The focus on fat cat pay in recent weeks has rightly fallen on to boardrooms. Some of Britain’s biggest companies have found themselves embarrassed after investors big and small refused to support gold-plated remuneration packages. Several chief executives including Sly...

Pity the poor traveller. As thousands of people prepared to head off abroad for the Bank Holiday weekend thoughts inevitably turned to what kind of reception airline passengers would receive when they arrived back in this country.Would the chaos that...

Hector Sants, chief executive of City watchdog the Financial Services Authority, delivered his parting speech this week and called for more action to deliver effective reforms on corporate governance.We’ve heard some of what he had to say before. But among...

It’s difficult to shake off the sense of deja vu pervading some of my working life as a City and financial journalist these days.The euro zone debt crisis, like a crazed zombie from a B-list movie, refuses to die. The...

Seeing the images of cleric Abu Hamza this week as he faced being shipped to the US on terrorism charges sparked memories for me of 2004, and the London extradition hearing of the so-called NatWest Three.The case of these former...

It’s been a bad week for Britain and bribery.Two years since the 2010 Bribery Act was passed and a mere 12 months since it came into force and the criticism of corporate controls in this country are coming thick and...

During the dark days of the recent recession British industry took a pounding as spending cuts and the consumer slowdown began to bite. Amid the gloom one sector provided a little-seen beacon in the far north of these islands. The...

‘Banks’ day of Shame’ was how one newspaper front page summarised the decision of Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group to publish their annual pay reports on the same day.Just one of these documents can provide an...

Some investors have already criticised the proposed Glencore-Xstrata merger, perhaps anticipating regulators’ potential veto of such a behemoth.Will the proposed merger of Glencore and Xstrata buck the recent trend of failed big mining deals and give the mergers and acquisitions...

The John Lewis Partnership was back in the news this week as the annual announcement of its bonus round for workers hit the headlines.The 14 percent of salary payout for all partners - equivalent to seven weeks’ pay - is...