Stick, end, wrong - Cameron

The Boy-King is all set to take on crony capitalism. Well, sort of. Because to take it on properly he would need to get rid of a great deal of legislation and regulation that he neither can nor will change. As the Wall Street Journal says in its trenchant article on the subject: A Phony War on Crony Capitalism:

Increased regulation of the market for corporate control, especially of these takeovers, has helped entrench mediocre managers who have been able to increase their own pay without suffering the consequences. For now, the main obstacles to throwing the corporate bums out are rules governing tender offers, limits on the quantity of shares that activist investors can accumulate before announcing a formal bid, and drawn-out regulatory approvals for consummating a takeover.

As we know, most of the regulation comes from the EU and is implemented here as a legal requirement. Does Mr Cameron know that? Hard to tell. What he does know is that knocking high salaries and strutting around as the supposed defender of the little man is good PR. The rest is of little consequence to him.

City AM, unusually, backs Cameron. Here is Allister Heath in yesterday's column noting approvingly that Cameron is right to back shareholders. Today, he is providing useful data about boards, cross-over, pay and cronyism. That approval of Cameron did not last long or not fully. Power to the shareholders is still seen as a very good idea.