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Skills, competitiveness and the City
 By
Teresa Sayers,
Chief Executive, Financial Services Skills Council
It’s been more than 20 years since the Pet Shop Boys
first sang “I've got the brains, you've got the looks,
let's make lots of money”, but in the minds of City
employers, the relationship between top brains and top dollar
is as strong as ever. And they’re worried about it:
more than four out of five of all UK financial services employers
feel the need to improve skills among their employees in
order to keep their competitive edge...
Full article
The Freud Report and welfare reform
 By
Kate Stanley,
Director of Research and Head of Social Policy, ippr
David Freud’s report on the options for the future
of welfare to work is exactly the report you’d expect
from a former investment banker. It’s slick, rationally
argued, and loaded with figures. It also argues for the kind
of expansion of the quasi-market in welfare services that
is capable of bringing in the giants of business...
Full article
Retail Distribution: The new order?
 What
was the biggest story in Westminster on Wednesday 27 June?
Was it Gordon Brown’s visit to Queen Elizabeth II?
Or was it the financial service industry’s procession
to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre? For many of
those FS grandees sat in the appropriately named Churchill
Auditorium there was no question – “Discussion
Paper 07/01: A Review of Retail Distribution” was the
only game in town...
Full article
The Future’s Brown: Notes on the new Government
 Last
week, amidst much theatre and emotion, Tony Blair finally
left office. Announcing that he will be appointed as a Middle
East peace envoy, he stepped down as an MP with immediate
effect. The temptation is to dwell on the last 10 years,
but incoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown has sent out a very
clear signal that he will preside over a very different sort
of government – and he is anxious to make an immediate
impact...
Full article
Post Monopoly: Financial services growth in unexpected
places
 A
couple of weeks ago, I found myself enjoying a late dinner
with a European banking equities analyst from a major investment
bank at Palais du Jardin. I was keen to talk about the industry
and market developments as an interested observer, and from
the EU and single market perspective...
Full article
All change for the Brown era
 Gordon
Brown used the word ‘change’ 25 times in his
acceptance speech last week. Elsewhere, Hazel Blears was
on radio making the very unconvincing claim that the atmosphere
at the first meeting of the new cabinet ‘was like there
had been a General Election’. Meanwhile, the Conservatives
are arguing that nothing has changed at all and that Brown’s
new team ‘represents the past, not the future’...
Full article
Flexible Futures: Transforming the workplace
 This
month, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) released
its report “The future of work: Employers and workplace
transformation”, highlighting the development of flexible
working arrangements in the UK. The report revealed that
the UK lags far behind its European counterparts in offering
flexible working practices, with only one in five UK firms
giving staff chances to work away from the office...
Full article |
