The Flaws of the Facebook Float

The idea that Facebook customers and the public would benefit from the social networking site’s initial public offering was always a fallacy. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg may now be the richest newly-wed in the world but the 16 billion-dollar-man did not achieve the impossible without being ruthless.

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Israel weathers financial crisis

Israel receives little credit for its economic achievements. So it was a nice surprise to find Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel, as the star turn at a luncheon for global economic policymakers at last month’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington.

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Lloyds bid turns to Middle East

Lloyds Banking Group, the product of the disastrous forced marriage between Lloyds and HBOS, has a serious problem.

The 43 per cent government-owned bank has been told by the European Commission that it must disgorge 632 of its branches and the back-up systems so as to satisfy rules governing state subsidy.

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Britain, we need to get building

You don't need to be an economist to understand that investment in the nation's infrastructure is grossly inadequate.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG, the holding company for British Airways, frequently takes to the media to express his concerns about the lack of runway capacity in the south-east of Britain.

Drought orders across great swathes of the country provide a sharp remainder of

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Tesco's troubles can turn around

Tesco may have run out of Jewish chief executives but as a supermarket group it has remained true to its roots.

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Osborne, be bold in the Budget

In many ways George Osborne has been a disappointing Chancellor. The toxic inheritance of Labour's debt mountain, together with the rigours of coalition politics and the crisis in the Euroland, have left him with little room to manoeuvre.

But none of this really explains his failure to seize the high ground in rebalancing the UK economy away from finance and underpinning growth.

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Negev economy gets boost

The most recent report by the OECD, the Paris-based watchdog of developed nations, generally gives the Israeli economy a clean bill of health.

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Glenstrata giant - it won't be that easy

Proposed and completed mergers of mining giants do not have a happy history in modern times.

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Do bonuses fuel antisemitism?

Let me be clear from the start. The bankers who have been, and will continue to dominate news bulletins; Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, are not Jewish.

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New pay rules just won't work

You do not have to be a socialist to think that pay in Britain's boardrooms has gone off the scale.

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