When China sneezed on 27 February, the whole world caught cold. Within a few hours the Shanghai composite index plunged 8.8 per cent, its biggest one-day fall since February 1997, causing Hong Kong’s markets to shiver. The contagion quickly spread to Japan, Korea, Australia and India. Before the day was out, leading stocks in Europe
By far the stickiest moment of my journalistic career was the time I interviewed a foul-tempered Michael Howard on his battlebus between Bristol and Cardiff during the 2004 European elections. But I’m sure I would have fared worse, much worse, if I had ever attempted to cross-question Gordon Brown. As it is, I’ve never even
Ralph Waldo Emerson is quoted as saying: ‘If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, tho’ he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.’ I don’t know about the first two commodities. There are too
Next month the Office of Fair Trading will produce its long-awaited report into parking fines. It is expected to rule that charging motorists £60 for overstaying their welcome at a parking meter is unfair, and that in future councils must charge motorists only what it costs to issue the parking ticket. Actually, that’s not quite
‘We’re always told that Russia is using its economic resources to achieve foreign policy aims,’ President Putin told journalists recently. But, he went on, it is ‘ill-wishers’ in the Western press who paint Russia as a threat to European energy security. ‘That is not the case.’ Yet within minutes of this assurance, Putin issued a
Before the number-crunchers of private equity and the hedge-fund world took control, the City was dominated by a pretty rough gang. Predatory tycoons such as Lords Hanson and White, Tiny Rowland of Lonrho and Sir Nigel Broakes of Trafalgar House were the big beasts of the stock market. They created conglomerates to match their egos,
Sir Flinders Petrie, who did more than any other scholar to bring Ancient Egypt and Palestine alive for us, once remarked that the perpetual joy of being a historian is that, whereas most of mankind are confined to one plane, the present, those who study the past have the freedom to sample life on all.
Marcus Agius was strolling round his Hampshire garden last summer when a headhunter rang to inquire if he would consider becoming chairman of Barclays Bank. ‘It took me a nanosecond to say yes,’ says Agius. ‘Barclays is a great brand and I love great brands; it’s 300 years old; it’s huge and it’s going through
When Goldilocks broke into the three bears’ house and stole their breakfast, she found Baby Bear’s porridge to be just right — neither too hot nor too cold. The same is true of today’s ‘Goldilocks’ American economy: it is growing neither too fast nor too slowly but just right, to the great surprise of its
‘Look! Concrete!’ Bruno Lafont crashes his fist on the table. ‘You could put 30 tonnes on top of this table and it wouldn’t break. Tougher than steel!’ The table doesn’t look like concrete at all. The top is only a centimetre thick. The surface is painted a Tuscan tone, giving it the feel and look
The current row about private equity seems to me to have much more to do with the flexing of union muscles in anticipation of a return to influence under Gordon Brown than it has to do with efficiency and fairness in the use of capital. The GMB union has taken the lead, publicising its claim
Browsing through a Christie’s catalogue, I came across the description of a pen-and-wash drawing by Rowlandson, c. 1800, ‘Elegant company in a park’. It set me thinking. One knows very well what was meant by ‘elegant company’ at the beginning of the 19th century. It applied perfectly to the party Mr Bingley brings to the
Dominic Prince says you’d have to be potty to buy a racehorse as an investment — unless your name happened to be John Magnier or Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum Owning and breeding a thoroughbred racehorse can be a mouth-wateringly profitable enterprise. Sir Percy, winner of last year’s Epsom Derby, cost a piffling 16,000 guineas when
With the endless talk about private equity these days you could be forgiven for thinking it must be the only sensible investment out there. Not so. In fact some of private equity’s biggest players (think Guy Hands) have recently been putting their money into something much more prosaic — trees. Until a few years ago,
Twelve years ago, on a rainy afternoon when nothing much else seemed to be happening, I abandoned my desk in Canary Wharf for a few hours in order to track down a new and obscure betting operation somewhere off the Mile End Road. The managing director was a large, florid man in his late forties.
Elliot Wilson explains how to navigate India’s rigid investment rules and buy into a dazzling growth story Sweat was pouring off the commodities broker sitting next to me in the sauna of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. ‘India is shining,’ he thundered. ‘You must invest in it — everyone in England must. The economy
In his annual meeting with foreign journalists in January, President Putin enthused over his country’s record on initial public offerings: ‘Without any doubt, 2006 can be called the year of IPOs, because it was the first time that Russian companies carried out … IPOs worth dozens of billions of dollars on international and Russian exchanges….
When Charles Prince, the chief executive of Citigroup, announced two weeks ago that he was getting rid of his bank’s rather likeable corporate logo, a red umbrella, I feared that he might be tempting the household gods. And the gods have duly stirred. The Financial Times has reported grumblings from some big shareholders that the
I admire the late Steve Irwin, the Australian crocodilaphile who, coming from nowhere, contrived to make £2 million a year sporting with these ugly, dangerous and tremendous beasts, and was then killed by a miserable stingray. I say ‘ugly’ but that is a matter of opinion. I love drawing them more than any other creature
Of the Australian tycoon Alan Bond it used sometimes to be remarked that, after a nuclear war, there would be only three things left alive: seaweed, cockroaches and Bond. In British business these days, there is probably only one man with the same kind of durability: Peter Sutherland, chairman of BP. The recent warfare at