Tag: Business and finance

THERESA MAY’S speech on January 17th set Britain definitively on a path to a “hard” Brexit, in which it will leave not just the EU but the European single market. This was not what the City of London wanted to hear. The prime minister did at least pick out finance, along with carmaking, as an industry for which “elements of current single-market arrangements” might remain in place as part of a future trade deal. The City is holding out hope that a bespoke deal built on the existing legal concept of “equivalence” could still accord it a fair degree of access to Europe.

“Passporting”, which allows financial firms in one EU member state automatically to serve customers in the other 27 without setting up local operations, was always going to be difficult after Brexit. Outside the single market, says Damian Carolan of Allen & Overy, a law firm, the “passport as we know it is dead.” Already, two big banks, HSBC and UBS, this week each confirmed plans to move 1,000 jobs from London.

Financial companies all have to firm up their contingency plans. For the City, these focus on so-called “equivalence” provisions, allowing third-country financial…Continue reading

AMONG other things, the start of Donald Trump’s presidency this week heralds a collision between campaigning rhetoric and legislative and economic reality. What follows will be a learning experience for all, it is fair to say. Though not perhaps the most consequential of the looming reality checks, the outcome of a brewing debate over a proposed border-adjusted tax plan could prove a taste of things to come. As Mr Trump and his Congress work to make policy, there are many ways for things to go awry.

Both Mr Trump and congressional Republicans are keen to cut taxes on corporations. America’s inefficient corporate-tax system has remarkably high rates but leaks like a sieve, yielding a pitiful tax take (see chart). As a solution, Mr Trump favours a large cut in the corporate-tax rate, from 35% to 15%, and a chance for companies to repatriate foreign profits at a tax rate of 10%. Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives and chief Republican policy wonk, has something very different in mind.

At present American firms are assessed for tax on their global income. This encourages multinationals either to use clever…Continue reading

BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO (BAT) announced on January 17th a final deal to buy Reynolds American for $49bn. BAT already owns 42% of Reynolds; buying the rest of it will create the world’s largest listed tobacco company by sales and profits. It will peddle brands such as Dunhill, Camel and Newport. The casual observer might imagine the deal to be a frantic bid to revive an ailing industry. On the contrary. Cigarettes may kill you, but the big companies that make them are rather healthy.

That is despite a decline in smoking rates. In 2015 just over a fifth of adults smoked, estimates the World Health Organisation, down from almost a quarter ten years earlier. This drop hardly helps companies, but it isn’t ruinous either.

Smoking is still popular in certain spots. More than three-quarters of men light up in Indonesia, for example. The habit is becoming more common among men in Africa and the eastern…Continue reading

“FLYING’S very dangerous. In 1987, there were 30 airline accidents; 211 were fatalities and 230 were definitely passengers.” When “Rain Man” was released in 1988, airlines edited this scene out of the film before showing it to passengers. The deleted segment was important to the plot—it explains why Raymond and Charlie drive cross-country rather than use more convenient modes of transport. Still, airlines’ squeamishness is hardly surprising. Despite Tom Cruise’s assurances that air travel is “the safest…in the world”, flyers prefer not to be reminded of the one-in-11m chance that they might die. To this day, airlines avoid playing the scene on shared screens. (Only Qantas allowed it to be shown: Raymond lists it as the only airline to have never crashed.)

If aeroplane-disaster flicks such as “Sully” (2016, pictured above) and “Flight” (2012) are obviously unsuitable for in-flight entertainment, what do carriers look for when offering a film? On short-haul flights with shared screens, the goal is to find something that might appeal to everybody. That is a tough task. In his book on censorship, Michael Cornick argues that “terrorism, nudity or sex…Continue reading

AS THEY slid down the streets of Davos this week, many executives will have felt a question gnawing in their guts. Who matters most: shareholders or the people? Around the world a revolt seems under way. A growing cohort—perhaps a majority—of citizens want corporations to be cuddlier, invest more at home, pay higher taxes and wages and employ more people, and are voting for politicians who say they will make all that happen. Yet according to law and convention in most rich countries, firms are run in the interest of shareholders, who usually want companies to use every legal means to maximise their profits.

Naive executives fear that they cannot reconcile these two impulses. Should they fire staff, trim costs and expand abroad—and face the wrath of Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, the disgust of their children and the risk that they’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes? Or do they bend to popular opinion and allow profits to fall, inviting the danger that, in the run up to their 2018 annual general meeting, a fund manager from, say, Fidelity or Capital will topple them for underperformance?

Wiser executives…Continue reading

IN THE tense, uncertain days of late 2013, when Ukrainians filled Kiev’s Independence Square in protest at their government’s turn towards Russia, the then president, Viktor Yanukovych, grabbed a lifeline. To bolster his resolve in resisting the demands of pro-EU protesters, Russia lent Ukraine $3bn in the form of a bond. Mr Yanukovych was subsequently ousted anyway. Russia and Ukraine went to war. The money was never paid back.

So Russia took legal action against Ukraine. The bond was issued under English law, and a hearing began this week in London. Those on the Ukrainian side say the country has no case to answer. In 2015 a group of creditors agreed to a debt restructuring on favourable terms: Russia refused to take part. And Russia itself made it much harder for Ukraine to repay the bond by annexing Crimea and stoking war in the Donbass. Moreover, it has fiddled with gas supplies to the country and slapped on trade sanctions. In 2013-15 Ukraine’s GDP dropped by 15%. The purchasing power of ordinary folk has fallen far more. In 2013 eight hryvni bought one American dollar; it now takes more than 25.

It is not clear, however,…Continue reading

GIANT, cross-border mergers in Europe have been rare in recent years. Deals fail to happen even when mid-sized companies—such as family-owned and run specialist manufacturers in northern Italy or the Mittelstand in Germany—have the chance to gain global heft. For that blame founding owner-managers, many of whom are reluctant to lose control of treasured companies. Blame too an artisanal culture, particularly in southern Europe, in which firms’ owners say they are content to remain small and relatively obscure. Occasionally, too, nationalist politicians block efforts by perfidious foreigners to snaffle prized local brands.

Now, though, one of the largest-ever mergers in Europe actually looks set to go ahead. Luxottica, an Italian maker of fancy specs that was founded in 1961—it owns brands such as Ray Ban and Oakley—is to merge with Essilor, a spiffy French producer of lenses. The joint entity is set to combine Italian style with deft French engineering. The deal is supposed to be completed by the end of the year, creating a new entity with a market value of €46bn ($49bn), 140,000 staff and annual revenues of €15bn. It will be…Continue reading

An eye-catching opportunity

IT MAY be an exaggeration to talk of French firms “colonising” corporate Italy. Some Italian business leaders nonetheless fret about expansionists from across the northern border plucking control of some of their most celebrated local firms. Family-run companies, especially, can make tempting prospects: ones that make excellent products but struggle to grow, or that face agonising succession problems, are notably juicy targets.

The latest example, announced this week, is the merger between Luxottica, an Italian maker of fancy specs, and Essilor, a spiffy French producer of lenses. Together they will produce an entity with a market value of at least €46bn ($49bn), 140,000 staff and annual revenues of €15bn. The deal, one of the largest cross-border tie-ups attempted by European firms, had long been expected by industry watchers. The idea is to produce an entity that combines Italian style and skills in marketing with deft French engineering.

The new firm will be listed on the Paris bourse (as probably its eighth-largest firm) later this year. That will mark the culmination of…Continue reading

SEGREGATION on airlines has a long history. Sometimes it is understandable. Carriers’ business models depend on them drawing a curtain between those of us stuffed into economy-class seats and our betters who have paid for lie-flat beds. Other times it has been immoral. While racial segregation on American planes was never legal, in some airports during the first half of the 20th century it was the norm to insist that blacks did not mix with whites in the terminals. 

That particular outrage has been consigned to the past. But new forms of segregation are replacing it. This time, though, they are less to do with enshrining differences and more for the benefit of those being segregated. Or so the argument goes.

On 11th January, Ashwani Lohani, the boss of Air India, told The Hindu newspaper that the carrier plans to reserve six seats in the front rows of its aeroplanes for women passengers who are travelling alone. As the paper explains:

The move assumes significance, as it comes soon after an on-board…Continue reading

IF THERE is a consensus right now in American politics, it must be that infrastructure spending is a good thing. It employs workers, improves economic efficiency and, at the moment, can be financed at rock-bottom bond yields. So why don’t governments get on with it?

The problem is multi-faceted. Although people tend to be enthusiastic about infrastructure in general, they are more critical of specific projects. If they are in the country, then they ruin the currency; if they are in the town, then they ruin neighbourhoods or impinge on private-property rights. When it comes to public infrastructure projects, the benefits are long term but the costs are short term. The politician that authorises the project is rarely the same one that opens it. So an elected leader gets all the flak from those who oppose this white elephant/blot on the landscape but none of the praise for the reduced traffic jams or cheaper power that ensue. Occasionally a leader might be tempted into authorising a big scheme (like Britain’s high-speed rail) but, as the Continue reading