Recession, recovery and reforms

But there’s a strong rationale for revisiting the eco-efficiency agenda to cut costs and leverage tax relief. Companies that are investing in carbon-cutting research and development can benefit from HMRC’s Research and Development (R&D) Relief. For the uninitiated, this is a corporation tax relief that may reduce a tax bill by more than the actual expenditure on allowable R&D costs.

Cutting costs is still high on the corporate agenda but many employers have gone to great lengths to maintain private medical insurance for their employees during the recession. It’s partly about motivation and partly because getting sick employees back to work quickly has a direct effect on productivity and costs. But private medical insurance isn’t always the most straightforward and cost-effective approach.

In the wider world, as various agencies struggle with the complex issues of banking regulation, we talk to Mike Rees, head of wholesale banking for Standard Chartered bank. In a fascinating, wide ranging interview on new world orders and power shifts to the Orient, he says Standard learned a lot from its experience of the 1997 Asian crisis. He says that fed into the DNA of the bank and getting the fundamentals right.

Asked about the broad thrust of the G20 agenda, Rees believes the effort would be better spent ensuring global supervision is improved. Along with many in the FSI, he says living wills are simply overseeing the death rites of a bank.