The FT has reported that:
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin group on Monday was confirmed as the preferred bidder for Northern Rock.
It is reported that:
Virgin said it would inject £1.4bn of cash, and its Virgin Money subsidiary, for a fully underwritten issue of new ordinary shares to existing holders, to be offered on a pro rata basis [...]
Earlier this year an accountant in Jersey was found guilty of money laundering £27 million. Let’s be clear: Peter Michel was no big time player, and he did work pretty much alone. A perfect target for prosecution therefore.
But now he’s appealed, and the grounds for his appeal could only have arisen in Jersey. He is [...]
The New Statesman Book of the Year column has the following from Michela Wrong:
Poisoned Wells by Nicholas Shaxson (Palgrave Macmillan)Brazzaville Charms by Cassie Knight (Frances Lincoln)The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier (Oxford University Press)
I believe in painless self-education, so it’s satisfying to log a number of highly readable non-fiction books about Africa. Two that caught [...]
The Guardian published two stories on Friday concerning the relationship between Northern Rock and its shadow entity, Granite. I’ll be candid, I know the stories have been influenced by what’s been written here: I was the only source named in the stories.
This led to a fairly mad day on Friday, when in two spare hours [...]
The New Statesman includes a brilliant article by Johann Hari called Cooking the Books. What it amounts to is a complete destruction of the Laffer curve principle, so beloved by the Right and invented by, as Hari says :
a group of men who were untrained in economics - and, as it happens, borderline-insane.
As he notes, [...]
It’s been my pleasure to work with Dennis Howlett on and off over the last couple of years. It was Dennis who got me, and quite a lot of other people blogging.
We don’t always agree, but on fundamentals we’re pretty darned close.
So I really welcome the fact that he’s been taking his pretty formidable Web [...]
I was one of millions to suffer agony and torment last night. No, I wasn’t worried about the loss of a couple of data CD’s. I was watching England lose at football.
Richard Brooks has the best analysis of this loss today. As he says, it’s all Gordon Brown’s fault we have so few good English [...]
The public have more sense than politicians.
And for all the newspaper furore about the possible loss of some basic pretty data on 25 million people by HM Revenue & Customs I note that Accountancy Age reports:
The phone lines at HM Revenue & Customs were only a little busier than normal today, a spokesman said, as [...]
Accountancy Age has reported:
HM Revenue & Customs policy chief Dave Hartnett has been appointed acting chairman of HM Revenue & Customs.
His appointment does not mean he will become full-time chairman, but Gray also carried out the acting role before taking the top spot officially.
Hartnett’s move to the top will surprise few in the tax world.
More [...]
Accountancy magazine has reported that IFRS 8 has been annulled by the EU. But as it notes:
A procedural hiccup has led to the adoption of IFRS 8, the controversial international standard on segment reporting, being delayed by 10-14 days.
Last week, the European parliament voted in favour of a resolution endorsing the standard, which allows listed [...]
