‘It’s a difficult world out there,’ admits Chris Kenny, investment director at Smith & Williamson, the wealth management and accountancy group. ‘There’s the recession, the economy teetering between inflation and deflation, higher tax rates, increased risk and lower returns all round.’ While market risks have soared, investors’ faith in the people charged with looking after
One dark evening in October 1994, I was standing in a small meeting room that faced on to Fleet Street, waiting for my last interview before I could escape into the rainy streets. Then a young trader strode in and asked me an unforgettably difficult question: why should Goldman Sachs — for that is where
Logging on to a university homepage I noticed that the first thing it flags up — breaking news — is that they’re installing a £56,000 digital satellite TV system which will ‘transform’ the way students access multilingual news and information from around the world. Apparently the purchase of Exterity IPTV represents the Language Centre’s biggest-ever
Critics of Gordon Brown’s ‘tripartite’ regulatory structure want authority restored to Threadneedle Street, says Richard Northedge. Critics of Gordon Brown’s ‘tripartite’ regulatory structure want authority restored to Threadneedle Street, says Richard Northedge. But is the Bank’s track record tarnished? The simplistic initial analysis of the financial crisis — that the tripartite oversight structure of the
I have the fear. The fear wakes me up at 3 a.m. and for a split second I forget what it is exactly that I’m frightened of. And then I remember. I am a mother and one of my children is off travelling and is on the other side of the world. In the still
David Crow says the Irish-based football channel — like the Prime Minister — looked a winner during the boom years but failed to attract fans and will struggle to survive You have to hand it to Michael O’Rourke and Leonard Ryan, founders of sports broadcaster Setanta. Three weeks ago it was hard to find anyone
History will regard Gerald Ronson as the man who withstood the humiliation of a high-profile trial and conviction, took his punishment without flinching, and returned quietly to his métier of making millions. Speaking from the comfort of his boardroom at Heron, his family’s property empire, the 70-year-old tycoon says, ‘Did I get a black eye,
It’s a law of the financial jungle that where there is debt there is desperation and where there is desperation you can sell all manner of dodgy ‘solutions’. Last year, commercial radio stations were full of ads telling us that — thanks to a ‘little-known loophole’ — half our debt could be wiped off if
It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge. It’s always the smallest thing that tips one over the edge. This week I cracked. I sat on the pavement outside King Edward VII’s hospital and shamelessly sobbed. My husband was ill with septicaemia, and I was desperate to get to him. I was
Afghan farmers can prosper by producing the world’s finest melons, pomegranates and grapes, says Elliot Wilson, but first they must be weaned off growing the opium poppy Modern-day Afghanistan conjures up many fearsome images, from rocket-launchers and retreating Soviet tanks to mujahedin warriors and Taleban zealots. Yet this war-ravaged central Asian state, which has to
When I was younger (old habits obviously die hard and you have to forgive me for not automatically writing ‘when I was young’ — it’s just going to take a bit more practice), I used to find a particular greeting card amusing. It was a cartoon of a demented-looking career woman. She had one hand clutching
I don’t give a toss about my MP’s flat, but I’m bloody livid about council tax Next Thursday’s elections have been so overwhelmed by the scandal of Westminster expenses that candidates for the major parties have scarcely shown their faces in my part of the world. And voters, content to fulminate at the daily pageant
Lucinda Baring meets Simon Berry, chairman of a 200-year-old company that’s more modern than it looks Berry Bros & Rudd in St James’s Street epitomises the idea of an old-fashioned wine merchant. Outside, the façade has remained largely unchanged for centuries. Inside, the panelling, desks and uneven wooden floor transport you to an era long
I am not one of those who believe that God made the highways solely in order for motorists to inherit the earth. But any milk of human kindness flowing through my veins curdles when I am driving on the Embankment during the early morning rush hour. I have to make the big sacrifice of not
Who will finally sit Gordon Brown down with a bottle of whisky, a loaded revolver and a copy of his own book on courage, and tell him the game is up? You might imagine the task would fall to Jack Straw, flanked by a couple of union bosses. In fact, it’s more likely to be
In Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, there lives a fat rodent called Phil whose job it is in the middle of every winter to tell us how much longer we must suffer through the cold and dark until spring. Phil is a groundhog and his annual prediction is taken very seriously. There is even a celebrated film about
As London’s mayor, Sir Alan, you’d be a mere apprentice A recent poll placed Sir Alan Sugar as the leading independent candidate to be the next mayor of London. His statement that ‘…observing the past mayor, Livingstone, and Boris, the current one, I’m confident that it would be a walk in the park for me’,
Ideally I only ever want to come across the word ‘system’ when it’s used by an astronaut and sandwiched between ‘all’ and ‘go’. Ideally I only ever want to come across the word ‘system’ when it’s used by an astronaut and sandwiched between ‘all’ and ‘go’. ‘All systems go!’ has a chirpy, optimistic feel. Eliminate
David Crow meets Mike Lynch, the computer scientist whose firm, Autonomy, makes software that knows how humans think — and can spot when they’re committing fraud The plush Piccadilly offices of Autonomy are decorated with complex mathematical equations, written in buzzing neon lights and frosted onto glass doors. Although the formulas underpin technology that would
I’m your man for the job, Chancellor HM Treasury has placed an advert in the Economist looking for a new external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, the body that sets UK interest rates, to succeed David Blanchflower. I have decided that it is my duty to apply and have therefore sent