£1.75 trillion) as it attempts to breathe life into its Covid-19 damaged economy.…
Beating the cheats
On 6 May 2010 the eurozone crisis was tearing through the continent. Greece was bankrupt, and it looked as though…
How climate change led to capitalism
At a dinner recently I was told the story of a Canadian billionaire (now defined in banking circles as someone…
Ten years after Lehman’s fall, how close is the next crash?
Our cinema is showing Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and I’m reminded of a remark attributed to Mark Twain,…
The Russian spy who went to all the Tory parties
I first met Sergey Nalobin in 2012 at Soho House. He introduced himself, in accented English, as from the Russian…
Cheap shots and uncosted bribes are drowning out vision, wisdom and optimism
The interesting thing about Labour’s pledge to abolish non-dom tax status — a squib designed to trap Tories into expressing…
Investment: Euro stars
Panic in Europe means opportunity for investors
Qatar’s bid for Canary Wharf fills me with foreboding, even if they deserve each other
I’ve written before of a ‘curse of Qatar’ that might explain misfortunes attending the Gulf state’s UK investments, of which…
We optimists aren’t always wrong but I’m keeping watch for black swans
A reader likens me to Dr Pangloss, the quack philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who insisted that ‘all is for the…
If a bank looks dull, it probably isn’t: so what’s new at Standard Chartered?
The cautionary tale of the Co-operative Bank, its black hole and its naughty chairman has recently taught us that if…
Investment: Banking 2.0
The financial crisis is the catalyst for a belated revolution
A parable of human weakness
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
