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Come here for my take on money matters from a Scottish perspective
24 hours ago
You can license bankers, claw back bonuses for the bad ones, and jail the reckless ones. But what do you do about banks?
Westminster's Banking Standards Commission offers lots of analysis and strong recommendations about what to do with the culture of banking.
06:49 UK time, Tuesday, 18 June 2013
As Jason Rose has been finding out, Scotch and soda remains a staple of the 19th hole for America's golf and country club set.
But it's only one part of whisky's appeal in the world's biggest market. If you thought it was a mature market, both in its sales prospects and in the average age of the whisky drinker, think again.
15:30 UK time, Monday, 17 June 2013
A bit of domestic clearing up in the Fraser vaults over the weekend uncovered a flyer for a Bank of Scotland savings account. It dated back to 2008, and in very large type, it offered interest at 6.5%.
It read like something from another world - one in which savers got rewarded with rates ahead of inflation, and in which banks could deliver extraordinary returns, helped by their extraordinary lending and investment activity.
19:11 UK time, Friday, 14 June 2013
The prospect of a trade deal between the European Union and the USA is a big prize, but we've learned the stumbling block is the French desire to protect its film industry.
In Paris, they take this very seriously. And poetically. Thus spake Jacques Toubon, the French minister of culture in 1993, during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, back in 1993:
21:55 UK time, Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Stephen Hester will leave Royal Bank of Scotland with the potential to earn a lot more than public opinion has allowed him to trouser over the past four and a half years. In the market for turnaround specialists, this hunting enthusiast has bagged a big trophy for his CV.
He's taken a lot of the flak for anger at what went wrong with RBS. Some of it was on his watch, notably the Libor rate-fixing scandal. But most of it dates back to the Fred Goodwin era.
20:13 UK time, Tuesday, 11 June 2013
For a fizzy, sugary flavoured drink, it's striking what a special place Irn Bru holds in Scottish affections and dental cavities.
I'll dare to suggest that that might have rather less to do with the product than with the marketers and advertisers, who have, for decades, consistently shared the brand's sense of humour with its customers.
06:57 UK time, Friday, 7 June 2013
She smiles as she clutches the sustainable packaging of her ethically-sourced dog snacks. Chris, from East Kilbride, put her redundancy money, with some grant funding, into a new firm, Pawsitively Natural.
She started by baking biscuits for one of her own dogs which has a sensitive stomach. She uses ingredients of a quality that humans could eat. Back by input from university nutritionists (one of three university collaborations), a key ingredient is seaweed sourced from the Isle of Lewis.
08:00 UK time, Wednesday, 5 June 2013
These are hard times to attract investment into Europe, let alone Scotland, so it's a notable achievement for Scotland to be told it's improving its performance at that within the UK nations and regions.
It's all the more significant when you recall George Osborne warning that the prospect of independence was already putting businesses off investing in Scotland.
18:33 UK time, Saturday, 1 June 2013
There are snakes under the stone marked "pensions", which is one reason why I ignore it too often, and at my peril.
I'm not alone. On Monday, we'll get the latest from Lloyds Banking Group with its regular update on the woeful state of the nation's retirement planning.
15:05 UK time, Thursday, 23 May 2013
Douglas added analysis to:
With a hiatus over Britain's aviation policy, the future of London's airport is often seen as an issue for Londoners.
And while it's a noisy row for those under the flight paths, the economic impact of the bottlenecks in London matters at least as much to those who fly in as those who fly out.
15:37 UK time, Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Not long off a red-eye flight from New York, I've returned to a country where the public attitude to immigration has politicians worried.
And I've left a country where it's trying to solve its own tricky immigration challenge.
11:30 UK time, Friday, 17 May 2013
There are places where you can almost touch the economic power and see global change taking place.
Standing on the Bund in Shanghai, for instance, watching the river cargo hurry to market, and looking across to the gleaming Pudong business district.
07:44 UK time, Wednesday, 15 May 2013
The search for a cure to cancer is not one for the impatient, or those short of money.
But at least one small team of Scottish researchers may be getting close to something significant.
07:55 UK time, Friday, 10 May 2013
You only occasionally get insights into the thinking of the captains of industry.
More often than not, they have a prepared line to take, and fear thinking out loud for fear of how an original thought might affect those dreaded stakeholders, not least shareholders. For Gerald Ratner, they recall, it was all over in one sentence.
13:24 UK time, Thursday, 9 May 2013
Four years ago, Edinburgh looked doomed. Its two giant banks had required enormous rescue packages.
I was fielding questions - mainly from London - about how the Scottish capital would handle the disaster for jobs, supplier companies and the self-confidence of the Scottish financial sector.
11:20 UK time, Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Douglas added analysis to:
"The questions on the energy question, which is never far from the economic part of the independence debate, are how you assess both risk and return, and how much appetite for risk - both downside and upside - Scottish voters will have when they vote in September next year.
"To watch the rate at which pounds, dollars, euros, Chinese renminbi and Korean won are being drilled into the North Sea and West of Shetland, you wouldn't think there's much concern about constitutional change.
07:00 UK time, Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Four trillion pounds: the possible value of oil and gas under Scottish waters. That's four thousand billion. It was a tantalising prospect of a lot of lucre looking out from the front of a Sunday paper this past weekend, potentially transforming the debate on Scotland's economic future.
Behind it is a projection of the oil price going as high as $270 per barrel, from the just over $100 it is trading at now.
22:37 UK time, Thursday, 2 May 2013
It's arguably the most important economic question in Scotland's independent referendum. No, not the choice of currency, nor the future path of oil revenues.
It's the question of what would happen to economic growth. Or to put a bit more simply: would Scotland be better or worse off if it were independent?
13:36 UK time, Wednesday, 1 May 2013
Douglas added analysis to:
What Vince Cable seems to have in mind is the possibility of using his department's power to ban individuals from being company directors - not only in senior financial jobs, but in any company.
And he feels constrained in taking action on that - either through criminal or civil action - while the Crown Office investigation drags on.
08:12 UK time, Wednesday, 1 May 2013
There's public pressure, an appetite for some exemplary bans and a bit of mischief-making behind Vince Cable's call for faster action on Scotland's banks.
The business secretary's mischief-making is clear from the recipient, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, advocate general in the Scotland Office and chief Scots law officer in the UK government.
Douglas joined BBC Scotland at the moment the financial crisis struck in 2008, reporting on the meltdown at RBS and the collapse of Dunfermline Building Society.
His beat also includes close attention to the offshore oil and renewable energy sectors, and he takes a mostly professional interest in whisky.
Working in Scottish journalism since 1989, he previously worked for The Herald and The Scotsman, among other newspapers.
He has covered politics from the Holyrood parliament, as well as education, the arts and the Highlands and Islands.
He is co-author of the Political Guide to Modern Scotland.
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