The disposal of Cadbury is some kind of a marker. It was still a successful company and could have continued independently with no problem. It had a proud history which doesn’t need to be repeated here, but it also had a price. And that price was agreed by its board of directors who gained prodigiously [...]

The theory which, over the past three decades, has become the ubiquitous orthodox free market wisdom, is widely assumed to be simply the current version of classical economics originally expounded by Adam Smith. Moreover, it might be reasonable to assume, it being the latest, it is the most insightful and effective, having been shaped [...]

As recounted in ‘The Rise and Fall of Management’, from the earliest days of industrialisation down to the present day, perhaps one of the most striking step changes to take place has been the adoption of the strategic perspective. It was not till the mid 1960s that long range planning and what became known as [...]

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC)’s latest publication, “Proposed Reforms to the UK Corporate Governance Code”, is rather a waste of time. Changing an ineffectual and irrelevant code, even though at considerable expense to the tax payer, is hardly a matter of huge importance. And when the changes themselves are so slight they will have [...]

Cadbury’s future as a British owned confectionery manufacturer seems doomed, for reasons discussed in ‘The Rise and Fall of Management’. Cadbury’s management may well have sought to fulfill their legal corporate duty, as defined in the 2006 Companies Act, to have regard to the company’s long term future and to the interests of employees [...]