It's up! At the FT, I talk about regulators and their different philosophical approaches www.ft.com/content/b12c...

NEW: The End of the Line: the centrepiece of Saudi Arabia’s Neom gigaproject - a 500m tall, 170km long wall-like building intended ultimately to house 9 million people - can’t get out of the ground, say more than 20 former Neom architects, engineers and senior executives. ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-l...

Late to this but I really enjoyed talking with my old colleague Richard on how Brexit and the City has contributed to the UK's productivity problem:

Imagine doing ANYTHING AT ALL and constantly interrupting it every two minutes to ask everyone around you “do you like me? Is this ok? Please like me! Should I do something completely different so you like me more? I will ask you again next week shall I?” That’s what government by focus group is.

The options are: broad based tax rises and good public services; no tax rises and acceptance that the state does meaningfully less; or keep promising someone else can pay, failing, and populists winning and making everything much worse.

Peter Gurney cleared or detonated thousands of unexploded munitions in his 40-year career. His working kit was principally medical scalpels, a ball of string, fish-hooks and garden secateurs

Oh wow, after over a decade of tilting at windmills the European Commission is finally giving up on the EU FTT #RIP

This is the most fun thing you can read today: @jayrayner1.bsky.social on the memoirs of three very different restaurateurs. Gift link free for 300 clicks on.ft.com/4qx0yhn

This is an interesting piece but I just read it going “the missing bit is the section on how the internet has fried everyone’s brains”. www.bbc.com/news/article...

"hi I'm calling about the 2 bed flat in St. Albans......is there any movement on the price?" www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

What’s that you say? You’re looking for a few thousand words on European equity market structure? Well, do I have a treat for you! www.newfinancial.org/reports/the-...

Watching Taskmaster and my wife said Maisie Adam looks like Ryan Gosling and now I can’t unsee it

It's almost as if a retail share offering last year of the government's remaining stake in NatWest would have been a good idea www.ft.com/content/0a55...

The German company that makes the mechanical ladder used in the Louvre heist has used the image to advertise, with the text 'When you need to move fast' 10/10 response, no notes

Updating my LEGO White House

The London Business School might want to rethink the name of this course. www.london.edu/executive-ed...

European equity markets are working better than you might think, argues @williamw1.bsky.social here. The real challenges are not fragmentation along national lines or competition between different types of trading www.ft.com/content/1182...

The AWS outage today is a good reminder that there is no "cloud", there's just somebody else's computer.

Films: We need to hack a keycard, obtained by seducing one of the guards. We then need to drop in from the skylight after jumping from a plane, and dodge all of the lasers and traps, carefully switching the jewels for fakes that weigh the same to avoid tripping the alarm. Real life:

Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."

Superb

Given that the majority of EU stock exchanges are owned and operated by for profit companies that are listed on the stock exchanges they run, I can see a few problems with this proposal…

The great thing about cryptocurrencies is that they strip banks of their power to create money thereby making the financial system more stable and.....oh finance.yahoo.com/news/paxos-a...

I care less about the boosting equity market investment side and more about the “£20k annually of tax free savings is just ridiculously high” aspect. on.ft.com/476MemD Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas

If only there were a think tank that had run the numbers on the distortions in cash ISAs and come up with a blueprint for the different options for simplifying the ISA framework and capping cash ISAs... www.ft.com/content/9387...

Milei looks like all the cast of Are You Being Served in one

Good. We can't have nice things in this country if we continue to incentivise people to *save* £20k a year. www.ft.com/content/9387...

Deep breath. My publisher @johnmurrays.bsky.social informs me that my book about 🇬🇧, "Fantastic Kingdom“ which will come out in June 2026, is now available to pre-order, and that @waterstones.bsky.social is offering a 25% preorder discount this week. www.waterstones.com/book/fantast...

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

toughest game of Guess Who? ever

🚨 One for the pensions geeks, and those who look to Canada as a model for the UK pension system. on.ft.com/4h0cXG6

Meta (facebook) is the largest stock in MSCI USA Value index and has a 0% weight in the Growth index Not what most would expect! It trades on a multiple of 25x next 12-month's earnings... Remember: when you track an index you are putting the power in the index provider. Still an active decision

Fun bit of trivia this morning *LEHMAN BROTHERS EUROPE ADMINISTRATION CONCLUDES AFTER 17 YEARS *LONDON JUDGE SAYS ADMINISTRATION IS ENDED AT HEARING

As a reminder, if you are under the age of 50 and have a DC pension, roughly half of it is in US equities and roughly 5% of it is in UK equities

Going to launch a campaign for British withdrawal from the OECD, just for a laugh

You don’t have to be called Steve or Stephen to work at Blackpool, but it does help.

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet. After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

Handy to know if your pension savings go down the tube.

Useful report mapping the sheer volume of EU financial services regulation. I doubt it would be much different in the UK. Or for other major sectors. Elements of simplification will barely impact - and good luck the small companies trying to navigate. www.newfinancial.org/reports/meas...

The new stats on FX and derivatives trading are like Christmas coming round every three years

This only happens to you once

Is it "move to Dubai"?

Reading The Times business section today was a good reminder that every day is a good day to longer work for News International.

In another life, I would do a PhD on what happens to consumer reviews / Trustpilot scores of companies after they have been acquired by private equity...

"It is not primarily Rachel Reeves’ fault that the public finances are in such a mess, but it’s her responsibility to resolve the problem." Excellent piece this.

If only there a think tank that were about to publish a report on the future of European equity market structure that would help explain what's going on, what's driving it, and why the policy / regulatory obsession with primary lit continuous trading is a little misguided...

I'll have more to say on Reform's proposals to scrap ILR at some point but for now I'll just note this - anyone telling you this is a popular idea doesn't know the polling. Overwhelming majority of public back giving people who work and pay taxes most or all rights after 5 years or less

There is a lot in this ‘policy’ that is really nasty and against the British sense of fair play (quite apart from the ludicrous numbers and impracticality of it all) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It’s not every Friday that you find yourself in Copenhagen presenting to the Informal Ecofin meeting of EU finance ministers and central bank governors on a report you have done on the simplification of EU financial regulation… danish-presidency.consilium.europa.eu/en/events/in...