Martin Vander Weyer

I shop at WH Smith with gritted teeth but I positively salivate when I spot a Pret A Manger. Some serious investors think likewise: the sandwich chain has just been sold for more than £1.5 billion by the US investment firm Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings, the vehicle of the German billionaire Reimann family who also own Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Kenco coffee. Though recently criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for describing its sandwiches as ‘natural’ when there are E-numbers in its bread, Pret has sustained the authenticity of its brand while expanding globally with the hand of high finance on its shoulder.

I shop at WH Smith with gritted teeth but I positively salivate when I spot a Pret A Manger. Some serious investors think likewise: the sandwich chain has just been sold for more than £1.5 billion by the US investment firm Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings, the vehicle of the German billionaire Reimann family who also own Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Kenco coffee. Though recently criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for describing its sandwiches as ‘natural’ when there are E-numbers in its bread, Pret has sustained the authenticity of its brand while expanding globally with the hand of high finance on its shoulder.

With one state-imposed compliance exercise after another getting in the way of business, no wonder our productivity looks permanently sickly. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which takes effect this week, has imposed a huge bureaucratic burden on companies and charities — as well as, for those that do it properly, a sacrifice of valuable data — following hard upon the UK government’s demand last month for ‘gender pay gap’ statistics from every entity with more than 250 employees. On the other hand, what a rare pleasure it has been to delete so many GDPR-driven ‘Click here to stay in touch’ emails from people and organisations I never had any wish to be in touch with in the first place.

Until a few days ago, reporting of the almost completed Crossrail project had been focused chiefly on the impact of the new Elizabeth Line on local house prices, ‘Still time to buy into Acton’s Crossrail hot spot’ being a typical example. Now we learn that the project’s much repeated if slightly fudged claim about being delivered within an overall £14.8 billion ‘funding envelope’ has almost certainly been blown. A £190 million budget overrun for the year to March, and the departure of chief executive Andrew Wolstenholme to join BAE Systems, were the first indications of problems that may now require a £500 million bailout to see the job finished in time for its scheduled December opening by the Queen.

Would it really be fairer, in an inter-generational sense, to whack an ‘NHS levy’ on pensioners while giving every 25-year-old £10,000 to help them buy a first home or start a business? These are recommendations by the Resolution Foundation, chaired by former Tory minister Lord Willetts, to address what it sees as a breakdown in the ‘contract’ between young and old. That contract allegedly says that each generation should expect to be better off than its parents — but in the current economic climate, many of our delicate ‘millennials’ believe they’re going to end up worse off, unable to afford their own homes and saddled with the ever-rising cost of healthcare for oldsters who refuse to pay for it themselves.

This is an extract from this week's 'Any Other Business' column.  The UK economy grew just 0.1 per cent in the first quarter, says the ONS, reflecting low construction activity, sluggish manufacturing, squeezed consumers, Brexit uncertainties and bitter weather. That’s the worst quarter since 2012 — so no wonder I had such a feeble response to my call a fortnight ago for evidence of feelgood. Two readers broke through the gloom, however. The first is a veteran banker who lends to small-to-medium UK corporate borrowers and describes himself as ‘miserable, cynical and pessimistic’ by nature and experience.

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer's 'Any other business' column in this week's Spectator The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make trouble. When I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the likes of New York ‘activist’ Edward Bramson — who holds 5 per cent of Barclays and may or may not agitate for a boardroom seat at next Tuesday’s gathering. I mean you, dear reader, the modest shareholder-customer who suffers rotten service, too-frequent computer glitches and negative returns on savings while directors on the platform congratulate themselves on the spurious performance measures that underpin their bonuses. This is your annual chance to make them squirm.

The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make trouble. When I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the likes of New York ‘activist’ Edward Bramson — who holds 5 per cent of Barclays and may or may not agitate for a boardroom seat at next Tuesday’s gathering. I mean you, dear reader, the modest shareholder-customer who suffers rotten service, too-frequent computer glitches and negative returns on savings while directors on the platform congratulate themselves on the spurious performance measures that underpin their bonuses. This is your annual chance to make them squirm.

I said last week that WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell was in ‘a very exposed position’. Sure enough on Saturday he resigned from the global advertising giant he created and had run for more than 32 years. ‘But he didn’t “create” it,’ one ex-employee told me, illustrating the internal resentments that seem to have contributed to Sorrell’s downfall. ‘He just made a lot of acquisitions and counted the pennies.’ Whatever he did or didn’t do, his departure was undignified and ill-explained.

I’m proud to be a member of the 661-year-old Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, having qualified on the strength of a first career spent trying to sell British financial services around the globe from Hokkaido to Gdansk. Before our annual feast last week we prayed optimistically for the discovery of ‘a better world’ from which we might bring back treasure, spiritual and material — and I couldn’t help thinking that UK trade prospects are a lot less straightforward today than they were in 1357, when the known world was eager to buy woollen cloth from English mercers as often as their little ships could cross the choppy North Sea.