Martin Vander Weyer

In the hierarchy of factors that will make consumers curse politicians and company bosses this summer, food price inflation probably ranks higher than holiday flight chaos. But both will contribute to an ugly mood that will manifest everywhere from Question Time audiences and airport voxpops to outbreaks of mass shoplifting. And only the last blip

A sandwich with Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England economist, now president of British Chambers of Commerce, is the intellectual equivalent of a lunchtime workout with an ultra-fit personal trainer – or so I imagine, having never submitted to the latter experience. When his BCC role was announced in February, Haldane spoke of ‘a

There’s a Tube strike in the old-fashioned style as I write – and you’ll understand the irritation, mine and that of restaurateurs across London, when I add that I’ve just cancelled a table at Noble Rot in Greek Street because my companion can’t face struggling into town. The loss of trade on these days, of

What with headlines focused on the Strait of Hormuz and scare stories about out-of-control AI, forecasts of a storm in the less vivid field of ‘private credit’ have dropped down the news agenda. But thunder continues to rumble since the collapse in London of the short-term property lender Market Financial Solutions, now being investigated for

Welcome to the new tax year, with its overflowing hamper of half-baked, growth-eating, enterprise-crushing Labour measures. And if you happen to be one of the 4.4 million self-employed who scrape an independent living despite rising costs and red tape, welcome to what must surely be one of Whitehall’s longest-running but least funny sitcoms, Making Tax

As chairman of the value-for-money Iceland frozen-foods chain, Richard Walker might be expected to know what he’s talking about in his newly ennobled role as the government’s ‘cost of living champion’. But he was also one of the few recognisable names on the list of 121 ‘business leaders’ who endorsed Labour’s clueless economic programme ahead

There’s very little to celebrate in Downing Street these days but it must have been vodka shots all round in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s office last week when Revolut, the City’s glossiest fintech start-up, finally secured the banking licence it has been pursuing for the past five years. Founded as a currency payments app in 2015

Shares everywhere dived for cover as missiles started flying. But one stock ahead of the pack, and responding to a different alarm, was Barclays, which has dropped 20 per cent since early February, having quadrupled over the preceding two years. I’ll declare an interest as custodian of a modest family holding – making me all

All eyes on the Strait of Hormuz, the 24-mile-wide choke point between Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, through which moves, in normal times, around a fifth of the global supply of liquified natural gas and a quarter of all seaborne oil. But with Iran threatening to set fire to any ship in the

There are elements of economic life, such as the impact of President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariffs, that are far beyond national control; others, including the supply of most consumer goods, that are best left to free markets; and others which naturally benefit from state intervention. New housing, wholly dependent on planning and building regulations, clearly

‘Nostalgia is not a strategy,’ declared Schroders chief executive Richard Oldfield after announcing that the investment firm, descended from a City banking house founded in 1804, is to be sold for £9.9 billion to Nuveen – which sounds like a brand of cooking oil but turns out to be a Chicago-based manager of retirement savings.

It’s a relief not to have been pressganged into joining the Prime Minister’s plane-load of business chiefs and reporters bound for Beijing this week. With Sir Keir Starmer are leaders of the likes of Astra-Zeneca, BP, HSBC, JLR and Rolls-Royce, and some billion-pound deals will no doubt be announced while they’re there – agreed in

My Davos spy disguised as an Uber Eats driver sent word that this year’s World Economic Forum was rammed ahead of Donald Trump’s arrival. The Alpine resort was heaving with Saudis, Emiratis, AI snake-oil salesmen and US tech titans strongarmed into sponsoring USA House, the official showcase of America’s ‘unity, ingenuity and leadership’ that has

The phrase ‘trumped-up charges’ dates from the 18th century, I learn, and derives from the Old French tromper, to deceive. It has certainly acquired new resonance with the threat of criminal indictment against US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, somehow relating to the cost of Fed building renovations. The President says this Department of Justice

Of all the heavyweight books I’ve ever been asked to review, one that most influenced my view of how the world works was Why Nations Fail (2012) by two American academics, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. Their theory, drawn from a broad sweep of history, is that all state regimes fit patterns that are

Forecasting is a mug’s game, as the Bank of England governor Mervyn King once said. But I’ll sketch a few trends for 2026 nevertheless, starting on a positive note in the stock market before moving on to some of the many choices on an à la carte menu of gloom. The FTSE 100 index will