The one guaranteed outcome of the US Fed’s new policy of forecasting interest rates is that the forecasts will ultimately be wrong. And that will undermine the world’s most important financial policymaker.
Read the rest of this post »

Companies are in no mood for mergers and acquisitions but the lack of takeover lack of activity risks leaving world business in a poorer state for the economic recovery.
Read the rest of this post »

Will a royal Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games rescue the UK economy in 2012? David Cameron thinks (or maybe just hopes) so in his New Year’s message, but it’s big ask.
Read the rest of this post »

If only governments had been as prudent as the corporate sector. Companies shored up their balance sheets as soon as they suspected the bubble might burst in 2007. That’s why they’re throwing off cash now.
Read the rest of this post »

SMEs are the backbone of the British economy – but why are the medium-size enterprises bracketed with the country’s small firms rather than the big corporations? Some small firms are sick of being grouped with the mediums – and the mediums want to move in with the large.
Read the rest of this post »

Where do CEOs come from? Ambitious finance directors. So it is worrying that FDs are no longer gaining experience outside their firms as non-execs so often.
Read the rest of this post »

What George Osborne tried to hide in his Autumn Statement is that Britain faces a lost decade: it’ll be 2016 before we are better off than we were in 2002. But while it will be at least as bad as that, it won’t seem so.
Read the rest of this post »

By taking four years to produce its report on the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland Group (LON:RBS), the Financial Services Authority has been able to make the maximum use of hindsight. But if today’s caution was applied, would RBS ever have taken over NatWest?
Read the rest of this post »

Queen of Shops Mary Portas has proved one thing with her study of Britain’s ailing high streets: there is no obvious answer. More street markets may increase footfall but they may also steal customers from shops that pay rents and rates.
Read the rest of this post »

Some organisations – government, bodies like the Bank of England and even a few companies – keep a register of hospitality received by their employees. Lord Woolf’s report on (and for) BAE Systems (LON:BA) suggests a log of gifts given.
Read the rest of this post »