By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: August 30th, 2009 An intriguing game of cat and mouse is being played between the Scottish businessmen Ben Thomson, of Noble Group, Martin Gilbert, of Aberdeen Asset Management, and Mark Shaw, of Hazledene and newspaper publishing group Johnston Press. The triumvirate is said to have made a [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: August 30th, 2009 Diageo, the drinks giant whose plans to axe 900 jobs at its Kilmarnock plant and Port Dundas whisky distillery have provoked widespread condemnation, has been branded socially irresponsible by a leading business thinker. William Hopper, author of The Puritan Gift: Reclaiming the American Dream [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: August 30th, 2009 Fordel Mains; copyright Richard Webb and licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons License Aberdeen businessman Neil Cordiner has unveiled ambitious plans to develop a “Harrods of the North”-style development on a 10-acre site at Fordel ten miles south-east of Edinburgh. The heart of [...]
By Ian Fraser and Mark Paul Published: The Sunday Times Date: August 30th, 2009 Analysts say takeover will boost Scottish brand, write Ian Fraser and Mark Paul It was a Celtic sweep that caught many drinks analysts and industry observers unawares. After eight months of secret talks, C&C, the Dublin-based maker of Magners cider, agreed [...]
By Ian Fraser Published: The Sunday Times Date: August 30th, 2009 Scotland’s female entrepreneurs are lagging behind their counterparts in the Middle East where ambition, presentation skills and networking abilities are concerned, according to Ken Morse, an American expert on start-ups. Morse, founder and managing director of the Entrepreneurship Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [...]
August 29th, 2009 At last someone in a position of authority has spoken some sense about taming the wild beast of finance. In a round-table discussion with Prospect magazine, the FSA chairman Lord Adair Turner has questioned the “social usefulness” of much of what happens on Wall Street and in the City of London. Turner [...]
August 26th, 2009 He was one of the architects of the current economic crisis. But ‘Helicopter’ Ben Bernanke was on Tuesday rewarded with a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Here Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital argues the move will be disastrous for the US economy’s long-term health. Ayn Rand wrote, “when [...]
August 24th, 2009 The financial crisis that started in September 2008 has presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent finance, ensuring it exists to serve business and society, rather than the other way around. Yet the agenda of free-market politicians and finance industry insiders is to pretend what happened was a ‘blip’ and to seek a [...]
August 23rd, 2009 European commissioner Neelie Kroes (pictured above) means business when it comes to breaking up banks that have received state-aid but which have too dominant a position in their home markets — and she has Lloyds Banking Group and RBS firmly in her sights. A former Dutch government minister, Kroes has made it [...]
August 23rd, 2009 Sir Victor Blank, who has been forced by investors to step down as Lloyds Banking Group chairman, has spent the weekend trying to exorcise some ghosts and salvage what’s left of his tattered reputation. Blank went on a PR offensive, granting interviews to BBC business editor Robert Peston and Andrew Davidson of [...]