Martin Vander Weyer

Reflections on the book trade from the man who wants his shops back 22- Apr -2009
The week in which HMV completed its £63 million takeover of Ottakar’s — and announced that Ottakar’s bookshops will be rebranded as Waterstone’s, which HMV already owns — seems a good moment to contemplate the future of the book trade in the virtual and digital age. Is it wrong to do business in Zimbabwe? Remember what Mandela said to Shell 9- Jul -2008
Shell and Barclays were the two highest-profile British companies in South Africa during the apartheid era. These days, Vesco the fugitive fraudster would have had a top job on Wall Street 15- May -2008
So farewell, Robert Vesco, the fraudster, drug trafficker and fugitive from US justice whose death last year has been 'confirmed by Cuban burial records', according to the Daily Telegraph. The Chariots of Fire moment that revealed Gordon's 10p tax timebomb 23- Apr -2008
The abolition of the 10p starter rate of income tax in Gordon Brown's last Budget has a special significance in recent Spectator history: coming only a month after our move from Doughty Street in Bloomsbury to Old Queen Street in Westminster, it was the event which made us realise how useful it is to operate within sprinting distance of the Palace of Westminster. I think I've spotted the 'trash and cash' merchants, dining at Mayfair's best tables 26- Mar -2008
A posse of hedge fund managers came round to The Spectator the other day, not to indulge in 'trash and cash' - or the even less attractive 'pump and dump' - but to participate in a breakfast discussion about how they are perceived by the media and the political world, and what they ought to do about it.  What scrapes ice, picks locks, tempts shoppers -- and bolsters shaken banks? 5- Mar -2008
'Sexual intercourse began in 1963,' wrote Philip Larkin; consumer debt, with similar connotations of gratification and regret, began in Britain three years later with the launch of Barclaycard, based on the model of the world's first mass-market credit card, BankAmericard in California, which dated back to 1958.  In the end, they may have to auction what's left of Northern Rock on eBay 20- Feb -2008
When the nationalisation of Northern Rock was announced at the beginning of the week, commentators queued up behind the shadow chancellor to declare a return to the dark days of the 1970s and to dance on the ashes of Alistair Darling's career. Network Rail's performance is poor enough to test an archbishop's patience 24- Jan -2008
The archbishop and I - not having been formally introduced - confined ourselves to an exchange of despairing glances.  Is that an iceberg ahead? 28- Nov -2007
Make mine a jereboam and put it on my credit card. Let’s not go to Angola: a glimpse of the costs and benefits of prison reform 14- Nov -2007
Is prison reform an economic issue, as well as a moral and social one? The tale of Grand Central's ghost train - and why I'm right behind Chris Huhne 1- Nov -2007
Rail delays are a daily fact of life, but Grand Central's ghost train has set new records. Due to depart from Sunderland last December, it has yet to pass York en route to King's Cross.   Piggy in the middle between the grain speculators and the supermarkets 18- Oct -2007
The concentrated aroma of — how shall I put it — deep piggy doo-doo that wafts through your car window as you motor up the A1 through North Yorkshire is, in normal times, nothing more nor less than the smell of money.   As the party games turn nasty, Sharapova shows bankers the elegant way to lose 4- Oct -2007
When I bumped into Barclays chief executive John Varley at Wimbledon one mid-week afternoon in July, I thought he looked remarkably relaxed for a man locked in a potentially career-breaking takeover battle with his deadliest rival.   How the spirit of the Rock triumphed over the prudence of the Northern 19- Sep -2007
Hindsight suggests that the Rock was always likely to get the Northern into trouble one day. Shoppers stay home as rates and floods rise — but there’s a bit of better news for M&S 11- Jul -2007
Shoppers have spent these past few weeks sheltering from incessant rain, rising interest rates and renewed threats of terrorism. Fast bucks all round as Saga and the AA form the Victor Meldrew conglomerate 3- Jul -2007
The £6 billion merger of Saga and the AA is a gift for cartoonists: a company whose ideal customer is Victor Meldrew with a broken fan-belt on the hard shoulder of the A22. Can Patak's fiery flavour survive 8- Jun -2007
I have long been a fan of Patak’s, the Lancashire-based Indian sauce-and-pickle empire that was acquired last week by Associated British Foods for an undisclosed price thought to be somewhere north of £100 million. Hot tips in the World Bank stakes: Blair, Bono, Clarkson ...but not me 23- May -2007
Shortly after the death of John Paul II in 2005, the wise and amiable Father Dominic Milroy, former prior of the Benedictine college in Rome, leant across a dinner table and said, ‘Martin, you’d make a good candidate for Pope.’ ‘But father,’ I protested, ‘I’m not even a Catholic.’ ‘Oh don’t worry,’ he responded, ‘We can soon see about that.’ The party’s almost over — but not in the land of the weeping camel 9- May -2007
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of leading US stocks passed 13200 for the first time last week, after its strongest run (23 rises in 26 sessions) since 1955. The row about private equity is mostly the Labour party arguing with itself 22- Mar -2007
The real credit crisis: the nation refuses to give any to Gordon Brown The row about private equity is... 28- Feb -2007
The current row about private equity seems to me to have much more to do with the flexing of union muscles in anticipation of a return to influence under Gordon Brown than it has to do with efficiency and fairness in the use of capital. The benefits of privatising BA seem to have worn off — so why not do it again? 31- Jan -2007
It is exactly 20 years next week since British Airways was privatised. Arguably, it was the most successful of all the Thatcher-era privatisations. Who’s new in 2007 — and how are things in Sakhalin, Comrade Lobachov? 18- Jan -2007
An entry in the new edition of Who’s Who isn’t quite like a knighthood — you can’t buy one, for a start — but it is nevertheless a distinction. Snouts still in the trough — and now bosses want 20 per cent of every profit 3- Jan -2007
I like to think I helped start the national debate about fairness and executive pay with an article here in May 1993 headlined ‘Snouts in the Trough’, illustrated by Garland with pin-striped porkers helping themselves to huge portions of gravy. Boston’s in a hole and still digging. Will London’s Olympics go the same way? 23- Nov -2006
On the way into Boston from Logan Airport, you pass a cavernous, closed-off tunnel entrance, full of construction vehicles, looking at night like an avant garde set for Siegfried. What makes a great businessman: a silver tongue or a killer instinct? 9- Nov -2006
‘Who’s the most impressive business leader you’ve ever met?’ I asked a group of senior executives the other night. Reflections on the book trade from the man who wants his shops back 12- Jul -2006
The week in which HMV completed its £63 million takeover of Ottakar’s — and announced that Ottakar’s bookshops will be rebranded as Waterstone’s, which HMV already owns — seems a good moment to contemplate the future of the book trade in the virtual and digital age. You’re hired — so long as you swear like they do on telly, and you don’t smoke 20- May -2006
Many of my friends were hooked on the latest series of The Apprentice — even our usually infallible television critic James Delingpole, who told me that he loved it ‘because it’s so awful’. Galbraith versus Friedman: the great debate is not over yet 6- May -2006
I would love to have been a fly on the wall — or a butler — at the US embassy in New Delhi in March 1963 when Milton Friedman, champion of laissez-faire, came to lunch with J.K. Galbraith, high priest of higher welfare spending and at that time President Kennedy’s ambassador to India. Knock, knock! A toast to the City’s peerless chronicler and jokesmith 8- Apr -2006
Christopher Fildes’s City and Suburban column first appeared in June 1984 and notched up over a thousand appearances; before that, he served as business editor under Nigel Lawson in the late 1960s. Even Lassie gets to Yorkshire quicker than the Royal Mail these days 18- Feb -2006
Watching the charming remake of Lassie, I realised — stifling a sob — how easy it was to suspend my disbelief that a soulful collie could make a solo journey from the Highlands via Glasgow to a village in Yorkshire, arriving home just in time for Christmas. Labour tries its hand at privatisation - and hands John Major’s firm a fast buck 19- Jan -2006
QinetiQ, the business created out of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, is Labour’s first attempt at full-scale privatisation, and it has deservedly run into heavy flak. Any other business 14- Jan -2006
Who will be man enough to stand up for big business against Cameron and Brown?