Martin Vander Weyer is business editor of The Spectator. He writes the weekly Any Other Business column.
From our UK edition
Twice I met the tech tycoon Mike Lynch, once a decade or so ago and again this year, shortly after he returned from his fraud trial acquittal in California. On the first occasion, I followed him as a speaker at a corporate conference in, of all places, the National Football Centre in Burton-on-Trent. He was
From our UK edition
The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond most expectations of the Paris Olympics: it had been ‘une parenthèse enchantée’, he said, but parentheses always have to close and ‘la merde va revenir’. I’m guessing he meant France’s brief political truce will end
From our UK edition
A bout of global stock-market turmoil and an outbreak of UK street violence as adjacent news items gave an apocalyptic feel to the start of the week. But as rioting continued, markets appeared to steady, led by Tokyo with a 10 per cent Tuesday rebound. We know the ugly sentiments that animate the thugs –
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More than a third of UK universities are in financial doo-doo: staff cuts, cancelled courses, slashed research budgets and possible bankruptcy beckon. Behind this is the fact that domestic students paying £9,250 in fees (way behind inflation since that figure was last raised in 2017) cost £11,750 to teach, representing a collective annual £5 billion
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If the new government’s ‘pensions review’ takes forward last year’s ‘Mansion House reforms’ – credited to chancellor Jeremy Hunt but largely the work of the then Lord Mayor of London, Nick Lyons, and designed to push the UK’s largest private-sector pension providers to commit funds to unlisted equities and vital infrastructure – all to the
From our UK edition
Market reactions to the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania represent, according to taste, rational bets on the significantly increased likelihood of a second Trump presidency or stark confirmation of the madness that has overtaken America and threatens the civilised world. Shares in Trump Media & Technology – the parent of his social media platform Truth Social
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‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is a conventional rebuild, nothing Grand Designs about it, on the south coast. ‘But it’s taking forever to get planning permission for the new one. They want reports on everything, from bats to highway impacts: you’d
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‘I drink champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad,’ Madame Lily Bollinger (1899-1977) remarked. ‘Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory.’ As the last constituency results trickle in, we’ll all inevitably find ourselves in some combination of those four states. If you’re sad, I hope at
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‘We are the masters now,’ I chirrup to my Holborn and St Pancras neighbours – misquoting Labour attorney-general Hartley Shawcross from 1946. I don’t mean I’ve decided to throw in my vote with the predicted Labour landslide: frankly, I’d rather give it to the candidate calling himself Nick the Incredible Flying Brick. What I mean
If realpolitik says an orderly plunder of Russian treasure might save Ukraine, then shouldn’t the rules change to allow it?
From our UK edition
The seizure of enemy treasure, formerly known as plunder and pillage, is an ancient tool of war. Though still practised in the world’s nastiest conflict zones, it’s a tricky business within a rules-based international order. The G7’s agreement to lend $50 billion to Ukraine – using income from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to
From our UK edition
Nigel Farage and I agree on one thing: a red-carpet welcome at the London Stock Exchange for Shein, the Chinese online fashion retailer, would be ‘a very bad idea’. Valued at £50 billion, Shein could become London’s biggest-ever initial public offering. Both the departing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds have
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The City is having a busier year than pessimistic observers – including me – might have expected. The biggest deal on the block, the £39 billion bid by Australian giant BHP Billiton for its London-listed South African mining rival Anglo American, has fallen away. But plenty of bankers’ and advisers’ fees have already been clocked
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I’m not on the guest list for the Duke of Westminster’s wedding, but I wish him luck anyway. Mind you, the young seventh duke – Hughie to his friends – hardly needs more luck than has already come his way in the form of the £10 billion Grosvenor property empire in London and elsewhere. When
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Entries for The Spectator Economic Innovator Awards, in partnership with Investec Wealth & Investment (UK), come in all sizes and sectors. How do our judging panels choose between them? We’ve asked three of our most experienced judges to offer their top tips for regional finalists to make the very best of a 10-15 minute pitch.
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I suspect I’ve had a lot more fun writing about the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the years than many of its denizens have had clambering into it and staying there behind their high-tech security gates and their phalanx of tax advisers. The 2024 roll call includes some great British wealth-creation stories – led
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If the 0.6 per cent first-quarter GDP uplift reported by the Office for National Statistics is sustained for the rest of this year, Rishi Sunak will be able to claim – as he waves goodbye – that he and Jeremy Hunt have succeeded against their naysayers in dragging the UK economy from pandemic depths back
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All the chosen finalists in The Spectator’s Economic Innovator of the Year Awards, in partnership with Investec Wealth & Investment (UK), have unique stories to tell. And in 2024, alongside regional and overall winners and an extra award for excellence in Sustainability, we’re looking for a very special entrant which we’re calling the One to
Complex globalized financial structures are capable of spreading damage everywhere
From our UK edition
The US crackdown on trade finance for Russia from international banks – designed to impede imports needed for the continuing assault on Ukraine – is biting hard, reports the FT, quoting an investor who thinks ‘the logical endpoint of this is turning Russia into Iran’. Quite right too: sanctions like these are a vital non-military
