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Welcome to Peston’s Picks - the home of my reports and analysis of the issues in business that matter to us all
17 hours ago
Scotland, and Edinburgh in particular, has a world class financial services industry, in banking, insurance and fund management.
The question posed by today's Scotland Analysis Paper from the Treasury is whether a Scotland that separated from the rest of the UK would be able to retain the bigger banks that are part of that industry.
05:07 UK time, Thursday, 16 May 2013
BP's financial recovery from the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 is being put in jeopardy by the escalating amounts being paid to businesses in the Gulf of Mexico region to compensate them for economic harm.
The UK oil giant complains that the interpretation of rules for assessing "business economic loss" are being systematically abused such that colossal sums are being handed to enterprises that suffered no detriment from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
18:11 UK time, Monday, 13 May 2013
Will the UK's financial regulators be cripplingly embarrassed by the Co-op's financial woes?
Perhaps not devastatingly humiliated, though perhaps mildly so - which means that there may be relatively more heat on the Treasury.
08:22 UK time, Monday, 13 May 2013
For the wider Co-op group or movement, banking is turning into a hideously expensive business.
As the Co-op evaluates - in partnership with the newly created regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority - how much additional capital it needs to find as a protection against losses, we will learn quite how expensive.
13:24 UK time, Friday, 10 May 2013
A couple of seemingly bad things have happened at the Co-operative bank in the past 12 hours.
Its credit rating has been downgraded by Moody's to "not prime" (a euphemism for junk) and it's losing its chief executive, Barry Tootell.
13:59 UK time, Thursday, 9 May 2013
I blithely write that we as taxpayers own Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds - or rather the state controls 81% and 39% of these recuperating banks respectively.
But as and when they are privatised (and as you may recall, RBS hopes that'll be next year), who actually deserves to own them?
08:36 UK time, Wednesday, 8 May 2013
With unemployment among 18 to 24 year-olds nudging a million, and all manner of statistics showing that social mobility is neither what it was nor what it should be (arguably), the question of how young people secure company internships and work experience has become a resonant one.
You will recall the issue became politically charged not that long ago, with messrs Cameron and Clegg not exactly speaking as one about whether it is unfair and economically harmful for employers to give work experience to the children of mates (PM and deputy disagree on interns).
10:24 UK time, Tuesday, 7 May 2013
Naturally most coverage of Lord Lawson's euro-Damascene moment in the Times has focussed on who he is - one of the two most influential chancellors of modern times - rather than what he says.
So what about the content of his argument that the UK would now be better off outside of the European Union.
07:31 UK time, Friday, 3 May 2013
Royal Bank of Scotland, the giant ailing bank 82% owned by taxpayers, is on the mend - if not quite mended.
For the first three months of the year, it made a profit at the operating level, before tax and after tax, which may be a unique occurrence since the crash of 2008.
09:02 UK time, Tuesday, 30 April 2013
There are two stories today of big corporate deals done in 2008 bearing some kind of fruit in the spring of 2013.
And what has emerged, not all of it juicy and succulent, tells us something about the soil of rather uneven quality that is today's British and global economy.
11:37 UK time, Monday, 29 April 2013
Is there a connection between Balfour Beatty's profit warning (shares have fallen more than 13% this morning) and the Public Accounts Committee's (PAC) critique of the Treasury's self-styled Infrastructure Plan?
Well the PAC is really talking about the future when it says that the Infrastructure Plan "is a list of projects, not a real plan with a strategic vision and clear priorities".
13:57 UK time, Friday, 26 April 2013
The Today Programme this morning highlighted a new initiative to coordinate lung-cancer research in London, with a view to increasing the availability of targeted, genetically personalised therapies for lung-cancer.
As you may know, this is an issue close to my heart, because my wife, the writer Sian Busby - a lifelong non-smoker - died of lung cancer at the age of 51 in September (which is why this is a slightly different blog from many I write).
16:14 UK time, Thursday, 25 April 2013
The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is deliberating on its final report, which - I am told - is unlikely to be published before June.
A tricky issue for it is how to respond to the recommendation from the Governor of the Bank of England that Royal Bank of Scotland should be cleaved in two, with the remaining toxic assets - and they are pretty stinky - retained in the public sector, while "good" RBS is privatised.
08:01 UK time, Wednesday, 24 April 2013
For Lloyds, the Co-Op's decision not to buy 631 branches with £25bn of deposits from it should not be too damaging.
The European Commission is forcing Lloyds to dispose of this operation, which is being rebranded as TSB, to promote competition, and that will still happen - by floating the separated business on the stock market.
07:45 UK time, Wednesday, 24 April 2013
The Bank of England believes that the continued serious weakness of the economy stems in part from the perceived reluctance of banks to lend to small businesses.
In extending by a year and broadening to other credit providers its scheme to supply cheap funds to banks - the Funding for Lending Scheme - the Bank of England is introducing a new incentive for small business lending.
08:06 UK time, Tuesday, 23 April 2013
The newish Archbishop of Canterbury has strayed into unusual territory for such a senior prelate, which is to make some proposals to mend the banking system and British economy.
Serious reform is necessary, he said, because we are in "a serious depression".
09:24 UK time, Monday, 22 April 2013
Economic recoveries led by private-sector investment are few and far between.
Companies, for understandable reasons, tend to wait till they see a consistent pattern of rising demand from customers before they embark on ambitious plans to expand capacity and hire lots of new people.
07:43 UK time, Wednesday, 17 April 2013
Tesco has probably had worse or more humiliating days. But not for a long time.
Pulling out of the US, with the abandonment of its Fresh & Easy venture, is costing it £1.2bn in money and probably as much again in loss of face.
08:27 UK time, Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Whenever I ask government officials and ministers why they are taking so long to reach a deal with EDF on building the promised vast new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, they say "40 years" - and turn a whiter shade of pale.
What they mean is that the French energy giant says it needs a commitment of between 35 and 40 years on the price to be paid by consumers for the power generated by Hinkley, before it presses the button on £14bn of expenditure for the two new reactors.
08:25 UK time, Friday, 5 April 2013
It is perhaps a bit odd that lords and MPs on the banking standards commission have chosen to chastise and publicly humiliate two former chief executives of HBOS and the erstwhile chairman - and to ask the regulator whether the three of them should be banned from working in the City.
To be clear, it is not the fact of censure that is odd. It is the timing, and that it's just these three rather than the great gang of bosses of failed British banks.
Robert has won numerous awards for his journalism, including Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year (twice) from the Royal Television Society, Performer of the Year from the Broadcasting Press Guild, and Broadcaster of the Year and Journalist of the Year from the Wincott Foundation.
Prior to joining the BBC, he was political editor and financial editor of the Financial Times, City Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and a columnist for the New Statesman and Sunday Times.
He broadcast and published a series of influential reports about the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis.
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