Financial Times News - Michael Skapinker Column

Muddling through with money and morals

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:05:40 GMT

Mondli Makhanya, editor of South Africa's Sunday Times, recently recalled his horror 20 years ago as he and his friends watched television pictures of Germans chipping away at the Berlin Wall.

Why chief executives struggle as politicians

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:15:16 GMT

Jon Corzine, former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs , failed last week to win re-election as governor of New Jersey but that has not stopped other business leaders thinking they would make terrific politicians.

Unions need to focus on jobs of the future

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:25:25 GMT

When I was a trade union committee member in the 1990s, my experienced colleagues drummed a lesson into me: never get involved in a dispute unless you know how you are likely to emerge at the other end.

Talent spotting

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:25:38 GMT

At first glance, it was going to be difficult to choose a winner from the shortlisted candidates for the FT Innovative Lawyers innovative individual award. It was not because they were of such high quality - they would not have made the shortlist if they hadn't been. Nor was it because they were all so similar.

Brazil is the 21st-century power to watch

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:05:26 GMT

When I appeared on a panel of journalists from international publications recently, the moderator asked us to nominate our big story for the next year.

Leaders' spouses make the best truth-tellers

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:25:19 GMT

At a recent lunch the Financial Times hosted for management consultants, one of them introduced us to the "spouse test". Before you submit a proposal to a potential client, the consultant said, ask your spouse to read it. If he or she can't make sense of it, rewrite it.

Real leaders do not swim with the shoal

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:05:29 GMT

Left to choose her own mate, a female guppy will opt for a brightly coloured orange fellow - unless she notices that the other girls are going for a slightly less orange male, in which case she will too. She will even be prepared to dump a previously selected bright orange mate for a duller one.

Slipping out for a cigarette has its benefits

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:15:23 GMT

The proportion of American adults who smoke has fallen from 42 per cent to under 20 per cent over the past 50 years, the American Journal of Public Health said in July. This suggested, the journal wrote, that the US was halfway through a 100-year war on cigarettes. Now, Thomas Farley, New York's city health commissioner, has resolved to fight on the beaches.

It takes character to call time on a cover-up

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:15:31 GMT

First there was Bloodgate - a leader ordering a disreputable act, attempting to cover it up and almost getting away with it. The leader was Dean Richards, veteran England rugby international and, latterly, rugby director at the London club Harlequins.

Time to turn the page on top pay

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:25:18 GMT

It is almost 23 years since I wrote my first Financial Times article about executive pay. The prompt was an interview with Sir Ralph Halpern, a flamboyant retail chief executive, who, after becoming the UK's first £1m-a-year boss, announced an incentive scheme with a potential pay-out of a then unheard-of £2.5m.

What is 'socially useful' is subject to fashion

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:35:17 GMT

It does not seem that Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee's new movie, is going to do much for me. The early reviews are tepid and it is hard to improve on Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock, the fondly remembered documentary for those of us a little too young to have been at that 1969 celebration of peace, music and love.

Exams do not have to be life's final test

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:50:27 GMT

When Stanley Kaplan applied to five medical schools in the late 1930s, he did not think he would have trouble getting in. He was second in his class at City College of New York and had won the college's award for excellence in natural sciences. He was rejected by all five schools.

Let us stick to the facts on organic food

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:55:14 GMT

Alan Dangour laughed when I told him I had just read the fourth Huffington Post blog to attack his study on organic food. The report has created an immense fuss. As one of the bloggers said, the study, commissioned by the UK Food Standards Agency, has been "picked up by what seemed to be every news outlet on the planet".

There are no easy answers to the call of home

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:10:12 GMT

They are called repats in Nigeria, homecomers in South Africa and sea turtles in China: emigrants who return to the lands of their birth.

Tear down this rotten edifice of internships

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:10:15 GMT

If you work in the law, advertising or the media, this is the time of year when friends, contacts and people you barely know ask if you can give one of their children a job.

Popular rage is the only brake on top pay

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:30:23 GMT

I was supposed to spend last Friday afternoon attacking bankers' pay - but my invitation to do so was withdrawn because I was deemed too wishy-washy.

There is more to city life than convenience

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:25:18 GMT

Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone, is moving to London. He has decided that the market town of Newbury in Berkshire is not the place for the headquarters of the world's biggest mobile phone operator.

There is more to city life than convenience

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:00:25 GMT

Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone, is moving to London. He has decided the market town of Newbury in Berkshire is not the place for the headquarters of the world's biggest mobile phone operator.

The students who swear by a business school

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:20:28 GMT

There is a youthful earnestness to the new Harvard Business School-inspired MBA oath, with such phrases as "I will mentor and look after the education of the next generation of leaders" and "this oath I make freely, and upon my honour".

You say 'you was' and I say 'you were'

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:35:27 GMT

Not everyone has taken Sir Alan Sugar's appointment as Gordon Brown's "enterprise champion" seriously. "What do we think of him coming in? Not much," one business group told the Financial Times.

You say 'you was' and I say 'you were'

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:25:22 GMT

Not everyone has taken Sir Alan Sugar's appointment as Gordon Brown's "enterprise champion" seriously. "What do we think of him coming in? Not much," one business group told the Financial Times.

Business too must look to its reputation

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:40:36 GMT

The political turmoil in Britain is worrying business leaders, who have warned that it is a distraction from the serious economic problems that the country faces. In the middle of a downturn, Gordon Brown's government is tearing itself apart.

It's competition that delivers the goods

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:25:32 GMT

In 2002, some people were ready to write off internet grocery shopping. "Digital lunacy" was one comment in the US press. "Doomed to be e-commerce disappointments" was another judgment on online supermarkets. The long list of failed US online grocers - Webvan, Streamline, HomeRuns, Kozmo - seemed to bear this out.

Diversity fails to end boardroom groupthink

Mon, 25 May 2009 17:55:15 GMT

Helen Alexander received two rounds of spontaneous applause without even speaking at the CBI dinner last week, such is the excitement about the British employers' group having its first female president.

Consumers are savvy about organic food

Mon, 18 May 2009 21:25:21 GMT

Organic food enthusiasts are not, in my experience, the most sensitive to criticism. Homeopaths and their patients are. But there is no need for either group to get cross - certainly not with me. I am happy to pay for whatever works.