How the British Upper Class Became Servants to the Global Elite

THE GUARDIAN – OPINION: Who better to understand the needs of global capitalism’s mega-rich than Britons who grew up with staff themselves?

‘London is known to the world’s wealthy as a place to eat in expensive restaurants, park your supercar outside Harrods (above), and check on your barely used properties and hidden investments.’ Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images
Britain is good at wealth. Not necessarily at generating it, or distributing it in ways that make a contented society, but at looking after it, helping it grow and making it respectable – converting it into social and cultural capital. For centuries, British bankers, lawyers, accountants and other assistants to the wealthy have discreetly performed these roles.

Their customers used to be mostly British: slave traders, self-made industrialists, people who had extracted fortunes from our colonies. But in recent decades, foreigners have become the main beneficiaries of Britain’s readiness to serve the rich regardless of how they made their money. So significant is this change that Britain has become “butler to the world”, according to a persuasive new book by the anti-corruption campaigner and journalist Oliver Bullough. » | Andy Beckett | Thursday, March 10, 2022

Paying for UN Abstention: German Businesses Unwelcome in Postwar Libya

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Before the Libyan revolution, Germany was the country's second-largest trading partner. But then Germany abstained in a 2011 UN vote to militarily intervene in its civil war. Now that the war is over, German businesses and think tanks are finding that most Libyans want little to do with them.

Henning Schnaars, who works for a shipping company in the northern German port city of Bremen, is standing with his two trolley cases on the side of a road in Libya. He has just been handed his first setback.

Schnaars stands with his back to the Benghazi airport, looking at a billboard. It depicts Libyan revolutionaries with outstretched arms and making the V-for-victory sign with their fingers. At the bottom of the billboard are the words, written in capital letters, "Merci La France."

"Oh, well," Schnaars says. At the moment, the French aren't exactly his favorite people.

Schnaars landed in Benghazi an hour ago and has just finished meeting with the airport's new director. It was a short conversation, with not even enough time for the coffee he had expected to be served. The director, who returned to Libya from exile during the civil war, had cut the meeting short after apologizing profusely, saying that he unfortunately had another appointment.

Schnaars was annoyed. He stood up reluctantly, took his briefcase and made his way to the door. It opened, and a delegation of well-dressed Frenchmen walked in, some wearing sunglasses. They saw a stocky German who hadn't had enough sleep and was standing there in his shirtsleeves without a jacket. A few of the Frenchmen grinned. One wished Schnaars "good business" as he walked by.

Schnaars was served his coffee, but it was in the waiting room, where he could hear his Libyan host enthusiastically greeting the French delegation through the closed door. » | Uwe Buse and Takis Würger | Thursday, March 01, 2012

Labour Party Conference 2011: Ed Miliband Pledges 'New Bargain'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Labour will offer a "new bargain" to the people of Britain to end the "fast buck" culture of the last 30 years and reshape society so that hard work and responsibility are rewarded, the party's leader Ed Miliband said today.


In his keynote speech to Labour's conference in Liverpool, Mr Miliband said he wanted to become Prime Minister so he can "write a new chapter in our country's history".

Launching a scathing attack on "unjustified rewards" at the top of companies, asset-stripping "predators" in business and bankers who profited even as their mistakes caused economic meltdown, Mr Miliband said that a Labour government would use tax breaks, regulation and contracts to reward firms which contribute to their community.

And he said he was determined to reform the welfare system to ensure that it pays to work, to end "cosy cartels" which set top pay, break up the "rigged market" which allows energy companies to charge high prices and rebalance Britain's economy away from the reliance on financial services and towards production and manufacturing.

Against the backdrop of opinion polls suggesting voters do not see him as a potential prime minister, Mr Miliband sought to shake off the legacy of the last two Labour leaders to hold power, telling the conference: "I'm not Tony Blair. I'm not Gordon Brown either... I'm my own man and I'm going to do things my own way."

And he declared that he was ready to take risks to break away from the "something for nothing" culture which has taken root in Britain over the past three decades and created a "quiet crisis" where those who do the right thing no longer believe they will be rewarded for it. Read on and comment » | Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Outsourcing Goes Full Circle as Indian Firms Look to the U.S. for Cheap Labour
MAIL ONLINE: It's a frustration experienced by most people when they've made phone calls to large companies.

An unfamiliar voice answers the phone in a call centre hundreds of miles away where cheap labour is commonplace.

But in a reversal of fortunes it now appears that large Indian companies are actually now themselves outsourcing - to U.S. shores.

Large corporations that have boomed in India amid the country's nimble economy have been drawn to the U.S. where unemployment has soared.

Struggling residents desperate for work are paid between $12 and $14 a hour to be stationed in tiny cubicles for long shifts of telesales work.

Once the employees are established, many are offered the chance to be flown to India themselves - the same tactic Western countries have done in India.

Experts said that the phenomenon, which could become more widespread in the coming years, is partly due to Indian workers demanding higher wages and higher living standards. Is this a taste of the future? Outsourcing goes full circle as Indian firms look to the U.S. for cheap labour » | Daily Mail Reporter | Monday, May 23, 2011

Tokyo Businesses Struggle after Quake
Mar 19 - Tourists stay away from the Japanese capital leaving local businesses to struggle. Andrew Raven reports

Egypt in Crisis: Business Collapse Piles Pressure on Mubarak
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Factories are closed, cash machines running dry, and food and petrol shortages feared, but some say it is a price worth paying

The industrial city of Abu Rawash sits in the desert beyond the pyramids. You reach it down a dusty road that seems to lead to nowhere. Then the factories and warehouses begin: Toyota, Hyundai, Mazda and Jeep deserted save for a handful of security guards sitting in front of a vacant parking lot for absent staff.

Outside the gates of the Toyota warehouse Ayman Ibrahim is talking to the gatekeeper. The factories are closed, the man tells Ibrahim, who owns a window business on the same site. They won't reopen until at least mid-week. Perhaps even Friday. No one really knows.

The closures in places such as Abu Rawash have been accompanied by calls from unions for an indefinite general strike. "I'm losing £10,000 pounds a week," says Ibrahim. "But it's worth it, I've been to the protest in Tahrir Square for the past three days with my kids. Mubarak is costing me money, but he has been costing Egypt money for 30 years." >>> Peter Beaumont in Cairo | Monday, January 31, 2011

Thai Businesses Look to Rebuild

US-Saudi Business Forum Gets Under Way in Chicago
Minister of Commerce and Industry Abdullah Zainal Alireza, standing third from left; Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade Abdullah Al-Hamoudi, standing extreme left; Chairman of Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry Abdul Rahman Al-Jeraisy, standing extreme right; with senior US business leaders and officials at the first Saudi-American Business Opportunity Forum in Chicago on Wednesday. Photo: Arab News
ARAB NEWS: CHICAGO: On the banks of the sparkling green Chicago River, overlooking the vast expanse of Lake Michigan, the Sheraton Towers Hotel, venue of the first Saudi-American Business Opportunity Forum, was literally bursting at the seams and the action was as much in the corridors and lobbies as in the meeting halls.

In the lull between plenary sessions, in harmonious counterpart to official presentations, friends and colleagues gathered, relationships were forged or renewed, all in an atmosphere of palpable excitement. These spontaneous exchanges were not a distraction from formal program but rather the embodiment of the forum's primary theme: The commitment to a vital and enduring partnership between the two countries.

A notable aspect of the event was the turnout: over 1,000 attendees (many of whom braved skies tainted with ash and smoke in order to make it to Chicago).

The Organizing Committee had expected something close to 400. The overwhelming response on the part of both the US and Saudi delegates is testament to the sense of how vitally important this relationship is.

When asked about his initial reaction to the event, Omar A. Bahalwa of the Committee for International Trade said, "Marvelous! This event is unique. The number of registrants means that this is the largest-ever forum in the history of our two countries. And for the first time, we're targeting small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs. When someone said large crowds and a jam-packed schedule were 'bad news,' David Chaudron, representing Organized Change, laughed and added, 'It's absolutely wonderful that the bad news is the good news!'"

While the forum's theme of "The US and Saudi Arabia: A New Economic Order" was elaborated through a variety of lenses and business perspectives, the subtext of each panel's presentations was the recent global financial crisis and how the messages of that catastrophe have served to catalyze the need for increased communication and cooperation. >>> Peaco Todd, Arab News | Thursday, April 29, 2010

Globaloney
DEFENDING AMERICA FOR KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION (DAFKA): There is something surreal about the spectacle of President Bush touring the Persian Gulf. It calls to mind the signature line of Mad Magazine's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman: "What, me worry?"

Mr. Bush's trip is, after all, premised on the notion that the Arab leaders he is courting there are reliable allies. Such a proposition should be subjected to the closest of critical scrutiny by Congress, the press and the American electorate since a number of highly debatable, and increasingly portentous, policies are predicated on this assumption. These include:

--Saudi Arabia and the other, smaller desert principalities are "moderates" who are as opposed as we to the totalitarian political agenda of fanatical ideologues such as Osama bin Laden.

--The Gulfies share our concern about the rising power of Iran and therefore can be counted upon to join us in countering that region's would-be Islamofascist superpower. It follows not only that we can safely provide these autocracies with an array of advanced weapons, but we must do so.

--The Arab regimes in the Persian Gulf will help broker a peace between Palestinians and Israelis — if only the United States pressures the Jewish State to make territorial and other concessions that may imperil the latter.

--And the willingness of the Gulf's potentates to recycle the immense wealth they have accumulated in recent years — primarily through oil sales at exorbitantly inflated prices — to purchase big stakes in U.S. companies and capital markets is a welcome development. Such investment is to be encouraged, and those who say otherwise should be condemned as "Chicken Little xenophobes" in the words of former General Electric Chairman Jack Welch and his wife, Suzy.

In fact, the Welch tag-team used a Jan. 21 Business Week column to admonish a letter-writer worried about Arab and other sovereign wealth funds buying up American corporations: "In trying times, U.S. companies always attract opportunistic, activist shareholders. Sometimes they look like Carl Icahn or Nelson Peltz. Sometimes they look like shiny-faced hedge fund managers just out of Wharton or Harvard Business School. And sometimes — like now — they look Chinese or Saudi or whatever. It doesn't matter. They're all after the same thing: the opportunities in America's capitalistic market."

Unfortunately, this confidence in the inexorable forces of "globalization" is as misplaced in the case of the so-called "pro-Western" Arab states as are the other assumptions driving American policy towards the region at the moment. Globaloney >>> By Frank Gaffney (from The Washington Times)

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Berlin Faces Hurdles in Push to Get Business Out of Iran
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: In an effort to forestall an American military strike against Iran, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for tougher economic sanctions against the mullah-controlled regime in Tehran. But critics say Merkel's plans are sketchy and difficult to implement, while experts disagree over their effectiveness.

The group of dignitaries from Tehran visiting Hamburg last Wednesday seemed noticeably pleased -- and it wasn't just the unseasonably warm weather. They had spent the morning attending a board meeting of the Iran-Europe Commercial Bank. The mood couldn't have been better.

The Iranian government bankers enjoyed the spectacular view from the bank's penthouse-level conference room as much as they did hearing its latest quarterly results. Indeed, before adjourning to the adjacent room for Persian delicacies, management reported the best results in the bank's history.

Even the representative from the German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) seemed impressed. Now that all major German banks have given in to pressure from the United States government and stopped doing business in Iran, business is booming for the Hamburg-based Iranian bank. Its commercial loan portfolio, worth about €3 billion ($4.4 billion), is twice as large as it was last year.

Machinery exporters and trading companies have practically been lining up to move their business from their traditional German banks to the Iranian bank, despite the fact that the US Treasury Department has blacklisted Iran-Europe Commercial Bank, together with two other major Iranian banks, Bank Melli and Bank Saderat. Ironically, Iran's state-owned banks are among the few businesses that have actually benefited and managed to turn a profit from tighter international sanctions against Tehran. GERMANY INC. IN TEHRAN: Berlin Faces Hurdles in Push to Get Business Out of Iran (more)

Mark Alexander

Virgin not so virginal as far as Kuwaiti authorities are concerned
KUWAIT TIMES: KUWAIT: The Virgin Megastore at Marina Mall reopened yesterday evening after being shut down last Thursday night by inspectors from the Ministry of Information. One of the inspectors involved in the closure had said the store was found breaching regulations of the Ministry of Information and was not cooperating with them. "They keep selling restricted items like indecent magazines and CDs, and were issued several warnings and reminders in the past, but they repeatedly ignored them," he had said. Virgin reopens after weeklong shutdown (Read on)

Mark Alexander