INSIGHT

The urban slang term “to be corzined” can be defined roughly as follows:

When something of value is stolen, and everyone who was in charge of safeguarding said item claims ignorance of just about anything.

The wishes in this title are, of course, for a truly effective risk management system for financial institutions. And the beggars, unfortunately, are us.

The Phones4U story provides an irresistible opportunity to discuss CSR, which has also been in the news recently.

It is rare that an established and profitable business goes into administration. The Phones4U story is significant, not just locally, but because of what it reveals about management, finance and investing.

The summer saw markets extend the pre-existing moribund state into out and out docility. There is a growing acceptance among financial institutions that central banks will apply the sedative of monetary policy should any instability emerge.

Gazprom earned $32bn last year and is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world. In a world of overpriced companies it looks startlingly cheap trading at just 2.7x earnings.

The Economist highlighted that Basilio Gonzalez is an “unusually well paid civil servant”. He earns $213,000 a year, which is not bad for a 70 year old. What catches the eye is that his job is President of the National Minimum Salary Commission.

The environmental impact of extended supply chains is increasingly coming under scrutiny. Mark Johnson of Warwick Business School analysed the supply chain of the number one US importer of bottled water: Fiji water.

One of the hats I wear is as the Deputy Chairman of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull (GBS) LEP. In all there are 39 Local Enterprise Partnerships in England.

Housing prices up by 9.9%” ONS.
“How Help to Buy helped to fuel London’s property bubble” Daily Telegraph.
“The average annual gain over the next five years will be around six per cent” Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

In the days before international coordinated banking regulation it was often claimed that the Governor of the Bank of England merely had to raise his eyebrow in an expression of displeasure and the recipient bank would get the message and stop misbehaving.

A vast pool of liquidity has been thrown at the global economic system by the central banks since the credit crunch. One of the results has been flattening of all yields and general asset price inflation.