Those who criticise the German government for trying to restrict the use of naked shorts and credit default swaps (CDS) are – on the whole – concerned about the when and the how, rather than the whether. Or to put it another way, there are strong arguments for restricting the use...

Bafin, the German financial regulator, was on the blower last night to other European regulators, trying to persuade them to participate in its attempt to ban purely speculative bets by investors that eurozone governments will have growing difficulties paying their debts and that the woes of...

Tonight, the new Chancellor has his first outing in front of what you might call middle business, as opposed to Middle England, when he addresses the CBI’s annual dinner. George Osborne’s theme, for a change, won’t be cuts, but growth – or how to engender the kind of...

Johnny Cameron, the cove who ran Royal Bank of Scotland’s investment banking division at the time the bank went to the very brink of collapse, has agreed with the City watchdog that he won’t ever again work full time in a senior position in the financial services industry. Hmmm....

I’d not met Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of the Prudential, till I interviewed him yesterday. And unlike many business leaders I encounter, for whom the expression charmless nerk was probably invented, it’s not hard to see how he has reached the top: he’s persuasive,...

No one can accuse the Prudential’s senior directors of being averse to risk – although, to state the obvious, most of the risk doesn’t actually fall on them but sits with the Pru’s owners. Against the backdrop of frayed investors’ nerves – with stock prices...