By Ian Fraser The Sunday Times June 29th, 2008 Walter Scott has quit the investment management company he founded in 1983 just two years after selling it for £400m. Scott, a former nuclear physicist who was famed for wearing a kilt at business meetings, sold Edinburgh-based Walter Scott & Partners to US-based Mellon Financial Corporation […]
By Ian Fraser The Herald Business June 26th, 2008 Chartered accountants are being advised to live by ethical codes, not just pay lip service to them BUSINESS ethics, or the lack of them, are once again coming to the fore in business circles. This is hardly surprising. The extraordinary tide of liquidity that propped up […]
June 25th, 2008 Dubai has unveiled plans for the world’s first rotating skyscraper, designed by the Italian-Israeli architect David Fisher, who has never before designed a high rise building. The planned 80-storey edifice, which looks like sheer folly to me, will be prefabricated in Italy to speed up construction time and reduce labour costs. Scheduled for […]
June 23rd, 2008 DUBAI is right to try and secure itself an economic future after the oil runs out. The tragedy for this tiny Arab emirate is that it has chosen to go about things in such a blatantly unsustainable way. As the emirate, with its 300,000 citizens, seeks to transform itself into a tax-free, hedonistic paradise that aims to […]
June 18th, 2008 Over the past couple of decades the Scotch Whisky Association has been hugely successful at defending the “geographical indication” of Scotch whisky. Its efforts have ensured the product has enhanced its position and profitability in global markets when other types of drink – including brandy, vodka and gin – have lost their […]
By Ian Fraser Sunday Herald June 15th, 2008 SCOTLAND’S housebuilders have hit out at Britain’s banks for tipping their industry into crisis and are pleading for government help to rescue them from a downturn that is expected to spark over 10,000 industry job losses in the current year. Jonathan Fair, chief executive of housebuilders’ group Homes […]
By Ian Fraser in Dublin and Colin Donald Sunday Herald June 8th, 2008 One of the leading lights of Irish finance has urged Scots to pursue independence to maximise the benefits of its world-class financial services industry. Mary Fulton, financial services partner with “big four” accountancy firm Deloitte in Dublin, told the Sunday Herald that […]
By Ian Fraser Published: Sunday Herald Date: June 8th, 2008 ECONOMIC slowdown is normally the last thing that business wants. But for Ireland’s £1 trillion international asset-servicing industry, a cooling-off seems almost welcome. AS NEXT week’s knife-edge vote on the Lisbon Treaty forces one of the Republic’s periodic reflective bouts, the Irish financial sector – which rose from nothing in the early 1990s […]
June 6th, 2008 A “delusional optimism” that the worst of the credit crunch is behind us has been propping up financial markets since the Bear Sterns rescue in March, according to Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at New York University Stern School of Business. Earlier this week, he had a powerful article on his website – RGE […]
By Ian Fraser The Herald June 5th, 2008 Two partners in law firm McGrigors have left to join its larger English rival Eversheds, as the Scottish-based firm seeks to make nine people redundant from its London office as a direct result of the commercial property market slowdown. Colin Gray, former managing partner of McGrigors, and […]