John Kay

The financial world used to have a diversity of corporate organisational forms – listed company partnership, mutual. Most partnerships and mutuals became listed companies, a change that was not usually for the better.

In the regulation of business affairs, from dress codes to rules on takeovers, it is always tempting to try to translate general principles into specific rules. But the world is rarely sufficiently clear and certain for this to be possible, and if it seems so today it will have ceased to be so tomorrow.

No one loves the bearer of bad news. But short sellers, Wikileaks, accountants who mark to market, and even rating agencies, should be applauded for telling people the news they do not want to hear.

A business secretary should focus on issues that enable business to improve how it serves the public. He should not act as a super lobbyist collating the suggestions of the chief executives and public relations consultants constantly banging on his door.

At the medieval courts Shakespeare described, the exercise of power was not a means to an end, it was itself the end. The political and economic environment has been transformed. But human nature has not, and the factors that drive powerful men today are little different from those that drove them five centuries ago.

The modern cult of the heroic chief executive is at the root of the problem. Greater shareholder activism may help, but the most valuable restraint would be more effective checks and balances within the company itself.

The richest men are not the most materialistic. Nor has it ever been otherwise.

Like all business success, innovative success is based on matching capabilities to market.

All our experience of the development of information technology starts from what the customer might want rather than what the technology might do.

If you aim to create a dynamic, successful business, a state-owned utility is not the place to start.