Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
From our UK edition
Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep small- to medium-sized companies afloat? Rishi Sunak’s announcement this week of fully guaranteed micro-loans for the smallest companies seeking to borrow up to £50,000 was reported as a partial climbdown in the face of pressure
From our UK edition
Keep your eye on GlaxoSmithKline. The UK-based multinational drug-maker represents the future, both as a mass-producer of the vaccines that we pray will finally defeat Covid-19 and as a beacon of the way shareholder capitalism will re-position itself in the post-pandemic era. GSK last week announced a collaboration with its French rival Sanofi to create
From our UK edition
When I wrote last week about business-to-business pain-sharing for survival, I was naturally thinking first about UK companies. I say ‘naturally’ because in every aspect of this crisis, national interest has, as it were, trumped transnational co-operation. That’s particularly the case where medical supplies are concerned — as in the US President’s attempt to stop
From our UK edition
Ah yes, the banks. They weren’t in the front line when the crisis began, but it wasn’t going to be long before they came in for a kicking. Sure enough, they’ve just had one for throwing bureaucratic hurdles and demands for personal guarantees in the way of the government’s business interruption loan scheme and for
From our UK edition
The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards 2020, sponsored by Julius Baer, are open for entries. Innovation in many spheres will be vital in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic and the recovery phase that follows. So we’re looking for entrepreneurs in every sector and region of the UK whose products are changing their
From our UK edition
The phrase ‘sharing economy’ was coined a decade or so ago to describe collaborative new business models made possible by the internet, from Airbnb and Uber to crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and skill bartering sites. It was about ways of monetising assets, circulating capital and earning casual livings that boosted economic activity after the ‘great recession’
From our UK edition
The suspension of the residential property market is disheartening for those who were hoping to buy a first flat or new-build house this spring. But spare a thought also for estate agents, who are usually well back in the queue for public sympathy but are nevertheless a familiar part of our high-street fabric, their windows
From our UK edition
In times of crisis, we need innovators more than ever. In the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re experiencing the most disruptive force the modern world has ever seen. So much so that ‘Disruptor’ no longer feels the right word to use in our search for the UK’s brightest entrepreneurs — which we’ve renamed The Spectator’s Economic Innovator
From our UK edition
The CBI’s guidelines on ‘best practice for business’ during the pandemic tell the 1,500 larger companies that make up the lobby group’s core membership to prioritise employee welfare while also asking ‘how can we help’ government and society to manage the crisis. So far so good. But the notes don’t say ‘Consider a temporary cut
From our UK edition
The world needs airlines — and, barring Armageddon, will still have some when this crisis is over. It will also still have aircraft, pilots and airports. The aviation industry, accustomed to volatility as it is, should be well capable of restructuring and regrowing in response to renewed demand, even if bankruptcies are left behind. I
From our UK edition
‘It’s a ghost town,’ said the officer manning the body scanner at Manchester airport — Manchester, New Hampshire, that is, a city of some 112,000 citizens. I don’t know how many of them would normally be passing through its departure hall on a Sunday morning, but today there are no more than 50, plus me
From our UK edition
Hit-and-miss, heavy-handed, but a necessary use of justice to deter repetition. That was my summing-up, last year, of the Serious Fraud Office’s probe into the Libor and Euribor scandal, in which just nine low-ranking traders from four banks were convicted, despite evidence that rate-fixing malpractice had been endemic throughout the money markets for years. In
From our UK edition
The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2020, sponsored by Julius Baer, opens for entries on Thursday 5 March. We’re excited to hear from entrepreneurs in every sector and region of the UK whose products are changing their markets in terms of price, choice or technology, and have potential for international growth. And in
From our UK edition
If anything, stock markets have been slow to respond to the spreading coronavirus outbreak. Stories of Chinese supply interruptions, from JCB digger components to plastic toys, have been circulating since mid-February, while hedge funds have been hard at work short-selling cruise-operator shares: Royal Caribbean and Carnival are both down 30 per cent. Now airlines have
Canny stock-pickers scan the pharmaceutical sector for claims of a first coronavirus vaccine
From our UK edition
After a dull interlude, the big banks in their annual results season look a bit more interesting again. First to report was Barclays, where pre-tax profits were up 25 per cent to £4.4 billion but attention focused, yet again, on Chief Executive Jes Staley, whose name rarely appears in print without ‘accident-prone’ attached to it.
From our UK edition
It’s the way the world’s going, but still it looks quite impressive that the number of women directors of FTSE100 companies has risen from 135 in 2011 (when Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, began agitating on the subject) to 349 today — representing a third of all blue-chip boardroom seats. It’s not long since that
From our UK edition
So farewell Bernie Ebbers, former chief executive of WorldCom, the long–distance phone operator that became America’s biggest-ever bankruptcy case in 2002. Ebbers has died aged 78, having been released on health grounds in December from a 25-year jail sentence for his part in an accounting fraud that concealed the perilous state of WorldCom’s finances, misleading
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For the grand finale of the second year of our Economic Disruptor Awards, sponsored by Julius Baer, we returned to the same atmospheric science-fiction venue: London’s Postal Museum at Mountpleasant, with its still-working Mail Rail miniature underground train that, until 2003, shuttled sacks of letters between the capital’s major sorting offices. Imagine it as a
From our UK edition
Readers of my weekly ‘Any Other Business’ column know I occasionally find reason or excuse to slip a restaurant tip in amongst the financial commentary. In that spirit, let me start by saluting the venue for our encounter with North-West & Wales finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019. This was