Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business ‘If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to give their employees better wages... and working conditions; to use production methods that don’t kill or maim or damage the environment...’ That was Peter Wilby in the Guardian, responding to the news last week that 40 American billionaires have pledged to donate half (or in Warren Buffett’s case, 99 per cent) of their fortunes to good causes. Wilby perfectly encapsulates the British left’s contempt for the notion of charitable giving funded by free-market capitalism — and the prevalence of his view is one reason why the culture of philanthropy in this country is so subdued.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business It’s nonsense to accuse high street banks of failing to lend to businesses because the money they might have lent has been siphoned off for bonuses — that just isn’t how it works — and it’s good news that they have been announcing restored or increased profits this week. It’s also absurd to claim that George Osborne and Vince Cable should or could instruct them how to lend.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business The flotation of a business that has carved a big slice of a fast-growth consumer market within less than a decade of its start-up ought to be a cause for celebration: an example of capitalism doing what it’s supposed to do in support of entrepreneurs; an affirmation that markets are back in business after their nervous breakdown two years ago. But the share offering for the online grocer Ocado, for which a price will be struck on 21 July, has provoked more of a City brawl than a champagne reception. Some fund managers are enraged by the indicative pricing, which values Ocado at up to £1.3 billion even though it lost £26 million last year on £402 million of sales.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business I once heard an after-dinner speech by Jackie Blanchflower, brother of the great Spurs captain Danny. Jackie also played professional football, for Manchester United, but his career was cut short by his injuries in the 1958 Munich air crash, in which eight of his fellow ‘Busby Babes’ died. Thereafter he scratched a living as a publican, a bookie and an accounts clerk, and by the time I saw him, not long before he died in 1998, he looked so knackered that I wondered whether he would be capable of standing to speak. But he did, and delivered an unforgettably funny and poignant account of the rotten hand he had been dealt.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business I wrote here in February that I did not believe the Conservatives’ pretence of having ‘absolutely no plans to increase VAT’, and that, having examined this fiercely complex issue at some length with an ice pack on my head, I had come down in favour of a VAT rise — as indeed had the experts at the Institute of Directors, who wrote: ‘The VAT rate should be increased to 20 per cent, in order to allow for more substantial and rapid tax reductions elsewhere than would otherwise be possible.’ That has now come to pass, and despite the howls of protest in the House of Commons when the Chancellor announced it, I’m sticking to my guns.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business I’m baffled why anyone should be offended by the £275,000 salary paid to John Fingleton, the director of the Office of Fair Trading who was declared last week to be Britain’s highest-paid public servant. Even if Fingleton’s wad represents double the prime minister’s, it is barely more than one tenth of the bundle taken home by Adam Crozier in his final year as chief executive of the Royal Mail, which — despite Vince Cable’s declared intention to press ahead with part-privatisation — is still wholly in the state sector. The Teflon-coated Crozier, who came to the Royal Mail from the Football Association and has moved on to become chief executive of ITV, collected £633,000 in salary, a £1.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business ‘Does anyone remember David Laws?’ a former City colleague asked me during the brief interlude between the Lib Dem MP’s debut as financial secretary last Monday and his descent into hell on Friday. Judging by the sketchy accounts of his banking career in the weekend papers, with their references to a ‘billion-dollar gamble’ that made him a ‘multimillionaire’, few journalists bothered to track down City sources who really knew him in those days. But in fact he held the same title of managing director of Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW, the forerunner of Barclays Capital) that I once held myself.

Martin Vander Weyer's Any Other Business Hedge funds can be accused of many different sins, not least because they operate in many different shapes and forms across the investment universe. As a label, ‘hedge fund’ is so loosely generic that generalising about the sector is almost as pointless as trying to corral it with tighter regulation, as EU finance ministers have been doing this week. Some hedge funds pursue, with brilliant results, the contrarian hunches of individual fund managers. Some cheat by trading on insider information or false rumours. Some are ‘long-only’, meaning that they buy and keep things that they expect to appreciate in value. Some are habitual short-sellers, seeking to profit from things they expect to depreciate.