A Long Time In Finance

In his youth, he commanded a motor torpedo boat called HMS Gay Charger, and in later life became a Mousquetaire d'Armagnac. In between, Nigel Lawson was Neil's second favourite Chancellor of the Exchequer since the Second World War. We discuss the life and achievements of Margaret Thatcher's most intellectually confident Number 11 neighbour, their turbulent relationship, and the decisions that sti...

Who knew that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, opium-nibbling author of Kubla Khan, also had views on the business cycle and foreshadowed Keynes' ideas by a century? Or that Walter Scott extolled the virtues of paper currency so powerfully that he saved the Scottish banknote, which bears his image in gratitude to this very day? Neil and Jonathan talk to John Ramsden author "The Poets Guide to Economi...

In recent years, companies have been deserting the UK stock market as if it were a sinking ship. But what brought on this sudden aversion? According to some, Britain's pension funds are the culprits, and Exhibit A the traditional defined benefit schemes that used to dominate the savings scene. Neil and Jonathan talk to William Wright, supremo of think tank New Financial, about how this shocking cr...

"At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. It varies in size with the business cycle. In good times, people are relaxed, trusting, and money is plentiful. In depression, all this is reversed. Money is watched with a narrow, suspicious eye. The man who handles it is assumed to be dishonest until he pro...

How did fund managers end up controlling so much of the essential services on which we rely, from water to electricity and property? Who gave them the money? And does it matter that they do? Neil and Jonathan talk to author Brett Christophers, whose new book  Our Lives in Their Portfolios  argues that the giant funds that dominate the landscape are driven by terrible incentives - and tha...

Neil Woodford was the fund manager who seemed to have it all. Hailed as the genius who "made Middle England rich", he ran one of the UK's best performing investment funds for decades. And then in a few hubristic years, after sticking his own name above the door, he raised an insane amount of cash, made some risky bets and lost the lot. Neil and Jonathan talk to David Ricketts, author of a book on...

"What is all this about being big?" asked the actor Anthony Hopkins in a famous (if toe-curling) ad from 2000 for Barclays Bank. "You know, seeing the big picture, having the big idea, clinching the big deal; no one wants to clinch the little deal." For decades the British bank followed this restless urge, always trying to get bigger, to keep up with the biggest banks in the world. Neil and Jonath...

Charles Ponzi was the first, FTX perhaps the latest, but few "rob Peter to pay Paul" schemes will ever match the sheer scale and staying power of Bernie Madoff's $64bn heist. As a new documentary airs about the "Monster of Wall St", Neil and Jonathan talk to author and fraud connoisseur Dan Davies about the world's most destructive Ponzi scheme. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins. Wi...

In this final episode of our six part series, Neil tells the story of the rise and fall of Bernie Cornfeld, mutual fund peddlar extraordinaire and founder of Investors Overseas Services, whose pitch to the aspiring affluent was "Do you sincerely want to be rich?" (Spoiler alert: they didn't end up getting rich.) Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins. Produced and edited by Nick Hilton f...

In the fifth of our historical series, Jonathan tells the story of Clarence Saunders - grocer extraordinaire, entrepreneur and valiant battler against the soulless money-makers of Wall Street - and how he attempted the last great corner on the New York Stock Exchange. Presented by Jonathan Ford and Neil Collins. Produced and edited by Nick Hilton for Podot. In association with Briefcase. News Host...

In the fourth of our series of historical shorts, Neil explains how a competition case before the Restrictive Practices Court in the early 1980s led to the reforms that turned the London Stock Exchange from the Hogwartian Victorian club he remembers from his own time "on the floor" in the Swinging Sixties to the polyglot digital marketplace we know and love today.  Presented by Jonathan...

On May 15 1648, the same day Holland signed the Treaty of Munster ending its 80 year war with Spain, a Dutch canal board issued a bond of 1,000 Carolus guilders to a Mr Niclaes de Meijer of Utrecht promising to pay him 5 per interest in perpetuity. In the latest of our Long Time Shorts, Jonathan explains how that promise is still being kept 374 years later, what Mr de Meijer's bond might be w...

In the second of our six-part series of historical shorts, Neil takes us back to the 1970s; a benighted time when you could only take £50 per head out of the country on your foreign holidays. We explain the regime that underpinned this miserable system, how it criminalised the otherwise law-abiding middle classes, and why its much feared (by HM Treasury) abolition in 1979 was t...

Introducing a new six part series - "Long Time Shorts", in which we serve up quick hits of financial history every Friday, Monday and Wednesday for the next two weeks. In this first episode, Neil and Jonathan look at the story of French thirty-something Max-Hervé George, whose father bought him a magical insurance policy; how this gave him the gift of 20-20 hindsight, and the agony it caused...

“For too long in this country, we have indulged in a fight over redistribution. Now, we need to focus on growth, not just how we tax and spend," said Kawsi Kwarteng on September 23. Unfortunately for the chancellor, the bond markets didn't agree with him; yields ballooned, and a few days later he was out, followed swiftly by his boss Liz Truss. So where does that leave the UK's stre...

"Let us be, say I, a free Nation deep in Debt.. rather than a Nation of Slaves owing nothing.” So wrote a pamphleteer in 1720 about the remorseless rise of Britain's National Debt. At a time of mounting concern about the public finances, we launch a two part series on the National Debt, starting with its ups and downs over two centuries with historian James Macdonald. Presented by Jonathan Ford an...

It’s not often when a start-up fails that taxpayers end up getting a bill for £6.5bn - equivalent to a penny on income tax. But that’s what happened with Bulb, a venture that tried to bring the economics of Deliveroo and Uber to the staid business of selling power to domestic customers. Energy expert Nick Butler helps us unpick the Bulb shaped mess that ensued, how it happened and what should happ...

The US politician Dean Acheson once said of Britain that it had lost an empire but not found a role. Could the same be true of the City of London? Out of the EU, it needs to find a new mission to retain its slot as one of the world's top financial centres. Neil and Jonathan talk to economist (and top Frenchman) Nicolas Veron about EU competition, HK's future, global opportunities and risks. Presen...

The sudden collapse of Sam Bankman Fried's $16bn crypto trading empire has caused even the most bored of apes to sit up and take notice. Investors in these digital currencies have exhibited an incredible stoicism, soaking up their punishment and "HODL-ing" through past crypto collapses, but could this be the end of Satoshi's children? Neil and Jonathan talk to crypto expert Izabella Kaminska about...

As the world gathers at COP27 to demand further action on emissions, what role can wind and solar really play in helping us hit global temperature targets? A sceptical Michael Shellenberger, US author and environmental activist, talks to Neil and Jonathan about the renewable "religion", the need for more nuclear and gas, and how much renewable capacity you can really put on an electricity grid. Pr...

With Britain facing "eye-watering" decisions about public spending, many have set their sights on HS2 as the sort of gilded "grand projet" the UK can no longer afford. But does scrapping it make sense, and what sort of infrastructure should Britain invest in instead? Neil and Jonathan talk to rail expert Tony Berkeley and Tom Forth, industrial strategy thinker, about the bizarre way infrastru...

In the second part of our series on Northern Rock, Neil and Jonathan pick over the lessons from the 2007 collapse of the world's most famous ex-building society with former chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling, Stanford finance professor Anat Admati, and bank expert Dan Davies. As interest rates rise, and tremors course through financial markets, how much more robust is our banking sy...

For a few weeks in 2007, a small ex-building society in Newcastle became the world's most famous bank as TV news cameras showed customers queuing at branches for their cash. Initially seen as a Victorian throwback, it later became clear that the collapse was a warning of much wider problems to come. As worrying tremors again strike our financial system, Neil and Jonathan ponder the lessons of...

The market panic that followed Kwasi Kwarteng's mini budget last month has been blamed on pension funds doing something called LDI. But what is this strange practice, what is its purpose, and how has it led to a £65bn meltdown in the pensions market? Neil and Jonathan talk to pensions expert (and grand wizard of LDI) John Ralfe about the fallout and whether Neil, as a pensioner, sho...

It is hard to find a worse reaction to a British Budget than the one accorded Kwasi Kwarteng's "special fiscal operation". Neil and Jonathan talk to Howard Davies, former financial regulator and Treasury Mandarin about why it got such a huge raspberry, what Kwarteng can do now, and how his effort rates in the roll-call of past fiscal fails, including George Osborne's "omnishambles"...