Neil Collins
[SFTW] Merv’s swerve from inflation control
It was almost a throwaway remark from Sir Mervyn King. At the end of another uncomfortable press conference, he floated the idea that the 2 per cent inflation target has had its day. In the real world,
Green light on how the City works
Andrew Osborne is justified to feel hard done by. A single four-word remark in a long phone conversation has cost him a small fortune. The words were “something like 350 sterling”, an amount which bears a curious symmetry to the £350,000 fine which the FSA has just levied on him.
[SFTW] ‘orrible merger! Read all about it!
If he’s selling, I’m not buying. This was an excellent plan with last year’s public offer of Glencore shares. Dazzled by the fees and muzzled by the conflicts of interest, very few mining analysts were in a position to say what they thought.
[SFTW] Dear Davey: handbrake turn needed
Every government needs a thick slice of luck, and this week’s has come as Chris Huhne slid off the political road into the ditch. Ed Davey has a golden chance to drive away from an energy policy which might have been designed to make energy expensive and electricity unreliable.
[SFTW] Winner takes all…
It’s been a gruesome week in the mobile phone market. The almost embarrassing dominance of Apple (ideas for spending $90bn of spare cash, anyone?) provided a cruel contrast to the desperate plight of the opposition.
[SFTW] The ship is easier to salvage than the supermarket
Two solid FTSE stocks, covered by a total of more than 50 analysts, fell by 15% in a day during the first couple of weeks of January. It would have been downright spooky for any of Carnival’s crew of followers to have predicted the bizarre sinking of the Costa Concordia,
[SFTW] Salmond is on the hook
Alex Salmond looks smug as a bug right now. His popularity in the Scottish polls is approaching that of Nicolai Ceausescu when he was running Romania. He should be careful what he wishes for. His pick’n'mix approach to Scottish independence plays straight to the xenophobic basic instinct of the complaining Scot,
[SFTW] No more Shelling out for pensions
So even Royal Dutch Shell has decided that the oil business is hard enough, without running a life assurance scheme for employees on the side. There is now not a single company in the FTSE100 index which offers a final salary pension scheme to new employees.
[Something for the weekend] A Dickens of a mess
Ebenezer Draghi sighed. These bank books would never come out right, and it was Christmas Eve already. As he struggled, the numbers began to swim before his eyes. So many hundreds of billions of euros,
[Something for the weekend] Life’s a beach (or not)
Life’s a beach (or not)
Ah, the holiday season. Dreams of surf, sea, sand – and soggy share prices, or so it must seem to the bewildered shareholders in Thomas Cook. The travel agent’s “amendment to bank facilities”
[Something for the weekend] The SGP without stability or growth
Ah, the Stability and Growth Pact. You remember. Joining the SGP, members promised fiscal restraint, and in return were allowed to junk their soggy old currencies for a Deutschemark with a suntan. They all promised to keep the gap between revenue and spending to below 3 per cent of GDP,
[Something for the weekend] Don’t offer this man a Rakoff
Jed Rakoff is quite the hero. A New York District judge, he has done what the rest of us would love to do, and busted a cosy deal between bankers and their regulators. In early 2007, just when everything was starting to slide,
[Something for the weekend] An irrelevant bargain for Branson
When you’re short of money, the odd £747m always comes in useful, but it doesn’t go far these days. It’s enough to finance the UK state spending machine for about nine hours. The government had spent more than the proceeds from the sale of Northern Rock before it could read the reaction to it in Friday’s papers.
[Something for the weekday] Dear Mr Budenberg
Due to unforeseen technical errors — actually it was the over zealous FT spam filter — Neil’s column did not appear at its usual time on Friday. But it’s too good to waste so we are publishing now.
[Something for the weekend] Let’s have the FTUK index (and the T-shirt)
Goodhart’s Law, as refined, states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Charles Goodhart coined it (the law, rather than anything else) at the Bank of England. At the time the Bank was targetting M3,
[Something for the weekend] It’s not the banks, it’s the bankers, cont’d
Good news: pay to bankers is falling. Bad news: having wiped out the shareholders, they’re still eating all the pies. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup reported tolerable figures only thanks to FVOOD, a piece of accounting nonsense which turns the bank’s deteriorating credit quality into earnings because the market value of its debt has fallen.
[Something for the weekend] Here comes the Rayne again
– By Neil Collins –
Once upon a time, Max Rayne ran London Merchant Securities much as he wanted to. Many years later, it now seems that his son, Robert, would rather like to do the same with LMS Capital,
[Something for the weekend] Dear Lloyds: nobody wants to buy your bank
– By Neil Collins –
Dear Lloyds: nobody wants to buy your bank
It was going to be a hard-fought auction. The chance to buy a fully-formed network of bank branches, complete (one supposes) with all the trimmings,