Credit crisis? Will someone please tell the stock market

Sunday, 11 May 2008

It was a trip to China that showed Tom Ewing, the head of Fidelity's UK growth fund, which British companies should receive his investment money. Along with his wife, Clare, he spent six weeks travelling round China, taking nine internal flights and visiting as much as they could of the vast country.

Ethiopia: It costs $5 for a tea, $17 to save a child's life

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Jilaye Muluken's first son died of rabies at the age of seven; her second died after a fever at the age of two; her third was stillborn. The pain of losing her children so young, to disease so preventable, is not uncommon here in the village of Woreb, northern Ethiopia.

'Answer that and I'll kill you.' The media bow to mining's alpha male – now for Rio

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Chewing his gum with quick, aggressive bites, Marius Kloppers, the 45-year-old crop-headed Afrikaaner chief executive of mining giant BHP Billiton, looks very much the poster boy of his extraordinarily macho industry. One of the seven journalists summoned to Goldman Sachs' Fleet Street headquarters on Wednesday for a news briefing later said of him: "He's like a South African army general, a really tough guy. Very different to Tom."

From Mr Buy-to-Let to Mr Die-in-Debt: the door to riches opened for Jim Moore and then it slammed in his face

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Easter, a chocolate-flavoured afterthought of a religious festival in these secular times, has come and gone again. But if by chance you're putting on a passion play and looking for someone to nail to a tree, Jim Moore is your man.

The City Diary

Sunday, 11 May 2008

With Mayor Boris as his boss, Bendy Hendy might prefer a ticket to ride

Ken Hanna: Crunch day for the financialchief of Cadbury

Saturday, 10 May 2008

Best Buy calls for carphone

Friday, 9 May 2008

It might have a tacky name and a garish corporate colour scheme that makes it look like Ikea in reverse. But Best Buy's entrance into Britain poses a serious threat to the country's existing electronics retailers, not to mention new kids on the block like Tesco.

So what would Cameron do?

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Tony Blair once famously appealed for "eye-catching initiatives" with which he could be personally associated. David Cameron's decision to "embed" some of his shadow ministers with Rolls-Royce isn't so much eye-catching as eye-popping. The Conservatives spent a good deal of the 1980s telling us why manufacturing and the balance of payments didn't matter. Now Mr Cameron wants to learn from Rolls-Royce, a great British manufacturing success story and a major exporter. The Conservative leader said yesterday that "we want to understand in detail the factors that contribute to successful science, technology, engineering and manufacturing in the 21st century". They've taken another leaf out of the New Labour playbook; just as Blair and Brown before 1997 sought to build up a relationship with a sector of the economy that their party had been traditionally hostile to – the City of London – so too do the Cameroons now seek to make friends with the UK's unloved manufacturing base, concentrated in the North. Mr Cameron asked yesterday of his party – perhaps almost on his own behalf as much as that of the country – "how will you respond to the increased scrutiny you will now receive as the alternative government in waiting?" When it comes to business and the economy, some of the answer, surely, lies in how they have responded so far.

Jarvis: the company that made a billion and nearly lost it all

Sunday, 4 May 2008

Paris Moayedi, the charismatic Iranian entrepreneur, has an unfortunate habit of being away when news breaks on Jarvis, the construction and infrastructure group he turned into a £1bn empire.

On the edge with the elusive Mr Reiss

Sunday, 4 May 2008

Catch him if you can but there is one retailer who is still smiling amid the gloom on the high street. He's David Reiss, owner of the womens/menswear fashion chain that bears his name.