BBC business editor Robert Peston denies being a News International 'patsy' after Labour MPs claimed some of his reports were apparently favourable to the company
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Who said the City was no longer a sexist place? Female trainees at Allen & Overy have been given a bollocking by the law firm's (mostly male) partners for... dressing too provocatively and for not brushing their hair... more
Harbinger of doom David "Danny" Blanchflower says it is "perfectly feasible" that the economy will shrink again in the first and second quarters of 2011 after the slump at the end of 2010... more
Labour peer Lord Peston has hit out at plans to reform the House of Lords' expenses system and warned a crackdown will deter high earners from entering Parliament... more
RAIL veteran Ian Yeowart is rattling the couplings of Virgin Trains by launching an all-new Great North Western Railways company on Virgin routes into Euston... more
London's hedge fund community may have had a torrid time last year but at least its favoured charity, Arki Busson's ARK (or absolute return for kids), has shown the way in moneymaking. In the year to August 2008, its income rose from £32.7 million to £40.2 million. Furthermore, hedge fund turmoil is not expected to affect the levels of pledges. ARK acknowledges that "the level of outstanding donor pledges is considered to be one of the charity's key risks" but that all funding pledges "due for payment have been received to date." So hats off to the generous hedgies and let's hope that spirit continues.... more
Forget the Great Depression of the 1930s. Economists and City analysts are looking into the history books to try to make sense of the mess we’re in and they’re pointing to two other periods: the early 1920s and the 1870s.... more
When Waterford Wedgwood went down, Robert Peston said, rightly, on the radio that the collapse of the pottery firm was a tragedy as it deprived Britain of a part of the manufacturing base it will need when the recession is over... more
The financial crisis, economic meltdown, credit crunch plus, or whatever we call it has almost imperceptibly changed our view of some universal truths that once seemed rock solid. We've all already acknowledged that climate change and the terrorist threat seem a little less pressing. So, in the interests of updating our inner lexicon, I thought it might help to examine some other newly unfixed positions.... more
DURING a coffee break at a conference a couple of weeks ago, a senior BBC executive spent some time trying to explain to a group of us the phenomenon that is Robert Peston. He is not a natural broadcaster, she began. He lays stress on the wrong syllables. He is acutely prone to inappropriate pauses in mid-sentence. He leaves odd words hanging in the air. At times, he uses a portentous tone to convey completely banal information, like a primary school teacher talking down to her class.... more
Michael Howard’s call for the Financial Services Authority to investigate the source of Robert Peston’s story about confidential talks between banking chiefs, the Chancellor and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King that sparked a plunge in bank shares on Tuesday morning is interesting.
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There is, in case you haven’t noticed it, a global financial crisis going on. So you might expect the largest-selling business newspaper in the Western world, the Wall Street Journal, to be reflecting that sorry state of affairs... more
When Chancellor Alastair Darling rose to address MPs on the financial crisis at 3.29 pm yesterday the FTSE 100 share index was a mere 200 points down... more
BBC Business editor Robert Peston has been leading the pack with his stories on the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley, the Lloyds TSB-HBOS merger and the run on Northern Rock. But where does he get his information?... more
Profile: The BBC's business editor Robert Peston landed blockbuster scoops with the HBOS takeover and Northern Rock but his rivals don't always take kindly to his style... more
The suggestion that the world was about to end because of the CERN atom-smashing experiment was nothing more than a laughable fantasy. But the turmoil that is lashing the Western world’s financial system is an increasingly uncomfortable reality.... more
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