Every day, the BBC – in fact the whole media circus – faithfully report the progress of the FTSE100 share index, as though it were a portent of our economic future. Every day so called “experts” explain in detail the reasons for FTSE100 movements seemingly on the assumption that it still relates to the UK [...]
Almost 18 months ago Glencore first featured on this blog – ‘Glencore and others are screwing the world’ – a posting which highlighted the predatory nature of financial monsters like Glencore. The Financial Times had reported Glencore’s ability and willingness to fix commodity prices for their own profit and everyone else’s loss and how they [...]
A news item on budget day, commanding all of two column inches on an inside page of some of the national press, was of far greater importance than anything Mr Osborne had to say. It reported the completion of Glencore’s acquisition of Viterra, Canada’s largest grain handling company. Glencore, the world’s largest by far commodity [...]
All sorts of hares are set loose in the run up to the budget: removal of the 50% income tax rate, ending of national pay settlements in the public sector, imposition of a mansion tax, a clamp down on stamp duty avoidance, and so on, not to mention the various stimulus–austerity alternatives. Debate centres around [...]
British Prime Ministers and their Chancellors are clearly in the pocket of the City of London, as regularly demonstrated by their red faced compliance at the Lord Mayor’s fancy dress functions. The politicians dutifully swear their allegiance. And they mean it, as Cameron recently showed by vetoing the Franco-German proposal for a timorous financial transaction [...]
The idea of economic man, sometimes given a Latin nomenclature to increase its gravitas, is the real cause of economics’ more recent failures. Forty years ago it was referred to as a nineteenth century idea, as though the study of economics had moved on since that primitive Victorian era. But with Friedman’s shareholder primacy in [...]
A few weeks ago a happy group photograph was published to accompany the announcement of Bob Diamond’s appointment as the new CEO of Barclays bank. The picture showed outgoing CEO John Varley and Diamond himself, both apparently chortling with delight, while chairman Marcus Agius offered a slightly more discreet smile of approval. What were they [...]
Around 80% of publicly quoted shareholdings are now controlled by financial institutions, rather than the end shareholders. The traders acting for these institutions have quite different objectives from those of the ultimate shareholders. Members of a company pension scheme, for example, are likely to have a personal desire for the survival and longevity of their [...]
Almost every empirical study of the value of takeovers indicates that overall there is no gain; the acquirer doesn’t benefit and the overall economy usually loses out. The only ones who gain are the shareholders of the acquired company, and in cases like the Tomkins sell out currently going through, its top management whose pay [...]
The hero of the free market philosophy is surely the entrepreneur, the one who has the entrepreneurial spirit to start from small beginnings and build something not only with their own sweat, blood and creativity, but also by putting their own money at risk. They control and own. Most of them fail but a few [...]
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