The clever radical who led the City’s transformation
It’s a vivid example of unintended consequences that the swimming-pool builders of southern England should owe so much to Sir…
Could hydrogen power turn air travel green?
Have you been scanning airline websites for exotic destinations to which your double-jabbed status might allow you to slip away…
Will a John Lewis home be up Boris and Carrie’s street?
The Financial Times carried a curious story at the weekend about ‘the secretive process to elect the Lord Mayor of…
The Nicola Sturgeon effect on house prices
Nicola Sturgeon depresses me and seems to be having the same effect on Scottish house prices. In a housing market…
Why private equity sharks are shopping at Morrisons
The late Sir Ken Morrison — founder of the eponymous supermarket chain that’s the latest UK target for US private…
Foreign opportunists are turning Britain into a corporate car-boot sale
The snatching of a 12 per cent stake in BT by French entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, last seen here when he…
Suddenly used cars are hot property
Companies should willingly pay tax wherever they generate profits — this column has long argued — because it’s fair they…
Will the new breed of retail investors cash in – or crash out?
‘Feed the ducks when they’re quacking’ sounds like advice from a foie gras farmer — but let’s leave gastronomy till…
Who cares who runs the railways? We just want them to run on time
The long-awaited review of the railways by former British Airways executive Keith Williams chugged past the platform of public debate…
Is Farrow & Ball’s business model flaking?
The happiest thing that happens in May is the coming into leaf of my long beech hedge. The shift from…
The pandemic’s transatlantic divide in executive salaries
‘Consider a temporary cut in executive salaries’ was the Confederation of British Industry’s advice to members at the start of…
Can Melinda still keep Bill Gates in check?
‘We are seeing very substantial inflation,’ the great investor Warren Buffett told shareholders in his master company Berkshire Hathaway at…
Who’s really to blame for the Post Office scandal?
The alleged frauds for which the Post Office prosecuted no fewer than 736 of its sub-postmasters has turned out in…
Crypto is a virtual Vegas whose towers must fall
What should we make of the valuation of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange listed on Nasdaq last week at $80 billion…
Can the ‘next Bicester Village’ take off without tourists?
Retail footfall will be the first measure of recovery this spring. Everywhere I look, from central London to small-town Yorkshire,…
Was Deliveroo the most embarrassing flop in City history?
The market emphatically endorsed my negative opinion of the Deliveroo share offer, which bombed from its offer price of 390p…
Why I won’t invest in Deliveroo
‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism — because of greed, my friends.’ So Boris Johnson…
Are we entering a new era of fractured trade?
Just as the auto industry embraces the electric future I wrote about last month, it hits a new crisis: a…
Can John Lewis and Waitrose really remain partners?
Historians of unforeseen crises talk about ‘chaos theory’ and the ‘butterfly effect’, in which a small perturbation far away —…
Are Wall Street’s ‘Spacs’ about to make waves in the City?
This column generally takes a sceptical view of financial novelties and gimmicks. So my antennae have twitched in recent days…
The case for keeping business taxes low
Why should business pay tax at all? That’s a provocative but forlorn question to ask in Budget week. Business pays…
The car industry is accelerating towards an electric future
Back in November, when Downing Street’s pandemic responses looked daily more incompetent, the announcement of a ban on sales of…
The City is losing its battle with Brussels and Amsterdam
No sign of progress towards a workable deal with the EU for financial services, on which news is due next…
Why it’s a good time to invest in a pub
It’s obvious from the body language of Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey that negative interest rates — much talked…
The Reddit rampage is a sign of market turmoil ahead
The Reddit story — in which a ragtag army of small investors have executed a spectacular short squeeze against hedge-fund…
