Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
My anecdote last week about upgrading to BT’s ‘superfast’ broadband provoked several readers, unasked, to tell me their own unsatisfactory experiences. So I thought we should compile a Spectator dossier on the subject — as we did to good effect on the issue of high street bank branch closures, on which your combined report reached the desks
Those twice-weekly sales emails from Foxtons that the recent GDPR clean-up has failed to stop have lately been spattered with the words ‘recent price reduction’ in big red capitals. Hence no surprise that the glossy estate agent and bellwether of London residential property has just reported a first-half loss of £2.8 million, compared to £3.8
I bought BT’s offer of an upgrade to ‘superfast’ broadband because the standard service seemed to be deteriorating just as the daily quota of sales calls from India was increasing. But the improvement is barely perceptible. The blue light that tells me the hub is working turns orange to tell me it’s not with irritating
Elon Musk, the California-based entrepreneur behind the Tesla electric car, the SpaceX commercial rocket venture and several other wacky start-ups, made a fool of himself with his attempt to intervene in the Thai cave rescue and subsequent Twitter spat, but there’s no doubt he’s an original thinker and a remarkable businessman. If the futuristic Tesla
When I first visited Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was struck by a set of black-and-white posters in the shopping concourse advertising the Co-op Bank’s ethical banking stance: essentially, no lending to arms, tobacco, gambling or oil companies, or to regimes that disrespected human rights. A cynic might have argued that it was
When I first visited Canary Wharf in the early 1990s, I was struck by a set of black-and-white posters in the shopping concourse advertising the Co-op Bank’s ethical banking stance: essentially, no lending to arms, tobacco, gambling or oil companies, or to regimes that disrespected human rights. A cynic might have argued that it was
Bank of England economists Will Holman and Tim Pike claim to have spotted a productivity revival, on the basis of a ‘recent pivot towards business investment to overcome greater labour scarcity’ aided by ‘major advances in technology’. But the Office for National Statistics reports that productivity actually fell by 0.4 per cent in the first
An IT glitch afflicting BP petrol stations for three hours last Sunday evening might not sound like headline news. A ten-hour meltdown of Visa card payment systems in June was a bigger story — as was the notorious TSB computer upgrade cock-up that started on 20 April, which was still afflicting customers a month later
We are delighted to announce the finalists, region by region, for The Spectator Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards sponsored by Julius Baer. We received entries from every corner of the UK, in business sectors ranging from advanced genetics to ice cream and from musical instrument-making to cyber security. Particularly well represented were ‘Fintech’ in
I’ve been on a mini-tour, full of echoes and warnings. First, to the Grange Festival in Hampshire, where we might still have been enjoying the summer of ’87: a moneyed audience in a Barings mansion laughing at funny foreigners in John Copley’s retro Seraglio (see Richard Bratby’s crit last week). Then to Oxford, to show
Very few business plans survive their first interaction with the real world,’ says Luke Johnson, whose own ventures have ranged from Pizza Express to fresh fish distribution and the UK’s largest chain of dental surgeries. ‘Entrepreneurs have the advantage that they can adapt swiftly — “pivot”, as they say in Silicon Valley — to satisfy
The voice of business has been all but silent in the Brexit debate ever since former Marks & Spencer boss Stuart Rose made such a hash of trying to lead the pre-referendum ‘Britain Stronger in Europe campaign’. Now suddenly there’s a business cacophony: Airbus, BMW, Siemens and the heads of the CBI, the Institute of
Whatever happened to Horlicks? Patented in Chicago in 1883 by British-born brothers William and James Horlick, the malted milk drink was manufactured in Slough from 1908 and came to be thought of as a British product — but disappeared from most of our kitchens half a century ago. It lingered only as a figure of
Maybe it’s a sandwich chain, or a price comparison website, or a bioscience breakthrough: but the start-up was your baby, and you’ve worked night and day to prove its potential. Now it needs capital to go to the next level — and you need liquidity for family needs, as well as a plan for long-term
‘So, Professor Shin, tell us what you really think about cryptocurrencies.’ I’m guessing that’s the brief the Bank for International Settlements (the Basel-based central bank of central banks) gave economist Hyun-Song Shin to write a chapter for its annual report, published this week. His response delivers a serious kicking to the whole befuddled concept of
Should he stay or should he go — or will he already have gone by the time you read this? These are frequently asked questions about chief executives whose businesses hit troubled waters. It’s true that the higher you rise, the higher the risk if you don’t deliver, but it’s not always true that bosses
Should he stay or should he go — or will he already have gone by the time you read this? These are frequently asked questions about chief executives whose businesses hit troubled waters. It’s true that the higher you rise, the higher the risk if you don’t deliver, but it’s not always true that bosses
At last the government has restarted the process of selling its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland. A first £2 billion sale in 2015 (of 5 per cent of the bank’s shares) took place at 330 pence per share, against a purchase price of 502 pence in the 2008 bailout. Those numbers looked so embarrassing
At last the government has restarted the process of selling its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland. A first £2 billion sale in 2015 (of 5 per cent of the bank’s shares) took place at 330 pence per share, against a purchase price of 502 pence in the 2008 bailout. Those numbers looked so embarrassing
I shop at WH Smith with gritted teeth but I positively salivate when I spot a Pret A Manger. Some serious investors think likewise: the sandwich chain has just been sold for more than £1.5 billion by the US investment firm Bridgepoint to JAB Holdings, the vehicle of the German billionaire Reimann family who also
