Category: Business

Tie the Knot

Men don’t wear ties and shops don’t sell them. Having left home without one and needing neckwear to visit my club, I popped into Uniqlo and American Apparel on Kensington High Street  –  no cigar. There was no branch of T M Lewin handy so, reluctantly, I went into TK Maxx.

Free Lunch.

About six days work a year, free lunches and £25,000. That’s what a non exec. director usually gets. But what does the shareholder, ultimately employing him/her get?

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Coal To Newcastle

The UK’s second biggest export market in August this year was Switzerland at £2.3 billion (the biggest was the US, £3.2 billion), according to the Barometer column in The Spectator this week. So what on earth are we selling so much of to the Swiss?

Drinks By The Pool (Or Structured Products Made Simple)

I visited a large house in East Anglia a few years ago and the owner outlined his plans for landscaping and extending his already extensive grounds. More a project for a French King and more a blog topic for The Irish Aesthete you might think.

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Fill Up Your Tank

The President of OPEC and the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell are in agreement; oil prices will go up. They would say that, wouldn’t they? (Thank you Mandy for your contribution to what is supposed to be a serious post.)

Bad News From Wolfsburg

You may remember Gifford, my hedge fund manager friend, who flits between the East and West coasts while managing a long/short equity fund domiciled in the Cayman Islands. He wrote to me and the other investors in his fund this week and I’d like to share what he had to say.

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Buy The Bank

Gordon robbed us shareholders in Lloyds Bank when he persuaded Lloyds TSB (as it then was called) to buy HBOS in 2008. That led to some £20 billion of government (taxpayers) money being injected into the   enlarged bank to keep it solvent. Now George is giving us a chance to get some of our… Continue reading Buy The Bank

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Cheap Lane

Some of the best things in life are free, others cost much less than the pleasure they provide. The reverse is also true. Does an expensive car, house or holiday really give value for money?