For decades the Financial Times has hardly had a good word to say about the Japanese economy. It is a special irony therefore that the paper’s longtime British owner, the Pearson group, has now agreed to sell it to the Tokyo-based Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) group. How come it is Nikkei that is buying the... Read More

Anyone puzzled by Scotland’s increasing disaffection should take a look at a book called British Enterprise. Written by Alexander Howard and Ernest Newman, and published in 1952, the immediate afterglow of the festival of Britain, it consisted of short descriptions of each of more than 100 then world-beating British manufacturing companies. It strikingly illustrates how... Read More

Given recent concerns for the future of jobs at places such as Longbridge, Dagenham and now Nissan in Sunderland, it is past time Britain diagnosed the real reasons for the erosion of its manufacturing base. One is the notion that in the digital age manufacturing no longer matters. Almost everyone who influences policy-making has come... Read More

Given recent concerns for the future of jobs at places such as Longbridge, Dagenham and now Nissan in Sunderland, it is past time Britain diagnosed the real reasons for the erosion of its manufacturing base. One is the notion that in the digital age manufacturing no longer matters. Almost everyone who influences policy-making has come... Read More