Martin Vander Weyer

It’s unusual for a Governor of the Bank of England to announce his next job before Downing Street has named his successor. In Mark Carney’s case, the new role turns out to be an unpaid, part-time one as the UN’s special envoy for climate action and finance, so no protocol has been breached — though the announcement will serve as a reminder to Chancellor Sajid Javid or whoever succeeds him to let the long--suffering Canadian escape his Threadneedle Street prison as swiftly as dignity allows after election day. What’s significant is the confirmation this news offers that ‘climate risk’ has moved into the mainstream of financial and corporate life.

Early experiences of Uber in London did not encourage me to become a regular user. My first driver thought I wanted to go to Birmingham when the ride had been booked from Clapham to Mayfair. The next was a furious driver who would have seen off Lewis Hamilton at Hyde Park Corner. Call me old-fashioned, but I still prefer the pottering black cab with its opinionated Essex-dweller at the wheel and the possibility of paying in cash. So my own modus operandi is unaffected by Transport for London’s decision not to renew Uber’s licence in the capital and I’m not in the least upset about it. OK, life today is all about apps, cashless convenience and the individual’s right to make choices and take risks.

The first time I was ever commissioned by the Daily Mail, the voice on the phone said: ‘You used to be a banker, you must know all about fraud. Everyone else is saying the SFO is rubbish, so we want a piece that says “We support the fraud fighters”.’ Not my field, I said, and possibly not my opinion. ‘Are you a journalist or aren’t you?’ barked the voice. ‘A thousand words by teatime.’ I wrote the piece and the BBC rang twice the next day to interview me as a City fraud expert.

An oil price surge from $60 to $72 per barrel, as happened after the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq refinery caused a sudden 6 per cent cut to global supply, would once have been taken as a sure signal of economic troubles ahead. A 1990s study of postwar oil prices plotted against employment and other data by Professor Andrew Oswald of Warwick University showed that every spike in energy costs had shortly been followed by recession. The theory still held in 2008: even though the ‘Great Recession’ was attributed to financial mayhem, it came soon after a speculative oil peak of $147.

Long ago in my investment banking days I had a glimpse into the mind of the British Airways long-haul pilot. Chatting to an attendant on a flight from London to Delhi, I let slip what I did for a living. ‘The captain would like a word,’ she whispered a few minutes later. Up in the cockpit I found the pilot and co-pilot, feet up as the plane flew itself towards the lightning-lit Himalayan horizon, deep in discussion of their portfolios. ‘Heard we had an expert on board. Which way’s this stock market going, then?’ Those flying fat cats must now be comfortably retired on the final-salary pensions BA no longer offers their successors — who have been striking this week in pursuit of more than a current pay offer of an 11.5 per cent rise over three years.

Readers of my weekly ‘Any Other Business’ column know I occasionally find reason or excuse to slip a restaurant tip in amongst the financial commentary. In that spirit, let me start by saluting the venue for our encounter with North-West & Wales finalists for The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019. This was 20 Stories, a penthouse restaurant in Manchester’s Spinningfields district, which gave us everything we needed, including fine food, service that never cut across our conversation and a view that encouraged us to think in panoramic terms about the markets our entrants are seeking to disrupt.

The average FTSE 100 chief executive earned £3.5 million last year — 117 times the £29,574 pay of the average full-time UK worker, according to new figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Other sources tell us that at the last count, 54 of those FTSE 100 chiefs were British, 21 held other EU passports, nine were Americans and 16 from the rest of the world. ‘So what?’ I hear you ask. These are global companies competing in a global market for management talent. Has not the average FTSE 100 chief’s pay actually fallen from £5.4 million since 2015, while UK wage rates have been rising this year at their fastest since the financial crisis?

A couple with a first baby sought my advice: they had accepted a low offer for their cramped London flat and bid the asking price for a nice house in commuterland. But they need a bigger mortgage and if Brexit leads to a property crash, they could face negative equity and financial stress. Should they call the whole thing off? Emphatically I said they should not: buying a family home is a long-term choice, rarely regretted, in which fluctuating value matters far less than whether you love the house and whether (as in their case, I gathered) income is sufficient to support the mortgage. Conventional wisdom, perhaps, but I’m pleased to see the nation thinking the same way: the property website Rightmove reports a 6.