Business Comment

Inside Business Comment

David Prosser: Britain's tawdry tax deal with Switzerland is a charter for tax evaders

Friday, 26 August 2011

Outlook Just how pleased should we be that George Osborne has persuaded his Swiss counterparts to pay some compensation for the fact that billions of pounds of British tax dodgers' money is parked in secret bank accounts in their country? Well, about as pleased as we would be if someone had robbed a British bank, fled to Switzerland and then got away scot-free apart from the inconvenience of the local authorities handing back some of the proceeds.

Sean O'Grady: Central bankers may use Jackson Hole to look beyond fiscal and monetary stimuli

Friday, 26 August 2011

Economic Life: Quantitative easing, let there be no doubt, is inflationary in intent because the fear is still of the world relapsing into deflation and depression

David Prosser: Apple's awkward changing of the guard

Friday, 26 August 2011

Outlook One of the most regularly quoted perspectives on the recent stock market crisis is that Apple has become a more valuable company than every single bank in the eurozone combined. But over the past 36 hours or so, its stock has proved almost as volatile as the paper of an under-fire French bank – and it need not have been this way.

David Prosser: Let's get pre-pack reforms right

Friday, 26 August 2011

Outlook The Government's decision to delay reforms to the rules on pre-pack administrations is welcome. The arrangements, through which indebted companies go into administration but emerge almost instantly with much-reduced debts and a new owner, have had a bad press. And there have been abuses of the rules, which have left creditors, often vulnerable small business suppliers, out of pocket and with no recourse to complaint.

David Prosser: Time running out for Tesco stalwart to make a big splash in banking

Thursday, 25 August 2011

Outlook The departure of Andy Higginson from Tesco is the latest in a steady stream of senior figures moving on since Sir Terry Leahy stepped down as chief executive earlier this year. Fears about a brain drain, however, are overstated, for Tesco's problem has long been that it has too few top-level posts into which it can promote from a large pool of talented second-tier executives.

David Prosser: Price comparison sites battle to be heard

Thursday, 25 August 2011

Outlook Sadly for insurer Admiral, Confused is the word that these days sums up customers' attitudes towards the price comparison market – and not Confused.com. With four major players in the market and a myriad of niche competitors snapping at their heels, maybe now is the time for someone to launch a price comparison site comparison site. In the meantime, the winner in this business is the company that shouts loudest (or spends the most on memorable advertising).

David Prosser: Derivatives timebomb is still ticking

Thursday, 25 August 2011

Outlook Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG, regulators still have not found a way to keep track of the opaque derivatives market that paralysed the world's financial system in the wake of those corporate disasters.

David Prosser: Mortgage lending is weak because buyers lack the required deposits

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Outlook The good news, says the housebuilder Persimmon, is that Britain's housing market has stabilised. But, it warns, there is not much reason to be optimistic about the chances of an upturn because mortgage availability remains such a problem.

Anna Bird: Let the Commons put house in order to set an example

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Six months since the Davies report, the latest figures reveal that although progress in the boardroom is slow, there has been some. FTSE 100 firms have appointed 18 women to their boards since the Davies report – 31 per cent of the total and well over twice the proportion seen in any previous year.

David Prosser: The ethics of pension fund investments

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Outlook Kent County Council has got itself into something of a pickle. Anti-smoking charities and local healthcare practitioners are up in arms after discovering the local authority's pension fund has investments in four international tobacco companies with a total value of £25m.

David Prosser: More cheques (and balances) required

Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Outlook When the Payments Council decided so few people use cheques these days that it could safely announce their abolition in a few years' time, it dropped an enormous clanger. The protests were so noisy that it was forced into aU-turn – and now the Treasury Select Committee wants to see its powers reined in.

David Prosser: Putting a cap on the cost of pensions both present and future

Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Outlook: If you retired a decade ago, the chances are you will live for three years longer than your employer had expected to have to pay you a pension

Stephen King: Our economic woes show that there is nothing unique about Japan

Monday, 22 August 2011

Economic Outlook: Economic outcomes in the Western world have, to date, been far worse than in Japan in the early years of stagnation

Ben Chu: Germany can forgive the debtors – or it can throw them in the dark tower

Sunday, 21 August 2011

Economic View

Margareta Pagano: Dyson and Portas are not the answer to our problems

Sunday, 21 August 2011

Famous talking heads can't fix the economy, we need serious policies

Stephen Foley: Bernanke must rise above the jibes from Perry's Texas hold'em economics

Saturday, 20 August 2011

Rick Perry’s comments about Ben Bernanke have been viewed as a gaffe and an unwise reminder of the rhetorical style of George W Bush

David Prosser: Osborne's political obstinacy risks asecond recession

Friday, 19 August 2011

Outlook Nothing, it seems, will persuade George Osborne to change his mind about Plan A for austerity. Not the shocking youth unemployment figures this week, which showed one in five 16-to-24-year-olds is without work, not further sell-offs on the stock market, and certainly not yesterday's retail sales figures, which revealed that stagnation on the high street is continuing.

A little bit of QE now might ease the pain of eurozone crises to come

Friday, 19 August 2011

Sean O'Grady: Low interest rates are the gift that keeps on giving. Someone with an average tracker mortgage could save tens of thousands of pounds.

David Prosser: Can the FPC calm your shattered nerves?

Friday, 19 August 2011

Outlook Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England's executive director for financial stability, is clearly a man with an immaculate sense of timing. When he published his latest paper, "Risk Off", yesterday morning, he cannot have known the markets were set to take another downwards lurch in exactly the sort of sudden sentiment shift he was anxious to discuss.

David Prosser: The wrong time to float a football club

Friday, 19 August 2011

Outlook Manchester United's flotation in Singapore moved a step closer yesterday, with several sources suggesting the club has now filed an IPO application with the stock exchange there. To which all one can say is, best of luck with that.

David Prosser: A eurozone solution that deals with the future but not the present

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Outlook Let us say this for Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy: having copped flak all year for being so far off the pace of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis, they have now pulled off the neat trick of getting too far ahead of the curve.

David Prosser: Royal Bank of Scotland drops a clanger

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Some banks really don't help themselves. Royal Bank of Scotland, 83 per cent owned by thetaxpayer, is banning customers with "basic accounts" from using cashpoints operated by other banking groups on the grounds it can't recoup the costs it incurs when they do so.

David Prosser: Lies, damned lies and political statistics

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Outlook The Office for National Statistics continues to get it in the neck. After last Friday's humiliation, which saw it publish construction industry figures in the morning that it had to recant in the afternoon, the ONS has now been publicly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for risking giving the perception that it is not politically neutral.

David Prosser: Why a home fixture is not the preferred option for Man United

Wednesday, 17 August 2011

Outlook So why is Manchester United considering an IPO in Asia rather than the UK, where it was listed on the London Stock Exchange until 2005? Assuming the club goes ahead with the float, the answer will presumably be that Asia represents a hugely attractive market for the club, which reckons the continent is home to two-thirds of its 300 million-strong fanbase.

David Prosser: Standard & Poor's is still feeling the heat

Wednesday, 17 August 2011

Outlook There is confusion over exactly what the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating in relation to the downgrading of the US by credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (and no one will say on the record). Some reportssuggest the SEC is conducting an insider dealing inquiry. Others think the regulator is looking into the decision itself.

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