Should celebs carry the can for Booze Britain?

A pub boss has waded into the debate over alcohol-fuelled disorder by trying to pin the blame on the nation's celebrities.
Business / Misc / UK news

Darling presents Rock rescue plan - as it happened

Alistair Darling will update parliament on his plan to find a buyer for Northern Rock at 3.30pm, and the Opposition are likely to give him a pretty rough time.

Northern Rock shareholders' meeting

Shareholders gathered today at Newcastle's Metro Radio Arena to help shape the company's future. Graeme Wearden was there to bring you the action from an extraordinary EGM.

Darling on Northern Rock - Live

In what promises to be a boisterous event, Alistair Darling will update MPs on the future of Northern Rock at 3.30pm.

The chancellor will outline the range of options on the table, in a ministerial statement.

We already know that Northern Rock has received around 10 approaches which have one thing in common - they all put a much lower price on the bank than last Friday's market value.

This revelation sent Northern Rock's shares crashing again this morning, and only added to fears that taxpayers will be out of pocket by the time this fiasco is resolved.

We'll bring you live coverage of the statement and the debate that follows.

Merrill Lynch dumps its top man

The travails of Stan O'Neal, the chief executive of Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch, hit the headlines today.

guardian.co.uk / Business

Darling, what were you thinking?

It's Alistair Darling's turn to explain his role in this summer's banking crisis, and also defend his pre-budget report.

MPs quiz Northern Rock - live

Four top Northern Rock executives have been called before the Treasury select committee to answer some tough questions about the bank's recent crisis.
Business

Private equity v MPs: Round Two

Welcome to Guardian Unlimited's second live blogging session from the Treasury select committee as it investigates the private equity industry.

At 10.45am we'll be hearing from four senior bosses: David Blitzer of Blackstone, Peter Taylor of Duke Street Capital, Alchemy's Jon Moulton and CVC's Donald Mackenzie.

The committee didn't cover themselves in glory a fortnight ago, when they quizzed their first quartet of private equity players on tax, job cuts and pensions. As Nils Pratley put it, the MPs "asked a handful of good questions but simply didn't understand the answers to ask decent supplementaries".

Will they be better briefed today, and will these four be as slick and well prepared as Damon Buffini and Co were last time?

Click refresh for live updates throughout the morning

Update: it's all over, so scroll down for our comprehensive coverage of today's session.

In defence of white van man

The long-lambasted white van man has been besmirched and is actually, according to a new study, diligent, hard-working and the backbone of the country's economy, writes Matthew O'Brien.
Business

Would you take a dog to work?

The issue of corporate fat cats hit the headlines in the UK again this week when MPs grilled top private equity bosses, but over in America it's dogs that are leaving their paw prints on the boardroom table.

MPs grill private equity bosses

Some of the key players in the UK's private equity industry were grilled by a Treasury select committee on Wednesday, writes Graeme Wearden.

Damon Buffini of Permira and Philip Yea of 3i, among others, faced tough questioning over their reputation for cutting jobs and saddling companies with debts.

The committee heard from union leaders from GMB and Unite, who demanded action over the tax breaks enjoyed by private equity.

Update: The committee have let the private equity panel depart, after more than two hours of Q&A in which the MPs raised some serious issues but didn't seem to land many killer punches. The unions also called for tougher regulation, but faced some criticism of their own. Read it all below.

guardian.co.uk / Business

The budget: what the papers say

"In newsrooms across the country," writes Matthew Engel in the FT, "chief sub-editors must have been panicking as they tried desperately to rake a headline out of the chancellor's turgid oratory and niggardly offerings."

Maybe they were short of inspiration at the FT ("Tories rap 'con trick' as Brown steps out on his road to No 10"), but not at News International, where Mr Brown's manoeuvres went down exceptionally well.

Business

Papers predict lean and green budget from Brown

Gordon Brown before the 2006 budget.
Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty
It is a ritual that has become as familiar as the photograph with the battered, red briefcase: predicting what will be in the annual budget statement.

In truth, there have been times when even the prime minister has not known, while David Cameron today confessed that responding to the budget is his least favourite part of being Tory leader.

In an entry on his weblog, Mr Cameron admitted he would "give a lot" for an accurate leak of what the chancellor would announce tomorrow.

"You get a few pages of the so-called red book an hour or so in advance - and even that has some thick black lines through it.

"The rest is guesswork, judgment and trying to be quick on your feet."

All this has never stopped newspapers printing details of what they believed would be contained in the announcement.

Whether the information has been obtained from "Whitehall insiders" or is simply educated guesswork we shall never know.

But as Gordon Brown prepares to deliver his 11th and almost certainly final budget speech tomorrow, it would seem that old traditions never die.

Read on for this year's predictions.

Business

Royal Mail chauvinism under the spotlight

The privateers in Britain's postal industry are no doubt cock-a-hoop that the Mail Competition Forum has persuaded the European commission to investigate the government-backed finance package for Royal Mail, writes industrial editor Mark Milner.

If the package is blocked on the grounds that it constitutes state aid, rather than commercial support from the company's only shareholder, Royal Mail's modernisation plans will be significantly weakened.

That will make it easier for the privateers to cherry-pick Royal Mail's most lucrative business customers and - shamefully - some of its government contracts. Take that trend to its logical conclusion and all that will be left for Royal Mail to do will be deliver Christmas cards to the more remote parts of the UK - a model which is clearly unsustainable.

If the commission does find against the government and Royal Mail and rules the package is tilting the playing field, the government should consider an alternative remedy.

Either it should remove the universal service obligation, which obliges Royal Mail to offer one delivery a day to every address in the UK - except on Sundays - or force the privateers to offer the same service. Fair's fair, after all. And I, for one, would be posting a letter a day to an address on Barra via TNT, DHL and UK Post.

Business

Corus steelworkers wave ta-ta to job security

Who would have thought that the future of the British steel industry would be decided at midnight behind closed doors by a group of suits in the City on the basis of sealed bids, asks the Guardian's industrial correspondent Terry Macalister.

The future of individual plants in south Wales and Yorkshire used to be a matter of debate in parliament - never mind on the streets of Llanwern - because this was about vital jobs and communities, not just the balance sheet of a company in the top 100 on the stock market.

And yet the former British Steel - now Corus - is to move into the ownership of Tata of India, a company a fraction the size of Corus in terms of steel output, and with none of its hi-tech know-how.

Business

Money talks - in English

Zut alors! Patricia Russo, an American, took over last week as chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, the combined Franco-American telecoms equipment group, and she doesn't speak - nor plans to learn - French, writes David Gow.

Pas un seul mot, even though she will be based in Paris most of the time.
Jacques Legendre, a French senator and vice-president of the Senate's cultural affairs committee, finds that shocking, according to a news agency report. "If I worked in New York I would try to speak English." Evidemment, mon brave.

But the senator, clearly a paid-up member of France's "civilising mission," is talking rubbish. Here in Brussels, where President Jacques Chirac memorably stormed out of an EU summit in March because Ernest-Antoine Sellière, French head of business lobby group Unice, spoke English, French has been virtually replaced as the lingua franca of EU institutions by English.

First Direct test the current account market

Would you stay with a bank that charged a fee for a standard current account, asks Guardian Unlimited Money editor Sandra Haurant.

Internet bank First Direct is going to charge current account customers a monthly fee of £10 from February 2007 unless they pay in £1,500 a month, keep a balance of the same amount, or take out another of the bank's products, such as a savings account. The move has provoked concerns that it could mark the end of free banking if others follow.

One reader and First Direct customer wrote to Guardian Unlimited Money: "I am not working at the moment but my salary went into my First Direct account for many years, although I never earned as much as £1,500 per month.

"When I called First Direct this morning to complain, the lady who took the call suggested that I could avoid this charge if I took out one of their other products, but apart from the fact that they aren't very competitive anyway, I no longer wish to deal with a bank which treats its customers in this way."

Can car industry ever be green?

Traffic hell on the M25. Photograph: Dan Chung/Guardian

"Act now or the world we know will be lost for ever," said a Guardian headline across two pages devoted to a digest of the wake-up Stern report on climate change.

Reflecting this new-found urgency, Tony Blair's government is now pressing for a pact with the G8 and five emerging countries on a Kyoto 2 (post-2012) deal to cut carbon emissions by 30% by 2020 and 60% by 2050 via a global trading scheme - to be signed next year or 2008 at the latest.

This zealous haste is laudable but is the goal - and the timeframe - achievable, asks David Gow in Brussels.

guardian.co.uk / Business

Does Qinetiq lack intelligence?

George Tenet. Photograph: Luke Frazza/AFP/GettyQinetiq, the controversially privatised defence and technology company, released a little more information than intended in its announcement to the stock exchange that it has appointed former CIA director George Tenet as a non-executive director, writes Hans Kundnani.

Not only does Qinetiq operate in a field where information security is all-important, it also develops technology to help keep information secure - for example from cyber-terrorists and hackers.

It was therefore somewhat odd - and worrying - to see an embarrassing appendix inadvertently attached to the end of the company's statement.

guardian.co.uk / Business

The strange world of the EU arts lobby

Brussels, the EU capital, is a hotbed of lobbyists, writes David Gow.

There are 15,000, ranging from corporates to NGOs via a host of consultancies set up by ex-commission officials and journalists to peddle the views of special interest groups and, more critically, influence the outcome of the tortuous legislative process.

I've even heard of evidence that lobbyists draft amendments to directives and regulations tabled in their entirety by MEPs, wittingly or unwittingly. Picking their way through this dark, thick forest of claim and counter-claim is the daily task of the 1,400 accredited journalists who can spend from breakfast to dinner going from one briefing to the next conference or seminar - with often meagre results.

Occasionally, an email from a lobbying consultancy sparks genuine interest and anticipation. This week "G-plus" invited us to the formation of Culture First, an alliance of composers, songwriters, actors and film directors battling against a "technocratic onslaught" on copyright - the threatened, not actual, removal of levies on devices used by private citizens to download and store music, films etc. These are then handed back, via collecting societies, to authors and composers.