Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
‘A jolly nice little place for lunch, handy because you can get to it on a number 11 bus.’ That was a senior partner of Cazenove the stockbrokers talking about the Savoy in the days when captains of industry and City grandees treated its Grill as their canteen — and my predecessor Christopher Fildes, who
The Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan may (or may not, depending which report you read) have been jeered by international investors and bond traders on a conference call last week, but he is widely admired by his own business community, both for his determination to steer a straight course through the banking crisis and property
‘HSBC shareholders should remember that slavish adherence to corporate fashion is usually what gets banks into trouble,’ I wrote in May, in response to whispers that executive chairman Stephen Green was under pressure to make way for a conventionally non-executive outsider. ‘HSBC shareholders should remember that slavish adherence to corporate fashion is usually what gets
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business Having spent more hours than I care to remember chairing voluntary committees of all shapes and sizes, I am firmly of the view that generous benefactors do not necessarily make good board members. By all means butter up the moneybags, offer them naming rights on the new toilet block,
Another time,’ began the Gospel reading last Sunday, ‘the tax gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen…’ Bible scholars will have spotted that our curate chose the New English version of the parable of the lost sheep, and that ‘tax gatherers and other bad characters’ is the modern rendering of ‘publicans
If I say that Bob Diamond richly deserves his promotion to chief executive of Barclays, I do not intend any snide reference to the fact that he is enormously rich. If I say that Bob Diamond richly deserves his promotion to chief executive of Barclays, I do not intend any snide reference to the fact
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business If life was a Doctor Who series and I was the scriptwriter, I would have the courageous Chilean miners tele-ported instantaneously to the surface — and replaced at the bottom of the collapsed shaft by 33 gloomy economists and market commentators. They would range from New York Times columnist
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business The appointment of fashion re-tailer Sir Philip Green to be David Cameron’s adviser on public-sector waste looks even more improbable than Sir Richard Branson’s stint as Margaret Thatcher’s ‘litter tsar’. The BHS billionaire and the Virgin balloonist both operate through offshore private companies partly because they can, but mostly
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business ‘If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to give their employees better wages… and working conditions; to use production methods that don’t kill or maim or damage the environment…’ That was Peter
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business It’s nonsense to accuse high street banks of failing to lend to businesses because the money they might have lent has been siphoned off for bonuses — that just isn’t how it works — and it’s good news that they have been announcing restored or increased profits this week.
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I told you so — and I might even have said it first. ‘Hayward may have to be sacrificed,’ I wrote on 5 June. ‘In that case, the next man in the line of fire could be Bob Dudley, who has the advantage of being an American…’ I might
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business A London hedge fund, Armajaro, has cornered the market in cocoa, for which prices have already risen by 150 per cent over two years. Armajaro is reported to have paid £650 million to take delivery of 240,000 tonnes of beans, all the cocoa there is in Europe in fact,
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business The flotation of a business that has carved a big slice of a fast-growth consumer market within less than a decade of its start-up ought to be a cause for celebration: an example of capitalism doing what it’s supposed to do in support of entrepreneurs; an affirmation that markets
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I once heard an after-dinner speech by Jackie Blanchflower, brother of the great Spurs captain Danny. Jackie also played professional football, for Manchester United, but his career was cut short by his injuries in the 1958 Munich air crash, in which eight of his fellow ‘Busby Babes’ died. Thereafter
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I’m standing on a hot platform at Tottenham Court Road, waiting for the relief of the momentary breeze that precedes an approaching train. I’m staring at a T-Mobile poster featuring people dressed as nuns at what looks like a karaoke party. And I’m thinking: do I really want to
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I wrote here in February that I did not believe the Conservatives’ pretence of having ‘absolutely no plans to increase VAT’, and that, having examined this fiercely complex issue at some length with an ice pack on my head, I had come down in favour of a VAT rise
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business Santander is a port in northern Spain with a population the size of Swindon’s. It is also the eurozone’s largest banking group, an institution that has far outgrown its origins to become the owner, in Britain, of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and the branch network of the crippled Bradford
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business I’m baffled why anyone should be offended by the £275,000 salary paid to John Fingleton, the director of the Office of Fair Trading who was declared last week to be Britain’s highest-paid public servant. Even if Fingleton’s wad represents double the prime minister’s, it is barely more than one
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business ‘Does anyone remember David Laws?’ a former City colleague asked me during the brief interlude between the Lib Dem MP’s debut as financial secretary last Monday and his descent into hell on Friday. Judging by the sketchy accounts of his banking career in the weekend papers, with their references
The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself. The British trade union movement needs to get a grip on itself. These days, the public associates the brotherhood of organised labour chiefly with the bizarre antics of the highly politicised Unite union, with its warring and tweeting joint general secretaries and its