The new year game of awarding knighthoods and damehoods, as it relates to high-profile business people, has long felt like a nonsense. As the examples of the de-gonged Fred Goodwin at Royal Bank of Scotland and James Crosby at HBOS (who gave up his knighthood voluntarily) should have taught us, …
Read More »Be glad UK’s watchdog has its eyes on what just happened at OpenAI | Nils Pratley
Why is the little ol’ Competition & Markets Authority, a UK regulator, inserting itself into the entertaining and important – but distant – drama at San Francisco-based OpenAI? Even if the CMA finds eventually that Microsoft, another US company, is pulling the strings at Sam Altman’s show, what could it …
Read More »UK lenders passed Bank’s stress tests – but no one should feel relaxed by the news | Nils Pratley
Terrific news: the banks aren’t about to collapse. The UK’s big lenders would continue to be “resilient”, says the Bank of England, even if the dark clouds over the economy turn into a prolonged thunderstorm. They have sufficient loss-absorbing capital to keep lending to households and businesses even in a …
Read More »Ofgem’s voluntary code on prepayment meters seems a bit of a mess | Nils Pratley
A voluntary code on involuntary installations sounds like a muddle. That impression is reinforced when reading the detail of Ofgem’s attempt to put a stop to some energy suppliers’ thuggish approach to fitting prepayment meters. You have to be aged 85 or over and living alone, or be extremely incapacitated …
Read More »Deutsche Bank is no Credit Suisse, despite investors’ fears | Nils Pratley
It’s rarely a good sign when politicians, in the middle of a crash in the share price of their country’s biggest financial institution, declare there’s nothing to worry about. Such remarks often just feed a sense of panic. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would have been better advised to say …
Read More »Kwarteng’s latest ‘we’re listening’ messaging fails to reduce credibility gap | Nils Pratley
At last, some clarity from Kwasi Kwarteng, even if we’re only talking about the day on which the chancellor intends to make himself clear. The grand unveiling of the debt-cutting plan will happen on 31 October, which risks riffs about ghoulish Halloween tricks but is better than trying to prolong …
Read More »Cineworld’s story has shareholders watching through their hands | Nils Pratley
One can’t call it a major twist in the plot in the disaster movie for investors that is Cineworld, owner of 750 cinemas in 10 countries. A possible “comprehensive deleveraging transaction” – in other words, a hefty whack for shareholders – has been a threat ever since Covid arrived. Even …
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