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Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins
A Long Time In FinanceEpisodes
Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins
A Long Time In Finance
A weekly Business podcast
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Episodes of A Long Time In Finance
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The economist Michael Jensen, who died this month, did as much as any single thinker to shape modern financial capitalism. To his detractors, he was the High Priest of Greed who justified stratospheric CEO pay and predatory private equity. His
A natural monopoly delivering an essential service, Thames Water was privatised in 1989 with no debt. Now it's on its knees, crushed by more than £15bn of borrowings. Neil and Jonathan talk to Feargal Sharkey about what this says about Mrs That
GEC was a British manufacturing titan; a cash-rich producer of everything from washing machines to railway trains. Then in a few years, it rebranded and restructured, shedding most of the old industrial bits to focus on telecoms. The result? By
For decades ICI was Britain's largest manufacturing company - a giant fixed point around which the rest of industry orbited. Then, in little more than a decade, it split itself up, sold many of its traditional businesses, and ran up big debts b
Remember Pets.com? Or Ask Jeeves? The dot com bubble of 25 years ago might have been a seismic event in markets. But was it just a collective moment of madness, or a deeper transformational moment? Or both? As AI stocks shoot towards the strato
One of Britain's better-known economic forecasters, Roger Bootle, set up his consultancy Capital Economics 25 years ago. He made his name predicting the "death of inflation" on which he wrote an influential book in the 1990s. We discuss the imp
In the second of our series on Privatisation and Popular Capitalism, we look at the biggest and riskiest privatisation of all - the 1987 sale of the UK's 31% stake in BP. How the Chancellor Nigel Lawson gambled that the markets were good for a
Along with the sale of council houses, privatisation was a signature theme of Mrs Thatcher's government. Its aim was not just more efficient businesses, but a "share owning democracy" that would purge Britain of the "corrosive effect of sociali
Along with the sale of council houses, privatisation was a signature theme of Mrs Thatcher's government. Its aim was not just more efficient businesses, but a "share owning democracy" that would purge Britain of the "corrosive effect of sociali
What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to green energy is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable. This is the conundrum at the heart
Unipart, once an unloved division of British Leyland, has grown steadily since its buyout 37 years ago, eschewing the stock market and building a "Mittelstand" like relationship with employees, customers and suppliers. Neil and Jonathan talk to
To some it might seem like the plot of a Jeffrey Archer novel: identical twins born to hardship who graft their way up together and ultimately get to own the Ritz Hotel, the Daily Telegraph and a socking great castle in the Channel Islands. But
Bill Gross was the "Master of the Universe" who got the world's attention when he declared in 2010 that UK government debt was sitting "on a bed of nitroglycerine". The man who built the modern bond markets, Gross seemed to have it all. But the
What links the iconic Sydney Opera House, Monsters Inc and the mess that is HS2? Well, they involve all giant projects and most conform to the "iron law" that schemes costing $1bn or more always end up over time and budget. According to the dat
At the recent COP conference, the UK, along with 21 other countries, promised to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. But what does that mean, and how can these plants be built without the delays and cost overruns that marked nuclear projects in th
Crypto's demise seems to have been exaggerated, a bit like Mark Twain's. After the collapse of FTX, multiple coin failures and the arrest of various coinigarchs at airports, Neil and Jonathan talk to bitcoin expert Matthew Pines about the digit
It's got a long history going back to Robert Maxwell and Sir James Goldsmith's long-running battle to bankrupt Private Eye, but in recent years so-called "lawfare" has become a veritable industry. We talk to David Hooper, solicitor and author o
No, it's not a novel by GK Chesterton; it's the takeover of the world's investment markets by a sinister posse of giant passive fund managers and private equity firms. These now possess the sort of political and economic power that would have m
Carbon offsets seemed a neat idea: pay poor people in the Global South not to cut down trees, and then use that "avoided" carbon to sell credits to polluters in developed countries. Bish bosh, your Delta Airlines flight or VW SUV is carbon neut
In 1987, the emerging private equity industry successfully lobbied the government to slip them a tax break. It allows private equiteers to take huge bonuses from the appreciation of client funds they invest in buyouts (a wedge called "carried i
It's more than a decade since an American investor described the UK's gilts market as resting "on a bed of nitroglycerine". But with government bonds facing a plethora of troubles right now, from surging issuance driven both by current deficits
The recently released film, Dumb Money, recounts the tumultuous events of 2021 when a group of internet-enabled sans culottes took on Wall Street's finest in a battle over the future of Gamestop, an obscure electronic games retailer. But was it
Liz Truss is the Lady Jane Grey of British politics, lasting just 49 days as PM before swirling economic chaos swept her from office. But a year on, has Britain dusted itself off and rebuilt - or are we still picking through the ruins? Neil and
The government is embroiled in a row about environmental protection. Should it apply pollution rules inherited from the EU in the way its own environmental advisers interpret them, or should it change the rules to help housebuilders construct m
In the concluding episode of our two part series, Jonathan and Neil look back on the dramatic events of March in the company of Josef Ackermann, who ran the Swiss bank in the 1990s, financial historian Philip Augar and banking analyst Frances C
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