Why it’s time for business
Here and now is the best time to be broadcasting or writing about business. The private sector and moncler outlet online store the unleashing of market forces across the globe is changing all our lives, mostly for the better, but also (if, for example, you are in the wrong job in the wrong place, or if you’ve been saving in many conventional pension funds) for the worse.
It’s an epic drama called “Globalisation”, with Tolstoyan themes: the emergence of Discount Moncler Coats great new cheap moncler jackets economic superpowers, China and India, and the strikingly fast dissemination of IT and broadband technologies that have combined to engender rapid (and surprisingly stable) economic growth almost everywhere. They’re manifested in news stories on cheap moncler a moncler coats for women daily basis, such as this report in The Times today about the angst of the giant mining companies over China’s agreed takeover bid for more or less the whole of Africa.
Then there are moncler outlet the great anxieties or our age: that the explosion of discount moncler jackets cheap credit around moncler outlet mall the globe over the past decade which fuelled a boom cheap moncler coats for women in buy moncler jackets toronto corporate takeovers, the explosive growth of hedge funds and private equity, and putative housing market bubbles in the US and UK will moncler jackets outlet end in tears; that the world’s most moncler coats important economy, the US, is excessively in hock (largely, though not exclusively, to China); that the spoils of growth are being unequally shared, within countries and between countries; moncler outlets uk and that the oil economy’s excreta, CO2, is poisoning all our futures.
It’s entertainment and moncler coats for kids soap opera too. Last week’s moncler jackets men ousting by the world’s biggest bank, Citicorp, of a high flying executive, Todd Thomson after he shared a private jet with a glamorous US business journalist, Maria Bartiromo, whose sobriquet is the Money Honey was a sizzler. But the recent turmoil at the UK’s second largest company, BP when its chief executive, Lord discount moncler outlet Browne, decided to quit 18 months early moncler outlet online was more Shakespearean tragedy, redolent of Julius Caesar.
moncler sale So I hope that this blog will be a conversation about the important trends, the drama of breaking news, the big business personalities who are now in many ways more powerful than politicians, and above all the issues that touch all our lives and affects our futures. It would be surprising if in the coming weeks and months the agenda didn’t include:
moncler mens jackets 1) Is Tesco a great British success, the bringer of the good life to millions of consumers, or destroyer of high streets and local communities?
cheap moncler jackets 2) Are the high street banks the vital infrastructure of the economy, innovators helping us provide for our retirement, or oligopolists fleecing us?
moncler sale outlet 3) Are small businesses being crushed by the burden of taxation and regulation or is complaining about mortal threats just part moncler jackets of the natural condition of being an entrepreneur?
moncler outlet moncler jacket outlet online 4) Is the abandonment of final salary pension schemes by companies a dreadful betrayal of their employees or essential for their survival in a cruelly https://www.mymoncleroutlet.com competitive world?
moncler outlet 5) Does moncler jackets kids it matter that the wealth gap between the super rich and the rest of us is widening?
cheap moncler coats 6) Is it a good thing that unprecedented numbers of British companies are being bought by overseas outfits?
7) What are the implications of the growth of private equity, or the increasing number of companies that are going private backed by specialist funds?
moncler outlet sale This phenomenon of private equity is utterly compelling. Suffice to cheap moncler jackets wholesale say for now that the British based private equity funds which are significantly smaller than their counterparts in the US raised 27bn in moncler jackets canada new equity capital in 2005 (and considerably more in 2006). Now when they buy a company, they tend to deploy 4 of borrowed money for every 1 of the moncler jackets mens equity capital they invest. So that equity capital is sufficient to buy companies with a total value of almost 140bn.
To put that in context, Tesco has a market moncler outlet woodbury capitalisation of 32bn, Unilever’s value is 18bn, and Cadbury Schweppes is worth 12bn. So these days only the very biggest businesses, such as HSBC (valued at 108bn) can be wholly confident they won’t be taken over by private equity for now.
Now last week, the eminences of British private equity were out in all their pomp and finery at the most glittering of parties held in London’s magnificently refurbished Roundhouse. Only rarely in the history of this nation can so many stupendously wealthy individuals have been gathered in one place. Many of those present were worth many tens of million pounds each, some worth comfortably more moncler outlet kids than 100m. According to a banker, the collective net worth of those at the do was more than 10bn.
cheap moncler They were there for “charidy”, moncler outlet uk to launch the Private Equity Foundation, a new charitable trust endowed by private equity’s leading firms and individuals. It’s part of a slightly belated charm offensive, to show that some of the high returns generated by the buyout moncler outlet ny of companies will be ploughed back into good causes. So far it’s raised 5.1m, which is a fraction of what a private equity partner can expect to earn in just one big deal that goes right. “Frankly the charity has moncler jackets outlet online got to do a lot better if it wants to impress,” said one of the guests.
Now private equity makes its profits by buying companies and making them more efficient. Some of this improved efficiency is fairly simple financial engineering, moncler outlet store the replacement of equity by debt in a company’s balance sheet (a subject to which I will return in later postings). Moncler Factory Outlet Some of it stems from cost reduction, often involving job cuts.
Inevitably, therefore, private equity hasn’t endeared itself to the trade union movement. And outside the Roundhouse last Wednesday night were protestors from the GMB, who’ve been targeting one of the UK’s leading private equity houses, Permira. The GMB has been trying to embarrass Permira over job cuts at Birds Eye and the AA, two companies it controls (Permira shares ownership of the AA with another private equity house, CVC).
buy moncler jackets And the trade unionists have focused much of their campaign on Damon Buffini, Permira’s managing partner. They’ve put his face on posters, they’ve picketed his local church, they’ve littered Labour’s last annual conference with leaflets attacking him. But arguably they’ve shown poor judgement in painting him as villain, because in many ways he symbolises the opportunities available in a meritocratic UK. He was brought up on a council estate in the Midlands by a single mum, he’s black and he went to local state schools.
Today Buffini is probably one of the UK’s top five business people. He embodies one of the great debates of our time: Britain as a place where excessive spoils accrue to a tiny minority versus Britain as a place where any of us can make it big. Sadly he won’t be taking part in that moncler jackets toronto debate, because he shuns publicity as though it were pure kryptonite.
Yours is a very important role someone focused on business stories in the heart of the business unfriendly BBC. Your predecessor Jeff Randall was under no misapprehension of the “visceral” antipathy of most of his BBC colleagues to the business world. If the BBC is avoid becoming a cosy echo chamber for metropolitan public sector views, then the business world needs to be explained, investigated (and yes, defended too) much more than the BBC has managed to date.
Your list of topics looks good. Can I suggest you also look at the moncler outlets usa concept of profit and how societal views on it have changed over the years? My own view is that a lot of people, particularly at the BBC, have become desperately confused about profit. It has become a totemic issue, a demonised concept and, for the lazy thinking, shorthand for rampant greed. It is, in fact, vital for our economy, our taxation, our jobs, our government spending and just about moncler outlet canada everything in between. This paradox should be explored and would make good blog content or even better, good broadcast material.
monlcer down jackets Good luck with the blog anyway
I absolutely think there is a backlash Moncler Outlet online occuring that shows the average highstreet consumer beginning to flex their collective muscles, demanding more value from the services they recieve.
cheap moncler outlet Take bank charges. Hot on the OFT’s trail which saw them call for credit card moncler coats for men charges to be capped at 12, consumer groups are moncler coats cheap supporting their investigation into the cash cow that are bank charges. Give the success of the OFT campaigns in recent womens moncler jackets years, Credit Card charges and Legal Service Reform to name moncler chicago but two, they are unlikely to roll over on this one.
The industry is desperately trying to firefight the issue and keep hold of the massive income/profit injection they get from these charges. But they don’t look to be winning.
It is indicative of greater consumer action that a national Building moncler coats sale Society such as Nationwide is receiving as many as 200 demands from customers for bank charge refunds A DAY.
moncler outlet store This’ll have an impact on free banking as the only thing likely to stay constant in this equation is banks/building society profits, but they’re not going to have such a free ride anymore.
cheap moncler sale Depends if your thinking in terms of a rich person with a share portfolio, or a poor person who has to catch more buses cheap moncler jackets outlet and walk more to buy groceries at a price that ain’t really all that anyway. moncler coats outlet Nothing has got that much cheaper, and if it is cheap in the supermarket it’s only because it’s crap, like 2p crisps, trans fat packed 10p mini rolls, or bread that makes you fart all night long for 32p a stick.
