Trouble at Co-op Bank raises questions about fitness of the mutual model
IT’S not all fun and games at the Co-op Bank. Just over a month ago, the bank was serious about acquiring 632 branches from Lloyds. Now its debt has been downgraded six notches to junk status, and veteran HSBC banker Niall Booker has been brought in as replacement chief executive after Barry Tootell resigned. Inquests […]
International Airlines Group: a ‘fantastic object’? The psychology of mergers and acquisitions
International Airlines Group (IAG), formed in January 2011 by a merger of British Airways and Iberia, is in the news. Operating losses at Iberia in the first nine months of the financial year are believed to be in excess of £200 million. Since the start of last year, IAG’s shares are down by nearly 40 […]
If it can happen to Google, who can feel safe?
The dramatic crash in Google’s share price and the temporary suspension of trading in the company’s shares made headline news. The event was triggered by the 20 per cent year-on-year fall in profits in the third quarter of this year. As usual, there was no shortage of explanations of why this happened – after the […]
USA vs China continued… The Influence of Networks (and the Olympics!)
The last three Olympics have seen a titanic battle between the US and China to head the medals table. If you combine the total of the last three Games, China stands just ahead, with 121 golds to the United States’s 116. But, the US topped the table in both 2004 and 2012, while China edges […]
Corporate structure, Darwinism and Random Selection
The corporate world exhibits a wide variety of structures. Co-operatives and partnerships have been around for a long time and have some well known examples. The Co-op, for example, was founded in Rochdale as long ago as 1844 and now is represented worldwide. Goldman Sachs was a partnership for most of its existence. There are […]
Co-operation and Competition
Ed Mayo, ex-head of the New Economics Foundation and now of Co-ops UK, has an interesting blog (here) on the importance of co-operation in our economic system rather than competition. This is a really challenging and difficult topic. Co-operation is extremely important to the successful functioning of the market-oriented economies of the West. But this […]
