We need regulators with teeth to fight Big Tech monopolism – The Spectator Australia

Is Britain really closed for business? That, were told, is the view of US Big Tech as expressed by Activision Blizzard the company whose most famous product is the violent videogame Call of Duty in response to the blocking by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of Activisions proposed $70 billion merger with Microsoft, which would have given the latter a dominant position in the emergent field of cloud-based gaming. You dont need to know exactly what that means to be worried that the worlds digital giants take a dim view of the UK as a marketplace and investment destination. But are they right?

Some pundits have used Activisions scorn as a prompt to recite the UKs obvious faults. Our corporate taxes are too high, we no longer offer EU access, our tech skills are woeful, our stock exchange offers a poor platform for high-growth companies and Tory ministers are not as keen as they should be to cut red tape. All true.

But in the case of Microsoft-Activision, lets note that the US Federal Trade Commission has also challenged the deal, that Activision boss Bobby Kotick stands to collect 300 million if it goes through, and most importantly, that Big Tech is always a seeker of monopoly power witness Amazons habitual crushing of competitors which regulators oppose in the interest of consumers and challengers. Competition is for losers (the slogan of the veteran US tech investor Peter Thiel) sums up the long-term strategy of Microsoft and its ilk. The fact that the CMA has teeth and is prepared to use them is a counter-indication that the UK is open, but for fair business rather than corporate bullies.

The takeover by JP Morgan Chase of First Republic, the collapsed Californian bank, may or may not mean, as Morgan boss Jamie Dimon declared, that this part of the crisis is over and the banking system is very stable. What it does signal is that JPMorgan Chase itself, having absorbed $173 billion of First Republics lendings, is now, even more than before, too big to fail. And rumours of other troubled banks around the world despite Dimons confident tone are likely to lead to another round of safety-first mergers akin to Credit-Suisse-UBS. So the next part of the crisis, if and when, will involve bigger banks needing taxpayer bailouts rather than smaller ones that might easily be taken over by their elder brethren. Frying pans and fires come to mind.

Ive observed before that my own City cohort, who started work in the mid-1970s, were a limp lot compared with the generation a decade or so ahead of us, who were pioneers of eurobond issuance, contested take-overs and international consortium banking. Battle-hardened by the early 1970s boom and bust, I wrote, they turned out tougher and more resilient than we were. Now theyre old and some, sadly, are dead, we can begin to place them in bankings pantheon.

Sir John Craven was a big figure because he brokered so many mergers between the banks themselves. My old boss Lord Camoys, saluted here recently, deserves credit for his bold vision of BZW. Among those still with us, Sir David Scholey of Warburgs was a prince before the fall of his firm and Sir Martin Jacomb was the thinking mans City grandee in a multiplicity of roles.

But without fear of contradiction, Id say the most admired for professionalism, leadership, loyalty, global gladhanding and multi-decade stamina was the German-born Sir Win Bischoff, who died last month aged 81. Successively chairman of Schroders, Citigroup in New York during the 2008 crisis, Lloyds Banking Group in London in the aftermath of that crisis, and finally JPMorgan Securities, Bischoff bestrode the financial world.

And everyone liked him. Long ago we headlined a Spectator profile of him (by Judi Bevan) The last of the Citys frequent flyers. There must be younger candidates for that title by now, but few who also deserve this simple accolade offered by one of Bischoffs peers: Hes a traditional relationship banker who puts the interests of the client first.

Are you an early retiree with a penchant for travel but thinking of re-entering the workforce? How about becoming a train driver for Transpennine Express (TPE)? They certainly need you: the northern regional rail franchisee, owned by FirstGroup, currently cancels one train in five for lack of driver availability.

And the terms are attractive, not to say fantastic. Salary around 60,000 a year, almost twice as much as most teachers and nurses, plus lashings of overtime if you want it but no pressure, since the drivers union, Aslef, cancelled a rest day working agreement with TPE. Youll get a leisurely 18 months training to learn the routes and no risk of repetitive strain because you cant be asked to drive the same route twice in a day. Holidays? Take them at 48 hours notice and put your feet up whenever you feel peaky: TPE drivers take the equivalent of 30 sick days per year compared with a national average of 5.7.

For further details, best to contact Aslef lead officer Andy Hourigan rather than TPE, whose current contract expires on 28 May. The government says all options are on the table for the future of the franchise while voxpopped travellers and northern mayors overwhelmingly support Hourigans call for the axe to fall on TPE, whose management wins no praise or sympathy.

But could any private-sector operator run a decent service with a drivers union so determined to derail it in pursuit of the declared political aim of a publicly owned railway from which privateers are excluded? If TPEs routes end up renationalised, the victor will be union militancy, not the suffering passenger.

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We need regulators with teeth to fight Big Tech monopolism - The Spectator Australia