A Long Time In Finance
Two veteran City editors, Neil Collins and Jonathan Ford, take the long view of finance, markets and money. Presented in partnership with The Library of Mistakes, the podcast offers insightful analysis and commentary on financial history and current events.
Episodes
The Turning Point: The Necessary Collapse of Rolls-Royce (Part 2)
When Rolls-Royce went bust in February 1971, it was a national disaster. One commentator likened it to discovering "Westminster Abbey had been turned into a brothel". At the root of the failure was an expensive and risky project to build a large jet engine, the RB211, to power one of the revolutionary new widebody jets that were about to take to the skies. In the second of our two part series, we
The Turning Point: The Necessary Collapse of Rolls-Royce (Part 1)
When Rolls-Royce went bust in February 1971, it was a national disaster. One commentator likened it to discovering "Westminster Abbey had been turned into a brothel". At the root of the failure was an expensive and risky project to build a large jet engine, the RB211, to power one of the revolutionary new widebody jets that were about to take to the skies. In this two part series we look at the qu
The Turning Point: How Arnault gobbled up LVMH
How did Bernard Arnault go from running a construction company in Lille to being Europe's richest man? Neil and Jonathan look at the moment that changed everything for Arnault, the man they call "the Wolf in Cashmere": the audacious takeover of LVMH.The show is made in partnership with The Library of Mistakes who are offering a 25% discount on their Advanced Valuation in Financial Markets cou
The Art of the Squeal
When a debt crisis unfolds behind closed doors, who really has the upper hand? Taking in a range of characters – from Donald Trump to Philip Green, the Barclay brothers and the private equity firms – this is a potted history of how some of finance's biggest names have turned reneging into an art form. In this live recording of A Long Time in Finance, hosts Jonathan Ford and Neil Col
The Turning Point: Kodak's Digital Asteroid
Kodak, the photography company George Eastman created in the late 19th century, was built on restless R&D and bold innovation. So why did it flunk the shift from chemical to digital photography - having invented the first digital camera. We talk to the inventor, Steve Sasson about how his brainwave almost killed a company. The show is made in partnership with The Library of Mistakes
The Turning Point: The Story of ASML
Welcome to a new series where we look at big businesses and what led to their big break or failure..ASML is the biggest European company you’ve never heard of and the Continent’s only true tech giant. But how did this seemingly anonymous Dutch business come to be the world’s biggest producer of key machinery used in printing semiconductors? It involves Americans, all conquering Japanese expor
The Derailment of Railtrack
It was supposed to bring in the cash to revive Britain's creaking railway network. But then it all went wrong for the listed network owner. A series of tragic accidents undermined public confidence, beginning the slow unravelling of rail privatisation as a whole. Neil and Jonathan talk to Gerald Corbett, one time boss of Railtrack, about the privatisation project, the accidents, and what
New Year Special: The Guinness Scandal
It's often seen as the point where the City dumped its old gentlemanly mores ("My word is my bond") for a new "win at all costs" culture - one that the UK's new regulatory regime singularly failed to quell. But what was the Guinness Scandal of the 1980s all about, why was it important, and what were its consequences? Forty years on, we talk to author Nick Kochan about "Deadly Ernest" Saunders, bos
How Britain Lost Its Shipbuilding Industry
Everyone knows that Britain once built almost all the world's ships, and now builds almost none. But what were the steps by which this mighty activity disintegrated? And no less importantly, how did it climb so high in the first place, when the US was the world's biggest ship building nation in the early 19th century? What are the economics of shipbuilding and do we need to build them? W
Britain's Energy Disaster
In the 19th century, Britain transformed itself into the workshop of the world by harnessing the power of coal and steam. Now a new energy revolution - that of renewable power - looks set to turn the UK into something closer to a workhouse inhabited by the destitute. But how did it all happen and why did politicians buy into it? We look at how Britain fashioned a disastrous energy trap for itself,
Barbarians at the Gate: A Short History of Private Equity
From a few tiny funds in the 1970s, private equity has transformed the financial world and is now a $7 trillion industry, accounting for 30% of the US private sector economy. But how did it all happen, why have pension funds poured so much into these funds, and how do the practitioners get away with paying themselves such eye watering fees? We talk to buyout expert Peter Morris about this str
Britain's Melmotte? The Cautionary Tale of Robert Maxwell
The publishing mogul Robert Maxwell lived a life shrouded in mystery that was ultimately capped by great disgrace. But was he an out and out villain, like Anthony Trollope's fictional swindler in The Way We Live Now, or a more nuanced and tragic figure? We discuss the life, legacy and deals of the great pension purloiner with his biographer, John Preston. Hosted by Jonathan Ford and Neil
The Green Shield Stamp Story
With Britain's economy mired in 1970s misery, we thought we'd brighten things up a bit. So this week we present the most 1970s story ever: the history of GREEN SHIELD STAMPS! Oldies will know, but for younger listeners, you collected them in books, kids, and exchanged them for glass tumblers and soda syphons. Groovy huh? Neil and Jonathan talk to Prof Leigh Sparks about how they worked a
The Art of the Shred
Fred Goodwin led Royal Bank of Scotland to ruin and Britain to the brink of financial disaster. But who was the man they called Fred the Shred and how did he build RBS into (briefly) the world's largest bank? And how was he allowed to make such a complete horlicks of it? In our first live show at the Library of Mistakes in Edinburgh, Neil and Jonathan discuss these issues with Ian Fraser, author o
The Great QE Rip-off
QE or QT? The impact of these hangover expressions from another era is only now becoming apparent. Christopher Mahon of Columbia Threadneedle talks to Jonathan and Neil about how the Bank of England bought government stocks and sold them back at a loss. One example:paying £101 (QE) and later selling it for £28 (QT). The cost of this insane behaviour to the taxpayer? Probably over £115 billion (tha
The Spiders That Ate Ebbsfleet
The government wants to build new towns on disused railway land to tackle the UK's housing crisis. A cracking idea, but will it be able to? Not just the planners but Natural England lie in wait. Neil and Jonathan are joined by Michael Dnes to investigate the murky tale of a new town on disused railway land in Kent that was eaten by a colony of jumping spiders. Presented by Jonathan Ford and N
Talking War-onomics
Neil and Jonathan talk to Duncan Weldon about his new book Blood and Treasure about the interplay between war, society and economics from the violent larceny of the Vikings to the GDP-chomping total wars of the 20th century.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Duncan Weldon.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Making Plans for British Steel
Britain's steel industry has all but vanished, and the government has intervened to save the last blast furnaces. But how did the country that invented the steel industry reach this pass and does it even matter? We talk to historian Ewan Gibbs about steel, the state, and the importance of ownership and production in an uncertain world.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ewan Gibbs.Pro
The Rearmament Pod: Lessons From Hard Times in the 1930s
Generals and politicians calling for rearmament often talk about the UK facing a "1937 moment" of rising threats and a deteriorating international situation. But what actually happened in the late 1930s, and how was an indebted and cash-strapped Britain able to mobilise its industry and spend so much more on armaments? Are there similarities to today and what can we learn? We talk t
Iraq, Minerals and the Art of the Deal
In the wake of Donald Trump's demand for a juicy minerals deal in Ukraine, Neil and Jonathan join author James Barr to look at the history of possibly the greatest minerals carve-up of all time - in the post First World War Middle East - and ask the key question: "How did that all work out?"Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With James Barr.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podo
1976: The Year Britain Went Bust
In 1976, the Labour government went "cap in hand" to the IMF for a loan to tide it through deteriorating economic conditions. The price was large cuts in public spending. Neil and Jonathan talk to economist and author Duncan Weldon about the "bailout", what caused it, the changes it brought, and whether there are any parallels to the predicament faced by Rachel Reeves.Presented by Jonathan Ford an
Why Germans Don't Do it Better
Until recently, Germany seemed to be going through a second wirtschaftswunder, as the country's mighty industry pumped out capital exports to China, powered by cheap Russian gas. Then everything blew up in the 2020s. Neil and Jonathan talk to Wolfgang Munchau about the wishful thinking, political misjudgments, and structural failings that led Europe's largest economy into
The Bretton Woods System
In the summer of 1944, as Allied armies fought through Normandy, 44 nations gathered at a run-down hotel in New Hampshire to discuss the economic future of the world. What followed was the only ever formal attempt to reorder the international monetary system; one that seemed for a time successful until it collapsed unmourned in 1971. Together with the author Ed Conway, we look
The John Stonehouse Affair
On 21 November 1974, an obscure backbench MP, John Stonehouse, went for a swim off Miami Beach and disappeared. So began an extraordinary tale of banking fraud, money laundering, spying and identity theft, which unravelled over the following month, ending in Stonehouse's exposure and arrest and making him one of the most famous MPs in the world. Together with the author Philip Augar, we look
The Mystery of Dame Linda Dobbs
Employees of a High Street bank rip off its customers for years. The bank refuses to admit that anything illegal happened. Yet when the fraud is finally exposed, it not only gets to decide what compensation to pay; it gets to investigate its own wrongdoing. Sound strange? We talk to the Ian Fraser about Lloyds Bank and the HBOS Reading Affair, its parallels with the Post Office scandal and th
Living in a Material World
Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium. These materials built the world we live in, and they will transform our future. Neil and Jonathan talk to writer and broadcaster Ed Conway about raw materials that drive our economies, who controls them, and how that affects Britain's place in the worldPresented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Ed Conway.Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot.
Ashes to Ashes: The Decline And Fall of Coal-Fired Electricity
Coal once powered the Industrial Revolution and made Britain the richest country on earth. Now with the closure of the country's last coal-fired power station, it will cease to play any meaningful part in the economic life of the nation. Aside from welcoming a cleaner, greener future, what are we to make of this momentous departure? Together with Ewan Gibbs from Glasgow University, Neil
Overpaid and Unaccountable
That's how the public increasingly sees today's managerial elite. Bosses enjoy vast rewards without seeming to be accountable for their decisions - at least the ones that go wrong. The economist (and old friend of Altif) Dan Davies has an answer: they've created what he calls an "unaccountability sink" which is delivering terrible business outcomes. Neil and Jonathan investigate.Presente
An Audience With The Bond Market's Wyatt Earp
One of Britain's best known bond fund managers, and also founder of the "Bond Vigilante" blog, Jim Leaviss is leaving the City after 32 years to train as an art historian. Neil and Jonathan caught up with him to look back on his City career, the huge bull market in bonds of recent decades, and the threats that lie in store from international instability, political turmoil and deteriorating pu
Libor and the Law
When banks were found to have manipulated the Libor rate during the financial crisis, they paid a whopping $8bn in fines but only a few junior traders went to prison. In a joint episode with Law & Disorder podcast, we look at the recently appealed cases of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palumbo, and ask whether justice has been served.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Nicholas Mostyn and H
The Great Online Money Laundry
One of the more striking crime statistics is that burglary is down 90% in England and Wales since the 1990s. That doesn't reflect more upright behaviour. Nope, it's just that villains are increasingly moving their operations online. We talk to author Geoff White about how Silicon Valley is helping the bad guys go digital by making it easier for them not only to con people and rob, but also to
From The Corset to Help To Buy: A British Housing Story (Part 2)
How did housing in Britain go from somewhere to live to being everyone's favourite financial asset? In the second of our two part series, we look at housing policy since 1970; and ask whether there has ever been a coherent approach. Also is there a natural level of home ownership and should we be encouraging everyone to buy? With Cambridge University housing expert&nb
From The Corset to Help To Buy: A British Housing Story (Part 1)
How did housing in Britain go from somewhere to live to everyone's favourite financial asset? In the first of a two part series, we look at the mortgage market since 1970; and ask whether the high prices and low supply we endure today are a financial phenomenon. With former building societies supremo Mark Boleat.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Mark Boleat.Produced and edited by Ni
The Amazon Octopus
When Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, it was an online bookshop. Now its tentacles are everywhere: it's a marketplace for third party goods from around the world, a huge cloud computing business and America's largest parcel delivery group. But is this a good thing or a bad one? We talk to Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal about whether Amazon is the consumer''s friend or a monopolist to r
Michael Jensen: High Priest of Greed
The economist Michael Jensen, who died this month, did as much as any single thinker to shape modern financial capitalism. To his detractors, he was the High Priest of Greed who justified stratospheric CEO pay and predatory private equity. His admirers believe he revived Anglo Saxon capitalism. We discuss his ideas and legacy with the independent researcher and private equity expert Pete
Fallen Angels: Thames Water Circles the Plughole
A natural monopoly delivering an essential service, Thames Water was privatised in 1989 with no debt. Now it's on its knees, crushed by more than £15bn of borrowings. Neil and Jonathan talk to Feargal Sharkey about what this says about Mrs Thatcher's most controversial privatisation, whether incentive regulation works, and whether we should just scrap the whole private structure and
Fallen Angels: GEC/Marconi - From Bellwether to Basket Case
GEC was a British manufacturing titan; a cash-rich producer of everything from washing machines to railway trains. Then in a few years, it rebranded and restructured, shedding most of the old industrial bits to focus on telecoms. The result? By 2005, shiny new Marconi was no more. In the second of our Fallen Angel series, we talk to industrial historian Nick Comfort about one of the most abru
Fallen Angels: The Fall of the House of ICI
For decades ICI was Britain's largest manufacturing company - a giant fixed point around which the rest of industry orbited. Then, in little more than a decade, it split itself up, sold many of its traditional businesses, and ran up big debts buying fancy but not very profitable fragrance companies. In 2006, the end came when it sold itself to a Dutch company and disappeared. We talk to writer and
The Internet, AI, And the Madness of Crowds
Remember Pets.com? Or Ask Jeeves? The dot com bubble of 25 years ago might have been a seismic event in markets. But was it just a collective moment of madness, or a deeper transformational moment? Or both? As AI stocks shoot towards the stratosphere, we talk to internet historian Brian McCullough, host of the Techmeme Ride Home podcast, about what we can learn from the last great tech bubble
The Economic Consequences of Roger Bootle
One of Britain's better-known economic forecasters, Roger Bootle, set up his consultancy Capital Economics 25 years ago. He made his name predicting the "death of inflation" on which he wrote an influential book in the 1990s. We discuss the importance of economic history, favourite writers, monetarism, bright spots in the world economy, and Britain's many problems with growth.Presented b
BP, Black Monday and Nigel Lawson's Big Bet
In the second of our series on Privatisation and Popular Capitalism, we look at the biggest and riskiest privatisation of all - the 1987 sale of the UK's 31% stake in BP. How the Chancellor Nigel Lawson gambled that the markets were good for a quick £7bn. Prepare for the world's shortest pricing meeting, diplomatic rows with Kuwaitis and lots of long faced underwriters. And our gues
Tell Sid: Popular Capitalism and the Thatcher Revolution
Along with the sale of council houses, privatisation was a signature theme of Mrs Thatcher's government. Its aim was not just more efficient businesses, but a "share owning democracy" that would purge Britain of the "corrosive effect of socialism". With its "Tell Sid" campaign, British Gas was the high water mark of privatisation. Neil and Jonathan talk to author Philip Augar about "stagging", Ced
The Price Is Wrong: Why Free Markets And Climate Don't Mix
What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to green energy is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable. This is the conundrum at the heart of economist Brett Christophers' provocative new book. Neil and Jonathan joined him to discuss why lower wind and solar costs may not equal a green bonanza.
Zen And The Art of Motor Car Maintenance
Unipart, once an unloved division of British Leyland, has grown steadily since its buyout 37 years ago, eschewing the stock market and building a "Mittelstand" like relationship with employees, customers and suppliers. Neil and Jonathan talk to John Neill, its long standing boss, about car parts, purpose versus City short-termism and why more companies don't embrace the "Unipart Way".Presente
The Weird World of The Barclay Twins
To some it might seem like the plot of a Jeffrey Archer novel: identical twins born to hardship who graft their way up together and ultimately get to own the Ritz Hotel, the Daily Telegraph and a socking great castle in the Channel Islands. But the story of Frederick and David Barclay is much stranger than that. With the Barclays back in the news as they attempt to recover control of the Tele
The Ups and Downs of Bill Gross, Bond King
Bill Gross was the "Master of the Universe" who got the world's attention when he declared in 2010 that UK government debt was sitting "on a bed of nitroglycerine". The man who built the modern bond markets, Gross seemed to have it all. But then he blew up his career just a few short years later with some very strange behaviour. We talk to Mary Childs, journalist and author of a book on Gross, abo
How to Get Big Things Done
What links the iconic Sydney Opera House, Monsters Inc and the mess that is HS2? Well, they involve all giant projects and most conform to the "iron law" that schemes costing $1bn or more always end up over time and budget. According to the data, a piddling 0.5% get delivered on time, for the right price, and produce the forecast benefits. So with the world facing a mountain of infrastructure
An Atomic Awakening? Or Another Big Zzzzz?
At the recent COP conference, the UK, along with 21 other countries, promised to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. But what does that mean, and how can these plants be built without the delays and cost overruns that marked nuclear projects in the 1970s and 1980s - the last time Britain had a nuclear programme? Neil and Jonathan talk to Tim Stone, head of the UK's Nuclear In
The Strange Non Death of Crypto
Crypto's demise seems to have been exaggerated, a bit like Mark Twain's. After the collapse of FTX, multiple coin failures and the arrest of various coinigarchs at airports, Neil and Jonathan talk to bitcoin expert Matthew Pines about the digital, bankless currencies strange ability to shrug off these disasters and what the future may hodl. Presented by Jonathan Ford
Legal Bullying and the War on Truth
It's got a long history going back to Robert Maxwell and Sir James Goldsmith's long-running battle to bankrupt Private Eye, but in recent years so-called "lawfare" has become a veritable industry. We talk to David Hooper, solicitor and author of Buying Silence about the ways in which companies have used libel and privacy laws to squash their critics, the numerous abuses, a
The Problem of The Twelve
No, it's not a novel by GK Chesterton; it's the takeover of the world's investment markets by a sinister posse of giant passive fund managers and private equity firms. These now possess the sort of political and economic power that would have made John Rockefeller green with envy. We talk to John Coates, professor at Harvard Law School and author of a new book on "The Twelve", about Blackston
Carbon Offsets: Dude, Where's My Trees?
Carbon offsets seemed a neat idea: pay poor people in the Global South not to cut down trees, and then use that "avoided" carbon to sell credits to polluters in developed countries. Bish bosh, your Delta Airlines flight or VW SUV is carbon neutral. What could possibly go wrong?Neil and Jonathan pick through the rubble of the South Pole scandal with environmental consultant Andrew Garraway to
The Great Private Equity Tax Swindle
In 1987, the emerging private equity industry successfully lobbied the government to slip them a tax break. It allows private equiteers to take huge bonuses from the appreciation of client funds they invest in buyouts (a wedge called "carried interest"), and pay a preferentially low rate of tax on these earnings. Now HMRC may be thinking again. We talk to tax expert Dan Neidle about the
As Good As Gold?
It's more than a decade since an American investor described the UK's gilts market as resting "on a bed of nitroglycerine". But with government bonds facing a plethora of troubles right now, from surging issuance driven both by current deficits and monetary policy, to persistent inflation, it's time to turn again to UK investor and self styled "bond vigilante, Jim Leaviss of M&G to ask if ther
Shortspiracy: The Apes v Wall Street
The recently released film, Dumb Money, recounts the tumultuous events of 2021 when a group of internet-enabled sans culottes took on Wall Street's finest in a battle over the future of Gamestop, an obscure electronic games retailer. But was it a financial revolution or an amusing (if tech enabled) throwback to the great stock market corners of the past? Neil and Jonathan talk
The Trussquake - One Year Later
Liz Truss is the Lady Jane Grey of British politics, lasting just 49 days as PM before swirling economic chaos swept her from office. But a year on, has Britain dusted itself off and rebuilt - or are we still picking through the ruins? Neil and Jonathan talk to economic historian Duncan Weldon about Truss's economic and political legacy, Sunak's problems and the still unanswered question of how to
Nutrient Neutrality
The government is embroiled in a row about environmental protection. Should it apply pollution rules inherited from the EU in the way its own environmental advisers interpret them, or should it change the rules to help housebuilders construct more homes? Neil and Jonathan discuss the trade-offs with Robert Colvile, a self confessed housing nut who is director of the Centre for Policy Studies.
The Nine Lives of Credit Suisse: Part Two
In the concluding episode of our two part series, Jonathan and Neil look back on the dramatic events of March in the company of Josef Ackermann, who ran the Swiss bank in the 1990s, financial historian Philip Augar and banking analyst Frances Coppola. They consider the macro background to the bank's collapse, and ask whether things could have turned out differently or whether excessive&n
The Nine Lives of Credit Suisse: Part One
In March 2023 the unthinkable happened: Credit Suisse, that giant of Swiss banking, collapsed. Like the proverbial cat, it had run through its nine lives. From the Chiasso saga to unprecedented corporate fines, via troubled times on Wall Street, Credit Suisse had always lived dangerously. And finally, in 2023, the financial winds caught up with them. In this first part of a two-part special of A L
Renewables: Bad for Your Wealth?
With net zero targets in mind, countries like the UK have ambitious targets for renewable energy. But do these make any sense? None at all, according to Doomberg, the US energy analyst. In conversation with Neil and Jonathan, he explains why he's deeply bearish about wind power, why renewables make no sense at all in Western Europe, and how there's a direct link between rising wind
Car Trouble
The car in front? These days it's likely to be a Tesla - or Chinese. Britain's car industry built just 775,000 motors last year, the lowest figure since 1956. Dwindling investment means we increasingly lack the wherewithal to take part in the unfolding electric revolution. Amid a picture of unremitting gloom, Neil and Jonathan talk to Peter Wells, Director o
The Practicalities of Net Zero
Since 2019, Britain has put itself under a legal obligation to decarbonise its economy by 2050. But do people have any idea what that means, how practical it is and how much it might cost? To get an idea, Neil and Jonathan talked to Richard Halsey, innovation director at the Energy Supply Catapult about how the country is faring on its great decarbonisation crusade.Presented by Jonathan Ford
Rolling the Dice on British Pensions
Jeremy Hunt says that by taking more risk, UK pension funds can make their members £1,000 a year better off. Sounds interesting, but is it really plausible? And should the government even try to interfere in pension markets? Neil and Jonathan talk to pensions expert John Ralfe about what he really said and didn't say, whether the proposals will make much difference, and wh
Not Waving But Drowning (in Debt)
"You could be an H20 Owner." That was the slogan when the water companies were sold off in 1989. But while we glugged the share sale down, the public didn't stay owners for long, and most of the companies were later flushed into the hands of international private equity firms. All we own now is the financial and ecological mess they left behind - one that's looming ever larger
Power to the People!
Energy policy has been one of Britain's great political failures over the past two decades. World leaders in climate pledges, we've failed to create the means to deliver them. And we barely build any green kit. This week's guest, energy expert Nick Butler has an idea for a fresh start. Create a state owned company to drive and fund investments in energy technologies with the aim of promoting green
Oh, Who Will Buy My Lovely Houses?
With mortgage rates rising ever higher, it's becoming clear the UK is facing a serious housing correction. But how bad will it be, and on whom will the blow fall hardest? Neil and Jonathan talk to Neal Hudson, housing expert at BuiltSpace, about past crises in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, how this one might compare, and what we might do to soften the blow.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Co
Is Going Vertical the Future of Farming?
Vertical farming has been hailed as the future of agriculture. More sustainable, needing fewer resources such as land and labour, and the capacity to grow crops all year round. So how far can it go and why have so many recently built vertical farms got into financial difficulty? Neil and Jonathan talk to Marcus Whately, chief executive of Grow Up Farms, about the challenges and whether vertic
China and the West: A Case of Conscious Uncoupling?
The hawks call it decoupling; the more dovish derisking. But it all means the same thing: imposing trade barriers between China and the West. Neil and Jonathan talk to China expert George Magnus about China's 2001 WTO accession, why the West's gamble on trade and democratisation failed, and also whether you can unscramble the trade relationship.Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins.With Geor
Is the Sun Rising on Japan?
After several snoozeworthy decades in which its stock market and economy went nowhere, Japanese shares are testing highs they haven't seen since 1990, just as the country's great asset bubble was declining. There have been plenty of false dawns in the past, but this time, as Japan expert and value investor Alex Kinmont told Neil and Jonathan, it really might be different.Presented by Jon
Investment Made Simple (But Not Easy)
With the outlook for shares cloudier than at any time since the 1970s, it is hard to know whether to be greedy or fearful. In search of enlightenment on this point, Neil and Jonathan talk to veteran investor and author Richard Oldfield about all things investment. These include active fund managers, how to judge them and whether they are worth the money, as well as high fees, ESG an
"Hosepipes No; Dividends Yes!"
England's water utilities have been under fire for leaks and discharging sewage into the rivers, something we are told they don't have the cash for. So why are they paying out huge dividends, which almost tripled last year to £1.4bn? Neil and Jonathan are joined by David Hall, visiting professor at Greenwich university, to peer into the murky world of utility financial flows.Trigger
Man United and the Football South Sea Bubble
The famous football club's owners, the Glazers, have put it up for sale for $7bn - or 10 times revenues. But instead of laughing out loud, several buyers are circling. With valuations at fever pitch. Neil (a Tranmere Rovers obsessive) and Jonathan talk to Kieran Maguire, football finance academic, about whether England's Premier League can sustain this sort of madness. Presented by
Succession: Does it all Add Up?
There is a bit of a general spoiler alert this week as Neil and Jonathan talk to Louis Ashworth, FT Alphaville's resident Succession expert about the TV melodrama. Does the financial side of the plotline make any sense? Should the family sell Waystar Royco to GoJo? How big are the children's stakes and what are they actually worth? Is Kendall a billionaire or a messy centimillionaire? There's
Auf Wiedersehen, Nuclear Power
The country which first achieved nuclear fission has just become the third (behind Italy and Lithuania) to phase out its entire nuclear fleet. An odd time to do it, when Europe has just cut off Russian gas and the main alternative is to burn more coal. But that's the Green Party for you. Neil and Jonathan discuss the politics of Germany's contentious phaseout with Mark Nelson, energy consulta
Crisis? What Banking Crisis?
After four banks collapsed in March, including the Swiss giant Credit Suisse, is it time to start worrying about a new banking crisis, just 14 years after the last one? Neil and Jonathan talk to financial historian Edward Chancellor about the challenges posed to the financial system by interest rates shooting up after a long period of historic lows, the risks for central banks, and why bankers' ad
Nigel Lawson: In Memoriam
In his youth, he commanded a motor torpedo boat called HMS Gay Charger, and in later life became a Mousquetaire d'Armagnac. In between, Nigel Lawson was Neil's second favourite Chancellor of the Exchequer since the Second World War. We discuss the life and achievements of Margaret Thatcher's most intellectually confident Number 11 neighbour, their turbulent relationship, and the decisions that sti
The Nobel Prize in Economics for Poets
Who knew that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, opium-nibbling author of Kubla Khan, also had views on the business cycle and foreshadowed Keynes' ideas by a century? Or that Walter Scott extolled the virtues of paper currency so powerfully that he saved the Scottish banknote, which bears his image in gratitude to this very day? Neil and Jonathan talk to John Ramsden author "The Poets Guide to Economi
Who Killed the UK Stock Market?
In recent years, companies have been deserting the UK stock market as if it were a sinking ship. But what brought on this sudden aversion? According to some, Britain's pension funds are the culprits, and Exhibit A the traditional defined benefit schemes that used to dominate the savings scene. Neil and Jonathan talk to William Wright, supremo of think tank New Financial, about how this shocking cr
SVB and The Shrinking of "The Bezzle"
"At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. It varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful.In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he prov
The New Absentee Landlords: How Fund Managers Gobbled Our Infrastructure
How did fund managers end up controlling so much of the essential services on which we rely, from water to electricity and property? Who gave them the money? And does it matter that they do? Neil and Jonathan talk to author Brett Christophers, whose new book Our Lives in Their Portfolios argues that the giant funds that dominate the landscape are driven by terrible incentives - and that'
