Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
From our UK edition
A hangar full of analysts and investment bankers must have spent the long weekend formulating advice for Shell chief executive Wael Sawan for and against a takeover of BP. On the plus side, Shell’s strong share performance, reflecting its undiluted focus on oil and gas and boosting its market value to £150 billion, makes a
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There’s nothing new about bringing maverick businesspeople into government to give the bureaucratic blob what an unnamed ‘Trump adviser’ was recently quoted as calling ‘a swift kick in the ass’. After all, it was David Cameron who in 2010 hired the now all but unmentionable retail buccaneer Sir Philip Green to find ways to cut
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Donald Trump’s Soprano-like threat that the ‘termination’ of Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell ‘cannot come fast enough’ has been headlined as one of his wildest thrusts to date, but is actually one of his most conventional. Prickly politicians always resent unelected central bankers, though they also see them as useful scapegoats for economic trouble. Liz
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The weekend’s Scunthorpe drama was a distraction from endless chatter about Donald Trump and his tariffs. Perhaps Downing Street’s spinners stage-managed it with that in mind. Or perhaps the heroic tale of shop stewards confronting villainous Chinese managers while rescue teams scoured the horizon for emergency shipments of iron ore and coking coal was a
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It gives me no pleasure to say I told you so. ‘If [Donald Trump] is prepared to cause mayhem in global trade as his first move, he’s even more dangerous than his detractors thought,’ I wrote in February. ‘British commentators of the “Why can’t we have visionary maverick musclemen like Trump?” persuasion should be careful
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The City’s self-styled ‘cheerleader in chief’, Lord Mayor Alastair King, on a recent visit to Beijing and Shanghai found leading Chinese banks keen to expand in London. What with Chinese diplomats also keen to establish a fortress-embassy at Royal Mint Court on the City’s eastern edge, that may ring alarm bells with those who regard
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The Digital Services Tax (DST) is a relatively easy bargaining chip to give away in a last-ditch bid to appease Donald Trump, whose final menu of tariffs on UK exports to the US is expected imminently. First tabled by Philip Hammond as chancellor in 2018 and enacted by his successor, Sajid Javid, two years later,
Inflation and scarcity afflicting America’s favorite breakfast have become a major political issue
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‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ is a maxim attributed to leaders on both sides of the French Revolution. ‘Move fast and break things’ is today’s equivalent, emanating from Silicon Valley and amply demonstrated by Donald Trump and Elon Musk in their approach to government and geopolitics. ‘You can’t make omelettes at all
On the platform of global affairs he’s wrongheaded, misanthropic and extremely dangerous
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‘Don’t stress over short-term stock market swings’ is a maxim on which Donald Trump and I might agree, even if he is keen to take credit for upward rallies. The shakedown of the past few days is a natural reaction to the wild six-week ride of Trump’s tariff and foreign policy gambits and the realisation
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I’ve been judging a beauty parade, but I hasten to add that no bikinis were involved. Four leading investment firms were competing for the mandate to manage a charitable endowment – and offering insights into the way professional stock-pickers see the world. First, despite (or if you’re a disciple, because of) the madness of Donald
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Among British car factories, Nissan at Sunderland is the most productive and Jaguar Land Rover at Solihull probably the most advanced. As for industrial landmarks, the former British Leyland complex at Longbridge is reduced to a research and development facility for Chinese-owned MG; but ‘Plant Oxford’ at Cowley, the original home of Morris Motors now
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If the new Trump era has a theme, it’s one of quixotic disruption with random consequences. In that spirit, stand by for more interventions from activist shareholders seeking to electrify sluggish businesses while making fast bucks on the way through. The first episode over here was the attack by the New York investor Boaz Weinstein
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The Chancellor’s appeal to regulators last month for suggestions to boost growth was mocked as evidence that the government itself is hopelessly bereft of ideas. Might as well ask traffic wardens to devise urban regeneration schemes, we scoffed, or food safety inspectors to plan state banquets. But it made sense to the extent that smarter
They shouldn’t be seduced by his pro-business, anti-woke agenda
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When I visited Toronto with a UK delegation last winter, conversation focused on the issues of immigration, housing and inflation that were contributing to the unpopularity of Justin Trudeau, who finally announced his resignation as prime minister last month. The prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House was the slumbering python in the
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Call me a cynic, but I suspect this week’s headlines about a revival of Heathrow’s third runway plan amount to little more than a political game. Arguments for and against this project have been aired many times over, from a white paper in 2003 to the Davies Commission’s final report (in favour) in 2015. Much
There’s no disputing the potential to find everything from gold to rare earth elements. But the operating difficulties are truly formidable
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London’s capital market needs a kick in the pants, as I write every week, and ‘activist investors’ are no bad thing if they provoke sharper corporate performance. The assault by the New York hedge funder Boaz Weinstein on seven UK investment trusts – demanding shareholder votes to replace directors with his own people and take
