On the way into Boston from Logan Airport, you pass a cavernous, closed-off tunnel entrance, full of construction vehicles, looking at night like an avant garde set for Siegfried. This is one end of the ‘Big Dig’, America’s greatest civil engineering fiasco, and it offers a useful corrective for the British inferiority complex about competence
At a time when I should be writing my book on human monsters — goaded on by the many ingenious suggestions from readers of this column — I have actually been painting. There are many reasons for this disgraceful irresponsibility. First, the delicious autumn weather and the tremendous rainbow of colours it has coaxed out
As we approach the festive season, spare a thought for the children of billionaires. These are joyless times for those holding out for an inheritance. As they climb aboard the private jet that will whisk them off to the yacht where a team of chefs will prepare their Christmas dinner, many will be wondering if
Glaswegians are secretly proud of their new, four-lane bridge across the River Clyde, the first crossing to be built in over 30 years. Seen from either end, it looks like half of a McDonald’s ‘Golden Arches’ sign. The city’s spin-doctors insist on calling it the ‘Clyde Arc’ but locals have christened it the ‘Squinty Bridge’,
‘Can’t see the wood for the trees’ is an old saying and a true one, not only metaphorically but literally. Nature students often look carefully at trees and know a lot about them. But they don’t notice the wood, and know nothing about its life and history. Since I began drawing trees with close attention
My name is Cosmic Finucane. I have lots of money, a body to die for and I’m building my dream house on an island with an ocean view. At least, that’s my alternative persona — sadly, a far stretch from the real me. He inhabits the internet’s hottest new phenomenon, the virtual world of Second
White diamonds are the world’s most expensive gems. White diamonds are the world’s most expensive gems. The ideal stone is like a piece of ice, whiter than white, graded ‘D’, the purest possible grading, and cut with exquisite precision. Only a handful exist. Ten years ago a pure white, pear-shaped 100.10 carat diamond (pictured here),
Bill Browder is strangely apologetic for the grandeur of his offices in Hudson House, a Lutyens mansion off Covent Garden. ‘I like the high ceilings,’ he says, scanning the room with a nervous smile, ‘It’s easier to work with some space around me.’ Somehow, though, neither the building’s fine fa
‘Who’s the most impressive business leader you’ve ever met?’ ‘Who’s the most impressive business leader you’ve ever met?’ I asked a group of senior executives the other night. I confess I interjected the question (as I do here) to enable me to mention that I have just edited a book of business obituaries. But it
Matthew Lynn finds private military contractors such as Colonel Tim Spicer — formerly known as mercenaries — responding to demand in a high-growth business sector Sitting behind his smartly fashioned desk in one of the new, antiseptic office blocks that line London’s Victoria Street, Tim Spicer looks the very model of the modern entrepreneur. He
The relationship between Newcastle and Gateshead, proud communities separated by a majestic stretch of the River Tyne, has never been harmonious. J.B. Priestley may have come from Bradford, but he spoke for most of Newcastle when he remarked that Gateshead ‘appeared to have been invented by an enemy of the human race’. Until recently Gateshead’s
A recent movie suggests that the Duke of Edinburgh’s nickname for the Queen is ‘Cabbage’. His experience dates back to the day when this delicious vegetable was overboiled into tastelessness. But now that most people cook it very lightly and so preserve its fine flavour and crispiness, the term is one of endearment, as (no
In June 1773 Adam Smith was at home in Kirkaldy, Fife, hard at work on his Wealth of Nations, when an excited letter arrived from his fellow philosopher David Hume. ‘Do these events affect your theory?’ wrote Hume. ‘What say you?’ Smith was caught up in perhaps the third or fourth most serious stock market
Once synonymous with men in red braces peddling junk bonds, the leveraged buy-out industry has become almost respectable. This is in large part thanks to some clever rebranding that would make even David Cameron blush; now invariably described as ‘private equity’, which sounds a lot cuddlier, the industry has even enticed that holier-than-thou old rock
Hedge funds, you read here in June, are often riskier than they are made out to be. Putting your money into ‘a fund that blows up, closes down or disappears with all your money’, I suggested, is a real risk for the unwary investor. The danger, I could have written, is that you will find
As the absurdly coiffed and probably deranged Kim Jong-Il fingers his nuclear button, not even the ballsiest hedge fund manager would contemplate investing in the prospect of Korean reunification. But I could name one secretive London investor who took a big punt back in the 1980s, buying a bundle of North Korean government debt at
It was a day to remember: 20 years ago, on 27 October 1986, Big Bang caused a revolution in the securities market which turned the whole financial sector upside down. The early 1980s was a time of change. The Thatcher government’s thirst for deregulation was at its height. Exchange controls had been lifted, capital could
25 October 1986 My friend the stockjobber closed his book, turned his back on his pitch, and walked with me off the Stock Exchange floor, down Throgmorton Street and into Bill Bentley’s fish house. We raised our glasses of Montrachet to the last of the good old days. On Monday he must quit the floor
Amid the growing mutterings over his suitability to be prime minister, Gordon Brown has managed to preserve his reputation in at least one quarter. It has become received wisdom that the Chancellor played a blinder on his first day in the job in 1997 by making the Bank of England independent, giving us perpetually low
‘We men don’t want to wear condoms, we want the West to find a cure.’ This dilemma, faced by HIV counsellors at the Mildmay Centre near Entebbe, mirrors that experienced by those hoping to help Uganda financially. Mukasa, a handler at the chimpanzee sanctuary on Ngamba Island, 45 minutes from Entebbe by speedboat, gives me