There’s a joke, beloved of American economists, that has a chief executive, a member of the conservative Tea Party movement and public-sector employee sitting at a table eyeing a plate of 12 biscuits.
The chief exec grabs 11 of them, before turning to the Tea Party member and warning: “You better watch him. He wants your cookie.”
This gag has been doing the rounds for a bit now and tends to be trotted out when the topic of inequality comes up – which means that there is a fair chance that someone might give it a run out at the Resolution Foundation this week, as the thinktank launches new research into “the wealth of our nation: who owns what in 21st-century Britain”.
The topic feels as current as ever – especially as the work will examine “not just at the wealth gap between rich and poor, but also the new gap opening up between young and old” – and comes at a point when Oxfam reckons the accumulated wealth of Britain’s richest 1% is more than 20 times the total of the poorest fifth.
The charity says the inequality problem is likely to have been a contributing factor in the vote to leave the European Union and that the figures make the country one of the most unequal in the developed world.
That really takes the biscuit.
Worth keeping track of Hornby’s travails
In April, a plan by the second-largest shareholder in Hornby to oust the toymaker’s chairman hit the buffers.
A 20% shareholder called New Pistoia described Hornby’s five years under Roger Canham as “disastrous”, before predicting that the firm’s “ineffective” strategy “will continue to destroy value and is not aligned with creating wealth for all shareholders”. Oh – and just for good measure it added that Canham’s other role, at Hornby’s largest shareholder Phoenix, was not “in accordance with principles of good corporate governance”.
Canham was not derailed: but if he’s congratulating himself over holding on to the controls at a company whose brands also include Scalextric, Airfix and Corgi, then he probably shouldn’t. Having your second largest shareholder characterise your tenure as “disastrous” hardly suggests the chairman has been doing a flawless job – and nor does the company’s share price.
It slumped by 62% in February 2016 after the firm warned of mounting losses following a “disappointing” start to that year – and it hasn’t really shown much sign of staging a comeback since.
All of which makes the group’s full-year results this week rather intriguing.
Developing.
Listening bank puts ear to ground
It may not currently be the most fashionable tactic for everyone – but this week we’re going to see what happens when our ruling classes talk to ordinary people.
On Wednesday we get the latest instalment of the Bank of England’s agents’ summary of business conditions – effectively a report from Threadneedle Street’s eyes and ears on the ground around the country.
The field agents talk to hundreds of businesses and report back with scores and comments on the health of consumer spending, manufacturing, the housing market, pay awards and costs faced by business and consumers.
This is likely to be watched more closely than usual following the split that emerged last week at the Bank over the right time to raise interest rates from their record low of 0.25%.
Three members voted against the other five and called for an immediate rise in borrowing costs to keep a lid on inflation. One of the hawks, Kristin Forbes, leaves the monetary policy committee at the end of the month – but investors will be hoping to hear from the other two, Ian McCafferty and Michael Saunders, soon. They will certainly hear from the governor – Mark Carney – this week, as on Tuesday he and chancellor Philip Hammond will be delivering their Mansion House speeches, cancelled last week after the Grenfell Tower fire.
