Tag: Business
Rebuild system for savers, not market makers
As the financial sector has become global, deregulated and regulated over the last 30 years, transactions and trading have increasingly replaced trust relationships.
The parable of the ox
Since the ox was no longer being weighed, the key to success lay not in correctly assessing its weight, but rather in correctly assessing what other people would guess. Or what others would guess others would guess. And so on.
Corporate values are not just a calculation
We are not interested in whether companies make good or bad cost-benefit calculations. We are interested in what these calculations tell us about their values.
Rent-seeking lessons from Mubarak to Louis XIV
If business is endlessly frustrating and politics endlessly rewarding, the career choice for able and enterprising people is obvious.
It is time to end the oligopoly in banking
Plurality and diversity are generally sources of stability – in banking as in nature.
Lessons from the house that Lewis built
The British retailer John Lewis, owned by an employee trust and long a favourite of metropolitan women, has now become a favourite of their politician husbands.
The Kay Review – Interim Report
The interim report of the Kay review into the effect of UK equity markets on the competitiveness of UK business, was released yesterday. It...
Investors should ignore the rustles in the undergrowth
In conditions of ignorance, people seize on any information available, even if their reason should tell them that it is irrelevant. Just watch the occupants of the airport lounge fiddling with their BlackBerrys.
Global Brief Interview
John was interviewed recently by Global Brief, an international affairs magazine that covers politics, business and culture. They discussed competitive advantage, the wealth of...
Genius can change the world
Is there such a thing as a business genius? It is a moot question this month, because in modern times Apple’s Steve Jobs, who died last week, was probably the individual with the strongest claim to that title.