Any other business

Mutual satisfaction

I don’t know about you, but I get infuriated by insurance. I don’t know about you, but I get infuriated by insurance. Motor insurance, household insurance, pet insurance. Some, like cover for your car, you have to have by law. Other stuff, like cover for your cat or the contents of your house, you don’t.

Billions more mouths to feed

Food security is the new energy security. So says Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, a Surrey-based company which claims to run the biggest agricultural fund in Africa following the launch of its first fund less than 18 months ago. Payne, a Canadian who cut her teeth as an emerging-markets expert first at

Gallantry is a finite resource

Few individuals better personify the eccentric, combative and rarefied world of medal collecting than Michael Ashcroft, the businessman and controversially deep-pocketed Tory party eminence grise. A self-made man whose fortune is estimated by the Sunday Times at £1.1 billion — more than the entire net worth of Belize, the tiny Central American state he calls

A seasonal lament

This Christmas my thoughts go out to the people of Cockermouth, perhaps my favourite little town in all England, as it was Wordsworth’s. Especially I think of its small shopkeepers, for what makes the town so delightful is its many tiny businesses, selling unusual and curious goods. So well-mannered and friendly are the people who

Martin Vander Weyer

Any other business | 19 December 2009

Is there a banker in the house? Well, please don’t ask me to go on apologising for you If I have one last sentiment to offer for 2009 — apart, of course, from warm compliments of the season — it is that I’m bloody fed up of apologising for bankers. I’ve been thinking this since

What made Madoff tick?

Madoff: The Man Who Stole $65 Billion Erin Arvedlund Penguin £9.99, 320 pages ISBN 9780141045467 ✆ £7.99 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me Sheryl Weinstein St Martin’s Press £14.56, 224 pages ISBN 9780312618377 Madoff with the Money Jerry Oppenheimer Wiley & Sons £16.99, 272 pages ISBN 9780470504987

Digging deep, finding profits

The great mining predators are on the prowl again, says Judi Bevan. The Chinese are on a spending spree in Africa. And there’s plenty of room for canny investors to make money by following the deals closely For those worried they have missed the move in mining shares – the FT mining index has nearly

Gold’s eternal allure: only Gordon could resist it

Unhappy anniversary. Ten years ago the Chancellor of the day was congratulating himself audibly on a job well done, and in the vaults of the Bank of England grumpy porters were sticking labels on the ingots to indicate a change of ownership. This was Gordon Brown’s great clearance sale. He had chosen to auction more

Thought for the day | 14 December 2009

What bankers must do to earn customers’ trust Revd ‘Budge’ Firth, preaching more than half a century ago, reminded the City of its moral obligations It is required of stewards, that a man be found faithful. 1 Corinthians iv 2 In preparing this address, I thought at once of the text which I have chosen,

My crystal ball sees disappointment ahead

Merryn Somerset Webb doubts that markets will go on rising — and advises us how not to get poorer in 2010 Back in early 2007, an interviewer challenged my stance on the housing market. She pointed out that I had been bearish on the property market for several years but that the market did not

City Life | 14 December 2009

Elliot Wilson in Reykjavik Mike, a commodities trader from Chicago, leans over the table in Reykjavik’s Prikid bar and almost whispers: ‘What’s the deal here? Where are the breadlines?’ Our group looks befuddled. An Icelandic playwright mock-whispers back: ‘What breadlines? Did you expect Reykjavik to be full of bakeries?’ No, retorts Mike, but didn’t Iceland

House prices

Here’s my hot prediction for 2009: house price inflation at 10 per cent. Yes, that is a 10 per cent increase, and yes, I do mean 2009. Halifax figures for the year to November were still showing prices down by 1.6 per cent — but believe me, by the end of this month housing will