Any other business
The Blackburn brothers who are bringing Asda home
What a triumph of entrepreneurial empire-building — if that’s still an acceptable phrase — is the £6.8 billion acquisition of…
Could ‘clean tech’ save the aviation industry?
What advice can I offer Alok Sharma, who took a pasting in the weekend press for his lacklustre performance as…
The end of the line for the rail franchise fiasco
Good riddance to the passenger rail franchise system which has finally been killed off by Covid, though a majority of…
The Japan trade deal shows how desperate we are for investment
A small cheer for Liz Truss’s treaty with Japan. It is, says the official press release, ‘the UK’s first major…
Wrecking the Brexit talks won’t help our fishermen
‘Every country has a political problem with its fishermen,’ wrote Peter Walker, the Conservative minister who negotiated the first effective…
Now get off your sofa to help save the arts
Along, cold weekend brought a haul of business news more bad than good. The worst was from aero-engine maker Rolls-Royce,…
Zoom falling: has the video-call novelty worn off?
A takeover battle for BT would bring much-needed excitement to the City — as well as a major political row.…
Has Downing Street calculated the real cost of quarantine?
Doing the math, as the Americans say, became this column’s theme after I abandoned another planned trip to France. Seven…
The battle to tackle excess boardroom pay may already be won
At a low moment in late March, I suggested that all large companies should consider temporary cuts in executive salaries…
In defence of Amazon
We should take heart from BP’s £5.1 billion second-quarter loss, accompanied by a halving of its dividend. What’s good about…
Will retail giants outsmart the online sales tax?
When I worked in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur long ago, my office looked across Jalan Tun Razak, a…
Is it too late to jump on the gold bandwagon?
The price of gold has been rising since the earliest virus reports from China in December. Adherents regard it as…
We’ll never know whether Huawei is still listening
This column has been banging on about the peculiar nature of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, ever since its expanded…
The extinction of the arts has been deferred – for now
The government’s £1.57 billion lifeline for the cultural sector was bigger than most practitioners were expecting — and drew a…
Why Boris Johnson’s ‘New Deal’ won’t save us
John Maynard Keynes looks down and smiles, recalling his own perhaps too-often quoted remark that ‘when the facts change, I…
Tinkering with VAT won’t make us trust the government
Should Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut VAT as an emergency stimulus to the consumer economy? When Labour’s Alistair Darling made a…
Is there anywhere visitors will be welcome this summer?
Do stock markets foretell the future while politicians fudge and economists mumble? No: share prices collectively have a life of…
Who would want to come to Britain for a holiday now?
All logic suggests that the 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad really is, as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair put it,…
Our theatres are dark – and in danger
Car showrooms are open again: some dealerships, with a hint of forgivable hyperbole, report a surge of pent-up demand. And…
Bailing out businesses looks inevitable – but it’s not all bad
Should the government be prepared to take equity stakes in major companies that will struggle to survive the current crisis?…
Rico Back’s departure is a first-class opportunity for Royal Mail
The Royal Mail worker who rang my bell to deliver an Amazon package on Friday was wearing a glittery ball…
It’s mavericks like Elon Musk who’ll get us through this crisis
This month’s most significant corporate deal attracted less attention than it might have done in normal times, crowded out by…
Now is not the time to throw money at airlines
British Airways warns of 12,000 redundancies. Ryanair announces 3,000 job losses as ‘a minimum to survive the next 12 months’;…
Rishi Sunak must stick to his guns
Was the Chancellor wrong to guarantee only 80 per cent, rather than 100, of ‘coronavirus business interruption loans’ to keep…
Will GSK show us what ‘purpose before profit’ really means?
Keep your eye on GlaxoSmithKline. The UK-based multinational drug-maker represents the future, both as a mass-producer of the vaccines that…
