Category Archives: Banking

Banking, Corporate Governance, Corporate Ownership, Economics, Management Practice, Management Theory, Merger & Acquisition

What good are Stock Markets?

July 14, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

An article in the current issue of Harvard Business Review notes that there has been a ‘multi-trillion dollar transfer of cash from US corporations to their shareholders over the past 10 years’ [‘What good are shareholders?’, Fox & Lorsch]. The City of London achieved similar disinvestment. But that’s not what stock markets are supposed to be for. The money was supposed to flow the other way, from myriads of investors into new industrial, technological and business developments.

But public companies clearly no longer need to issue shares for sale on the stock market. Their funding is largely through retained profit and more and more of them are actually being taken private where disclosure and transparency requirements are less invasive. At the same time, the fast growing small and medium sized innovators on which a sustainable future depends, and which do need to acquire additional funds for future investment, don’t find stock markets a satisfactory means of raising the necessary. The fund managers and traders who control investment in stocks and shares want fast, low risk returns. But returns from SME innovators, even though they may be exciting and sustainable, are unacceptably long term.
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Banking, Company Law, Competition, Corporate Governance, Economics, Management Practice, Merger & Acquisition

What will replace the public company?

July 11, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

The public company, the corporate form that Chandler once described as the most powerful institution in the economy and which made industrialisation possible, is rapidly becoming an endangered species. Over the past decade the number of public companies in the UK has almost halved and declined by 38% in the United States. Similarly, the number of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) has declined by over two thirds, and in the case of SMEs by more than 80%.

These statistics are quoted in a recent article in The Economist which puts the rapid decline down to the over regulation of public companies. This is the only explanation available that fits The Economist’s free market dogma. The article cites the case of Boots the Chemist as an exemplar of how ‘now it is perfectly respectable to choose to “go private”’. This is a distortion of what happened to Boots. Under the leadership of asset stripping accountant, Sir Nigel Rudd, Boots merged with Alliance Unichem which was preliminary to the opportunistic takeover by an American private equity firm, which saddled the company with the debt raised for its acquisition and moved its registration to a tax avoiding canton in Switzerland. What part of that sad story is ‘perfectly respectable’ is open to debate. The result is that a great British company was raped and pillaged for the benefit of a small number of individuals, mainly in an American private equity limited liability partnership.
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Bank Bonuses, Banking, Company Law, Corporate Governance, Corruption, Economics, Management Practice, Political Decision

Modifying the Capitalist System

April 26, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

Goldman’s Lloyd Blankfein, Citibank’s Vikram Pandit and, of course, Barclay’s Bob Diamond, all have something in common. Even their normally acquiescent shareholders have been moved to express concern about their latest round of excess, greed and thuggery. But they are only the tip of the ice-berg. It has become custom and practice for top people to take spectacularly from the businesses they command. Whether their take, largely for unacceptable performance, is £5m or £67m makes little difference. It obviously bears no relation to their true worth: their talent, or their hard work.

These are the unacceptable faces of capitalism, the reasons why people have so little trust in the integrity of corporate business. They are why people are demanding ‘new models of capitalism’, ‘ethical capitalism’, ‘capitalism with a conscience’, etc. And why Ed Milliband makes the clear distinction between what he refers to as ‘good capitalism’ and ‘bad capitalism’.

But capitalism with a conscience won’t work. We may all start out with a conscience, but if the system tempts us with untold riches for doing not a lot, then most of us are likely to fall for it. Our intrinsic good intentions will be crowded out by extrinsic incentives or greed. The problem is making the system proof against that simple human frailty. Continue reading Modifying the Capitalist System →

Banking, Competition, Corporate Governance, Economics, Political Decision, Regulation

Who Rules the World?

March 26, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

A news item on budget day, commanding all of two column inches on an inside page of some of the national press, was of far greater importance than anything Mr Osborne had to say. It reported the completion of Glencore’s acquisition of Viterra, Canada’s largest grain handling company. Glencore has ways of making money as reported previously on this site (see http://www.gordonpearson.co.uk/28/glencore-and-their-ilk-are-screwing-the-world/). Briefly, they bet on the future price of a commodity in a market they can fix. They then fix the price and take the profit. The example given in the previous posting was Glencore’s bet on future wheat and corn prices. Despite Russian harvests in 2010 being threatened by drought, prices didn’t rise sufficiently for Glencore to profit, till Yuri Ognev, the relevant Glencore executive, “suggested” to Moscow they might be well advised to ban wheat exports. Two days later exports were banned and prices rose by 15%, enough for Glencore’s profit. That’s how Glencore works. An unfortunate bi-product of Glencore’s price rise would be added numbers starving to death in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere.

Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trader, listed in London but successfully avoiding UK taxes, is currently taking over its associate company Xstrata, one of the world’s largest mining and metals companies. Xstrata’s London IPO ten years ago established it from day one in the FTSE100. Its boast is that over the past decade it has grown faster than Amazon, largely by acquisition. It is now big enough to fix supply, and therefore prices, of strategic minerals such as nickel, zinc, platinum, chrome and copper and being highly influential in thermal and coking coal. Glencore with Xstrata will be able to create and exploit prices of all these commodities and more. And with Viterra on board they’ll be even more powerful in the grain markets, adding starvation to the millions already struggling for survival. The already weak and poor will pay for Glencore’s profitable growth. But they won’t be alone: we all will pay.
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Bank Bonuses, Banking, Economics, Political Decision, Regulation

Why Bankers’ Bonuses Matter

February 12, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

It is barely four months since Bob Diamond’s BBC lecture about how banks might restore public trust, which he acknowledged was then sadly lacking. He avoided discussion of excessive bonuses for doing not very much, and also the casino banking which got us into this trouble and for which he was responsible at Barclays. His lecture hardly revealed a man of super intellect, rather one who happened “to have been in the right place at the right time” (see http://www.gordonpearson.co.uk/06/talent-for-being-in-the-right-place-at-the-right-time/). Now, here we are again with bonuses being declared, but with Bob still being coyly reticent about his own take.

According to Peter Drucker, when bosses over indulge themselves at the corporate trough, they lose the respect of people within their organisation. Yet, while paying himself around £5.4m the previous year, Bob lectured that “if you can’t work well with your colleagues, with trust and integrity, you can’t be on the team.” Bob adopts the long discredited ‘rewarding success’ and ‘departure of talent’ defences of banker’s bonuses. He clearly doesn’t recognise Drucker’s ‘hatred, contempt and fury’ among his people at Barclays. Presumably that’s because he doesn’t see much of them, or because those he does see have their trotters in the same trough.
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Bank Bonuses, Banking, Economics, Political Decision, Regulation, Shareholder Value

Hatred, Contempt and Fury

January 31, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

A typically indecisive Will Hutton article in The Observer (29.1.12) was headed ‘Hester’s pay discredits bonus culture’. Did Will Hutton think, despite the works of Bob Diamond, Fred the Shred and the rest, that the bonus culture still had credit up to the time when Stephen Hester was awarded his relatively modest bonus of around £1m. Of course, Will labours under the considerable disability of being a neoclassical economist. Which unfortunate affliction led him, in the article, to assert that ‘It is true that well designed and proportional incentives work’. He offers no evidence. It is simply a bone deep belief, no doubt held in his mind since school days doing A level economics.

Much is understood about human motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, which won’t be repeated here. But economists only deal in money and it is well understood how money incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation. In the case of the bonus culture, incentives are specifically aimed at doing just that, so that executives are converted into shareholders, thus aligning themselves with shareholder interests. That is the sole purpose of the bonus bribe: to destroy higher level, longer term motivations for the short term benefit of shareholders.
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Accounting profession, Banking, Co-operation, Competition, Corporate Governance, Economics, Political Decision, Regulation

The Road to Co-operation: Escaping the Bottom Line

January 22, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

This book (http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9781409448303) is about a new direction for market capitalism, based on co-operation rather than the neoclassical idea of maximising self- interest. It is not argued from a moral or ethical standpoint, but has a hard-nosed foundation in economic theory. The Road leads from the predatory capitalism we suffer today to a co-operative and far more productive capitalism we could enjoy tomorrow.

Predatory capitalism is the inevitable result of encouraging almost anyone to trade in almost anything, not just sub-prime, but actually worthless, even imaginary, financial “products”. The aim is to create a fever of anticipation which sucks money out of the real economy (manufacture, distribution etc) into bubbles of speculation in derivative or imaginary “products” or in mergers and acquisitions.
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Bank Bonuses, Banking, Economics, Free Market Capitalism, Political Decision, Regulation

Mr Cameron Doesn’t Understand

January 1, 2012 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

Mr Cameron really doesn’t understand what’s going on. When he talks of rebalancing the economy he appears not to have the faintest idea what has unbalanced it. He doesn’t understand the crucial difference between real markets and financial markets. Demand for real things is essentially finite – when you’ve had enough, you’ve had enough; demand for high yielding financial “products” is essentially infinite. An investment, such as a ‘carbon credit’ which would yield ‘up to 398% return’ (see: http://www.gordonpearson.co.uk/06/pity-the-poor-banker/), would attract anyone. Would you invest in a widget maker earning 10% a year at some risk, when you could be earning up to 398% risk free? Consequently, despite the sub-prime fiasco of 2008, money is still leaving the real economy to be bet on financial “products” which are high on promise, but low on substance. That’s the rebalancing that’s actually going on, with Mr Cameron’s approval.

The only rebalancing towards manufacturing and the job creating real economy results from the ingenuity and efforts of practical people achieving results on the ground, through co-operative rather than exploitative means (The Road to Co-operation is due out Gower in April). This achievement is despite Mr Cameron and his friends.
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Accounting profession, Audit profession, Banking, Company Law, Competition, Corporate Governance, Regulation

Monopolistic Complacency and the Big Four

December 17, 2011 Gordon Pearson Leave a comment

A couple of “industries”, audit and management consultancy, which have deliberately entwined themselves round each other and called themselves ‘professional services’, have developed strongly monopolistic tendencies. The degree of industry concentration is truly remarkable: the four leading firms employ around 650,000 people, earn revenues of over US$100 billion, and take around 80% of the global market for large and medium businesses, plus a huge involvement in public sector consulting.

The big four ceased to be truly competitive decades ago. They now exist for the benefit of their own people, rather than their customers. It’s a carve up comparable to the various cartels and closed shops which existed in the City of London prior to the ‘big bang’. It seems unlikely to last much longer.
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Fighting for Fairness by Remaking the Real Economy