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• British rage at bankers boils over

  March 25, 2009 @ 10:42 am | by John Collins

  Fiona Walsh’s London Briefing today talks about the many protests planning to bring London’s financial district to a halt next week as the G20 leaders meet in the city.

  “People working in the City of London and in the Docklands financial districts have been advised to dress down – jeans and T-shirts instead of suit and tie and supermarket carrier bags instead of briefcases – to avoid becoming targets. Some employers are even advising staff to work from home for the duration of the demonstrations.”

  

  It seems however the rage at senior bankers is bubbling over already with news this morning that the Edinburgh home of former RBS chief Sir Fred Goodwin (see pic above) has been vandalised.

  It seems the “summer of rage” that British authorities are predicting and which Fiona mentions in her column may have kicked off already.

• Not-as-bad is the new good

  January 7, 2009 @ 12:07 pm | by John McManus

  Fiona Walsh, our woman in the City writes this morning in London Briefing on the changed face of retail where success is not doing as badly as everybody expects.  Debenhams and Next did it yesterday and Marks reports today

• Carphone Warehouse founder makes wrong call

  December 10, 2008 @ 2:00 pm | by John Collins

  Fiona Walsh’s London Briefing today looks at the glittering career of Carphone Warehouse co-founder David Ross who has had to step down after using his equity to guarantee personal loans.

  “As for Ross, is he very bad, very stupid or simply forgetful? Whichever it is, his reputation is in tatters over his failure to disclose that he had pledged millions of pounds of shares in companies where he served as a director as collateral for personal loans. The bulk of the shares used as collateral by Ross – worth about £160 million at current prices but far more when the pledges were made between 2006 and 2008 – were in Carphone Warehouse, where, until Monday, he was deputy chairman.

  But Carphone is not the only company to be dragged into the scandal. Ross failed to tell fellow directors in three other firms that he had used his stakes to raise further cash for his personal business interests. National Express was the most prominent of these. The other two were storage company Big Yellow and Cosalt, the Grimsby-based marine safety company.”

• Bailout offers respite for beleaguered Brown

  October 16, 2008 @ 11:11 am | by John Collins

  LONDON BRIEFING: UK premier was praised for rescue plan, but winning the next election may be tougher, writes Fiona Walsh  

  FROM ZERO to hero . . . as stock markets around the world rebound on the back of the co-ordinated bank bailout schemes, Britain’s lame-duck prime minister is enjoying a rare moment of glory.

  Slammed for his dithering and virtually written off a few weeks ago, Gordon Brown is now being hailed as the driving force behind the global financial rescue plan – the man who helped haul the world back from the brink. (more…)