InBev’s best-known European brand, Stella Artois, is marketed under the slogan
of "reassuringly expensive". The same might be said of its
ambitions to acquire Anheuser-Busch, brewer of America’s most iconic lager,
Budweiser.
Does Drax Group have a long-term future? As Europe’s largest coal-fired power
station, and therefore its biggest single source of greenhouse gas
emissions, you might not think so, yet Dorothy Thompson, the chief
executive, is doing her best to ensure it does. Yesterday’s exchange of
contracts with Alstom gives her the technology to take Drax’s co-firing of
renewable biomass materials up to 10 per cent of output.
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, apparently thinks his comments
on City pay, made recently at a Treasury select committee hearing, have been
misinterpreted. He was not trying to say City financiers pay themselves too
much per se, though many might reasonably think they do. Rather, it is the
manner in which they pay themselves, with the incentive it seems to give for
taking extreme financial risk, which he takes issue with.
Ignoring Mervyn King’s warning that the "nice" decade is behind us,
the City story of the week was again banking rights issues – or rather,
Barclays’ decision, either brave or stupid, not to have one. Meanwhile,
Bradford & Bingley, having declared a month ago that it had no intention
of tapping its shareholders for more capital, then turned around and
launched a cash call anyway.