shareholder values

And now for Samoa - completely different

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:18:19 GMT

The tiny South Pacific island of Samoa (pop 177,000 and just 332km of paved roads) is about to switch from driving on the right side of the road to the left. Not only is this the first country to switch sides in many years (Yemen, 1977, seems to be the most recent) but it is also the first in living memory to switch to the British side rather than the American side.

And therein lies the reason for the changeover: apparently the government wants to discourage the import of American gas-guzzlers and encourage ex-pat Samoans in left-hand driving Australia and New Zealand to send back home more economical second-hand cars. Seems like a challenging way to protect the environment.

It brings to mind a press trip made by our editor to Hong Kong in 1996, some 18 months before the handover to China. At a meeting with a senior official from the Hong Kong tourism authority, one reporter asked whether China (right-hand drive) would likely force Hong Kong (left-hand drive) to switch. The official thought for a minute and then concluded that this wouldn't exactly be China's first priority - but his choice of words caused much merriment: "It won't happen overnight," he said...

And now for something completely different...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:41:38 GMT

Apologies for the radio silence on this blog over the last few weeks - a combination of summer holidays, it being too hot to blog, too rainy to blog or too busy to blog because it always feels like we're the only ones who actually have to do any work in August.

Oh, and our editor resigned, so that's created a bit of a kerfuffle to sort out. Took him 12 years, but he's finally going to pastures new, to be succeeded by deputy editor Melanie Stern. Details available by clicking this link.

So as Financial Director rushes headlong into its 25th anniversary issue - with Andy Sawers having been responsible for almost half of that - expect the start of the title's next quarter century to see a few changes...

I've finally paid off a really weird overdraft...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:02:58 GMT

This could be the ultimate 'green shoots' story. As we all try to get out of debt, I can now tell you that I have, after six months, finally repaid my Nectar loyalty points overdraft.

Eh? Here's what happened. Last Christmas, Mrs Shareholdervalues was doing all the festive food shopping at Sainsbury's. I arrived a bit later and started getting in all the festive booze. Mrs Shareholdervalues was loading up her shopping and paying at one till, while the master of the house was going through another till with all the drink.

Both of us had big bills, as you might expect, if only because we planned on doing a lot of entertaining over the holidays (and not because we eat and drink a lot ourselves, you understand). Unbeknownst to each other, we both whipped out our Nectar cards (which run off the same account) and asked for the full credit balance - some 5500 points, worth £55 - to be taken off our shopping bills.

The computer couldn't handle two near-simultaneous transactions drawing down the full balance - and allowed them both to go through! Not until we got home did we realise that we'd struck a bargain.

Fortunately, the next time we went to Sainsbury's and presented a Nectar card, we weren't arrested for committing a heinous computer crime. Instead, our till receipt showed a balance of minus 5500 points.

And so, for the last six months, every point we've earned has gone straight into repaying what was, in effect, a £55, interest-free, unauthorised overdraft.

Colleagues suggested that this had the makings of a modern-day Great Train Robbery, if you could upscale it. Not so sure. Do you know how much money you have to spend at Sainsbury's in order to earn 5500 points in the first place? There must be cheaper ways to commit a crime.

Birthday gongfest

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:20:46 GMT

The Queen's Birthday Honours list contained the usual assortment of unsung community stalwarts, sporting heroes and treaders of the boards.

One gong, an OBE, goes to West Yorkshire Police assistant chief officer and director of finance Nigel Brook, so many congratulations to him from all at Financial Director on behalf of FDs everywhere.

In past years there's been a chunky representation from the financial services industry - a field of endeavour notable by its absence these days (despite the fact there must be someone out there who deserves royal recognition!). The nearest we get to a Square Mile honour is the one given to fashion designer Jeff Banks. Boom boom.

Speak softly, and carry a really, really big stick...

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:12:14 GMT

Today's Financial Times reports that derivatives brokers are getting annoyed with the interventions of the reinvigorated Financial Services Authority - so much so that Alexander Justham, director of the FSA's market division, retorted:

"This is where society wants us to be. You should do the right thing and if you don't you run the risk of having your head put on a spike."

Okay. We're scared. Nice doggy. Niiiice watchdoggy...

My Sweet Lord

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:43:41 GMT

The BBC says that Sir Alan Sugar is about to be offered a peerage in recognition of the role he is taking on as 'enterprise tsar' [sic].

Forget The Apprentice - here's some real business TV...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:33:07 GMT

As The Apprentice draws to a close on Sunday night, business 'reality show' TV junkies will be despondent and wondering where to get their weekly fix.

Here's a tip: tune in to Mary Queen of Charity Shops (Tuesdays, 9pm, BBC2). Forget about the ridiculous management games that a band of almost entirely obnoxious over-hyped contestants try to complete. We're talking real business with this show - even if it is the charity business.

Mary Portas is a retail expert, credited with great success at West End shop Harvey Nicks. In this series, she is trying to improve the fortunes of a 'Save the Children' charity shop in Orpington. Being a charity shop, it is almost entirely staffed by lovely 'old dear' volunteers, many of whom have worked there every Tuesday morning (or whatever) for years - even decades. As you might guess, they have heard of 'change' but aren't really in favour of it.

Here's a flavour of how bad things are: weekly takings per volunteer aren't £30 a head as one volunteer suggests. No, it's more like £12.50.

Then there's the ultimate supply chain horror: the tat that people 'generously' donate to shops such as this is largely useless - unwashed bras, sodden, mud-encrusted football boots, old trousers with holes in the crotch. Lovely stuff. Worse than useless, in fact, because the shop has to pay around £90 a week to have all this crap taken away. "We could pay for a part-time therapist for £90 a week," says one volunteer as she loads an industrial-sized rubbish bin with more 'donations'.

If you missed it, watch the first episode on BBC iPlayer (quickly, though, time's running out) and make sure you see the next episodes. You'll soon forget all about Sir Alan Sugar.

* Talking about Sir Alan Sugar, we hear today he's been appointed by Gordon Brown as an 'enterprise tsar'. Um, aren't the concepts of 'enterprise' and 'tsar' rather at odds with each other???

0.1% - and the end of a chapter for GM and the Dow

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:07:18 GMT

Today's Wall Street Journal Europe reports that the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by General Motors will result in it leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average index - the best-known benchmark for Wall Street.

Bankruptcy disqualifies a company from being a constituent of the index - though the fact that GM's market capitalisation is now just 0.1% of the 30-share Dow's weighting won't help much, either.

GM, founded in 1908, has been a fixture of the index since 1925 (though the WSJE, which is owned by Dow Jones, says 1923), and, previously, popped in and out the index briefly during the Great War (but before the Yanks actually joined in).

Can't help wondering what Alfred Sloan would have made of this corporate giant's fall from grace...

One of our green shoots just died

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:16:08 GMT

Not only should you never make predictions, especially about the future, but you aren't always safe writing about the past, either.

In our latest cover story we listed as one of our green shoots the fact that van-maker LDV had withdrawn its application to go into administration as it was being rescued by Malaysian group Weststar.

Oops! Despite a £5m loan from the UK government, Weststar has changed its mind and LDV is applying once again to go into administration.

No representation without taxation

Tue, 12 May 2009 22:24:08 GMT

Let's keep this simple. There is no -- repeat, no -- need to reform the House of Commons rule book on expenses.

In other words, there is no -- repeat, no -- excuse for blaming the rules or the system for the abuse that has taken place.

There is only a requirement that MPs read the rules. Out loud. While standing in the naughty corner of their constituency offices in front of their unpaid volunteers. And after writing out a cheque to reimburse the taxpayer.

Why? Easy. Read what the rules actually say...

Claims should be above reproach and must reflect actual usage of the resources being claimed.
Claims must only be made for expenditure that it was necessary for a Member to incur to ensure that he or she could properly perform his or her parliamentary duties.
Members must ensure that claims do not give rise to, or give the appearance of giving rise to, an improper personal financial benefit to themselves or anyone else.
Members are committed to openness about what expenditure has been incurred and for what purposes.
The requirement of ensuring value for money is central in claiming for accommodation, goods or services - Members should avoid purchases which could be seen as extravagant or luxurious.

This comes from the Commons Green Book. What could be clearer than this? Admittedly, the rules are about 70 pages long -- but you don't have to read beyond page 8 to take in the key principles above.

But because MPs aren't generally the smartest guys in the room, the guide gives a few helpful tips, in the form of self-examining questions. Things like...

Is this purchase supporting me in carrying out my parliamentary duties? Anything which is done for personal benefit or for electioneering or for the direct support of a political party will not be part of a Member's parliamentary duties.
Could the claim in any way damage the reputation of Parliament or its Members?
How comfortable do I feel with the knowledge that my claim will be available to the public under Freedom of Information?

So here's a test for MPs who have fallen foul of these fairly basic principles: Are you crooked? Or just stupid?

And which of those two qualities best equips you to be a Member of Parliament?

Grrrrr!

Oh, one more thing: send in HMRC to decide whether the unreimbursed expenses claims that MPs think they're still entitled to count as taxable benefits or not. Let the taxman reach the parts that even the Daily Telegraph hasn't reached yet.

Latest news: HMRC may investigate "flipping" (read story)...

Wrong, Honorable Members...

Tue, 12 May 2009 06:55:18 GMT

The country is financially bankrupt. The government is morally bankrupt. Why do I find myself more shocked by the second statement than the first???

You couldn't make it up (unless you're an ID thief)

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:00:25 GMT

An email arrives. "Your personal data held by *****", says the subject field (we're using asterisks to protecting the guilty - for the moment - and the innocent). Okay, you've caught our attention. We're interested, though so far it sounds like a phishing scam.

The body of the email says...

"Below is the information we currently hold under your name in our contacts database. If any of these details are incorrect, missing or if you would like us to remove your information, please contact us by email at *****************@*****.org.uk"

Then come the details...

Firstname: L******** Lastname: M********
Organisation: N**** ******** Limited
Job Title:
Address: *************************, County Down, ************

Telephone:
Fax:
Mobile:
Email: *****************@******.co.uk

Odd. "My" details are complete wrong. I've never heard of this person. And I don't think I've ever even been to County Down.

Then, a moment later, an identical email arrives - identical apart from the fact that it has a different set of personal details, relating to someone who works in a building society in Swindon. And I know I've never been to Swindon, so that can't be me, either.

So who is sending out emails with other people's personal details - and, moreover, asking for these details to be confirmed or corrected? Step forward CIFAS, the UK's fraud prevention service!

Within 90 minutes another email arrives from CIFAS - this time a grovelling apology blaming "a mailing error" and explaining that the work contact details of three people on CIFAS's mailing list were sent out in error.

Three people? I only received two such emails. Suddenly I feel short-changed and want to find out who the third person was. Probably best not knowing...

Nast business

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:18:44 GMT

It seems like every time business gets too exciting and too sexy, in steps oh, so glamourous publisher Conde Nast, the company behind uber-glossy, style-setting titles such as Vanity Fair, Vogue and GQ. It happened in the 1980s when stock markets were letting rip and buccaneers like James Hanson stalked corporate prey. In a joint venture with the Financial Times, Conde Nast launched Business magazine in the UK. Sadly, though it did have good, well-written stories, it couldn't survive the downturn of the early 1990s.

Two years ago, before we knew what a credit crunch was and when hedge fund managers still had too much money, Conde Nast tried again with a solo effort costing $100 million (yup, a hundred million bucks), Conde Nast Portfolio.

Now it, too, has bitten the dust, unable to find enough big-spending readers to attract big-spending advertisers.

Perhaps this is a contra-cyclical sign that things are about to get better - though we can but hope that it will be many, many years before business is again sexy enough for a third Conde Nast business launch.

The name's Bond. Junk Bond.

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:34:03 GMT

Given the embarrassingly enormous amount of money that Alistair Darling is going to have to borrow for many years to come, we suggest that UK government bonds be rebranded as "guilts"...

Thanks, Darling, for the British Sarbox

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:39:20 GMT

If you're a finance director in a large company, you now work for HMRC. In a sense, of course, we all work for HMRC, and those of you earning over £150K will be working for them harder than ever.

In the face of a vast, vast Budget deficit, the government is anxious to protect what little revenue it still has. This is where you come in: "senior accounting officers" are to be given a new statutory duty to personally certify that adequate controls are in place to prepare accurate tax computations. And you'll have a £5,000 personal penalty if you screw it up.

Exactly why it seems necessary to overlay this extra bit of bureaucracy on top of the existing statutory duties to (and I paraphrase, here) not lie to the taxman and rip him off, remains stunningly unclear at the moment. Stephen Timms, the government minister who signed off the impact assessment, says that companies are expected "to take reasonable care to ensure that they declare the correct tax liability". He justifies the new measure by saying that "HMRC may not discover that care has not been taken" (so another signature on another piece of paper is going to help, yeah?) "or the accountabilities within the company may be insufficient" - which we dare to suggest seems a little unlikely given that the measure is aimed at large companies (roughly, those with turnover greater than £22.8m or more than 250 employees).

The requirement is apparently based on the much-derided US Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. So that's good news. The Treasury has worked out that while there are around 2 million companies, only around 60,000 are big enough to be subject to the new rule. So that's a relief. But most of these are companies within groups, so there's only around 1,600 to 2,000 groups involved. Phew. But if you work for smaller companies, don't get too smug: if the scheme (which costs the government virtually nothing and so has no downside) is successful with big companies, small ones might later get clobbered with it, too.

Oh, and by the way, the measure is expected to raise £140m. Over four years. Which seems like a surprising small yet precise number, to us. Still, when the Budget deficit has more zeroes than a Zimbabwean fiver, every penny counts, I guess.

Lovely motor, in sub-prime condition...

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:12:32 GMT

Let's get straight to the Budget winners and losers: losers are anyone earning over £150K, who now have a pledge-busting top rate of tax of 50%. Winners are anyone with an old banger worth (as of yesterday) a hundred quid. It's now worth two grand as a trade-in on a new model. The Arthur Daleys of this world will be delighted (provided they don't earn more than £150K), and a healthy arbitrage market could soon develop in the pages of Auto Trader.

In fact, I can easily imagine that some enterprising individuals will buy up whole fleets of crappy old bangers at prices far greater than their intrinsic worth, perhaps even offering to share the profits with people who put up funding for them. Of course, cars that don't qualify for the two grand trade-in will be less valuable, and no doubt enterprising individuals will sell short the most vulnerable vehicles, buying them back when the scheme closes and their value goes... - hang on: isn't this how the banking system went wrong?

The life and times of Eddie George...

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:48:20 GMT

For several months while Eddie George was studying economics at Cambridge, inflation was negative. Within days of his death last weekend at the age of 70 after a long battle with cancer, inflation went negative. In between it went up to almost 27%.

His career at the Bank of England, which started in 1962 until his retirement as Governor in 2003, spanned a couple of posh Tory prime ministers, a modernist Labour PM, then a hopelessly disastrous Tory administration, followed by an almost equally appalling Labour government - albeit one that, with Denis Healey as Chancellor, started to embrace monetarism - then a reformist Tory government, followed by a useless Tory government, then a reformist Labour government, then...

George, who was given a life peerage in 2004, became Governor shortly after the debacle of Black Wednesday (or White Wednesday, if you prefer), when Britain suffered the humiliation of being ejected from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) club that it should never have joined in the first place.

Four years later, he was able to preside over an independent Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee that had been handed responsibility for determining interest rates according to what was best for the economy, not the politicians. Unfortunately, at the same time, then-Chancellor Gordon Brown took away the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street's responsibilities for supervising the banks, handing most of that role, instead, to a newly-created super-regulator, the Financial Services Authority.

Wouldn't his memoirs have been fascinating! As far as I'm aware, he never wrote them. What a shame. It's our loss.

Why turkeys should vote for Christmas

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:51:31 GMT

As Budget Day approaches, we're getting the usual cries that the Chancellor must simplify the tax system. As usual, these cries come from accountants, the very people who employ thousands of expert tax advisers in order to explain the complexity to their clients and help them cope with it all.

It's an annual ritual, as much a part of the Budget as standing outside No 11 Downing Street waving a decrepit red briefcase - though it always makes me think of turkeys protesting against the abolition of Christmas: if ever the tax laws were really simplified, lots of highly-paid people would be out of work.

On the other hand, KPMG's tax folks are now following their colleagues elsewhere in the firm into four-day working, so maybe Finance Act complexity alone isn't enough to keep them all fully-occupied.

And besides, we're losing companies to overseas jurisdictions at a rate of knots, not just because of the lower tax rates abroad but also in large measure because of the relatively simpler regimes elsewhere.

The Chancellor desperately needs more money, however. So Darling is faced with a daunting challenge: raise more tax revenue while making the tax burden less onerous. Maybe the accountants are right this time...

In the balance

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:00:16 GMT

Tonight I bought a book called Investing Against the Tide: Lessons from a life running money, written by Anthony Bolton, the former Fidelity fund manager who arguably deserves the title of England's Greatest Living Investor.

There are plenty of gems in this book - too many to repeat here without violating the law of copyright - but allow me to pull out a couple:

"When I've analysed the biggest mistakes I've made over the years they have nearly always been in companies with poor balance sheets."

Remind you of any sector in particular? Banks, perhaps? Then Bolton is candid about the broking community's failings:

"I am always surprised how little analysis is done by most broker analysts on balance sheets."

Suddenly a lot of things become very clear...

The book also contains many quotes from the über investor of them all, Warren Buffett. But I have to highlight this one from The Great Crash author and economist John Kenneth Galbraith:

"In [Wall Steet,] a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who succumb to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nealy always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves."

Suddenly a lot of things become very, very clear...

If you didn't know, you can now follow the Shareholder Values blog via an RSS feed.

Wise council: 200 words you shouldn't say in local government

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:30:12 GMT

The Local Government Association has produced a list of 200 words that it says should not be used by councils. We've unearthed a memo that shows how one local authority is trying to embrace a 'plain English' policy to improve services, increase accountability and reduce costs...

This across-the-piece protocol guidelines initiative for best practice in joined-up customer dialogue is actioned as an enabler to challenge the contextual framework for engaging users with our core message of rebaselining our reconfigured taxonomy toolkit to enhance top-down transparency, meaningful dialogue mechanisms, consensual cascading of outcomes and to promulgate synergies in community engagement.

Stakeholders should welcome this proactive coterminosity of our engagement with localities to fast-track funding streams for holistic governance and flex embedded empowerment. Our priority, going forward, is to champion citizen empowerment and advocate prioritization of a multidisciplinary network model within municipalities to leverage democratic legitimacy on an area-based level playing field.

The overarching paradigm is participatory partnership working and peer challenge within a process-driven cross-fertilisation of blue-sky thinking, the joint working of multi-agency capabilities benchmarking in collaboration with interdepartmental inspectorates for rationalisation of a menu of options and streamlined, scaled-back yet robust improvement levers for single conversations about strategic priorities for normalising holistic interface with the client, and an evidence base coterminous with incentivising practitioners with quick win output indicators.

This pathfinder direction of travel is an iteration of our democratic mandate with cohesive communities. Downstream, a meaningful consultation and external challenge gateway review of agencies will signpost our predictors of beaconicity. Core developments such as capacity-building functionality, governance good practice, performance network output parameters, and a horizon-scanning transformational symposium will ensure we step-change a strategic, visionary, sustainable upward trend trajectory, scoping spatial seedbed social contracts, the procurement of potentialities and the mainstreaming of situational functionality in partnerships with the populace.

A quantum of quick-hit innovative capacity indicators, conditionality lowlights, a cohesiveness beacon baseline, and outsourced proportionality levers will utilise a value-added tranche of transactional, risk-based resource allocation revenue streams. Sector-wise, an upstream, area-focused, autonomous ambassador will edge-fit double-devolution and bottom-up CAAs, LAAs, and MAAs, commissioning a single point of contact as an exemplar for pooled budgets as a shared priority for a can-do culture.

Third sector provider vehicles have been tested for soundness in sustainable communities which cautiously welcome the flexibilities and freedoms and the well-being of a vision of shell developments for sub-regional service users. Social exclusion and subsidiarity distorts spending priorities, cross-cutting contestability and our core value of pooled resources for place-shaping management capacity.

Thematic pooled risk of systematics and income streams should procure early wins. Self-aggrandizement and worklessness will fulcrum slippage. We need more thinking outside of the box.

The full list of 200 words is available here.

Financial twitters

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:00:56 GMT

Don't really understand much about this twittering stuff and the fact that this blog is now writing about it probably means bang, that's it, game over, time to move on to the next biggest, latest fad because - sorry, I mean "coz" - we're too late for this one.

Be that as it may, a friend informs me that the following tweets or twits or whatever they're called were spotted on this wonderful media of social interaction (I post them here unedited, in all their illiterate glory).....

"you noe things r bad wen ur finance director instruct the pantry auntie to lock the damn fridge." Actually, quite wise words from 'SADdogbarking' - whoever he/she/it is.

"what is a good question to ask a company's director of finance? why can i not think of something pseudo-intelligent?" Ah, well, 'Canele' is clearly not as switched onto these financial wotsits as SADdogbarking is. Maybe they should twitter to each other (if indeed, that's what you do on Twitter). Maybe we should start doing it ourselves...

Attention tech-heads: if you'd like to follow Shareholder Values via an RSS FEED, I'm delighted to say we've finally changed the fuse on the computer that makes that work - so now you can.

How to make a banker wince

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:20:23 GMT

Warnings aplenty for everyone who works in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf and who runs the risk of looking like a banker. Dress down, or work from home, they're all being told. Yes, it's the smelly-socked anti-globalisation brigade back in town, about to mark the G20 Summit by launching carnage on the streets of the capital.

What a tragic waste: millions of pounds of property will be damaged, several policemen will get hurt and the protesters will look like a bunch of total d***heads. Their attempts to overthrow 'the system' will prove to be pathetically misguided and, if anything, public sympathy for the banking industry just might increase by a smidgeon.

If the demonstrators really want to hurt the bankers, all they need do is gather outside the glimmering offices - and laugh themselves silly.

Old whine in new bottles

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 09:43:13 GMT

We may think the current crisis is unprecedented but the allegedly topical email with 'new stock market terms' flying around at the moment has a strong whiff of post-dotcom bubble about it. Still, worth repeating anyway...

CEO Chief Embezzlement Officer
CFO Corporate Fraud Officer
Bull market A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius
Bear market A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery, and the husband gets no sex
Value investing The art of buying low and selling lower
P/E ratio The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing
Broker What my financial planner has made me
Standard & Poor Your life in a nutshell
Stock analyst Idiot who just downgraded your stock
Stock split When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves
Market correction The day after you buy stocks
Cash flow The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet
Yahoo! What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share [it's $13.22 now]
Windows What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo! at $240 per share
Institutional investor Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse
Profit An archaic word no longer in use

Profit (noun) - pecuniary gain resulting from the employment of capital in any transaction (in case you'd forgotten!)

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:38:15 GMT

Citigroup made a profit in the first two months of 2009, it said in a letter to employees.

A profit, a profit...! Dare we hope this is a good omen? Dare we?

Don't hold your breath. Analysts say the profit excludes asset write-offs. But it's a start.....

This tax war won't be a tea party

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:24:38 GMT

As the financial crisis bites deep into the bones of the global economy, a new passion is taking hold in Downing Street and the White House. It's a new war against offshore tax havens that have been enjoyed by entrepreneurs and multinationals for many decades.

Yesterday's Observer reports that some £8.2 trillion of private wealth sits in tax havens, costing home governments £180bn - £25bn of which is lost to HM Treasury.

How ironic that Gordon Brown and Barack Obama should want a piece of that action now. Two years ago, you could have done a lot with £25bn or £180bn. Now it will hardly bail out a reasonably-sized bank.

But Brown is on the warpath: he asked Congress, how much safer would people's savings be "if the whole world finally came together to outlaw shadow banking systems and offshore tax havens".

Obama is, too, viz, the "Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act" - which is currently a bill. (And don't forget that this wouldn't be the first time that America went to war over tax matters!)

So - they're happy to slag off the "shadow" banking systems, while in fact it's the banking systems that operated in the full glare of publicity that seem to be falling to pieces.

Be that as it may, expect the agenda to shift from fighting against "the axis of evil" to "the taxes of evil" - and remember you first heard that phrase here!