Morning:
6°c
Here at the Evening Standard, we start work early in the morning. Which means that when I drive to work the roads are usually virtually empty.
Just as well - because the other day I nearly careered off the road in Barnes, such was my fury at the brazen hypocrisy I was hearing on the radio.
First, there was the red dwarf herself, Hazel Blears, declaring that from now on she was going to be "bread and butter champion" for the people of her Salford constituency after she survived a deselection vote.
Bread and butter? This is a woman who failed to pay £13,000 capital gains tax on the sale of a flat in Kennington.
She said her house in Salford was her second home, then switched it to the Kennington flat, while telling the Revenue it was her primary residence.
When she sold it four months later, she avoided paying CGT on her £45,000 profit because the tax man thought it was her main home.
Then, the Chancellor came on, saying Sir Fred Goodwin had done "the right thing" in reducing his pension by £200,000 a year. "I think that Sir Fred, in handing back part of his pension, is doing the right thing."
By now my car was swerving violently. The right thing? We don't need lectures in right and wrong from someone who changed his designated second home four times in as many years, who repaid around £700 after claiming for two properties at the same time and, as overseer of HMRC, claimed public money for personal tax advice and submitted a receipt for a 30p bus ticket.
At least, in the sanctuary of my car I could shout and bang my fists at the guff I was listening to.
Sadly, that option was not available to those City folk who had to endure the Chancellor's speech at the Mansion House when he proclaimed that "bank boards must have the right people and the right skills and experience to manage themselves more effectively; their focus must be long-term wealth creation, not short-term profits; they must recognise their duty to shareholders is best fulfilled by acting in the interests of all - not just some - of their employees."
All credit to those bankers present for putting decorum and etiquette before reason and not heckling or walking out. But they were also treated to Mervyn King expressing the need for caution in regulatory reform. I don't know about you but I'm getting rather tired of the Governor.
I know it's heresy in some quarters but I do wonder about his contribution to the debate as to what went wrong and where we go from here.
To be fair to the Government and Financial Services Authority, they've done their bit but one leg of the three-legged stool known as the Tripartite Authority looks consistently wobbly.
The Bank was slow to react to the crisis, failing in its financial stability remit and preferring to hand out lessons in moral hazard.
The other two legs did respond. The Government recapitalised the banking sector and produced legislation to take out failing banks.
At the FSA, its chairman, Lord Turner, produced his report - by far the best piece of official analysis of the drama. The watchdog has conducted its own review of Northern Rock, hired 200 extra staff and revamped its supervision role.
The Prime Minister is often accused of being Macavity but perhaps that name should be attached to King. I've listened in vain for a ringing apology from the Governor for presiding over an explosion in credit.
Seemingly, he thinks it's the banks' and politicians' fault but not the Bank's. All we get from Mervyn is: "We are a long way from identifying the precise regulatory interventions that would improve the functioning of the markets."
This has been interpreted as an attack on Darling, saying the Chancellor doesn't know what he is talking about.
But it sounds pretty clearly like the Governor doesn't have a clue either. It isn't good enough. We need actions from our leaders, not hollow words.
Ocado should make sure it can deliver before going for a float
Ocado could float on the stock market next year and a value of £600 million is being mentioned.
Putting aside that the online grocer's finance director Jason Gissing said last year he would "rather shoot himself than be finance director of a listed company", I wish Ocado would reconsider.
That's not to say I'm not an admirer. The revamped Ocado website is slicker than it was, their drivers are always courteous and helpful, carrying the bags from the van right into the kitchen and they phone 10 minutes before they're due to arrive to check we're in.
I also believe Gissing and his two colleagues from Goldman Sachs, Tim Steiner and Jonathan Faiman, deserve huge credit for undertaking a task, the logistical and technological complexity of which is difficult to comprehend.
Nobody should underestimate as well the competition they've faced from such as Tesco, which has done its Goliath-like best to see them off. But oh dear, I'd far rather they didn't go public. Not yet.
The problem is that Ocado has never produced an annual profit. It is making an operational profit on an ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) level but that is not the same as turning in a healthy yearly surplus, one that could build up reserves and yield a dividend for shareholders.
Two businesses that attracted similar razzmatazz without making money were Cobra Beer and Lastminute.com. They were iconic, too, and they both showed themselves to be alarmingly fragile.
Despite its rapid growth, Cobra has yet to make a profit.
According to its latest set of accounts, Cobra was losing £13 million a year. It's just gone into administration and has been sold, in a pre-pack arrangement, to Molson Coors.
Lastminute came to the stock market in March 2000 with a market capitalisation of £577 million. This, despite the internet travel agency and retailer earning just £195,000 in commission in the year to 30 September 1999, from total transactions of only £2.6 million.
Subsequently, it was bought by Travelocity and was then acquired by private equity. When it was sold, the purchasers paid 165p per share, compared with a flotation price of 380p per share.
The firm's founders, Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, did very well out of the listing, each making a paper profit of more than £50 million.
It's that sort of number being dangled in front of Gissing, Steiner and Faiman now; they stand to share about £140 million if Ocado floats. But whether anyone else following them will be so fortunate remains to be seen. They should resist temptation and bide their time.
Clampdown not too taxing
Trust the French. In future, banks in France will have to publish information about their activities in offshore centres in their annual reports.
The move is part of the continuing push against tax havens by the Sarkozy government.
France has also signed a deal with Switzerland that allows the French authorities to conduct investigations in bank accounts held by in Switzerland by French citizens they suspect of tax evasion.
The French will take their initiative to this week's meeting of G20 ministers in Berlin, and invite the other leading economies to follow suit.
Typically, Britain's response is nothing like as Draconian - even though our Government makes noises about also wanting to crack down.
We've just entered into an "exchange of information" agreement with the Cayman Islands, which is about as feeble as it gets.
