Martin Vander Weyer

The bank holiday turned out to be a hot one, not least in the takeover arena. First, Shire Pharmaceutical accepted a £46 billion offer from Takeda of Japan — though the stock market did not seem wholly convinced that the deal will proceed. If it does, should we care? Shire is a FTSE100 company that began in the UK and ended up stateless. As a start-up in Basingstoke in 1986, it made calcium-based treatments for osteoporosis; since then it has grown by acquisition to become ‘the world’s leading global biotechnology company focused on serving patients with rare diseases’. In 2008, when it was the UK’s third biggest drug manufacturer, Shire shifted its domicile to take advantage of Ireland’s ultra-low corporate tax rates.

This is an extract from this week's 'Any Other Business' column.  The UK economy grew just 0.1 per cent in the first quarter, says the ONS, reflecting low construction activity, sluggish manufacturing, squeezed consumers, Brexit uncertainties and bitter weather. That’s the worst quarter since 2012 — so no wonder I had such a feeble response to my call a fortnight ago for evidence of feelgood. Two readers broke through the gloom, however. The first is a veteran banker who lends to small-to-medium UK corporate borrowers and describes himself as ‘miserable, cynical and pessimistic’ by nature and experience.

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer's 'Any other business' column in this week's Spectator The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make trouble. When I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the likes of New York ‘activist’ Edward Bramson — who holds 5 per cent of Barclays and may or may not agitate for a boardroom seat at next Tuesday’s gathering. I mean you, dear reader, the modest shareholder-customer who suffers rotten service, too-frequent computer glitches and negative returns on savings while directors on the platform congratulate themselves on the spurious performance measures that underpin their bonuses. This is your annual chance to make them squirm.

The season of high-street banks’ annual general meetings is with us and I urge you to turn up and make trouble. When I say ‘you’, I don’t mean the likes of New York ‘activist’ Edward Bramson — who holds 5 per cent of Barclays and may or may not agitate for a boardroom seat at next Tuesday’s gathering. I mean you, dear reader, the modest shareholder-customer who suffers rotten service, too-frequent computer glitches and negative returns on savings while directors on the platform congratulate themselves on the spurious performance measures that underpin their bonuses. This is your annual chance to make them squirm.

I said last week that WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell was in ‘a very exposed position’. Sure enough on Saturday he resigned from the global advertising giant he created and had run for more than 32 years. ‘But he didn’t “create” it,’ one ex-employee told me, illustrating the internal resentments that seem to have contributed to Sorrell’s downfall. ‘He just made a lot of acquisitions and counted the pennies.’ Whatever he did or didn’t do, his departure was undignified and ill-explained.

I’m proud to be a member of the 661-year-old Company of Merchant Adventurers of the City of York, having qualified on the strength of a first career spent trying to sell British financial services around the globe from Hokkaido to Gdansk. Before our annual feast last week we prayed optimistically for the discovery of ‘a better world’ from which we might bring back treasure, spiritual and material — and I couldn’t help thinking that UK trade prospects are a lot less straightforward today than they were in 1357, when the known world was eager to buy woollen cloth from English mercers as often as their little ships could cross the choppy North Sea.

I remember the arrival of Toys ‘R’ Us in Britain, because as a young banker in 1984 I was tasked with devising a menu of exciting financial products to offer a brash American retailer that was clearly going to take a bite out of our sleepy — and in those days still Christmas-seasonal — domestic toy market. How we sneered at that childlike reversed R in the logotype; likewise the Guardian, commenting on insatiable demand for Cabbage Patch dolls, derided the chain’s huge stores as ‘-cathedrals to kiddie gratification’. But however tacky its image, this was the ultimate ‘economic disruptor’, to use The Spectator’s current favourite phrase: a business that utterly transformed its marketplace.

Human progress has depended on economic disruptors since long before the advent of the internet. The internal combustion engine was a hugely significant invention, but motor cars remained rare luxuries until a disruptor called Henry Ford perfected the assembly line that enabled the Model T to be mass-produced at a price the ordinary citizen could afford. If we define a disruptor as an entrepreneurial business that radically changes its own marketplace, numerous examples spring to mind, from the low-cost no-frills airline to the flat-pack, home-assembly bookcase. Today’s online auction, home-stay, ride-share and crowd-funding sites have generated markets and money flows that barely existed before, to the great benefit of providers and consumers.

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer's 'Any other business' column, in this week's Spectator.  Unilever, the consumer goods conglomerate formed in 1929 by the merger of Margarine Unie of Rotterdam with Lever Brothers of Port Sunlight, is a model of cross-Channel collaboration that pre-dates the European Union we’re about to leave. So the decision due this month as to whether the group will no longer maintain dual head offices — which means closing London but keeping Rotterdam — will be highly symbolic. If the move not only goes ahead but also entails doing away with dual fiscal entities and dual stockmarket listings, Unilever will henceforth be a wholly Dutch company with UK subsidiaries.

Some time ago I labelled Oxfam ‘the anti-capitalist lobby group which is also a part-time aid charity’: my column has repeatedly highlighted the fact that donors have unknowingly funded a hard-left think-tank (recent publisher of a list of ‘the eight people who own as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’) as well as a Third World relief operation that has now been tainted by allegations of sex abuse. I also objected to the plague of its 650 charity shops, cannibalising the trade of established small businesses in struggling high streets. So I have scant sympathy for Oxfam’s embattled boss Mark Goldring.