January 30th, 2008 Standard Life has not covered itself in glory by losing the services of Trevor Matthews, who last night announced he was resigning to take over as chief executive of Friends Provident. Matthews is a down-to-earth and charismatic Australian who came as a breath of fresh air to the then somewhat stuffy Edinburgh [...]
January 25th, 2008 The measures introduced by the US federal reserve and Congress to stave off stock market meltdown are a panic-induced over-reaction that are more likely to lead the US into economic Armageddon than to avert it. An entry in the Investors Chronicle’s ‘week in review’ slot today sums up the position pretty well. [...]
January 25th, 2008 Douglas Mill ultimately found it impossible to move with the times. The chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland has this morning announced his resignation from the body he has lead for the past 11 years. He intends to finally demit office in October, and some lawyers and most aggrieved customers [...]
By Ian Fraser Citywire January 25th, 2008 Jim Fisher of investment boutique Saracen bought a chunk of shares in struggling Marks & Spencer on the back of a grim trading update from the retail bellwether. Fisher, who is AAA-rated by Citywire, bought £3 million shares in the firm for his £210 million Saracen Growth (Saracen [...]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald January 20th, 2008 CONVENTIONAL wisdom has it that the credit crunch has made big private-equity buyouts a thing of the past. However, Alasdair Locke, the 54-year-old executive chairman of Abbot Group, has just proved this wildly wrong. On December 20, he sold the Aberdeen-based oil services company to US venture [...]
By Ian Fraser and Karen Peattie Sunday Herald January 20th, 2008 ONE OF Scotland’s leading oil magnates has launched a stinging attack on the Labour government, accusing it of destroying the economic transformation created in Britain by 17 years of Conservative government. Alasdair Locke, the executive chairman of oil rigs and services giant Abbot Group, [...]
January 18th, 2008 A recent warning from the U.S. comptroller-general has given a much clearer picture of who’s really to blame for the economic crisis that will engulf the US and global economies. Yes it’s not the so-called ‘trailer trash’ or the ‘masters of the universe’ of Wall Street. It’s the Fed. On January 10 [...]
January 9th, 2008 Oil is obviously a finite resource. However, contrary to the scaremongering of subscibers to the ‘Peak Oil’ theory, this is not the reason the oil price is sky high at the moment. The real reason was that the prolonged period of $22 oil that ended in 2001 led to significant under-investment right [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times January 6th, 2008 CALLS for Scottish Water to be taken out of state ownership and turned into a mutual company like Wales’s Glas Cymru generated more heat than light last week. Alex Johnstone, MSP for north-east Scotland and Conservative spokesman for infrastructure, claimed Scottish Water misallocates resources, is immune [...]
By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times January 6th, 2008 A CORPORATE finance practice that was launched with some fanfare and whose backers included some of Scotland’s most high-profile businesspeople, such as Norman Murray, chairman of Cairn Energy, has closed for business in Scotland. British Linen Advisers, a management buyout of the rump of the old [...]