Take the commodity trader Glencore, based in Zug, Switzerland. The character was deliberately a dinosaur, even when the show first aired 20 years ago, but the sketches worked then (and, perhaps, even now) because this bloke really does exist – especially in the corporate world. “You get on the couch, string ’em along with some half-lies and evasions … and then hand over all your money.” “Having therapy is very much like making love to a beautiful woman,” he would schmooze. Swiss Toni, the appalling car salesman from the comedy sketch programme The Fast Show, used to love comparing everything to sex. Many questioned his suitability for his new post, while the tax deals offered to big companies by Luxembourg during Juncker’s spell as PM are being investigated by his own organisation, as illegal state aid. One of its most lucrative operations is in Luxembourg, where its three offices – and, er, one local employee – generated almost $250m in financing income in seven years.Īnyway, the leak of 548 letters, relating to 343 companies, showing how PwC wrote to Luxembourg tax authorities to agree on how their clients structured their businesses for tax purposes, proved as awkward for Jean-Claude Juncker, the new president of the European commission and Luxembourg’s former prime minister, as it was for the firms involved. Take the UK-based City broker Icap, which operates in key financial centres across the globe. The shock this year came from how few people were actually in Luxembourg to generate the frankly heroic profit levels needed for the tax dodging ruse, following November’s revelations of aggressive avoidance by PwC clients in the country, published by the Guardian and more than 20 other international news outlets. Still, it was not the notion that plenty of folk might visit Luxembourg on a tax-dodging expedition that was the unexpected bit. “Discover the unexpected Luxembourg”, gushes the grand duchy’s tourist website – and in many ways we all did so in 2014. His services in the field of German retailing, on the other hand, make him a slightly shorter price for a grand cross. Lewis issued three profit warnings – taking Tesco’s tally for the year to five – which included a £263m accounting scandal that has attracted the attentions of the Serious Fraud Office.Īll of which leaves Clarke – who became Tesco’s fourth boss after Sir Jack Cohen, Lord MacLaurin and Sir Terry Leahy – looking a long shot to emulate his predecessors and take an honour in the new year’s list. His replacement, Dave Lewis from Unilever, had never worked in retail, although he quickly seemed to appreciate the scale of the crisis.
His tendency to blame Tesco’s woes on those around him (his “every belittle helps” strategy) finally exhausted all the easy targets – but he was still scheduled to attend a party to celebrate his 40th anniversary at the retailer when it proved time for him to become the unexpected item in the debagging area. Few in the industry foresaw that customers might like this.Ĭlarke certainly didn’t. Added to that, customers now seem to prefer shopping in stores based in convenient locations. So Coupe and his rivals in the big four were left running huge mid-market retailers being squeezed on the one hand by the irritating German discounters Aldi and Lidl, who had devised the unthinkable ruse of charging lower prices, and on the other by upmarket competitors such as Waitrose, whose outrageous innovations include selling tasty food. Just as King was about to depart, his stellar run of 36 consecutive quarters of sales growth abruptly ended. Anyway, King foresaw the end of the glory days of the supermarket and seemingly felt no shame in then: a) handing in his notice shortly after insisting he would be leading the grocer for the long term and b) delivering a deft hospital pass to his mate and successor, Mike Coupe, who is now tasked with dealing with the wreckage.
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