Ross Butler says MPs’ criticisms of the sell-off of theformer Defence Research Agency are financially naive In America it would have created celebrity entrepreneurs and provided a template for future deals. Instead, the British government’s hugely successful privatisation of the defence business QinetiQ has prompted a political witch-hunt. The taxpayer made more than £800 million
I recently gave a lecture, on quite a solemn subject, the connection between freedom and the ownership of property, to about 200 people, and was gratified — and surprised — at how well it was received. I think it was because I followed my own maxim, and spoke for only 25 minutes, leaving the rest
The last time I played rugby, I was sent off for reading on the field. It was my small satirical protest against the supposition that my character would be much improved by having my knees dragged along icy ground, or my hand trodden into the mud by boys who, by dint of no effort of
Elliot Wilson explains why international condemnation of Burma’s brutal military leaders is so ineffectual: because many other countries are eager to do deals with them The satirist P.J. O’Rourke once noted that the more references to democracy a country has in its official title, the greater the chance it is run by a grubby totalitarian
The image of women in Victorian times veered between that of madonna and whore, but nowadays in Britain it veers between harridan and slut. This is only natural in a country where vulgarity is not only triumphant, but militant and deeply ideological. The men, of course, are just as bad. Recently, I flew to an
Christopher Fildes on international accounting standards How gratifying. One set of rules for the whole world, and all of them springing from a fountainhead in Cannon Street, London EC4. There will have been no such display of global authority since the sun set on the British empire. Washington is warming to it. Brussels is restive.
In eight years in venture capital, my partners and I have met only a handful of female applicants for capital. Yet we receive 500 to 600 business plans every year. It seems remarkable when you consider that women figure prominently in almost all walks of life — over 50 per cent of medical-school graduates, for
How times change: the ECB has become the very model of a modern central bank I don’t suppose many of my readers took part in the European Central Bank’s tenth birthday celebrations last week — but if I’m wrong about Jean-Claude Trichet’s taste in columnists, then bon anniversaire, monsieur le président, though I can’t quite
Don’t ask an African elephant to show you his cardiograms I can’t help liking elephants, and I was delighted to receive from India a silk tie with a pattern of these huge and benevolent beasts, raising their trunks in the traditional gesture which means ‘Good morning and good luck’. I once had a beautiful alabaster
David Craig, a pioneer of the British hedge-fund industry, recalls lessons learned from John Paulson, the New York investor who topped last year’s global earnings league New York in the mid-1990s: my long-time investing partner Richard Atkinson and I were in the city seeking out people with whom we might co- invest. We had run
Christopher Silvester says you don’t have to be rich to invest in fine wine, and the rewards can be handsome Wine as an investment asset class intimidates most people, who mistakenly assume it is a rich man’s game when in actuality it is open to anyone who is prepared to commit a few thousand quid
On the face of it, I picked a bad week to volunteer to write about the rebirth of gentlemanly capitalism. My thesis was that the credit crunch would lead to a profound shift in the way the City goes about its business, heralding a return — if not to bowler hats and brollies, liquid lunches
‘Mr Pont, may I introduce you to Miss Austen?’ There is something infinitely touching about a creative artist who dies young, not before displaying sure evidence of a glorious gift but without having time to set up the arching parabola of developing genius. One thinks of that magic group at the beginning of the 19th
Staying recently in a handsome French provincial city, I could not help thinking, as I walked down its silent cobbled streets at night, what it would have been like if it had been in England. How restful is that deep, urban silence, which the young English so hate for fear of having to attend to
An unpopular, costly war; a sliding dollar; high levels of US government debt; behind us, 20 years of growth; oil and commodity prices out of control… Remember the first oil shock of 1973? Or are we looking at 2008? Just as 1973 was the harbinger of a new political epoch — of individualism ascendant over
Matthew Lynn wonders whether the world’s greatest investor will be able to pick winners in continental Europe the way he has for more than four decades in the US If Warren Buffett had not become famous as the world’s richest man — a career choice that trumps most alternatives — he could still have carved
The Financial Services Authority has had only two chairmen since its creation in 1997, and as the Northern Rock debacle happened on the watch of the second incumbent, Sir Callum McCarthy, the model for his replacement is inevitably the original holder, Sir Howard Davies. On that basis, Adair Turner — Lord Turner of Ecchinswell —
Hard to remember an occasion when an author has aroused such unanimous distaste as Cherie Blair’s revelation that the birth of her son Leo was due to her unwillingness to take her contraceptive kit to Balmoral, where the royal butler would unpack her suitcase and see it. ‘Ugh!’ or ‘Oh dear!’ were the universal responses;
Life has taught me very little, but one thing I have learned is that the only employee of local councils with a genuine vocation is the rat-catcher. He always loves his rats, eliminating them with the deepest respect, and is extremely knowledgeable and interesting about their habits — which are, indeed, very interesting. The last
Minsk is not a mecca for entrepreneurs or foreign investors, but it seems that the perpetual leader of Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko, has decided to change that. The kolkhoz (collective farms) are not about to be broken up, and nor is the KGB ready to give up its paternalistic interest in business. But Lukashenko, Europe’s answer