Martin Vander Weyer

Since we launched our Economic Innovator (originally ‘Disruptor’) awards in 2018, I’ve had enjoyable contacts with well over 100 entrepreneur-led high-growth companies picked as finalists from across the UK. Most I met at convivial pitching lunches; the rest told me their stories by Zoom or phone. Only one chosen finalist has ever shunned both the

Should US regulators ban short-selling of bank stocks? That’s a hot topic as investors refuse to accept reassurance from the Fed chairman Jerome Powell that the recent banking crisis-that-wasn’t is over. Following JPMorgan’s rescue of First Republic, shares in other regional banks such as PacWest in Los Angeles, Western Alliance (Phoenix) and First Horizon (Memphis)

During a lull in the pandemic I rented a little flat in Oxford for the academic year I was thrilled to have been offered; then Covid came back, my college all but closed and I made so little use of my lodgings that it would have been cheaper per night to stay in a suite

‘March madness’ was a tag applied with hindsight to last month’s scare provoked by the unconnected collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse. Nothing systemic there, said the wise men. But this week began with another rumble, as reputable US institutions, including State Street of Boston and the stockbroker Charles Schwab, reported large deposit

Three months ago I praised Tony Danker, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, for berating the government over corporate tax rises and skill shortages: at last, I said, a CBI chief con brio. But now he’s been fired following an investigation into his ‘workplace conduct’ and three other CBI staffers have been suspended

BBC News reported Britain’s imminent accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership behind two stories about racism in cricket, giving no suggestion that it might represent a major economic breakthrough. Rather the opposite, with emphasison the cautious official prediction that CPTPP membership will add just 0.08 per cent to UK GDP over

When markets are in ‘seek and destroy’ mode, like the last dragon in Game of Thrones, it’s fruitless to guess where they might attack next. Silicon Valley Bank’s excess of deposits was not in itself a signal of distress. Credit Suisse’s balance sheet was stronger than those of many other leading European banks. Deutsche Bank

The bank’s fate should have been decisively resolved by the Swiss authorities and its own board last fall

If G-SIBs were a gentlemen’s club rather than a category invented by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board, Credit Suisse would have been kicked down the front steps months ago. G-SIBs are the 30 ‘global systemically important banks’ and even within that list, Credit Suisse counted among those with the lowest ‘required levels of addition capital

How is it possible for a bank to collapse because it holds too many customer deposits – rather than too few, or too many bad loans? That was the mystery of the sudden failure of Silicon Valley Bank, America’s 16th largest, which had seen its cash holdings double to almost $200 billion during the pandemic

Talk of a ‘stampede’ for the exit from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) may be overdone, but there’s clearly a problem. It was highlighted this week by the decisions of the Cambridge-based chip designer Arm to list in New York rather than London and of the Irish-based building supplies group CRH to shift its existing

The pound rose a cent or two against the dollar in response to the new trade deal for Northern Ireland. The FTSE 100 index rose on Monday but slid back on Tuesday, deterred by the prospect of a stronger pound, while the more domestic FTSE 250 showed a clearer uptrend. Overall, markets were cautiously positive about the

‘Greenwashing vs Sportswashing’, as Sky Sports put it, is a curious way to characterise the emerging £6 billion takeover tussle for Manchester United between industrialist Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani from Qatar. The latter might feel that his emirate – contrary to expectations, shall we say – has been not

‘Great news, Prime Minister, Astra-Zeneca has decided to site a new £320 million factory on Mersey-side. Your vision of the UK as a science superpower is becoming a reality.’ What a moment that would be for a Downing Street intern in search of the positive for an otherwise grim morning briefing; almost up there with

What comfort can we draw from the FTSE 100 Index’s all-time high of 7905 last Friday? Yes, in a limited sense, it’s a reason to be cheerful: first, because it’s a boost to the value of pension and tracker funds; second, because it fits the current narrative of gloom receding, in which inflation has probably

Does a change of chief executive at Unilever, the British-based shampoo-to-Marmite multinational, signal the demise of the fashion for corporate ‘purpose’? Alan Jope, who steps down in July, drew scorn when he declared that every brand in his portfolio should ‘stand for something more important than just making your hair shiny… or your food tastier’.

As a scattering of snow settles on the desolate site at Blyth in Northumberland that might have become the £3.8 billion Britishvolt battery factory, differences of opinion over the failure of this would-be flagship of the UK’s electric vehicle revolution become clearer. For Andrew Orlowski in the Daily Telegraph, it’s ‘a surprising success’, ministers having rightly