Forget about saving British big pharma – it's little pharma we should be helping
Readers in all sorts of places — at the club bar, over a birthday lunch, even along the church pew…
Are we killing investment banking? And if we are, should we care?
Do we really mean to kill investment banking, or are we trampling it by accident in a fit of righteous…
Pfizer’s already beaten Ed Miliband. Now it just needs to offer the right price
Pfizer will almost certainly have to offer more than its second bid of £50 a share for rival drug giant…
Why the bankers’ bonus debate is not going away
A bouquet to Alison Kennedy, ‘governance and stewardship director’ at the Edinburgh-based pensions provider Standard Life, for leading the rebellion…
George Osborne is entitled to look smug
The popular pastime for financial commentators this season is sticking pins in George Osborne. To those on the left who…
Should the Co-op be preparing for its own funeral?
‘Care, respect, clarity and reassurance’ are what the Co-operative funeral service says it offers the bereaved, and the parent Co-op…
Don’t blame ministers for the Royal Mail sell-off. Beat up the bankers!
Vince Cable and Michael Fallon, ministers responsible for the Royal Mail sell-off, have been summoned for another select committee grilling…
Is full employment just another of George Osborne’s political stunts?
‘Full employment’ usually means the lowest achievable rate of unemployment — somewhere south of 5 per cent compared with 7.2 per…
Why I’ll join the silver stampede to cash in a pension
At the beginning of the last decade, a young man who claimed to be my ‘premier banker’ paid me a…
HS2’s boss is right – it’s push on or be rubbed out
I’m sure HS2 chairman Sir David Higgins is right to argue that if we’re serious about building a new north-south…
Any other business: Turn down those token directorships, girls, and tell them you want to be chairman
Last Saturday was International Women’s Day, but we celebrated early in Helmsley when my Yorkshire home town was featured in…
Any other business: Britain’s chaotic energy policy puts us in Putin’s hands
To have written last month that the headline ‘Kiev in flames’ looked like a black swan on the economic horizon…
Any other business: Why a trillion dollars of dividends is a milestone worth celebrating
Dividends paid by listed companies around the world passed $1 trillion for the first time last year, we learn from…
Any other business: The friends of Putin taking home gold from the Sochi Olympics
Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter…
Where I’m looking for the next great banking blow-up
A reader likens me to Dr Pangloss, the quack philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide who insisted that ‘all is for the…
Any other business: The £1 bet that built a 1,000-strong company
At a charity lunch in Manchester, I meet a cheerful ‘engagement manager’ from AO.com, formerly Appliances Online, a fast-growing internet…
Richard Branson deserves (some) respect
Tom Bower’s first biography of Sir Richard Branson, in 2000, was memorable for its hilarious account of the Virgin tycoon’s…
Ed Balls's secret: he doesn't care whether his tax plan makes sense
There were a million people who voted Labour in the 2005 general election but not in 2010, when the party…
Any other business: How François Hollande let France miss the global recovery train
I’ve always respected stationmasters, but that sentiment is not universally shared. A distinguished friend of mine across the Channel described…
Any other business: Oh dear... perhaps Standard Chartered isn't as dull as it looks
The cautionary tale of the Co-operative Bank, its black hole and its naughty chairman has recently taught us that if…
Martin Vander Weyer: Why I’d rather run M&S than Tesco
This first working week of January is apparently the time when we’re most likely to think about a change of…
Martin Vander Weyer: In my hospital bed, I saw the future of the NHS
I blamed the pheasant casserole, but I did it an injustice. Its only contribution to the drama behind my disappearance…
The pleasures of the Dordogne
Call me a trencherman or worse, but I tend to think of the Dordogne as a giant restaurant-cum-farm shop, set…
Martin Vander Weyer: How many times must we save the City?
Top of my Christmas reading pile is Saving the City by Richard Roberts, a new account of the largely forgotten…
Lord Bamford on why JCB is staying independent
‘If I can’t see a factory from up here,’ I mutter to myself, throwing the car round an uphill bend…
