Old Money

Recent weeks have seen an attack of existential angst among Europe’s major banks, on account of the challenges they face from America’s big universal banks.

The recent announcement of the sale of £2bn of Lloyds Bank shares to individual investors on special terms has put UK privatisation and widening share ownership back on the agenda.

The ascent of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the UK's Labour Party is ultimately an outcome of the financial crisis. As the party in power when the crisis struck, Labour’s economic competence was discredited with voters with election defeats in 2010 and 2015.

Since March 2009 Britain’s benchmark official rate has been 0.5% — the lowest rate in the Bank of England’s 320 year history, its long term average being about 4.5%. But recently BoE's governor Mark Carney speculated that it will begin to rise from the end of the year to around 2%, possibly heralding the end of the era of cheap money.

The short term risk of Grexit might have receded, but nothing really looks solved. In nearly every currency union in history, once a sovereign joins a currency, it doesn't leave — except for the Pope.

The Greek Prime Minister’s decision to provide voters with an opportunity to reject the country’s bailout conditions in a referendum is an unusual move, but not without precedent.

If Greece defaults on its debts it will be its sixth sovereign default since independence in 1829. In fact, Greece was in arrears on its external loans in no fewer than 51% of the subsequent 180 years, Europe’s worst record by far. But in those past defaults does there lie a solution for the country's troubles today?

200 years might have passed since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. But some things in war — and finance — do not change, such as the absolute importance of being ahead of the game. Nathan Rothschild cleaned up on the Gilt market thanks to his rapid, reliable, and finely honed communications system that brought him news of Wellington's victory ahead of anyone else in Westminster and the City.