Jim Armitage



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Area of interest: Business

Journals/Organisation: The Independent | Evening Standard

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Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/biography/jim-armitage-8153163.html | http://www.standard.co.uk/biography/jim-armitage

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Career: former Deputy City Editor of the Evening Standard

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Other activities: adviser to Evgeny Lebedev, owner of the Evening Standard and Independent titles

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Column name: Global Outlook

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Articles: 2013

 * Let’s hear it for those generous bankers - after all, those billions of dollars of fines should give world’s economy a boost - Numbers look large but not when set against profits they were making - 23rd November
 * Scandals notwithstanding, something tells me Serco's down but not out - Outlook: Serco's shares might finally have fallen too far. Yesterday's 17 per cent slide in the stock of arguably Britain's least favourite company takes its plunge since the summer to nearly 40 per cent - 15th November
 * More power to Justin King as he calls it right on tax-dodgers and energy bills - Outlook: Is Justin King, the Sainsbury's chief executive, running for Prime Minister? - 14th November
 * 'Recovery' is overstating it – so let's forget about those rate rises for now - Outlook: We should all be thankful that Andrew Sentance is no longer on the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee - 7th November
 * Shadowy saviours of the Co-op - Hedge funds, renowned for their relentless pursuit of profit, now own 70 per cent of the beleaguered bank – and that hands its customers a huge dilemma - 5th November
 * Share sale by Sports Direct bosses doesn't mean a bleak winter for retailers - Outlook: Forget the run up to Christmas. For the founder-bosses at Sports Direct and Asos, 'tis the season to be selling - 25th October
 * There's no froth on Royal Mail shares – taxpayers have been short-changed - Outlook: Another day, another £380m added to the stock market value of the Royal Mail - 24th October
 * Why Northern Rock chief deserved to be bowled out from his new career - Reports suggest that Mr Applegarth, whose masterplan for Northern Rock involved flogging 125 per cent loan-to-value mortgages, has resigned from Apollo - 18th October
 * Boosting our exports comes at a price - Outlook: The Cameron-Osborne Chinese trade circus has won hugely admiring headlines for our leaders this week - 17th October
 * More power to China if it wants to have a hand in our nuclear future - Outlook: Two stories out yesterday: first, unions are up in arms that China appears likely to bail out our decades-long efforts at building a new generation of nuclear power stations - 11th October
 * Too many miss out on chance to climb aboard Royal Mail gravy train - Outlook: The underpricing of the Royal Mail flotation would be less infuriating if more members of the public were able to access the shares - 10th October
 * Next stop China for HTC phone whiz on the long road from Mandalay? - There’s a very good reason not to write off the mobiles group HTC - 5th October
 * A nuke deal is in the offing - don't blow it this time - Outlook: The Government's claim this week to be pro-business is news to Carillion - 4th October
 * Ignore the critics, Phil, you're the grocer we need - Outlook: David Cameron may not have a clue how much a supermarket value loaf of bread costs, but Tesco's shoppers certainly do - 3rd October
 * 'Sorry' is still the hardest word for our blinkered, rapacious bankers to say - Outlook: JPMorgan's suave Jamie Dimon wishes this whole tedious contrition business would just go away. Wall Street's top brass thought they'd got past this "saying sorry" phase way back, when the last of the Tarp bailout funds were paid off - 27th September
 * 'Appalled and disgusted', so why no gesture of apology from Icap chief? - Outlook: Michael Spencer is a hard man not to admire. He is not afraid to speak out on controversial political issues and, unlike many of his peers at the top of major companies, is opinionated without the banal varnish of the MBA - 26th September
 * With friends like the traders at JPMorgan, who needs enemies? - Not many people trust investment bankers – least of all investment bankers themselves. But at the Wall Street bank JPMorgan, there is now little doubt which type they trust the least - 21st September
 * RBS looks set to spoil Osborne's claim that he has fixed banking mess - Outlook: Temasek is clearly a beast with some appetite for the UK. Little surprise, then, that the Singapore sovereign wealth fund has become George Osborne's best new buddy - 20th September
 * Lord Wolfson puts bite on Chancellor's effort to gild an economic pig - Outlook: Interesting times in the Wolfson household this weekend. The Tory peer Lord Wolfson – until yesterday the business world's biggest George Osborne fanboy – has come out swinging against the Chancellor's economic policies - 13th September
 * Kingfisher boss keeps his Krug in the fridge over British recovery - Outlook: Ian Cheshire is one of our more cerebral chief executives. The Cambridge economics and law graduate who runs the B&Q owner Kingfisher is given to penning the occasional well-reasoned treatise on subjects such as "sustainable capitalism" -12th September
 * Tesco's much-needed prune isn't a cause for panic - By his dry standards, Sir Terry Leahy was dewy-eyed with hope and optimism back in 2006 when he declared war on the US grocery market. "This is a tremendously exciting move for Tesco which will add a new leg to our international expansion," he proclaimed -11th September
 * Congo kleptocrats’ obscene pursuit of wealth is about to spread to oil - Global Outlook: The new law will replicate most of the lax conditions of the country’s mining world - 7th September
 * Disaster warning for insurance market has a familiar ring about it - Outlook: Who could ever imagine a repeat of the conditions behind the banking crisis? - 6th September
 * Belarus has bitten off more than it can chew by reeling in this big fish - Global Outlook: In most countries, you get arrested for operating a cartel. In Belarus, it seems, the opposite is the case - 31st August
 * In pointing out how Bupa was right, commission opens a can of worms - Outlook: It feels instinctively wrong to be rooting for the big guy. But in the messed-up world of private healthcare provision, that is precisely what we should be doing - 29th August
 * Technology entrepreneurs who are changing the script of Greek tragedy  - Global Outlook: Athens now has four venture capitalist houses – a couple of years ago there were none - 24th August
 *  Mandarins may have been outwitted on the probation service deal - Outlook: Justice secretary Chris Grayling used emotive language to demand G4S and Serco "purge themselves" after the electronic-tagging scandal - 22nd August
 * Relief at Goldman Sachs as scandal stories abate…thanks to JPMorgan - Outlook: Blankfein’s PR team have possibly suggested the “trust-me” beard he’s sporting this year - 20th August
 * A year on, and Mario Draghi's pledge to save the euro should be applauded - He followed his words with deeds by launching a vast programme to buy bonds - 27th July
 * Take our economies off their stimulants and they aren't really growing at all - Outlook: We are right to take some cheer from the latest run of official statistics. The evidence is mounting that our economy is, albeit very slowly, moving in the right direction - 26th July
 * Questions need to be asked of Witty as China corruption crisis deepens - Outlook: Poor Sir Andrew Witty. Here is a man who, by all accounts, has spent much of his five years on the bridge at GlaxoSmithKline doing sterling work cleaning up the scandals left by the regimes of previous captains - 25th July
 * Desolation of Motor City carries a warning for other American cities as Detroit files for bankruptcy - Bondholders and unions will see Detroit as a test-case for cash-strapped cities - 20th July
 * How to prevent private sector providers from bleeding us taxpayers dry - Outlook: The John Lewis Partnership is as bourgeois as summer holidays in Provence - 19th July
 * Barclays wants a scrap over this ‘scandal’ just as JPMorgan is set to pay up - Outlook: It’s never easy to be sympathetic with Barclays, let’s be honest - 18th July
 * Don't mess with Gaston – he's still got his hand on the Glock - Global Outlook: This kind of courtroom drama is nothing new to the gun maker - 13th July
 * Another procurement contract bungled by inexperienced mandarins - Outlook: So, we taxpayers have been allegedly paying G4S and Serco to monitor dead crims - 12th july
 * British firms could be big winners if online gambling returns to the States - Outlook: Could seven years of darkness finally be lifting over European… well, primarily British, online gambling companies? Since George Bush in effect made their businesses illegal in 2006, banging up a fair few British businessmen on the way, the sector has been a shadow of its former frontiersman self - 11th july
 * It took a Brit to lay bare the state of Japan, but then its elite failed the test - Outlook: The spectacular ability of Japan's cosy establishment to shoot itself in both feet rarely fails to amaze - 3rd July
 * Where do we dig? The trouble with fracking - It's not so easy to exploit shale gas reserves found in the UK - 27th June
 * Vodafone's German buy is a cause for celebration, but don't bet on more big deals - Outlook: We should all be giving ourselves a huge pat on the back. Vodafone's €7.7bn (£5bn) takeover of Germany's Kabel Deutschland is the biggest deal by a British company for three years - 25th June
 * This report brings long awaited justice to the banking sector. Mr Osborne would do well to heed it - The public instinctively feels the law has been found wanting in the aftermath of the banking collapse - 20th June
 * The Fed Whisperer is a key voice in a smooth transition to recovery - Global Outlook: The Bank of England kept Deputy Governor Paul Tucker’s departure plans closely under wraps this week, like it does with most of its communications with the outside world. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street does not blab - 15th June
 * Oligarchs win again in game of Ukraine monopoly - Global Outlook: Depressing news from the Ukraine, where yet another vast monopoly asset has just been handed over to one of the tiny group of uber-rich oligarchs who pretty much run the show there - 8th June
 * Alone and unloved, Swiss provide a salutary lesson for the Eurosceptics - Global Outlook: Conservative backbenchers like to cite Switzerland as an example of how it’s possible to trade in Europe while remaining out of the European Union. But within Switzerland itself, this benefit is not quite so apparent - 25th May
 * Doan Nguyen Duc, the Vietnamese Arsenal fan and the land grab claims - Global Outlook: Blog raises serious concerns over Gunners’ partnership with the tycoon’s company - 18th May
 * Shades of ENRC? The Zambian bank that’s eyeing a London float - Global Outlook: Kofi Annan’s panel criticised deals ENRC has done on mining concessions - 11th May
 * This bond-market lunacy can only end in tears, and we’ll be the losers - Global Outlook: If your mind was boggled by the fact that a business barely registering on the map a couple of decades ago just borrowed $17bn (£11bn) from investors, wait ’til you hear who else has been squeezing money out of our pension funds - 4th May
 * Chad - Journalist seized in front of his family and thrown into a disease-ridden jail for investigating the government - Voices in Danger: In politically unstable Chad, journalists working to expose corruption can disappear from their families without a moment's notice - 2nd May
 * In Libya, Gaddafi's media suppression lingers - Voices in Danger: Though Gaddafi is gone, the tools he used to stop Libyan journalists attacking him are still being used - 1st May
 * No end to the pain in sight for US after cuts scare away the shoppers - With tax rises and spending cuts wired into Obama’s policy choices, he has little room to do much - 27th April
 * The $1bn deal that has Schroders looking down the barrel of a gun - Michael Dell should take out his iPad and watch The Artist, the 2011 Oscar winner - 20th April
 * Amid the scandals, there are still microfinance firms doing good - Global Outlook - 13th April
 * Stop moaning, Amazon traders, you can always find another marketplace - Global Outlook: I know it's fashionable to bash Amazon. I dislike its super-low tax bill as much as the next guy. But the storm over its fee hike for traders selling their wares through Amazon's marketplace is overblown - 30th March
 * Need to keep Germany sweet pulls the plug on Russia's Cyprus rescue - Global Outlook: Mr Putin knows that the wealthy Russians likely to lose money are not the most popular - 23rd March
 * So should we be in a real funk as investors rush into buying junk? - Global Outlook: Last week I reported how the exotic financial products that blew up the world in 2007 are back with a vengeance. If that wasn't enough to get you stocking up on tinned food and a new bunker in the garden, perhaps a story buried in yesterday's FT might be - 16th March
 * They're back - the exotic (and toxic) products that blew up our economy - US Outlook: So many reasons exist to be suspicious of the current boom in world stock markets, it's hard to know where to start. The renewed eurozone crisis, slowing growth in China, sovereign debt down-grades, the flattering effect of QE. I could go on - 9th March
 * Beppe Grillo’s not funny and he’ll have to grow up now he’s a big player in Italy after election - Global Outlook: Remember at primary school when, on General Election day, we kids would play at staging our own elections? - 2nd March
 * Mugabe regime still failing the test, so why are we handing it a prize? - Zimbabwe is arguably run largely for its leaders’ benefit - 16th February
 * A glimmer of hope for Greece but it's still going to be a long haul - There have been real reforms made to reduce labour costs, pensions and so forth - 9th February
 * Despite the Davos hype, Europe's economy is still neck-deep in crisis - Global Outlook: If the Alps around Davos were echoing to the sound of bankers' champagne corks popping last week, by this weekend the hangover had already set in - 2nd February
 * Blair's repeated Guinea trips raise eyebrows over his connections - Global Outlook: It is his mixture of charity and business that can leave questions to be answered - 26th January
 * As far as oil and gas workers are concerned, money trumps risk - Global Outlook Engineers are a tough breed. Oil and gas engineers the toughest of the bunch - 19th January
 * Lobbyists help smooth the way for Diageo's jumbo-sized tax breaks - The deal will mean Diageo saves many millions more dollars in rebates - 12th January



Articles 2012:

 * Revulsion at latest US massacre, but don't expect investors to flee - Global Outlook: A total of 47 per cent of households own a gun, up 6 per cent on two years ago - 22nd December
 * Fracking future could see Uncle Sam hanging up his policeman's helmet - Global Outlook: It’s not beyond the realms of reason to see China muscling in on the scene to prop up the sheikhs - 15th December
 * Cosy deals by Glencore and ENRC's chums are costing the Congo dear - Global Outlook: London Stock Exchange mining giants ENRC and Glencore have some questions to answer about the company they keep in Africa - 8th December
 * Old Mutual seems unembarrassed by its links with Mugabe's Zimbabwe - Global Outlook: The company has a big reputation to look after, in the UK and around the world - 1st December
 * Whistleblower Woodford warns of Japan's 'collective economic suicide' - This is a Made in Japan problem. It’s cultural... It’s about the way the society functions - 23rd November
 * Out of Africa - a scheme where helping refugees helps everybody - Refugees are survivors, with the drive and ambition that make fantastic entrepreneurs - 17th November
 * Obama's win shows the numbers always count - Economic Outlook: We will teach about the failures of forecasters for years in statistics - 12th November
 * Brits are still basking in the heat of a thriving economy in Gulf states - Compared to more fashionable emerging markets, the Gulf states have enjoyed sustained growth -10th November
 * Bumi fiasco casts a cloud over the President's tea party at the Palace - Indonesia risks gaining the same reputation as Russian mineral firms on Wall St - 3rd November
 * So what happened to the billions in oil money that gushed out of Libya? - The Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund set up under Colonel Gaddafi, has been quiet since before the war that killed him and his four-decade regime a year ago - 27th October
 * tale of corruption and greed should be an election issue in US'' - General Electric is one of those companies that touch our lives from the moment we wake to the moment we turn in. And then it's present while we sleep as well - 20th October
 * As Rupert Murdoch says - take the money and run! - If you ever thought Rupert Murdoch might be humbled by his experiences in the UK over the last year or so, forget it - 13th October
 * Time may not yet have come for the man who would rescue Venezuela - Hugo Chavez's Venezuela is one of the most violent countries on earth. Caracas saw more murders than Baghdad last year, and Mr Chavez himself has said the murder rate is the fifth-highest on the planet - 6th October



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