Business Comment

Inside Business Comment

Margareta Pagano: Draghi needs a bazooka to fix the eurozone

Sunday, 9 October 2011

Sometimes only a huge shock to the system will do

Hamish McRae: What a barrage of bad news! Let's just sift through and make sense of it all

Sunday, 9 October 2011

Economic View

Hamish McRae: Calm down Mervyn – this so-called global recession is really not that bad

Saturday, 8 October 2011

Comment

Stephen Foley: The death of Steve Jobs may have left Apple with the wrong chief executive

Saturday, 8 October 2011

US Outlook: I may have underestimated the importance of love.

Stephen Foley: Demand won't rise till unemployment falls

Saturday, 8 October 2011

US Outlook: You can actually see financial markets holding their breath in the minutes before the monthly US unemployment figures are released. Activity slows, as traders hover over their "buy" and "sell" buttons, ready to jump when the number comes out at 8.30am, New York time, on the first Friday of every month.

David Prosser: Groundhog Day maybe, but there is still a case for Microsoft to buy Yahoo

Friday, 7 October 2011

Outlook It is only three years since Microsoft fought a bitter and ultimately unsuccessful battle to buy Yahoo. Given that the internet company is today worth less than half the $47.5bn Microsoft was prepared to pay in 2008, it would be odd if executives were not at leastthinking about the idea of making a second attempt for control.

QE may increase the risk of inflation but it should help the UK avoid a recession

Friday, 7 October 2011

Hamish McRae: Maybe we should not blame QE for the surge in inflation; maybe the roots of the problem go back to the unsustainable nature of the Brown boom.

David Prosser: Osborne's obstinacy forces MPC's hand

Friday, 7 October 2011

Outlook The Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee has made the right decision, but it was interesting to note yesterday that the Governor felt it important to make it clear there had been no pressure from the Government for it to act. In terms of direct pressure, that is no doubt true, but the fiscal policy pursued by the Treasury has left the MPC with precious little choice but to intervene.

David Prosser: Trichet bows out with head held high

Friday, 7 October 2011

Outlook Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, has sometimes been attacked for failing to deliver the policy response to financial crisis – both today and in 2008 – that his critics had been hoping for. There is plenty to argue about on that front, but with Mr Trichet giving his final press conference yesterday before bowing out after eight years at the ECB, let us all concede one point: on the central objective of the bank, price stability, Mr Trichet has done an outstanding job – he has certainly been more effective than the Governor of the Bank of England.

David Prosser: Tesco boss picks wrong moment for debut, but no problem with his form

Thursday, 6 October 2011

Outlook It would seem we need to add an impeccable sense of timing to the endless list of attributes of Sir Terry Leahy, who bowed out as chief executive of Tesco in March.

David Prosser: Why your country needs you to spend

Thursday, 6 October 2011

Outlook: Margaret Thatcher famously used to compare the Government's stewardship of the public finances to a housewife's careful marshalling of the family budget. It was as daft a comparison then as it is today: the fact that governments have such good access to credit is hugely useful since it allows them to run deficits during tough times, providing the economy with a stabiliser (the corollary, of course, is that they need to run a surplus when the environment improves). Households, by contrast, get into difficulty quickly and often disastrously if they continue to rack up borrowing when their finances are squeezed.

David Prosser: Europe's new bank regulator got it wrong

Thursday, 6 October 2011

Outlook Does the European Banking Authority (EBA), the regulator set up in the wake of the financial crisis, understand the International Monetary Fund's call yesterday for an immediate recapitalisation of many of the banks it supervises?

David Prosser: The time for watching and waiting is over: the MPC needs to turn on the taps

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Outlook So will they or won't they? When the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee arrive at the Bank of England this morning to begin their monthly deliberations, they will know that the case for a renewal of the quantitative easing programme that has been in abeyance since November 2009 is now even stronger. The question is whether October is the month in which the MPC pushes the button.

David Prosser: It's a home victory for Sky after all

Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Outlook For a woman who lost her case, the Portsmouth pub landlady Karen Murphy was looking remarkably cheerful yesterday. And no, that is not a Daily Mail-style jumping of the gun on the European court's verdict: Ms Murphy – and byimplication, publicans up and down the country – really did suffer a reverse. Why do you think BSkyB shares, down by less than 3 per cent last night, were among the best performers on a dreadful day for the Footsie?

David Prosser: HM Treasury: lender of last resort to companies turned down for credit?

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

Outlook: Hands up if you like the idea of civil servants, or even a publicly funded agency, deciding which firms are a good bet for loans of taxpayers' cash

Ben Chu: The IMF matters, but we should also pay attention to the World Bank

Monday, 3 October 2011

Economic Outlook: Staff at the Bank are under huge pressure to push money out of the door. The emphasis is on quantity rather than quality

An ethical economy? Now, what says Cameron?

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Margareta Pagano: Ed Miliband and David Cameron both want a 'big' society. But at the moment, the PM is trying to work out how to get UK plc to spend its �50bn cash pile.

Hamish McRae: From Singapore, Europe is not only west, but looks to be going there too

Sunday, 2 October 2011

Economic View

Stephen Foley: So will it be Amazon or Apple taking the honours in the Tablet Premiership?

Saturday, 1 October 2011

US Outlook: Sometimes we business reporters can feel a lot like sports commentators. Certainly this week, we have been writing about two of the world's largest technology companies as if they were United and City.

Stephen Foley: Morgan Stanley feels the eurozone jitters

Saturday, 1 October 2011

US Outlook: The investor relations department at Morgan Stanley has had to do a lot of work this week to calm its shareholders, creditors and clients, and it really shouldn't have to.

David Prosser: Nokia's boss certainly talks the talk, but will we ever see some walk?

Friday, 30 September 2011

Outlook Nokia's boss, Stephen Elop, has an irritating addiction to corporate jargon: the man who famously began his tenure at the company with a memo to all staff warning them about the "burning platform" on which they were standing has continued in that vein ever since. Yesterday, he was talking about the need to "align our workforce and operations with our path forward" – make jobs cuts, in other words.

Asia shows a vigour that is sadly lacking on our side of the world

Friday, 30 September 2011

Hamish McRae reports from Singapore, where economic growth is still at 6 per cent despite its ties to the West.

David Prosser: There is no consensus for regulatory reform

Friday, 30 September 2011

Outlook Behind the scenes, at wonkish conferences around Europe, the nitty-gritty of regulatory reform is slowly being worked out. Three speeches caught the eye yesterday alone: the Bank of England's David Miles argued the new Basel III requirements for banks to hold more capital would have to be raised in future; Hans Hoogervorst, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board, questioned the fact that banks do not have to count sovereign debt held in their national currency as a risk-weighted asset; and Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, warned that using regulatory powers to control credit would be very tough.

David Prosser: Danger signals flash for Autonomy windfalls

Friday, 30 September 2011

Outlook At one level, it's just fun to sit back and watch the spat between Mike Lynch, the boss of Autonomy, and Larry Ellison, the Oracle chief executive who claims he was offered the chance to buy the British company but did not want to pay what Hewlett-Packard subsequently agreed to shell out. But at another, Autonomy shareholders, salivating at the huge premium HP has offered for the company, will be feeling anxious.

David Prosser: BAE cuts are a wake-up call for a government with no growth strategy

Wednesday, 28 September 2011

Outlook It is easy enough to rant about the irony of BAE Systems cutting 3,000 jobs at a time when politicians of every persuasion talk of little else but the need to rebalance our economy away from financial services towards the kind of hi-tech manufacturing at which the defence company excels. However, the job losses announced yesterday do not represent a setback, a failure for that rebalancing act, but something else entirely.

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