David Wighton

Profile: Full name: David Wighton Area of interest: Business Journals/Organisation: The Times Email: david.wighton@thetimes.co.uk Personal website: Website: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/davidwighton Blog: Representation: Networks: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/david-wighton/21/b37/175 | http://twitter.com/#!/davidwighton

Biography: About: Associate Editor, Business and Politics at The Times and the newspaper’s Chief Business Commentator Education: Politics, Philosophy and Economics at New College, Oxford Career: Previously, he was Business and City Editor of The Times. He joined The Times in May 2008 from the Financial Times where he was New York Bureau Chief and US banking editor. In fourteen years with the FT, he also served as US News Editor, Financial News Editor and Chief Political Correspondent. He was editor of the Telegraph’s Questor column and City news editor Current position/role: Columnist and chief business editor also writes/written for: Other roles/Main role: Other activities: Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Broadcast media: Video: Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Scoops: Other:

Books & Debate: Latest work: Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Times: Column name: Wighton on Saturday Remit/Info: Section: Role: Pen-name: Email: david.wighton@thetimes.co.uk Website: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/davidwighton Commissioning editor: Day published: saturday Regularity: Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2012 Tick the box marked ‘personal responsibility’ - From public servants to City bosses, procedure has replaced judgment. Reversing that trend is a risk worth taking - 2nd January

Articles: 2011 Greece — a question of when, not if - What seems to be the obvious big question at the start of a new year frequently turns out to be a bit of a sideshow by the end - 31st December A good time to be nice to the taxman - Christmas is a time of goodwill to all men, and that should include the good men and women at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs - 24th December A brave move, Mr Cameron, but it backfired - The Prime Minister was right to try to protect the City but failing to secure concessions was a big mistake - 12th December Summit to save the euro changes little - David Cameron’s wielding of the British veto may have been a shock but the rest of the Brussels summit was all too predictable - 10th December The doomsters must be heard - There was something strangely familiar in the warnings from some business leaders about the consequences of the veto of the euro pact - 10th December Bigger and bigger fixes of panic are needed - Eurozone leaders resemble drug addicts who need bigger and bigger fixes of market panic to stimulate any action - 5th December Progress is agonisingly slow — the world still needs a big bazooka - This week’s grim forecasts for the economy have been bad enough. But they have come with one big caveat. If the eurozone crisis is not resolved soon things could get worse - 1st December Divided Britain: in this together, but some deeper in it than others - We are all in this together, George Osborne likes to say. But it is clear that Britain is deeply divided economically and many of the divisions are getting deeper. Between North and South, between young and old, between , the gaps are getting wider - 30th November There’s a welcome development for developers, but bad news for voles - Among the biggest losers from the Autumn Statement could be newts and water voles. The Chancellor said the Government was reviewing the way Brussels wildlife directives were applied in Britain, which imposed “ridiculous” costs on construction projects - 30th November Osborne is rising to his biggest challenge - Infrastructure is not a pretty word but it holds the key to the way the Chancellor can get Britain moving - 28th November Osborne can seize on threat of break-up - Only a few months ago those claiming that the euro could break up were treated like flat-earthers. Now senior British officials talk openly about the need to prepare contingency plans - 26th November Big names, but they’re not too big to fail - How are the mighty fallen. The past few years have left many reputations in tatters. Investment managers have fared almost as badly as bankers, with some of the biggest names in the business humbled - 19th November The solution to the euro crisis lies in Alabama - Forget tighter political union, the real lesson to be learnt from the US is not to bail out spendthrift states - 14th November Daredevil brinkmanship pays off — so far - The best that could be said about the great eurozone game of chicken this week is that nobody actually went over the edge - 5th November A dead giveaway that legacies need a boost - A new campaign asks people to pledge 10 per cent of their estates to charity. Will the Prime Minister sign up? - 31st October Big earners cannot carry on regardless - For once, it is hard to disagree with Len McCluskey. The Unite union leader said yesterday it was “outrageous” that directors of Britain’s top 100 companies saw their total earnings rise by 49 per cent in the last financial year. He’s right - 29th October Only a bigger crisis will save the euro - There is a big Catch-22 at the centre of efforts to resolve the eurozone debt crisis - 22nd October Can growth take off without a third runway? - Justine Greening, the new Transport Secretary, hates aircraft noise. This will create a headache for business leaders - 17th October Dallying on the way to a new credit squeeze - When it comes to tackling the eurozone crisis, the more gung-ho types in the City urge a Big Bang approach - 15th October QE2 arrives just in time to ease gloom - Some Tory delegates complained that George Osborne’s speech to the party conference in Manchester this week was just a bit too gloomy. Goodness knows what they thought of Sir Mervyn King’s subsequent warning that we could be facing the worst financial crisis since, well, ever - 8th October We all hate property tax, but at least make it fair - Stamp duty is outdated, inconsistent and easy for the rich to avoid. Let’s base payments on house values instead - 3rd October Mixed signals put Miliband on rocky road - Ed Miliband has been rightly lampooned for suggesting that companies could be taxed differently according to whether they are deemed good or bad, “producers” or “predators” - 1st October Time to use the last of the ammunition - The unnerving thing about the markets this week was not that everything that happened was interpreted as bad news. On the contrary. Investors have been desperately trying to discern a silver lining - 24th September Getting rid of pylons could power growth - Burying electricity lines is costly but it would make Chris Huhne look environmentally and economically sound - 19th September Ring-fencing now will strangle any recovery - The Chancellor has unwisely painted himself into a corner by supporting a retail-investment split of banks - 12th September Bank on hand for some heavy lifting - George Osborne has had worse weeks. The news on the economy remained dismal and he could have really used a bit of help from the Bank of England, which decided against more quantitative easing - 10th September When in a hole, why dig a deeper one? - The economy appears to be in such a deep, dark hole that ministers are desperately scrabbling around looking for anything that might help us clamber out. It should seem obvious that a shovel, with which to dig a deeper hole, is not what they need - 3rd September Britain should a bit more of a borrower be - Investment in infrastructure would stimulate growth without spooking the markets or tearing up Plan A - 29th August Housing is the cornerstone of US growth - The US economy would not make a solid recovery until the housing market stabilised, said many pundits in the aftermath of the financial crisis - 27th August Meetings are no substitute for action - The outcome of this week’s meeting between President Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was hard to parody. Faced with a collapse in confidence over the eurozone’s ability to deal with its debt crisis, they proposed — another series of meetings - 20th August It’s summer, and Osborne is given a break - There is always that one thing you have been dreading that you have to get out of the way before you can go off on holiday - 30th July The family business is not the poor relation - Despite the criticisms made against the Murdochs, family firms often beat short-termist, ‘ownerless’ corporations - 25th July No real stress amid a game of chicken - Yesterday’s European bank stress tests brought to a suitably dramatic close a week in which politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have been playing a high stakes game of chicken - 16th July A Tory industrial policy? You’d better believe it - Helping companies to save British jobs is now a priority for the coalition. It’s controversial, it’s risky, but it’s right - 11th July Faith alone won’t fill the energy gap - Chris Huhne’s response to Centrica’s gas and electricity price rises yesterday was a little disingenuous - 9th July Insurers left licking self-inflicted wounds - Otto Thoresen wasn’t kidding when he told the Association of British Insurers conference last week that the industry faced a tough challenge restoring its reputation - 2nd July Transport delays are due to red tape and Cable - The Business Secretary is failing to slice through bureaucracy to get a much-needed new British port moving - 27th June Leaders change camp over Greece - Only a few weeks ago, the idea that Greece could withdraw from the single currency was largely confined to professional contrarians and diehard eurosceptics. However it is becoming increasingly respectable - 25th June Stocking up on stores a risky strategy - Britain’s leading supermarket chains are stuffing their trolleys with new stores as if they were on special offer - 19th June Why weekly collections have to be binned - Only growing piles of black binbags full of household rubbish will spur us to recycle more and waste less - 13th June Price shock wipes smile off Osborne’s face - Just when it looked as if George Osborne might have a better week of economic news, he was hit by a quick one-two on energy prices - 11th June More investment is the only way out - A week of mixed economic news ended on a dismal note yesterday with further evidence that the British economy is crawling along in the slow lane and clear signs that the US has hit a pothole - 4th June Britain needs to build its roads to recovery - Investing in our infrastructure is obvious good sense but plans have stalled through lack of leadership - 30th May The trouble with a magic roundabout - There has been much celebration this week on behalf of Iain Dodsworth, the 36-year-old computer programmer who founded a Twitter software company only three years ago and has sold it to the microblogging site for £25 million - 28th May We must end short-termism. And it won’t wait - Investors keep shares for even less time than football clubs keep managers. And that’s bad for jobs and growth - 16th May Dreadful kerfuffle about boardroom pay - We are all in this together, the Prime Minister likes to say. Only the boards of many big British companies don’t seem to be listening - 14th May Spitting or not, others must follow Lloyds - The frenzy of rash lending by the banks ahead of the financial crisis was stupid. The frenzy of rash selling of loan insurance was worse than stupid. It was shameful - 7th May This belief in making things is make-believe - It is pure fantasy to argue that the solution to Britain’s economic problems lies in boosting manufacturing - 2nd May Two cheers for an economic recovery - Royal weddings aren’t quite what they used to be. Nor are economic recoveries - 30th April Japan’s misery provides a lesson for British industry - Like clothing fads, business strategy fashions tend to overshoot - 23rd April Hold firm on privatisation, Mr Cameron - The probable retreat on NHS reforms looking like derailing the strategy to move services out of the public sector - 18th April Little hope on the horizon for savers - Long-suffering savers who have been desperately hoping for an early interest rate rise look set to suffer for a good while yet. The first rise may well not happen until next year - 16th April Splitting up the banks was always a sideshow - Sir John Vickers has ignored all the sound and fury in favour of some sane suggestions - 12th April So the answer to debt is more debt - The question is: who is going to lend us all the money? I haven’t found any bank that finds the figures remotely credible - 9th April Osborne has a splitting headache over banks - Should retail be separated from investment? Is more competition helpful? There are no easy answers - 4th April Preventing a panic on the high street - Wighton on Saturday - 2nd April British business is missing the African dream - As Chinese and Indian companies scramble for Africa’s billion consumers, Britain is in danger of being left behind - 21st March Britain must turn tide against piracy - Gather any group of music and film folk together these days and the conversation will quickly turn to piracy. This week’s Abu Dhabi media summit was no exception - 19th March A flap in Germany risks a storm in Spain - The PhD plagiarism of a German minister threatens to stymie economic recovery throughout the eurozone - 7th March So much for the paperless revolution - I am delighted to reveal that an endangered species is to be saved from extinction. The campaign to preserve the printed annual report looks set to succeed - 5th March The shipping forecast means yet more trouble for Lloyds - Eric Daniels has many strengths. Timing is not one of them. Had he waited a bit longer before agreeing terms for the rescue of HBOS, he could have got the toxic bank for a lot less. Or, better still, not got it at all - 26th February Cameron is right: more competition is required - Many argue that now isn’t the time, but Britain will benefit from letting new businesses in to disrupt the status quo - 21st February If China is curbing corruption, why can’t we? - Business says the Bribery Act is an obstacle to growth. But implementing it quickly is vital for Britain’s reputation - 7th February Property loophole leaves us at a loss - 5th February The private fury behind bankers’ public smiles - 27th January There is more to bad news than meets the eye - 26th January HMV slowly sinking as the band plays on - 20th January Goldman turns bonus count on its head - 20th January BP finds a quantum of solace in Russian deal - After the Gulf of Mexico spill, the oil giant is taking a big risk. But where else can it turn as the world tilts east? - 19th January Jobs must be more open to avoid bruising Apple - 18th January Inflation fears might well be overblown - 14th January Eurozone needs more than just a bailout - 13th January My bank pays too much. But don’t stop it - Pressure over bonuses will work long-term. But headline-grabbing gestures will only harm our investment - 12th January More must be done to put tourism on the map - 11th January It conquered the market. Can ARM conquer Intel? - 7th January HMV slowly sinking as the band plays on - 6th January Good news! Petrol is horribly expensive again - Those aghast at the cost of filling up can console themselves that the global economy has bounced back - 5th January

Articles: 2010 Twice bitten but not shy: house prices will fall - 31st December Winners in the brave new world of electricity - 17th December Private sector A-list can raise Whitehall’s game - 16th December Better watch out. Activists are coming to town - These customer protests are not just for Christmas. Bad behaviour could seriously damage your business - 15th December HMV hoping a sour note won’t spoil its Christmas - Don’t mention Woolies to Simon Fox. The HMV chief executive fumes at the suggestion that his much-loved brand may also be heading for the knacker’s yard - 11th December Will Whitehall plc ever be launched? - Cameron’s plan to bring in more business directors to oversee the Civil Service is meeting resistance - 8th December Europe must recognise the scale of its crisis - 7th December Reasons to be cheerful in Britain’s employment factory - 2nd December What’s good for the planet is good for business - Companies will no longer wait for government action on the environment. But they must take shareholders with them - 1st December The means and the will, but at what price? - 30th November Posen breaks cover to stop King straying again - 26th November Ireland is too weak to make banks share pain - 25th November Time to trim back on immigration red tape - 24th November Banks get time to pay while Irish foot the bill - 23rd November Stagnant housing market leaves Treasury sweating over deficit plan - 19th November Congratulations to the happy couple. There’s just one thing . . . - A bit like Will and Kate, the proposed marriage of Northern Foods and Ireland’s Greencore is what the Prime Minister would describe as unadulterated good news (except, perhaps, for the tax man) - 18th November Dublin and markets disagree over next step - Micheal Martin, the Irish Foreign Minister, let the cat out of the bag back in April. Some eurozone governments and banks will not be able to repay all their debts - 17th November Back-seat drivers tell Ireland to U-turn - 16th November The Fed gives the Bank a break — for now - 5th November Suave, charming and with a point to prove - 4th November Gulf with governments is finally closing for BP - 3rd November Serco should remember who its partners are - 2nd November Slow and steady starts to reap rewards for Shell - The reversal of fortune for BP and Shell could scarcely be starker - 29th October Bosses should beware Cable’s Big Bang on pay - 28th October Tale of the unexpected lifts hopes for recovery - The 0.8% growth in the third quarter means growth of 2.8% over the past year, not bad given how much Government finances have been tightened - 27th October Anyone for a double-dip? Not at the CBI summit - A great deal has changed since this time last year but there were many aspects of yesterday’s CBI conference that were strangely familiar - 26th October Panel right to target boards, not foreigners - The Takeover Panel has rightly decided against a radical change to its rules in the wake of Kraft’s controversial acquisition of Cadbury - 22nd October No cheer for banks as change is shared out - Like the boss of a highly leveraged buyout, George Osborne has got to get debt down and profits up in four years or he will be out of a job - 21st October A war of words over interest rates and easing - The Governor of the Bank of England stoked fears about a global currency war by warning yesterday that failure to tackle international imbalances could lead to a disastrous bout of trade protectionism - 20th October This convert should be praised for going nuclear - It’s amazing how becoming a minister can change you. For years in opposition, Chris Huhne was a fierce critic of nuclear power and an ardent advocate of renewable energy - 19th October QE2 ahoy after distress signals from the US - Clear the slipway for QE2. The Bank of England should be preparing to launch as soon as next month - 15th October If you thought problems were over, think again - For those worried whether banks will be able to lend enough to support the global economic recovery, yesterday brought some apparently good news - 14th October Can Cable finally get rid of the problem package? - Say what you like about Vince Cable, but you have to admit he has real political cojones. Pressing ahead with the privatisation of Royal Mail is the right thing to do for the business, its customers and, indeed, its workforce - 13th October The tills may ring out yet this Christmas - Some retailers are getting very nervous about the Government’s comprehensive spending review - 12th October Playing the technology card is a risky business - Technology stocks are hot again, which may explain why Betfair, the online betting exchange planning a stock market flotation, is presenting itself as a tech story - 22nd September Daniels may be proved right and still be a loser - It is still too soon for Eric Daniels to claim that Lloyds’ rescue of HBOS was a good deal for his shareholders - 21st September Speed of defence review is a worry all round - The Government is carrying out the strategic defence review much too quickly and risks making serious mistakes, the defence committee said yesterday - 16th September Rate-setters pin their hopes on fiscal squeeze - The end of cheap clothes, proclaimed the headlines after Primark warned about rising cotton prices. Don’t panic, responded Debenhams yesterday, pointing out that cotton prices are now falling and the harvest in China and India is predicted to be very good - 15th September Basel is done. Now for all that new lending . . . - One of the excuses banks have come up with for their caution over new lending is that they have not known how much capital they might be forced to hold in future. They will now have to find another excuse - 14th September Dodgy moves and illegal evasion that cost Britain £95bn a year - Tax evasion is as bad as benefit fraud, the Prime Minister said recently. Not true. It’s worse - 13th September Challenge of splitting the difference at Morrisons - Dalton Philips has inherited an idiosyncratic not to say eccentric business as the new chief executive of Wm Morrison - 10th September 2010 Tinker, tailor, banker, finance director - What was it I was saying yesterday? Oh yes. Former investment bankers seem to be running everything these days - 9th September Masters of the universe 1 Banking reformers 0 - Those who were hoping that the financial crisis would see investment banking masters of the universe cut down to size have had another bad day - 8th September Bob’s the man to deliver Barclays’ grand ambition - Politicians will wonder whether the problems of credit-starved small companies will be at the front of Bob Diamond’s mind - 7th September All to play for still in Henderson class action - Unless there is a last-minute climbdown by either side, the courts will decide. Much is at stake - 7th September Now we know — it’s the real deal after all - A couple of weeks ago we suggested that the flurry of deals involving British companies in July might have had something to do with the time of year — bankers rushing to complete long-running deals before decamping to the beach - 20th August Whatever else, RSA has misjudged the mood - The more you look at RSA’s offer for Aviva’s general insurance operations, the less attractive it appears — for both sides - 19th August Bid raises questions about BHP’s reach - The last time a company was willing to fork out $39 billion in cash to buy a rival, Rio Tinto was bidding for Alcan, the Canadian aluminium producer. That was three years ago and it saddled Rio with a mountain of debt just as the global economy seized up and commodity prices crashed - 18th August Sun sinking over Japan casts a deeper shadow - There was much hoo-ha yesterday about China overtaking Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy. In fact, it probably did so some time ago - 17th August Sleeping giants show signs of waking up - The spate of grumbling among investors and analysts about Aviva’s chief executive Andrew Moss seems to have worked wonders - 6th August Your bold investment has paid off — well done - Congratulations on your successful investment in Lloyds Banking Group - 5th August Crozier may be the boss with the X factor - ITV’s new strategy looks remarkably like a repeat of ITV’s old strategy. But then The X Factor looks remarkably like an updated version of Opportunity Knocks - 4th August HSBC wrongfoots the Chancellor over lending - In the match between banks and ministers over small business lending, it was 30-15 to the banks yesterday after HSBC thwacked the ball back to Osborne and Cable with a bit of top spin - 3rd August Lenders may regret the day they upset King - Mervyn King is not a man who gets terribly worked up about things in public — except perhaps cricket. So when the Governor of the Bank of England admits it is “heartbreaking” to hear the stories of small companies unable to get bank loans, it comes as a bit of a shock - 29th July Post-disaster, BP faces its next big challenge - It’s a bargain. If BP gets away with paying out only $32 billion for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it will have done very well - 28th July What future is offered by exile in Russia? - Tony Hayward’s exit may be applauded by the White House but it won’t be celebrated by many of BP’s staff - 27th July There may be profit in consulting on cuts - Paul Pindar is sticking to his story. The Capita chief executive has been insisting that the outsourcing specialist’s exposure to the public sector is an opportunity more than a threat - 23rd July Risks to recovery still beat fear of inflation - The members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee are certainly earning their salaries at the moment. The job has rarely been trickier - 22nd July Early birds can smile at ‘told you so’ price cut - The few big investment banks that were not on the eight-strong advisory team for Ocado’s flotation have one thing in common. At a beauty parade for the work, they told the retailer’s management that it would not achieve its target price of 200p-275p a share - 21st July Pru beset by different kind of Asian problem - Mark Tucker’s appointment to head AIG’s giant AIA business in Asia has prompted speculation that he might turn round and bid for Prudential - 20th July Defence cuts will go deeper than the Forces - what our Armed Forces are for. How should the country be defended and when should the military be used as a tool of foreign policy? - 16th July Putting the onus on owners is still a challenge - Those like Sir Terry Leahy and Lord Myners who are worried about the rise of the “ownerless corporation” should have been at yesterday’s Marks & Spencer annual meeting - 15th July Why swimming against the tide makes sense - The stock market has appeared to behave at its perverse best over the past few days, with share prices staging a spirited recovery against a pretty dismal economic backdrop - 14th July While oil still leaks, BP should avoid distraction - The news that BP is in talks to sell its stake in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay does not mean that it has decided that its future lies outside the US - 13th July A rough ride whichever business cycle you take - Vince Cable yesterday declared there was a one in four chance of a double-dip recession as the IMF cut its forecast for British economic growth next year. But the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee stuck to its guns, holding interest rates and shrugging off calls to step up its quantitative easing programme - 9th July BP must face its own American question - No wonder BP moved quickly to scotch the idea that it was planning to bolster its finances by selling new shares to a strategic investor - 7th July It’s time the Bank turned the tap back on - Apart from the deficit and the woeful performance in Bloemfontein, one of the big talking points in the margins of The Times CEO Summit on Monday was inflation - 2nd July Bullish British business sees itself as the way out of the gloom - The main message to the Government from The Times CEO Summit was clear: we can do it if you get out of the way - 29th June Prudential given lesson in takeover strategy - A life insurer agrees to buy a rival almost twice its size at a far higher valuation funded by a huge rights issue. Sound familiar? - 27th June Target the zero-rated to add those noughts - George Osborne was really sorry he was being forced to increase VAT. The years of debt and spending made it unavoidable, he said. He would certainly not have done it otherwise, was the clear implication - 24th June 2010 Temperature gauge shows signs of edging back at BP - The agreement with the President to set up the fund and to suspend dividend payments raised hopes that the rhetoric from the White House would now calm down - 18th June Chancellor folds up the regulatory deckchairs - So farewell, then, Financial Services Authority. For a while it looked as if you might live on. Vince thought you should. But George really had it in for you - 17th June Inflation eases, but we’re not out of the woods yet - 16th June Cowdery lays down his challenge to the banks - Resolution looks set to confound the sceptics with its deal for Axa, and to take the fight to underwriting fees - 15th June Someone has to carry the can for Pru fiasco - Since the collapse of its bid for AIA, the company has failed to restore confidence among shareholders and staff - 11th June Punishing BP investors is in nobody’s interest - If the oil company succumbs to pressure over the dividend, it will represent a clear abuse of the President Obama’s power - 10th June Satisfied Tesco orders more of the same - Tesco’s has done remarkably well under the leadership of one down-to-earth Liverpudlian. So why not try another? - 9th June Watershed for the cheap and cheerless culture - For China and its dreams of rebalancing, Foxconn’s pay rise is a big deal that puts cash in the hands of the people - 8th June Turning a debt drama into a banking crisis - Analysts blamed the sabre-rattling in Korea but the nervousness seems to be mainly down to clearer thinking about the eurozone mess - 26th May Never mind the electric shock, feel the dividend - The one thing investors don’t expect is surprises. Which is why some of National Grid’s biggest shareholders were pretty grumpy - 21st May The Chancellor’s task will get more taxing - As promised, the headline corporation tax rate will be cut in next month’s Budget, although Mr Osborne did not say when - 20th May The elephant in the room just got bigger -It is unsettling that inflation should be rising so fast while we are bumping along the bottom after a sharp recession - 19th May Prudential starts to win over the sceptics - The insurer is to be congratulated for persuading the banks to reduce their fees for underwriting the rights issue - 18th May Switching taxation to spending has its merits - Britain’s revenue is very geared towards taxes on income which are much more volatile than taxes on spending - 14th May Coalition compromise comes with benefits - Blending Tory plans and LibDem policies was worrisome but trade-offs seem to have produced a fairly benign outcome - 13th May Finding treatment for easyJet's growing pains - People close to Sir Stelios let it be known that easyJet’s founder thought the chief executive was overrated - 12th May Wall Street infected by the fear of contagion - US investors are concerned at the time it has taken eurozone governments and the European Central Bank to tackle the Greek crisis - 7th May Prudential could change from predator to prey - Acquisitions of assets thousands of miles away must be impeccably choreographed for the sake of the prospective backers - 7th May Overblown BP sell-off may damage industry - The oil spill is a huge challenge, but does it really warrant the £20 billion that has been wiped off the company’s value? - 5th May Thiam must prepare to do battle with the banks - Some of Prudential’s shareholders were incensed by the apparent lack of concern about investment banking fees shown by Tidjane Thiam - 1st May Water industry in danger of going down drain -It seems bizarre there has been no national framweork and little incentive for companies to pipe water between regions - 23rd April The new frontier where all roads lead to Tesco - 21st April Asia for the action and London for the listing? - Prudential’s big aims after buying AIA could lead to a sale of its UK and US operations from a position of strength - 15th April Tories’ pledges mix the desirable and the duff - There is plenty for business to cheer, though making manifesto pledges is one thing, delivering them is something else - 14th April Labour’s business policy founders on the Rock - Some of the language and ideas in the Labour party’s manifesto have the familiar mark of Lord Mandelson on them - 13th April Spotlight falls on Tories dancing by numbers - The Conservatives will say that Labour cannot be trusted on the economy, without casting doubt on Treasury growth forecasts - 7th April It looks like recovery — would you credit it? - The latest manufacturing data suggests a broad-based revival, but do we need our heads examined if we take this on trust? - 2nd April Gartmore and the perils of the star system - It seems Guillaume Rambourg told traders to direct buy and sell orders to particular brokers, against the house policy - 1st April Isas prove why trust is in such short supply - The banks came in for a good bashing from the three Chancellors on Monday night. And yesterday brought yet more evidence of how richly deserved the public abuse seems - 31st March Beijing is determined to play by its own rules - 30th March Giveaways are kept to a minimum - The Budget was slightly better than the Square Mile had expected, but its lack of clarity will frustrate business leaders - 26th March McCall is heading into turbulence at easyJet - Executive team at the budget airline is beginning to resemble an advertising agency after some high-profile appointments - 25th March Darling in a position to play the economy card - Mr Darling is expected to unveil a budget for the jobs of the Labour Government, although he is likely to lose his own - 24th March A rush to judgment over China would be wrong - Whatever we think of the Rio case, there may be more to the country’s relationship with foreign business than meets the eye - 23rd March Beware of ambitious bosses in bulldozers - Tidjane Thiam has done the right thing in responding so quickly and so emphatically to shareholder concerns - 19th March Taking on part-time job isn’t prudent - Tidjane Thiam has enough on his plate at the Pru without a non-executive role at one of the biggest banks in the world - 18th March So far so good as Shell is given a shaking - He arrived with a bang and within weeks had axed 5,000 jobs. But eight months after taking over the helm at Royal Dutch Shell, is Peter Voser making progress turning around the supertanker? - 17th March So far so good as Shell is given a shaking - Peter Voser had axed 5,000 jobs within weeks of joining, but eight months after taking over is he making any progress? - 16th March Let's hope Hayward doesn't get into deep water in Brazil - What BP is doing here is getting more from the stuff it knows while taking a big bet on stuff it doesn’t know - 13th March There’s no place like home for Standard Life - David Nish used maiden outing as chief executive to explain why the British pensions market is full of growth potential - 11th March You can’t build trust in just 45 minutes - Prudential's Tidjane Thiam has given a short presentation on why they should give £14 billion to bankroll his ambitious acquisition - 10th March Science may be sexy but its attraction is limited - In a report Sir James Dyson urges a new Conservative administration to tackle the cultural bias against manufacturing - 9th March The European tortoise versus the Asian hare - Avvia's chief executive, Andrew Moss is choosing a 'step-by-step' approach to growth - pity investors are nonplussed - 5th March The Pru must play fair by all its shareholders - Today’s slide pointed to a volatile ride for the Pru in the three months it will take to get its financing nailed down - 4th March It’s now or never for the Pru, if it can calm nerves - Some of his biggest shareholders were focusing on the volatility the insurer’s share price could suffer in the short term - 3rd March More unloved than Mugabe’s dollar - Sterling had a pitiful day as it suffered its biggest rout on the currency markets for more than a year - 1st March Pru goes a-wooing for marriage made in heaven - The Pru is proposing to double its size, funded by a record-breaking rights issue of up to £15 billion - 1st March Time to put down the Liver bird - The mutual life assurer founded 160 years ago is looking increasingly rudderless as well as short of capital - 25th February Time to crank up the Bank’s printer - If the economy relapses, jobs may be cut, reducing spare capacity, so the Bank should start easing as soon as possible - 24th February Sheep that went astray are back in the fold - To be fair, once the top duo at Barclays turned down their bonuses, the writing was on the wall for the others - 23rd February Moral hazard of bailing out Icesave - Looking back, it is only to be expected that we can point to things that the Chancellor should have done differently -19th February The private cost of public savings - The plan by 18 English local councils to club together to buy their insurance is more than just a modest proposal -18th February The issue is performance-related - Shell’s board is still reeling from having its pay plan voted down by shareholders at last May’s annual meeting - 17th February A deal that flies under a flag of convenience - It’s an odd competition climate that would bathe a BA-American alliance in sunlight. But this is the flight path we’re on - 16th February Merlin proves magic of IPOs has gone - There is almost a buyers’ strike for flotations and it could threaten to close down the production line completely - 12th February Bank’s line on QE is looking peculiar - Why the MPC has not continued injecting new money into the economy through quantitative easing is very hard to know - 11th February Hector Sants bows out — but what timing - Morale will not be improved at the FSA as its chief executive heads for the exit after 2½ years - 10th February Greek bailout is looking increasingly likely - The rest of the eurozone may have to come to the rescue amid a flight to the dollar and dark mutterings about speculators - 9th February Time will tell if Bank's caution is right - It will be a shame if, having responded well to the financial crisis, the Bank of England has now dropped the ball - 5th February Myners could do more than lecture over banks - City shareholders may have fallen short in their watching over banks but they are unhappy at City Minister's approach - 4th February Exxon still marks the spot for Hayward - BP's rival is the big daddy of oil — much more efficient and more profitable — so will BP's boss follow its lead to cut costs? - 3rd February Under-employment is overworked - This was the recession of people who have clung to their job by agreeing to shorter hours or picked up a part-time work - 2nd February Banks caught between Zug and a hard place - Zug is one of the most aggressive contestants in the competition to offer the lowest tax level for hard-pressed bankers - 29th January Regulation of banks a question of credibility - With banks' credibility close to zero, some suggest public apologies might help: Davos would be a good place to start - 28th January (Davos) Jury still out on Davos’s glittering global elite - Organisers are trying to remind them that they are still in the dock in the international court of public opinion - 27th January Property groups ignore derivatives backlash - It is easy to see why Land Securities thinks property derivatives, used judiciously, would add value - 26th January Is it a road to Damascus, or a blind alley? - At this stage it is impossible to judge the significance of President Obama’s Damascene conversion on bank regulation - 22nd January So who can borrowers turn to now? - Skipton Building Society’s decision to remove a rate guarantee is a bitter blow to 100,000 borrowers - 21st January Glass and a half full for some, not for others - Kraft’s Irene Rosenfeld has won the prize for a price at least one large Cadbury shareholder said was a steal - 20th January ANALYSIS: can Kraft run Cadbury? - The likely success of the pursuit of the chocolate maker shows a mastery of takeover tactics. The big test is yet to come - 20th January Hesitation from International Power may be a hint - Despite heavy speculation, it took eight hours for the confirmation there would be no bid. Does this hint at round two? - 19th January Levy is a wholesale improvement - Obama tax on US-based banks is rather a good one — certainly better than our half-baked attempt to grab at bonuses - 15th January Low exports aren’t grist to the mill - Sterling has dived but the price of UK goods hasn't budged. How much longer can manufacturers maintain their cost bases? - 14th January So, every little loyalty card really does help - Most of us made it to Christmas without losing our jobs and celebrated by splashing out - 13th January Chinese car companies are catching up - Carmakers gathered in Detroit for the city’s Motor Show are looking to China for sales growth - 12th January Housebuilders aren’t home and dry - Although the supply of credit for home purchases has been steadily increasing, it remains a big problem for the builders - 8th January Sales surge may be a false dawn - So now we know. John Lewis’s dazzling performance over Christmas was down to John Lewis, not the retailing weather - 7th January The art of controlling contrition - It is ten years since the disastrous sale of Time Warner to AOL, which Jerry Levin has now apologised for - 6th January Nestlé deal stirs chocolate melting pot - Just because it has pocketed $28bn by selling its stake in Alcon does not mean the food group will bid for Cadbury - 5th January A year when tipsters took a tumble - ‘I fear even a stock market recovery will have to wait until 2010. I hope I’m wrong.’ Boy, was I wrong - 1st January

Articles: 2009 Labour sees a City without honour - Gone are the days when Tony Blair showered British business leaders with gongs — the haul for business is strikingly meagre - 31st December Lord Mayor’s role needs a rethink - It doesn’t help that one of his main responsibilities is now facing strong competition from London’s other Mayor - 30th December Companies must be bold to curb merger bills - Banks have been allowed to get away with fees that look astronomical in relation to the work done - 18th December Good figures hide a not-so-good truth - Unemployment may not have risen as far as expected in the downturn but it will not fall as fast - 17th December Inflation could yet bite us on the backside - The Bank of England is relaxed about rising prices but if its forecasts are wrong, rates may go up at just the wrong time - 16th December High price of waiting game in the Gulf - Those who predicted the richer and more staid Abu Dhabi to make Dubai sweat before bailing it out have been proved - 15th December Rough Budget causes morning-after gilt trip - The markets decided that, whatever the political considerations, the Chancellor jolly well should have done something - 11th December City bamboozled by the bonus tax - Rough justice to be the order of the day as some have their pay packets slashed and others laugh all the way to the bank - 10th December Shareholders have to get out and vote - The increasing importance of hedge funds means the rules governing shareholder democracy may need to be re-examined - 9th December Optimists ride on Shanks’s pony - The private equity bid is back — and the waste group is doing a good job trying to push up the price offered by Carlyle - 8th December Every little helps, but a lot helps more - Tesco's massive land-grab shows it remains very much focused on the UK as its planning applications outstrip rivals - 4th December Caught between a rock and a hard place - Investors are incensed at what they see as the Government’s willingness to ride roughshod over other shareholders’ rights - 3rd December Is it time to drink up and move on? - Adam Fowle, the newly appointed M&B chief executive, wants to focus on running the company’s hostelries efficiently - 1st December Banking’s fragility is exposed - Scare has provided timely reminder that the hangover from the great debt binge will still inflict more pain - 28th November Dubai World and properties built on sand - The state-owned conglomerate is seeking a six-month standstill on $60bn of debts, raising the prospect it may sell assets - 26th November Shareholders in shock after bombshell - Many at Lloyds thought the HBOS takeover was disastrous. Now it turns out they were sold the deal on incomplete details - 25th November A gush of party leaders come to woo the CBI - All three main political party leaders turned up at the conference to court British business and all were appropriately gushy - 24th November If these investors are so long-term, why sell? - Proposed overhaul of voting rights, influenced by Kraft's Cadbury bid, ignores the short-term pressures on fund managers - 20th November Better very late than never if you get it right - Bolland combines knowledge of the British retail scene with experience of developing brands internationally - 19th November Property fizzes but could still go flat - While value at last seems to be returning to commercial developments, the revival may prove to be built on sand - 18th November ISC’s code of conduct for heading off trouble - It may be that institutions are desperate to be seen to be doing something ahead of the Walker Report due next week - 17th November BA taking a bit of a flyer with Iberia deal - There will be some opportunities for boosting revenues for the two airlines, but there are also plenty of potential pitfalls - 14th November Loose legacy of Chancellor’s fiscal tightening - Cuts in public spending, plus tax rises, should give the Bank some leeway in setting new interest rates - 12th November Some good news on bad debt situation - It seems Lloyds' Eric Daniels may have been right: there are glimmers of hope for high street banks amid the devastation - 11th November Kraft will make meal of bid battle - The US food maker's low bid is an attempt to appear tough, disciplined and patient - tactics that are working pretty well - 10th November This is no time for half measures by the MPC - The Bank of England is pretty confident that its injection of huge amounts of new money into the economy is working - 6th November Daniels does the trick for Lloyds - Escaping state help had seemed a risky game, but the finances picked up and now Europe has provided the final vindication - 14th November Oilman who returned to nuts and bolts - BP chief executive Tony Hayward's ruthless approach to cutting costs in the company's supply chain has pleased investors - 28th October Why Standard Life Bank affects us all - The insurer plugged away at savings and home loans for 11 years and has nothing to show for it but £85 million of red ink - 27th October Sugar rush over Cadbury bid fades - Things have calmed down, in part because there is no sign of a rival purchaser entering the sweet shop - 22nd October Power belongs in hands of ministers - Tory leader David Cameron’s quango-hunters have Ofgem in their sights and warn of a massive cull in regulators - 21st October Bank must set out QE thinking soon - There are big differences of opinion on how and when and whether it should be withdrawn, and what it is in the first place - 9th October FSA watchdog is stripped of its bite - The Dresdner Kleinwort traders’ success in going to the committee will surely encourage others to try their luck - 8th October Leahy has confounded critics again - Since April, Tesco shares have comfortably outperformed Morrisons and have risen by 20 per cent against Sainsbury’s - 8th October Unemployment looming large - Continued strength of stock market appears dramatically at odds with gloomy noises coming from many business leaders - 7th October BAE has no option but to stand its ground - The threat of a criminal prosecution on corruption charges could not come at a worse time for the UK's defence industry - 2nd October Bank says QE is making a difference - Bank of England will be wary of unwinding policy quickly or of starting to raise interest rates - 1st October PM unblocks the cash pipeline - Model for new body is the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, which was set up in 1945 and became 3i - 30th September Mandelson’s U-turn is a short-term fix - As the Government duly came under intense pressure over car scrappage, it proved too much for the Business Secretary - 29th September When it’s going well, start worrying - We may have almost made it through September without a share correction, but what happens when the fiscal stimulus stops? - 25th September Get a move on or miss the boat - If companies can tell a good enough story, investors are in the mood for a cash call. But sell now while demand lasts - 24th September Cover price fines are a bargain for builders - The £130 million of fines for bid-rigging imposed on 103 construction companies could have been a great deal higher - 23rd September Exile is only place for crisis culprits - Did Odgers really think it would be acceptable for more taxpayers’ money to find its way into Mr Cameron’s pockets? - 23rd September No sign of rush to claim pension gold in 2012 - The legacy from the pensions revamp could be a lot more profound and valuable than the over-hyped Olympic Games - 22nd September Dreaming of a ‘not bad’ Christmas - Retailers have numerous reasons to justify their nervousness about business prospects for the next financial year - 18th September BA risks letting a crisis go to waste - The airline needs to press ahead with cost cuts but talk of economic recovery makes it harder to sell a deal to staff - 17th September Irish vote on Lisbon ... and Lloyds - The fate of the Lloyds chief may lie in the hands of Irish voters as the bank plays a high-stakes game with the EU - 16th September US healthcare reform promises jam - The drugs industry is still alive and kicking after playing a strong negotiating hand in President Obama's shake-up - 12th September Healthcare reform promises jam tomorrow - The drugs industry is still alive and kicking after playing a strong negotiating hand in President Obama's shake-up - 11th September Call me when you know who wins - Everyone wins in the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Orange — except, perhaps, the companies’ staff and suppliers - 9th September Offer must be sweetened to secure deal - Cadbury would give the tired Kraft a sugar rush, but the US suitor is simply not offering enough money - 8th September You’ll glimpse an upturn if you don’t look back - OECD sages believe prospects for the UK, alone among the G7 group of industrialised nations, have worsened since June - 4th September Waving the flag is not the best defence - Whichever party forms the next government, it will face some very difficult decisions about spending - 3rd September There may be a sting in jobless tale - The Inflation Report says that recovery will be slow, but, if anything, its medium-term forecast has improved a bit - 14th August A blue suede shod foot is put down - Business leaders usually find that Lord Mandelson speaks their language and listens well but Ratan Tata would disagree - 13th August Moving ever closer to a resolution - It always looked likely that Friends Provident’s huffing was an attempt to squeeze out better terms from Resolution - 12th August Is this the turning point at last? - It is notoriously hard to call economic turning points, never mind the bottom of the worst recession in memory - 7th August Right way to avoid another Rock fall - The surprise is not that so many of loans have gone bad — it is that Rock was allowed to make them in the first place - 6th August Posturing cannot disguise reality - Politicians and regulators huff and puff in public about banks. But in private they are rather more circumspect - 5th August Putting the wind up the lenders - The banks would be insulated from ministers trying to promote pet projects such as ... oh, I don’t know ... wind-farms - 29th July Those green shoots ... so near, yet so far - The biggest driver of the stock market rise in the past two weeks seems to have been better-than-expected company results - 24th July National Savings stuck in the middle - Attempting to negotiate a middle way, Jane Platt is trying to pitch rates so as to attract no net new money - 23rd July Ryanair’s fees move is no flight of fancy - The Government and BAA do not seem to be listening to Mr O’Leary, perhaps because they are used to being monopolies - 22nd July Shuffling the bank regulators’ chairs - George Osborne’s proposal to shift banking supervision back from the FSA to the BoE is among the least convincing - 21st July Out of school and on to the dole - The latest unemployment figures show that 17 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds were out of work in the three months to May - 17th July More than money at risk for Goldmans - Profits have recovered quickly and large bonuses are likely to follow, but there is no evidence of excessive risk taking - 16th July Resolution loses appeal for some - Has Clive Cowdery missed his moment to consolidate Europe's life insurers and asset managers on the cheap? - 14th July Perils of ‘bangers for cash’ Chinese style - China's economic stimulus may be way over the top, but in the UK the risk is one of doing too little - 10th July Regulation pledge is good politics - Looking around the world, there seems to be no pattern linking the structure of financial regulation and its effectiveness - 9th July Bank needs courage to boost credit - Little of the Bank’s newly minted money seems to be finding its way out of the financial sector to individuals and businesses - 8th July National Express goes the wrong way fast - The rail company's mistake was to argue with Lord Adonis when he said that the East Coast line would be renationalised - 2nd July Patience is a virtue in the housing market - Britain’s economists were frustrated as the housing market behaved with complete disregard for what forecasters predicted - 1st July Cheeky offers and shrewd moves - The recession encourages companies to think of consolidation and hope the competition watchdogs turn a blind eye - 30th June He's just the man for the job - It is a bit of a blow to the national self-esteem that we can’t find a Brit to chair BP, even if we might win Wimbledon - 26th June M&S needs to perform, not explain - If Marks & Spencer made as much money as it made headlines, it would have some very happy shareholders - 25th June Chancellor is right not to rush reform - The bigger worry remains that the pressure to be seen to be doing something takes us down the wrong road - 24th June Wasted opportunity on bank pay - The package proposed for Stephen Hester may be well structured but size is important and it is a very large sum of money - 23rd June Banks turn the screw on borrowers - The Bank reports slight improvement in big banks’ appetite to extend credit but GKN’s experience is hardly encouraging - 19th June Expansion is Sainsbury’s new line - Companies had been asking shareholders for money to shore up their financial foundations but now it is about extensions - 18th June The great British success story - Inward investment has been one of the UK's greatest success stories, but, if we are not careful, we could easily mess it up - 17th June Change of mood is boost for Punch - The response to Punch Taverns’s placing of new shares shows how far City institutions have regained their thirst for equity risk - 16th June Scrambling for green shoots - Economists argue about the effect that the oil price has on the British economy, they do agree that it is less than it used to be - 13th June Mutual likely to go the way of other small fry - West Bromwich Building Society seemed to have bought itself time, but its days as an independent lender look numbered - 12th June Taking stock of the different economic signals - The turning point has come more quickly than many economists forecast, just as the downturn was more abrupt than many expected - 11th June Barclays: You can’t have too much capital - The $12bn price that Barclays is discussing with BlackRock makes it seem an attractive way for the bank to boost its capital ratios - 9th June China hovering over miner’s shoulder - The failure of the Unocal and Rio Tinto deals may well force China to strike more arrangements directly with other nations - 5th June (See also: Mining: summary) ECB fights the wrong battle - Since its creation, the ECB’s approach has been marred by two flaws. It has elevated over-optimism about growth into an artform. Yet, at the same time, it has frequently been too gloomy over inflation, with which it is perenially obsessed - 5th June Retired and emotional: the final cut - Only four blue chips (Shell, Tesco, Cadbury and Diageo) still operate defined benefit schemes that are open to new recruits - 4th June Those green shoots are just tumbleweed - Claimed sightings of a recovery in the devastated housing market still look more like weeds on a deserted building site - 3rd June It takes courage to avert a crisis - House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee condemns present tripartite arrangements, which left the buck stopping nowhere - 2nd June Mulling the shape of things to come - There has been growing confidence that we are at the economic bottom. The great debate now is over the likely shape of the upturn - 22nd May Plaudits for the dame who would not give in - Not only did Dame Clara Furse rebuff takeover approaches for the LSE, she has also made the exchange appear to be bid-proof - 21st May (see also: Exchange looks to life after Clara) Rose runs short of internal options - There is a growing conviction that chief executive Sir Stuart Rose will look outside of Marks & Spencer's to find his successor - 20th May Lloyds: take the money or open the box? - Just in time for the summer, Lloyds Banking Group looks set to pump a welcome holiday spending windfall into millions of homes - 19th May BT phone group faces tough challenge - BT's pension liabilities are five times the company's market value and so the share price has been very sensitive to market swings - 15th May Profit alone isn't enough for Royal Mail - It has been a while since the youthful BT has made less money that its venerable former parent, the Post Office - 15th May Boards lacked courage - The time-honoured role of the Treasury Select Committee in hurling rotten tomatoes continues. In the report on the banking crisis, senior bankers of course get pelted, but so too do non-executive directors, institutional shareholders and credit rating agencies - 15th May Bank has no idea what will happen - The Bank of England’s familiar 'fan' chart showing a range of forecasts for economic output is wide enough for a sumo wrestler - 14th May Black horse is saddled with a dud - Lloyds has admitted that losses on corporate loans, most of them HBOS loans, would rocket 50 per cent this year to £13.5 billion - 8th May It makes sense to take Aviva's cash - Norwich Union insurer has finally drawn a line under years of tortuous negotiations over the surplus in its with-profits fund - 7th May Why 'quantitative easing' is self-defeating - The Bank of England's decision in March to create money in the process known as “quantitative easing” was seen as a dramatic escalation in its efforts to combat the credit crunch. The results, it must be said, have been rather less than dramatic - 7th May A word in your Shell-like about those bonuses - This is the third year that Standard Life has voted against Shell's remuneration report. Maybe Shell should start to listen - 6th May Spring is in the air, so is confidence - There is a fairly sustained improvement in consumer confidence and some retailers are convinced we are coming off the bottom - 30th April Risk of having suppliers over a barrel - The danger for BP is that forcing suppliers to reduce costs too much could threaten the ability to carry out work properly - 29th April ITV contest makes riveting viewing - Michael Grade always manages to move on before the audience gets too restless. In reality, his job at the broadcaster is done - 24th April When a break-up makes sense - Dunstone persevered with Carphone Warehouse, so shareholders of both Best Buy and TalkTalk should want him to stick around - 23rd April Champagne moment for rumourmongers - There could be life in the merger market yet, as talk that Diageo was to buy LVMH's stake in Moët Hennessy did the rounds - 22nd April Commission looks at plane speaking - BA, AA and Iberia have proposed a deal that would allow them jointly to determine capacity and fares on transatlantic routes - 21st April (see: BA, AA and Iberia reach an agreement, The Economist, 14th August 2008) Sun sets on a Silicon star - Oracle’s surprise acquisition of Sun will challenge the other big beasts in the IT jungle, including the biggest of all, IBM - 21st April Darling needs oil to be well - On current forecasts, the tax take from the oil industry will fall by more than a third this year to £8.7 billion - 21st April Drug companies refuse merger pill - Rather than the mega-deal, Andrew Witty at GSK favours small bolt-on acquisitions and collaborations with rivals, such as with Pfizer - 17th April Rio Tinto sale ignores other options - The company has raised $3.5bn in the bond market and $2.5bn from disposing of assets - this could go some way to repaying its debts - 16th April Survivors of crisis find a silver linin - Goldman's bumper profits highlight that, even in times of recession, there will always be companies who can bounce back - 15th April Bigger isn't better if you're a bank - Bankers love to point out that their business is much less consolidated than other global industries, such as carmaking - 9th April Moves needed to plug any pensions gap - Likelihood is that most staff will not dip into their pay to make up for lower company contribution, so reducing their pension - 9th April Buyers need enough to feed the meter - Auction is the critical first step in implementing ambitious plans to plug a looming gap in UK electricity supplies - 9th April Industry must plan offensive moves - There will be pressure on defence spending around the world as governments face mounting bills from the recession - 8th April A deal that's as safe as houses - Britain's biggest housebuilder has done well to reach a deal on its debt, but lenders have extracted their pound of flesh - 8th April Open to exploration - When a mystery bidder got cold feet, it was bad news for BowLeven, which may now have to revive plans for a rights issue - 8th April The road is long and unfair - The blameless car manufacturers have seen the bottom drop out of their world with no upturn in sight - 7th April Recession: the penny finally drops - Half of those polled in the Asda survey fear losing their jobs in the next six months while two thirds would take a pay cut - 7th April Leadership needed over toxic assets - Mr Sarkozy and Ms Merkel have their crackdown on tax havens, perhaps they can show some leadership on the issue of toxic banks - 7th April Lucky Brown basks in market glory - The markets were cheered by the G20 agreement, even if figures owed something to Gordon Brown's talent for inflationary arithmetic - 3rd April Time to cash in Blank cheque? - Sir Victor said this week that it was too soon to judge the success of the HBOS deal - 2nd April You have done us all a favour, Sir Tom ... - Sir Tom McKillop had ultimate responsibility for the collapse of RBS and has done the right thing by resigning from BP - 2nd April Beware the rush to buy a golden nest egg - If Ecuador views gold as a safe haven, it must be expecting one hell of a storm. The country has nearly doubled its central bank gold reserves in the past three months - 1st April UK economy: We still need to take our medicine - The OECD says Britain will contract by 3.7 per cent - hardly cause for celebration, but not so bad compared with others - 1st April Dunfermline: a little local difficulty for the PM - There was clearly a regulatory failure but hardly an international one. Dunfermline barely ventured south of the border - 31st March There’s no fire in a sleeping dragon - Unfortunately for Kingfisher, the company has found that most of the opportunities in China involve losing shareholders’ money - 27th March Green energy is not such a breeze - ScottishPower, Shell, BP - the list grows as energy giants find that renewables seem not to be the expected promised land - 26th March Any recovery is still purely theoretical - Undeterred by the ridicule heaped on Norman Lamont in 1991 and on Baroness Vadera the other day, Barclays has gone ahead and declared, in its latest research report, that “green shoots have arrived” - 26th March Fittingly frugal dish before a Queen - Suspicion is that the monarch will have approved of the Governor's warning against a further fiscal stimulus and rightly so - 25th March (see: Queen invites Mervyn King, Bank of England Governor, to palace) Flimsy reasons to be cheerful - The Geithner scheme for public-private purchases of toxic bank assets is hardly a slam dunk - 24th March Thiam has tough act to follow at Pru - The new chief will inherit a confident, outward-looking organisation in which 65 per cent of profits come from overseas - 20th March BAA: so who wants to buy rundown airports? - Ferrovial's treatment by British regulators is hardly an advert for foreign investors looking to buy UK infrastructure - 20th March Will Citi and UBS spawn advisory boutiques? - The City is awash with gossip about stars from two of the hardest-hit investment banks quitting to start up on their own - 20th March FSA crusader's real test comes next - You have to hand it to Adair Turner, the FSA chairman's review of financial regulation is an intelligent and rigorous model - 19th March Coca-Cola cannot slake its thirst in China - Australian opponents of the proposed investment by Chinalco in Britain's Rio Tinto were yesterday celebrating the Chinese decision to block an acquisition by America's Coca-Cola - 19th March Corporate governance cries out for reform - It is only right that there should be a review, but it's far tougher to decide what changes are needed - 18th March Rio's choice from the talent mine - The shortage of people for jobs in top British boardrooms was further highlighted yesterday by the appointment of Jan du Plessis as chairman of Rio Tinto - 18th March Mucking in, down on the EU farm - Mariann Fischer Boel knows one end of a cow from the other. The Commissioner for Agriculture once worked on the family farm in Denmark, but hands-on experience is lacking among her officials in the agriculture department in Brussels and the Commissioner has a plan - 18th March Barclays' price of independence - The fact that Barclays is prepared to ditch iShares underlines how determined the bank is to stay out of Government hands - 17th March Why lawyers will be the only winners - Over the years, people have sued God, the devil and Batman. But it is rare to sue yourself, even in America. Yet here we have the spectacle of two British local authority pension funds — largely funded by the taxpayer — suing Royal Bank of Scotland — largely owned by the taxpayer - 17th March Standard Life's brush with equity death pays dividends - Standard Life has withstood the market slump much better than rivals, its share price comfortably outperforming the sector - 13th March EDF starts to feel the heat - The monster is weakened and now is the time to move in for the kill; at least that seems to be what the European Commission was thinking this week when its inspectors paid a surprise visit to the Paris head office of Electricité de France - 13th March Hector Sants takes on sinners - Be afraid, says Hector Sants, as he warns the City that the Financial Services Authority is no longer going to take prisoners - 13th March (See: graphic: The FSA) We are in trouble by any calibration - If only Britain had not become so dependent on financial services, we would be in a much stronger position now. Or would we? - 12th March A stitch in time from Threadneedle Street - Dire industrial production figures should dispel any doubt about extraordinary measures being taken by the Bank of England - 11th March Not even a Close call - Close Brothers is now in a club of one, the only sizeable listed UK bank that has neither tapped its shareholders for fresh equity, nor even cut the dividend - 11th March Old economy proves its worth - Tullett Prebon has reminded the market that there is money to be made when all around you are losing their heads and governments are desperate to issue debt - 11th March Are hedge funds banking on insurance killing? - Big guns of the hedge fund world, having had good sport with banks, smell new blood and have targeted insurance companies - 6th March UK goes easy on the throttle over car crisis - Although Britain has set up a £2.3 billion loan fund, other governments have seemed quicker off the mark and willing to offer more - 6th March Bank should act soon and act big - The Monetary Policy Committee faces tough decisions but should recommend buying both corporate IOUs and government bonds - 5th March ITV: a failure to make the grade - If bonhomie could be translated into profits, Michael Grade would be on to a winner. The urbane ITV chairman's mere arrival at the commercial broadcaster elevated spirits and raised hopes that, in retrospect, were impossible to meet - 5th March A capital idea for business banking - The credit drought is worsening, yet business lending should be very profitable and presents an opportunity for entrepreneurs - 4th March BP stands firm as all around is chaos - There is no doubt that the BP can sustain its dividend and even if that is not good for the company, it is good for stocks - 4th March It's a high price to pay for HSBC's reputation - The bank has launched the biggest rights issue by a British company, but even £12.5bn does not put its financial strength beyond question - 3rd March Royal Bank of Scotland rescue plan could be a winner - The Government is right to bend over backwards to avoid outright nationalisation of the bank, but why all the political posturing? - 27th February Michael Grade's format unlikely on screen - Proposed merger with C4 and Five is unlikely to get blessing of ministers or competition authorities - 26th February Great British Consumer's last gasp - The mysterious case of the Great British Consumer grows curiouser by the day. Most pundits penned obituaries for the GBC long ago, blaming years of over-indulgence and exposure to the chill winds of recession - 25th February Alistair Darling's bank driven to distraction - After being ordered to cease lending, Northern Rock now has the mandate to squirt £14bn of fresh loans at homebuyers and remortgagers - 24th February Lost skills are a cause for concern - The silver lining of the credit crisis and the fall in the pound is that this should help to rebalance the economy but many industrialists have a nagging worry, which is shared at the highest levels in government, that Britain's neglected manufacturing base may now be too small and wobbly to take the weight - 20th February Angry Rio investors stake their claim - If Rio Tinto thought its big shareholders would calm down over the weekend it will have been disappointed. Investors who expressed anger at its proposed $19.5 billion fundraising from Chinalco, announced last week, now seem even more steamed up - 17th February Rio Tinto digs in its heels over deal with China - The mining group must win over its shareholders and convince the regulators, particularly in Australia, over $20 billion plan - 13th February FSA bonuses: does it ring any bells? - Hector Sants, chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, talks about the importance of bonuses for his staff in exactly the same terms that are used by the banks that the regulator oversees - 13th February Jean-Claude Trichet needs to follow Britain's lead - There does not seem to be any reason why the ECB should not start buying up securities in the same way as the British authorities - 7th February Cold fury at Iceland's Baugur administration plan - The spat between Britain and Iceland over the collapse of the Icelandic banking industry is starting to make the Cod War look like a convivial fish supper - 6th February Bank rate freeze could help savers - We shouldn't forget the millions of old folk who chose to save prudently rather than throw themselves on the mercy of the State - 3rd February Moody’s: the imprecise science of credit rating - Moody’s says that Barclays could lose another £17 billion, but declines to say with what likelihood or under what conditions - 3rd February Blame game takes off on the slopes - Union leaders launched an attack on the politicians and executives who they said had failed to tackle the financial crisis - 31st January Efficient market hypothesis is dead - for now - Belief in efficient markets has dominated economic policy across the globe. Its death, if confirmed, is a momentous event - 30th January Davos 2009: China feels the heat up in the Alps - Beijing is under pressure to boost economic growth and doesn't want to depress exports by allowing currency to strengthen - 29th January Mind the credibility gap at Barclays - Barclays achieved something remarkable and unprecedented. No bank has ever seen its share price soar after £8 billion of writedowns - 28th January Will a call go out for a bonus recall at BT? - The telecom group's global services arm underpriced contracts, overestimated cost savings and then failed to deliver them - 24th January RBS goes from toxic to radioactive - Full nationalisation looks increasingly likely for RBS, which then could be split into a bad bank, with all the toxic assets, and a good bank that could lend unencumbered - 20th January Equitable Life debacle: means test that punishes prudence - Means-testing compensation would penalise those who had prudently limited their exposure - 17th January Global fiscal rescues may not go far enough - Trade figures underline the threat posed to the UK economy by a collapse in world trade as demand sinks around the globe - 14th January Government must move quickly - Consumer confidence may hold up better than might be expected, but then again it might be headed for another lurch down - 13th January One 'bad bank' may allow the rest to be good - The howls from corporate Britain suggest that bankers remain reluctant to lend, however much they insist they are lending more - 9th January Cracks in Waterford Wedgwood seen long ago - Waterford Wedgwood was too slow in moving production overseas. Cutting jobs in Ireland was expensive, financially and politically - 7th January Being wrong would be good news just this once - There could still be a stock market recovery this year, as investors start to anticipate economic recovery. But I fear even that will have to wait until 2010 - 1st January

News & updates: Times names David Wighton as business editor - Reuters UK, 21st January 2008 Times appoints David Wighton associate editor, business and politics - Wighton will be the newspaper's chief business commentator and contribute across the business, opinion and news pages - Journalism.co.uk, 14th January 2011

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