Boycott Big Business Society

Pro Cuts Directors still Paying themselves Very Well

2011-11-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

I said in a recent post that I would try to find out just how much the Procuts 35 take as salary, sometimes from themselves.

Here are the figures.

Will Adderley, CEO, Dunelm Group - gets paid £350,000 p.a.
Robert Bensoussan, Chairman, L.K. Bennett
Andy Bond, Chairman, Asda - now with Republic Fashion Stores
Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher - gets paid £1,972,100 p.a.
Gerald Corbett, Chairman, SSL International, moneysupermarket.com, Britvic - £215,000 from MoneySupermarket.com (2008) others to be confirmed
Peter Cullum, Executive Chairman, Towergate - gets paid £167,140 p.a.
Tej Dhillon, Chairman and CEO, Dhillon Group - n/k
Philip Dilley, Chairman, Arup - n/k
Charles Dunstone, Chairman, Carphone Warehouse Group, TalkTalk Telecom Group got £240,000 in fees as chairman of Carphone and £360,000 as chairman of TalkTalk
Warren East, CEO, ARM Holdings gets paid £1,436,097 p.a.
Gordon Frazer, Managing Director, Microsoft UK - n/k
Sir Christopher Gent, Non-Executive Chairman, GlaxoSmithKline - n/k
Ben Gordon, Chief Executive, Mothercare - has announced his intention step down on November 17th, was on an annual salary of £600,000, but picked up £5.2million including share incentive payments in the year to March 2011
Anthony Habgood, Chairman, Whitbread, Chairman, Reed Elsevier gets paid £500,000 p.a.
Aidan Heavey, Chief Executive, Tullow Oil gets paid £1,670,909 p.a.
Neil Johnson, Chairman, UMECO gets paid £240,000 p.a.
Nick Leslau, Chairman, Prestbury Group - no salary figures but recently paid £156M for St Katherine's Dock in London
Ian Livingston, CEO, BT Group gets paid £2.36M p.a.
Ruby McGregor-Smith, CEO, MITIE Group- gets paid £1,229,000 p.a. most of this coming from public sector contracts, i,e, YOUR taxes
Rick Medlock, CFO, Inmarsat; Non-Executive Director lovefilms.com, The Betting Group - gets paid £597,000
John Nelson, Chairman, Hammerson gets paid £597,000 p.a.
Stefano Pessina, Executive Chairman, Alliance Boots - pays himself £693,000 p.a.
Nick Prest, Chairman, AVEVA - pays himself £85,000 p.a (2009)
Nick Robertson, CEO, ASOS - pays himself £341,706 p.a.
Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman, Marks & Spencer - no longer at M&S
Tim Steiner, CEO, Ocado - pays himself £646,000 which includes a bonus of £220,000, not bad for running a company that can't turn a profit and whose shares at close of play today (7/11/11) were worth 87.1p down from £2.50 in February.
Andrew Sukawaty, Chairman and CEO, Inmarsat gets paid £1,478,000 p.a.
Michael Turner, Executive Chairman, Fuller, Smith and Turner gets paid £590,000 p.a.
Moni Varma, Chairman, Veetee - n/k
Paul Walker, Chief Executive, Sage - Now left Sage
Paul Walsh, Chief Executive, Diageo gets pAID £3,183,000 p.a.
Robert Walters, CEO, Robert Walters - n/k
Joseph Wan, Chief Executive, Harvey Nichols - n/k
Bob Wigley, Chairman, Expansys, Stonehaven Associates, Yell Group
Simon Wolfson, Chief Executive, Next - gets paid £1,757,000 p.a.

Lowest confirmed annual pay of the Procuts 35 is £167,140 p.a. making all the people named above in the top 1% of the country for large pay packets.

The rest of us, to borrow a slogan from the Occupy protests, are the 99% and these people are not representative of us nor act in out interests. Please boycott their businesses. Don't fund your own oppression.

The source for most of these figures is businessweek.com and are from various dates within 2011 unless stated, others are gleamed from news stories. As you can see it's not possible with ease to discover what all these people earn. If you know of any other sources where I can check or double-check these figures I'd be glad to hear about them.

Boycott Republic Fashion Stores

2011-10-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

Andy Bond was Chairman of ASDA when the boycott of the businesses of the Procuts 35 started. He is now the Chairman of the Private Equity Funded 'Republic' fashion chain.

Back in April Andy seemed to acknowledge the recession predicting that the recession in retail will continue for another two years from that point. He has not however retracted his initial statement that the private sector (currently in recession and facing a crisis in confidence, job losses and issuing profit warnings excepted for the greedy bastards increasing their own pay by 50% just to prove to rest of us what a bunch of uncaring, ruthless bastards they really are) will magically step in and provide jobs for the millions of public sector workers Andy wanted to see sacked.

For this reason I am extending the boycott to include 'Republic'. Andy, you can run, but you can't hide. Any business you are associated with is now tainted by your public position.

Director's Pay Continues to Rise

2011-10-28T12:15:00.000-07:00

There's a report out today that shows that the claims of the millionaire cabinet that everyone has to suffer in the current economic climate is a pile of lying hogwash.

FTSE 100 director's earnings rose by almost half last year

I won't repeat the report here but suggest that you read it.

The question to be asked is how to respond to this outrage. Well in the pages of this blog I have, where available, included the details of the salaries and remuneration packages of the Procuts 35 who said that public sector workers, including their own customers, should be sacked to pay for excesses of the banks.

Well I intend to update and re-publish details of the earnings of these people just to show that when they said that cuts had to be made they did not mean to their own salaries, the hypocritical swine that they are.

I've been busy on other projects most of this year but winter is setting in and now I have time to hunt these people down and expose their greed and I will delight in doing so. Stay tuned for updates.

Here are the latest figures for the annual earnings of the Procuts 35. Those with nothing next to them yet will be added shortly.

Will Adderley, CEO, Dunelm Group - gets paid £350,000 p.a.
Robert Bensoussan, Chairman, L.K. Bennett
Andy Bond, Chairman, Asda - now with Republic Fashion Stores
Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher - gets paid £1,972,100 p.a.
Gerald Corbett, Chairman, SSL International, moneysupermarket.com, Britvic - £215,000 from MoneySupermarket.com (2008) others to be confirmed
Peter Cullum, Executive Chairman, Towergate - gets paid £167,140 p.a.
Tej Dhillon, Chairman and CEO, Dhillon Group - n/k
Philip Dilley, Chairman, Arup - n/k
Charles Dunstone, Chairman, Carphone Warehouse Group, TalkTalk Telecom Group got £240,000 in fees as chairman of Carphone and £360,000 as chairman of TalkTalk
Warren East, CEO, ARM Holdings gets paid £1,436,097 p.a.
Gordon Frazer, Managing Director, Microsoft UK - n/k
Sir Christopher Gent, Non-Executive Chairman, GlaxoSmithKline - n/k
Ben Gordon, Chief Executive, Mothercare - has announced his intention step down on November 17th, was on an annual salary of £600,000, but picked up £5.2million including share incentive payments in the year to March 2011
Anthony Habgood, Chairman, Whitbread, Chairman, Reed Elsevier gets paid £500,000 p.a.
Aidan Heavey, Chief Executive, Tullow Oil gets paid £1,670,909 p.a.
Neil Johnson, Chairman, UMECO gets paid £240,000 p.a.
Nick Leslau, Chairman, Prestbury Group - no salary figures but recently paid £156M for St Katherine's Dock in London
Ian Livingston, CEO, BT Group gets paid £2.36M p.a.
Ruby McGregor-Smith, CEO, MITIE Group- gets paid £1,229,000 p.a. most of this coming from public sector contracts, i,e, YOUR taxes
Rick Medlock, CFO, Inmarsat; Non-Executive Director lovefilms.com, The Betting Group - gets paid £597,000
John Nelson, Chairman, Hammerson gets paid £597,000 p.a.
Stefano Pessina, Executive Chairman, Alliance Boots - pays himself £693,000 p.a.
Nick Prest, Chairman, AVEVA - pays himself £85,000 p.a (2009)
Nick Robertson, CEO, ASOS - pays himself £341,706 p.a.
Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman, Marks & Spencer - no longer at M&S
Tim Steiner, CEO, Ocado - pays himself £646,000 which includes a bonus of £220,000, not bad for running a company that can't turn a profit and whose shares at close of play today (7/11/11) were worth 87.1p down from £2.50 in February.
Andrew Sukawaty, Chairman and CEO, Inmarsat gets paid £1,478,000 p.a.
Michael Turner, Executive Chairman, Fuller, Smith and Turner gets paid £590,000 p.a.
Moni Varma, Chairman, Veetee - n/k
Paul Walker, Chief Executive, Sage - Now left Sage
Paul Walsh, Chief Executive, Diageo gets pAID £3,183,000 p.a.
Robert Walters, CEO, Robert Walters - n/k
Joseph Wan, Chief Executive, Harvey Nichols - n/k
Bob Wigley, Chairman, Expansys, Stonehaven Associates, Yell Group
Simon Wolfson, Chief Executive, Next - gets paid £1,757,000 p.a.

Lowest confirmed annual pay of the Procuts 35 is £167,140 p.a. making all the people named above in the top 1% of the country for large pay packets.

The rest of us, to borrow a slogan from the Occupy protests, are the 99% and these people are not representative of us nor act in out interests. Please boycott their businesses. Don't fund your own oppression.

The source for most of these figures is businessweek.com and are from various dates within 2011 unless stated, others are gleamed from news stories. As you can see it's not possible with ease to discover what all these people earn. If you know of any other sources where I can check or double-check these figures I'd be glad to hear about them.

The Power of Boycotts

2011-07-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

People sometimes doubt the power of boycotts. They look at international conglomerates with multi-billion pound turnovers and wonder what possible difference their spending power can make.

This week we've seen the Power of Boycotts. News of the World, the biggest selling purveyor of tittle-tattle, sexual gossip, pro-Tory propaganda has been closed down as a result of a short lived but hard hitting boycott.

The News of World boycott differed from most commercial boycotts in that instead of targeting consumers it asked the News of the World's advertisers, its main source of income, to remove their ads from the paper.

Pressure to comply with the boycott was organised through Twitter and FaceBook and before any knew it advertisers were receiving thousands of message from customers saying were going to take their custom elsewhere if their ads remained in the paper. The advertisers soon realised that the News of the World had become a toxic brand and there was a virtual mob with virtual torches and pitchforks out for its blood.

The revelations that people at News International had been hacking into the phones of the families of murder victims and the families of dead soldiers was enough to turn the British public, who had tolerated the intrusion of the privacy of publicity seeking celebs and hypocritical politicians, against those responsible. The public roared, the advertisers listened and the paper was shut down by its ruthless owner, sacking the staff but keeping on board the person in charge at the time most of the offending events had taken place.

It was a partial victory for common decency but now people have tasted victory and the smell of blood is in their nostrils, they are not going to let things go.

It is suspected that News International will launch a new Sunday paper making this exercise more of a re-brand than a closure. The boycott campaign against the rest of News International has already begun with demands for a full and independent investigation of those responsible.

The links between News International and the Metropolitan Police make an investigation into these matters by the Met a potential whitewash. The investigation should be conducted by a senior appropriately skilled person or team with no connection to previous events from another force or even from Interpol should that be necessary and the cost of the investigation should be paid by News International.

We can make a difference; we know that now, so let's go after the ProCuts 35 with renewed vigour.

Boycott Virgin Media

2011-03-04T00:59:00.000-08:00

This post marks a departure from the usual policy of only targeting the companies of the 35 business people who made their support of the cuts known in an open letter.

No one at Virgin Media signed that letter, so why am I now asking for people to boycott their services? Quite simply because they are absolutely useless.

Virgin Media provided my broadband until the end of January but the story begins in December

On December 16th the phone service stopped working. This was reported to Virgin Media via their online forum as I had no other way to contact them. The broadband was still online.

This forum is full of complaints from hundreds of Virgin Media customers who are not getting the service they have paid for.

Subsequently 4 separate appointments were made for engineers to attend to fix the problem before one finally turned up on 3rd January and fixed the problem which was in their control box a couple of street away.

All of the previous 3 appointments were cancelled on the day they were supposed to take place and notification of cancellation on two of them was only received after the time of the appointment. Two of those days involved me taking time off work to make the appointments. The reason given for one of the cancellations was the weather. It is true to say that we had some snow over that period, but I do not live in an isolated cottage in the middle of Dartmoor, I live in an out London suburb where the roads were gritted, the buses kept running and binmen collected the rubbish on schedule all through the winter.

I was without a phone service, which I had paid for, over Christmas and New Year during one of the coldest spells we have had in years. With two children in the house, one of whom is registered disabled, this was a situation that involved more risk than I found acceptable.

Within 5 minutes of the phone being re-connected I had a phone call from someone claiming to be from Virgin Media demanding my account password. This was not given of course.

These phone calls continued daily , and sometimes up to 5 times a day until I posted a notice on the forum telling Virgin Media that if they wasted any more of my time I would charge them. During one of these phones I was threatened by an employee of Virgin Media and demanded to speak to his supervisor. On this occasion that occurred and he agreed to end the calls. The calls continued but petered out shortly after.

During the time the phone was out of action I hadn't paid my December bill as that was my only leverage to ensure that a repair would eventually be completed.

After the third appointment was cancelled on the day it was supposed to take place I contacted Virgin Media from work and cancelled all my services with a switchover date of 31st January.

During that call, or a subsequent one around that time a closing balance on the account was agreed between myself and someone at Virgin Media that would cover my alleged services oup to 31st January.

Since then I have had threatening letters saying that I owe them a small balance.

The fact is that they owe me.

Their customer service is appaulling.

I phoned them on receipt of the most recent letter to try to resolve the issue by referring them to the previous agreement on the closing amount. The person I spoke to was abusive, rude and was unable to provide me with the Register Office address of Virgin Media so that I could formerly issue legal proceedings of my own. All Limited Companies have to have a registered office address. She also refused repeated requests to pass the call on to someone who could answer the question.

It took me one Google query to find out that Virgin Media's Register Office is Virgin Media Limited 160 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5QA.

One thing you should know about Virgin Media is that if you use the service you pay for they will cut back of your bandwidth. They advertise 'Speeds of up to 20MB' but as anyone with some technical knowledge of broadband knows this is rarely achievable and in Virgin's case is never reached. If you use your broadband a lot, by say letting the kids watch programs on the BBC iPlayer they will throttle back your bandwidth to a half or a quarter of what you pay for. They will not of course reduce your bill when they do this.

So basically, with Virgin Media we have a company that sell services, prevent you from fully utilising them, cannot fix faults within a reasonable period of time, threaten their customers and provide totally crap customer service.

They may not have signed the offending letter but those are enough reasons for me to advise anyone to steer clear of them.

There are other cable broadband provider if you wish to avoid paying BT phone line rentals charges. let me know if your experience with any of the others is similar to mine with Virgin, or if you would positively recommend someone.

Tomorrow is Pay Day

2010-12-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, Saturday 18th December, the last Saturday of Christmas shopping should be a big day for High Street retailers. There premises should be full of hopeful shoppers trying to pick up a present for a friend or family member and the cash registers should be filling up with other people's hard earned cash.

However tomorrow is PayDay, the culmination of UKuncut's campaign against the corporate tax dodgers Vodafone and Arcadia, owned by Philip Green.

Let's not forget also the tax avoided by Mothercare and Boots.

Ukuncut have organised, and more importantly inspired, peaceful protests across the country, usually taking the form of a group of protestors appearing outside a store and attempting to temporarily shut it down. If they can do this to sufficient sites tomorrow they will seruously dent the profits of the tax dodgers.

Pay up Phil, it'll be cheaper in the end !!!

Good luck to anyone involved in aprotest tomorrow. Remember, keep it loud but keep it peaceful.

Captain SKA for Christmas Number One

2010-12-12T07:26:00.001-08:00

This is Captain SKA with Liar Liar. Enjoy.

Let's get it to Number One.

Yes2AV or No2AV that is the question

2010-12-10T05:56:00.000-08:00

I'm posting on a subject other than the Boycott of the business of the 35 cuts-supporting fat cats today for a couple of reasons.

1. I'm so angry at the scenes I witnessed yesterday outside the home of our 'democracy' where violent thugs wearing police uniforms were assaulting people trying to protect their livelihoods and education that if I think about it any longer longer I'm liable to do myself an injury, and

2. I've been 'tweeting' with people from the YES2AV campaign as I'm genuinely unsure how I will vote, or even if I will vote now that the LibDems have made a virtue of abstentianism, in next May's referendum on changing the voting system. I said I would post up my ideas, as I can't fit them into a 140 character tweet so here they are.

A bit of personal history on the subject.

When I first got involved in party politics in the 80's I opposed PR in all its forms. This was largely because I suspected it was simply a ruse to improve the political fortunes of the LibDems and would do little to improve people's lives.

My position on this changed however when I saw the tories retain control of our local council, of which I was a member, despite having the same number of councillors elected as the combined opposition parties and elected on many fewer votes. The tories then launched an all out offensive against public services cutting everything they could find. Had that council been elected by PR there would have been some kind of coalition formed and extreme behaviour prevented.

So I was turned into a PR convert, but each system of PR I looked at seemed to be devised with the aim of helping one political party or the other. I could not see one that seemed to regard the wishes of the electorate as paramount. I then started to devise my own systems, but more of that later.

The referendum in May does not propose PR, which is the first reason I hesitate to vote Yes. It proposes changing the voting sytem from First Past the Post to the Alternative Vote.

Another reason to hesitate is that it is supported by the LibDems who have shown themselves to be totally untrustworthy. You rarely buy a wreck from the same car dealer twice.

First Past the Post (FPTP) is the system we are all familar with. Whoever gets more votes than any other individual candidate wins. It was devised back in the days when there were rarely two candidates let alone more than two and all the electors could meet in one room. In those days only male landowners could vote. In that context FPTP worked. However we are no longer living in the early 1800's.

The Alternative Vote is where each elector indicated there preference for candidates by listing them as choice 1,2,3 etc. If no candidate receives of 50% of the votes cast the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and the second preferences of their voters added to votes of the other candidates. The process is repeated until one candidate has over 50% support.

Sounds fairer doesn't it, but look at it in the context of UK politics and it sounds like a scam.

The first thing I noticed about AV that I did not like was that this first group of people to have their second vote counted are those who supported the candidate who polled the least. That means those who support the least popular set of policies have their second say before those who come 3rd, 4th or 5th. That seems to favour extremists.

UK Politics is highly tribal. People tend to grow up with a political identity based on social status. For example David Cameron's conservatism was inevitable given his privileged background. He didn't just read Adam Smith and Milton Friendman and decide he agreed with them. He instinctively identified with the politics of his class and rationalised accordingly. The thing is, he is not alone in this, we all do that. We know who is 'on our side' and who is not. Professor Dawkins could probably explain the reasons for this much better than I could as I suspect it's an evolutionary thing linked to the protection of identiable tribal groupings.

Whatever the reason, political allegiance and the perception of others' political allegiance seems fixed. People may change parties, but they rarely change their motives or their principles, if they have any.

So in this context it is easy to see that in a three way contest fought under AV a Tory supporter would put the Labour Party, his historical class enemy, as his bottom choice, and a Labour supporter would do the same with the Tories.

This means the LibDems would pick up the majority of second preferences of whichever other party polled third. It is therefore a simple calculation to see that the LibDems would be favoured to take any seat where a, the winning candidate polled less than 50% and b, they are currently in second place.

(This analysis does not take into account the current suicidal behaviour of the LibDems in breaking pledges and voting against the interests of aspirational parents who want to see their kids go to university.)

This is why I have doubts as to how to vote on the referendum. FPTP is bad and AV is just as bad.

Were this a conversation at this point someone would shout out 'Ok, then what's you're idea' and it would be a fair call.

Ok, I have two mutually exclusive solutions.

My First system. d'Hondt Plus.

This is not completely my own idea but does have a twist I've added myself.

The UK uses the d'Hondt system to elect its Euro MPs. Every voter chooses the party of their choice and the number of seats awarded to each party is roughly proportional to the number of votes cast. There is a complex mathematical formula used to determine who gets which seat which can be found here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method .

The problem I see with the d'Hondt system is that although voters decide which parties get each number of seats it is the party managers, through a listing system, who decide which of their candidates are actually elected.

I would propose that we change this so that each elector has the opportunity to also vote for each candidate.

Under the system I would propose there would be two ballot papers. The first would be the existing ballot paper where you decide which party receives your vote. The second would list all the candidates individually and you could vote for up to the number of seats available. All Euro seats are multi-member and all Westminster seats would become likewise.

This way voters could express their dis-satisfaction with a candidate without having to change their party allegiance. In the light of the recent expenses scandal people could vote for their party of choice and unelect a perceived crook without voting for another party.

Equally if a voter had a particularly strong view on an issue on which all parties were split, such as say, membership of the Euro, they could vote for pro or anti candidates in all parties and so have their view better represented.

If you supported a minority party and knew your favoured party were unlikely to win any seats you could use your vote to determine which candidates of other parties were elected.

As you can probably imagine party managers would hate this system as it places the power to elect firmly in the hands of the electorate and eliminates safe seats, as no seat would be safe as you could lose it to someone in your own party.

This system requires multi-member seats representing 5 - 8 current constituencies to work.

My second system is more radical, more representative in its results and is a bigger change from the current system. I call this 'All In'

Under the 'All In' system the number of MPs elected becomes less relevant than the number of votes they gained.

The basic idea is that instead of a MP with a majority of 1 being the equal of a MP with a majority of 50,000 votes cast in the House of Commons by MPs are weighted to reflect the number of votes each candidate received.

This changes our democracy from being a 'representational' system to being a 'delegatory' system where each voter decides which candidate to delegate their vote to during the next parliament.

The way it would work would be that every candidate polling more than a threshold figure would be elected, but governments would form on polling strength rather than number of MPs as no party would have a majority in terms of number of MPs but may do so in terms of popular vote.

Votes in the House would be more like shareholders meeting where the voting strength of each MP would be different and would be the number of votes they received in the election.

The downside to this is that unless we combine constituencies into larger blocks we could end up with a lot more MPs, and that might not go down very well. We could of course change their system of remuneration to one of performance pay linked to their number of votes so the power to pay them lies in the hands of the only people whose opinion matters, the electors.

The upside is that if all MPs vote on a piece of legislation it will succeed only if a majority of those whom the electorate cast their votes for vote for it, making parliament more representative of the country.

Both my systems envisage larger multi-member constituencies because I believe this would work better than the current system. I know from experience that someone looking for assistance from an elected representative will rarely go to his or own if they are from a party the elector does not trust. They would rather go to someone from the party they do support even if that means dealing with an MP or councillor from another area. With multi-member seats we are all more likely to end up with someone we voted for.

Let me know your views in the comments.

Boycott Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge

2010-11-29T13:13:00.000-08:00

Philip Green is a retail billionaire who advises the Conservative led government on 'efficiency', that called 'sacking people' outside board rooms and conservative circles.

He is Britain's ninth-richest person with assets worth around £4.43bn in 2008.

Taveta Investments, the company used to acquire Arcadia in 2002, is in the name of Green's wife, Cristina Green, a Monaco resident, avoiding £285 million in tax that would be payable if a UK resident owned the company. When Green paid his family £1.2bn in 2005, it was paid for by a loan taken out by Arcadia, cutting Arcadia's corporation tax as interest charges on the loan were offset against profits. In comparison, staff at Arcadia were told in 2005 that members of its final salary pension scheme must increase contributions by half and work five years longer to qualify for the same payout.

UKuncut are currently campaigning against Philip Green and his unpaid taxes http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/29/philip-green-protest-alleged-tax-avoidance?CMP=twt_gu

Let's show some solidarity and support UKuncut.

Boycott Expansys, Stonehaven Associates, Yell Group

2010-11-25T13:09:00.000-08:00

Bob Wigley is another businessman for whom the corporate boardroom appears to be a natural habitat.

He is Chairman of Expansys, Stonehaven Associates and Yell Group. Between 2008 and 2009 Bob was Chairman of Sovereign Reversions plc.

Expansys is an online electronics store selling mobile phones, sat navs, laptop tvs etc.

Yell Group own and produce Yellow Pages and the yell.com web site.

Stonehaven LLP is a recruitment and personnel advisory firm. They are focused on boardroom and senior level recruiting and management assessment in the Corporate, Institutional and Financial Services sectors.

Sovereign Reversions operate in the equity release market, convincing retired people to borrow money using the equity in their property as collateral. This means that Sovereign can pick up the property cheap later.

This is how this practice is described on Sovereign's web site.

Sovereign Reversions buys property assets at a discount to vacant possession value. It benefits from the elimination of this discount when the homeowners leave their home or die, and from the long term appreciation of property values.

They actually boast about the 'discount' and 'benefits' they get when people move into care or die. I thought I had found a sick one when I wrote about Nick Prest's arms dealing through Cohort PLC but I think this may be worse.

Bob Wigley was appointed as Ambassador for UK business by the Prime Minister in 2010.

Bob is on the Advisory Board of the venture capital firm Bluegem LLP and is the European Financial Services Operating partner of the venture capital firm Advent International. Bob is the former chairman of Merrill Lynch EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). He held a number of management positions at Merrill Lynch, serving from 2003 to 2004 as chairman of EMEA Corporate Banking, global co-head of Telecom and Media Investment Banking in 2002, co-head of U.K. Investment Banking in 2001 and co-head of Corporate Broking in 2000. He was educated at Exeter School and the University of Bath. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

He is Chairman of the National Education Employer Partnership Taskforce. He is Chairman of the Green Investment Bank Commission and on the International Advisory Council of the International Centre for Financial Regulation. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Cranfield School of Management’s Doughty Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, the Advisory Council of Business for New Europe and is a Visiting Fellow of Oxford University and Chairman of Oxford University’s Centre for Corporate Reputation. In 2008, he chaired a panel of leading London financial services company CEO’s for the incoming Mayor of London, Boris Johnson producing a major report on how to maintain London’s competitiveness in global terms for the decade ahead and as a reward now sits on the Mayor’s Panel of Economic Advisers and the Advisory Council of TheCityUK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and is Master of the Court of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and has a business degree and an honorary doctorate from Bath University.

On 18th October, Bob Wigley signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Bob Wigley is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Expansys, Stonehaven Associates, Yell Group. There are lots of recruitment agencies out there, just steer your personnel people in other directions.

This post marks the completion of the entries on each of the companies represented on The Offending Letter of 18th October. These posts will now be revised, improved, clarified, have sources added and linked to, kept up to date with any new information that comes to light on the companies and the signatories and generally made easier to find and index by search engines on the web using what knowledge of SEO I have picked up over the last decade of working in the online search and affiliate marketing industry.

Please let me know if anything on this site is or becomes out of date or wrong.

Boycott Robert Walters PLC

2010-11-25T12:16:00.000-08:00

Robert Walters plc is a professional recruitment consultancy that focuses on placing high calibre professionals into permanent, contract and temporary positions. Established in 1985 by current Chief Executive Officer, Robert Walters, Robert Walters plc today has 41 offices in 20 countries. Robert Walters PLC acquired Dunhill Management Services in 2001, and launched Walters Interim, its junior professional contract recruitment business into France in 2005, Belgium in 2006 and the Netherlands in 2008. In February 2008, the Group acquired Talent Spotter, a specialist recruitment business headquartered in China with offices in Shanghai and Suzhou.

They opened an office in Seoul this year. That must be a hairy placed to work with tension building again between North and South Korea, and with Sarah Palin unable to identify friend from foe.
Robert Walters is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Robert Walters PLC

After graduating with a degree in economics and politics in 1975, Robert joined Touche Ross. In 1978 he joined Michael Page International plc, initially working in its commerce division and subsequently set up and ran its public practice unit. In 1982 he set up and managed its New York office. He resigned in 1984 and founded the business of Robert Walters in 1985.

On 18th October, Robert Walters signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Robert Walters is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Robert Walters PLC. THere are lots of recruitment agencies out there, just steer your personnel people in other directions.

Boycott Sage Software

2010-11-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

Sage produce business software and services. The range includes software to manage business' finances, run the payroll, manage customer and supplier relationships, plan the business and support your HR function. In the UK, they provide software and services to over 760,000 small and medium-sized businesses.

This software ranges from accounts, payroll, forecasting and business intelligence to customer relationship management, e-business and help for start-ups.

Sage's services include Excel Support, HR Advice, Health and Safety Advice and training courses.

It is the world's third largest supplier of enterprise resource planning software (behind Oracle and SAP), the largest supplier to small businesses, and has 6.1 million customers worldwide.

Paul Walker joined the company by accident 20 years ago. Born and raised in Sheffield, he qualified as an accountant with Arthur Young, “doing bits and bobs to do with computers”. He soon felt the urge to try something more entrepreneurial.

In 1984 Walker was introduced to David Goldman, who had spent 20 years running a printing business in Newcastle. He had seen the business potential of a book-keeping software package created by academics and students at Newcastle University.

That's right, Sage was set up on the back of the intellectual property of a state-subsidised body.

Sage’s co-founders included Paul Muller, an American computer specialist who worked on the Apollo moonshots. Muller set up a computer business while lecturing on astronomy at Newcastle University.

He worked with students including Graham Wylie, who created the first piece of Sage software. Muller became Sage’s technical director, leaving the marketing of the business to Goldman.
Paul Walker joined Sage in 1984 and was appointed Chief Executive in 1994. He stepped down with a reported £21M exit settlement in October this year. He had earlier join the boards of Experian and Diageo.

Just before he left Sage, on 18th October, Paul Walker signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Paul Walker is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Sage products and services.

This is an easy one to boycott unless you run your own business or are an accountant, as Sage is a standard accountancy tool. There are however alternatives available including the aforementioned Oracle and SAP.

Boycott Fuller's Beer, Pubs and Hotels

2010-11-23T13:41:00.000-08:00

Fuller's have been brewing beer at the Griffin Brewery in Brentford since 1845. Their brands include London Pride, ESB, Discovery and Honeydew. They also own the Gales' range of beer following their purchase and closure of Gales' Brewery in hampshire in 2005. Fuller's has an estate of approximately 360 pubs split between managed and tenanted houses mostly in London and the South East but also in Avon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and the West Midlands.

Fuller's also own 6 hotels; The Chamberlain Hotel, in the City, London; The Fox & Goose Hotel, Ealing; The Mad Hatter Hotel, Nr Blackfriars' Bridge London; The Red Lion Hotel, Uxbridge; The Santuary House, Westminster and the White Hart in Hampton wick.

Michael Turner is Executive Chairman of Fuller, Smith and Turner. He is a fifth-generation descendant of John Turner, who co-founded the Fuller's brewing empire in 1845.

Michael is an Old Etonian who then went on to Harvard Business School. He qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Whitney. He joined in the company in 1978. Initially he ran the Wine Division as Wine Director becoming Marketing Director in 1988, Managing Director in 1992, Chief Executive in 2002 and Chairman in 2007.

On 18th October, Michael Turner signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Michael Turner is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Fuller's beers, pubs and hotels especially over the festive season. There's always a better pub not far away.

Boycott ASOS (As Seen On Screen)

2010-11-22T14:13:00.000-08:00

ASOS.com describe themselves as "the UK's largest independent online fashion and beauty retailer. With over 35,000 branded and own label products available and over 1500 new lines added each week, ASOS.com is rapidly becoming the market leader in the UK online fashion world" which in plain speech means it's a website with a warehouse at the back-end selling clothes and beauty products.

Aimed primarily at fashion forward 16-34 year olds, ASOS.com attracts over 6.9 million unique visitors a month and has 2.9 million registered users.

Nick Robertson of ASOS (centre)

Nick Robertson is the Chief Executive of Asos. He failed to get anything above a "D" at his A-levels while a student at the independent Canford School in Dorset. He had a comfortable upbringing in suburban Surrey financed by his father's career as a successful advertising executive.

Low and behold in the small world of London based advertising agencies Nick started his career in 1987 with Young and Rubicam and in 1991 moved to Carat, the UK’s largest media planning and buying agency. In 1995 he co-founded Entertainment Marketing, a marketing services business, and in 2000 he co-founded ASOS.com.

On 18th October, Nick Robertson signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Nick Robertson is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Asos.com.

Boycott AVEVA, Cohort PLC and The Shephard Group

2010-11-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Nick Prest signed the offending letter of 18th October as Chairman of AVEVA. He is also Chairman of Cohort plc and Chairman of The Shephard Group, so these companies are profiled as well.

Please note AVEVA is not a typo for Aviva, the insurance company previous known as Norwich Union; the two are not connected.

There is a disturbing theme to Nick Prest's companies.

AVEVA provides engineering IT software to the plant, power and marine industries. It is now listed on the FTSE250 but AVEVA's origins lie in the public sector with public money building it up to be a the centre of excellence it became.

The Computer-Aided Design Centre (or CADCentre as it was more commonly referred to, and later formally became) was created in Cambridge UK in 1967 by the UK Ministry of Technology. Its mission was to develop computer-aided design techniques and promote their take-up by British industry. Its first director was Arthur Llewelyn who initially contracted out the recruitment and management of specialist staff to ICL.

The centre carried out much pioneering CAD research, and many of its early staff members went on to become prominent in the worldwide CAD community, such as brothers Dick Newell and Martin Newell. Dick Newell oversaw the creation of the extremely successful Plant Design Management System (PDMS) for 3D process plant design, and later co-founded two very successful software companies - Cambridge Interactive Systems (CIS) which was well known from its Medusa 2D/3D CAD system, and Smallworld with its eponymous Smallworld GIS (Geographical Information System). Martin Newell later went to the University of Utah where he did pioneering 3D solid modelling work; he was also one of the progenitors of PostScript.

Along with the Cambridge Science Park, CADCentre was arguably the most important single factor in what became known as the Cambridge Phenomenon - the transformation of Cambridge from a distinguished and beautiful but rather sleepy small University town into one of the world's high technology centres within a few short years in the 1980s. Many people who had worked at CADCentre went on to found their own successful software companies.

CADCentre was privatised in 1983, was the subject of a management buyout in 1994 and became a publicly quoted company in 1996. It changed its name to AVEVA in 2001.

In January 2006 Nick Prest joined the board of AVEVA plc becoming Chairman in April 2006.

Cohort plc, describes itself as a 'defence technical services business'.

Cohort plc is the parent company for three innovative, agile and responsive businesses operating in defence and related markets. It aims to add real value through the experience and contacts of its senior team while providing a light-touch but effective governance framework. Its objective is to deliver consistent and growing value to shareholders through its three operating subsidiaries: MASS, SCS and SEA.

MASS is an independent UK systems house with a defence and aerospace market focus. Formed in 1983, the company is based near St Neots in Cambridgeshire with a second facility in Lincoln. MASS joined Cohort in August 2006.

SCS provides independent technical advice and services primarily but not exclusively to the defence and security sectors. Formed in 1982, the company is based in Theale, Berkshire. SCS became the first member of the group in February 2006.

SEA (Group) Limited (SEA) is an independent systems engineering and software company operating in defence, aerospace, transport and offshore markets. Formed in 1988, the company is based in Beckington, near Frome, with offices in North Bristol (near MOD). SEA joined Cohort in October 2007.

The Shephard Group has been providing high-quality business intelligence to the aerospace and defence market, through a combination of magazines, online news services, handbooks and global events. Particularly well known within the helicopter, unmanned vehicles, defence electronics, military airpower and civil aviation markets.

The Shephard Group is a global company. In 2008, they operated in Oman, Australia (where they delivered the largest helicopter exhibition in the region), Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium. Of course, the UK is very important to them, and their appointment as the organisers of the official conference for Defence Equipment & Support is a reflection of their imbeddedness with the Ministry of Defence.

Nick Prest, Chairman of AVEVA plc, Cohort plc and Shepherd Group Ltd

After graduating with an MA from Oxford, Nick Prest began his career as an administrative civil servant in the MOD in 1974. After an MBA course at Bradford Business School, Nick then moved within the MOD to the Defence Export Services Organisation. In 1982, he left the MOD to take a marketing role at United Scientific Holdings, predecessor of Alvis plc (Alvis). He was appointed marketing director in 1985, with overall responsibility for the order intake of the Alvis Group worldwide, and became chief executive in 1989. Alvis developed into one of the world's leading contractors in the specialist field of armoured vehicles before being acquired by BAE Systems in 2004. Nick was appointed chairman of Alvis in 1996.

In the 1990s Nick also held a prominent role in arms industry affairs in the UK, acting as Chairman of the Defence Manufacturers Association and Vice-Chairman of the Defence Industries Council. He left Alvis following its acquisition by BAE Systems in 2004. In January 2006 he joined the board of AVEVA plc becoming Chairman in April 2006. In March 2006 he was appointed Chairman of Cohort plc. In December 2007 he became Chairman of Shephard Group, a privately owned arms and aerospace media group. He is a member of the Council of ADS, the UK trade association serving the arms, aerospace, space and security industries. He was chairman of the Defence Manufacturers Association from 2001 to 2004. Nick is chairman of AVEVA plc, Cohort plc and Shepherd Group Ltd.

He was awarded a CBE in 2001 for services to the arms industry, also known as 'killing people abroad'.

The number of people who have died as a result of the activites of Nick Prest is unknown but what is known is that on 18th October, Nick Prest, former MOD civil servant and chairman of a company created with public funds and privatised to suit the dogma of the government in 1983, signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

This would be fair enough if this were to involve reduced public expenditure on companies like Nick's and the rest of the arms industry, but somehow I don't think that's on either his or the government's agenda.

For this reason Nick Prest is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott AVEVA plc, Cohort plc and Shepherd Group Ltd. In fact we should work with CATT to shut down Cohort plc and Shepherd Group Ltd as they deal in death.

Boycott Hammerson, Brent Cross Centre, Birmingham Bullring

2010-11-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

Hammerson is a property development and investment company. It invests mainly in offices and retail premises.

This means we can boycott Hammerson by staying away from the shopping centres it owns.

Hammerson have interests in several major retail developments, including:

* Brent Cross, London, England
* Cabot Circus, Bristol, England
* Espace Saint-Quentin, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France
* Highcross, Leicester, England
* Italie 2, Paris, France
* Les 3 Fontaines, Cergy-Pontoise, France
* O'Parinor, Aulnay-sous-Bois, France
* The Bullring, Birmingham, England
* The Oracle, Reading, England
* WestQuay, Southampton, England
* Union Square Shopping Centre, Aberdeen, Scotland

Hammerson own six London office buildings, which provide 105,000 m² of prime accommodation including 125 Old Broad Street and 99 Bishopsgate.

The firm switched to Real Estate Investment Trust status when REITs were introduced in the United Kingdom in January 2007. This means that they can buy a share of a retail premises without buying the premises themselves. This also means that they pay no tax on their income, or on their capital gains, but do pay on their dividend income the properties generate. Hammerson describe this arrangement as 'tax-efficient'. I think we know what that means.

John Nelson, a Chartered Accountant, was appointed Chairman of Hammerson in 2005. He had joined the board the year before. He is also a non-executive deputy chairman, Kingfisher (annual pay, £63,000); non-executive director, BT (annual pay, £50,000). His pay at Hammerson is £200,000 per year. (source http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article587653.ece )

On 18th October, John Nelson signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason John Nelson is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Hammerson properties including the Brent Cross Centre, The Birmingham Bullring and Cabot Circus, Bristol.

Boycott Cheapflights.co.uk, The Betting Group, lovefilm.com & Inmarsat

2010-11-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

The subject of today's blog is Rick Medlock, who is a man of many parts leading to a range of companies to avoid if you can.

Rick Medlock was appointed a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit Committee of Cheapflights.co.uk in May 2008.

Cheapflights.co.uk is a price comparison site for flights. One alternative site is skyscanner.net. There may be others.

Rick is also the CFO of Inmarsat who operate 11 satellites that provide voice and data communication worldwide. This will be a tricky one to boycott as you may be using Inmarsat whenever you use a mobile phone or watch live TV or even when using the web. They own and operate the hardware your telco, TV station or ISP use to relay whatever signal you're after. Very hi-tech, very clever, very hard to avoid. When they idea of a boycott was first mooted on CiF one sceptic posted that it would be hard to boycott Inmarsat. I fear he may turn out to be correct.

lovefilm.com is a couch-potato's dream. They are an online film and games rental company. Basically they're Blockbuster without the walk to the shop. They even sell view online subscriptions so you don't even have to move from your PC to your TV. Rick is a non-Executive director of lovefim.com. The alternative is to get some exercise by walking down to the video shop, or going on an anti-cuts demo.

The Betting Group. For the first time since starting this blog I have drawn a total blank as to who or what The Betting Group is. A Google search directs me to betfair.com, but I can find no mention of Rick Medlock on the betfair site and have to assume that Google is sending me there because betfair is 'A' betting group, although possibly not 'The' Betting Group. If anyone can send me links to any information sources I would be deeply grateful. My email is betting at howtowinelections dot co dot uk.

Business Week reports Rick's income as being £582,000 per year.

Rick Medlock joined the Board of Inmarsat in September 2004. Prior to joining Inmarsat, he had served as chief financial officer and company secretary of NDS Group plc since 1996. Mr. Medlock previously served as chief financial officer of several private equity backed technology companies in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Mr Medlock is a non-executive director of Cheapflights Limited and Lovefilm International Limited and is Chairman of their Audit Committees. He is also a non-executive director and senior independent director of OpenBet Technologies Ltd. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales. Mr. Medlock holds an MA in Economics from Cambridge University.

On 18th October, Rick Medlock signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Rick Medlock is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Cheapflights.co.uk, lovefilm.com, The Betting Group (once I work out who are and what names they trade under) & Inmarsat (if you can).

Boycott Mitie & Dalkia

2010-11-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

Mitie is a Group operating through numerous trading names. The brands to be boycotted are shown in bold.

Mitie Group is a British outsourcing and asset management company with their head office in Bristol. MITIE operates mainly in the UK and Ireland with a growing presence in Europe. It provides infrastructure consultancy, facilities management, property maintenance and a range of energy management services to its customers.

Their strategy of growth through acquisition has seen MITIE acquire several businesses over the past few years and in 2006 it acquired Initial Security, a leading security business. Following on in 2007 MITIE acquired Robert Prettie & Co. Ltd for £32.7m and incorporated the specialist plumbing, heating and mechanical services business into their Property Services division. In 2008 MITIE continued its acquisitions strategy through the acquisition of Catering Partnership, and DW Tilley. The purchase of DW Tilley allowed MITIE to extend their roofing services nation-wide. 2009 saw the acquisition of Dalkia Facilities Management for £130m to bolster its Technical Facilities Management capability and an expansion into Social Housing with the purchase of Environmental Property Services (EPS) for £38.5m. In 2010, MITIE acquired the integrated facilities management business of Dalkia in Ireland.

Who is paying for all this? We are through Mitie's public sector contracts.

Mitie is split into four divisions: Facilities Management, Technical Facilities Management, Property Management and Asset Management.

Mitie, whose annual report for 2010 notes: "The public sector faces the prospect of considerable pressure on expenditure in the coming years. We believe that this will create significant opportunities for the outsourcing market as contracts will tend to become larger and broader in scope . . . we believe that in subsequent years we will benefit from the efficiency agenda that is expected to impact central and local government."

So when Ruby McGregor-Smith in an interview with the Evening Standard in April waxed "lyrical about the huge potential opportunities that every outsourcing company in the land is eyeing following next week's General Election." That's our money, jobs and services that Ruby was eyeing up in the way a vulture eyes up a dying lamb. To say these people feed on the misery of others is truly not an overstatement.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=503561&in_page_id=3#ixzz15fwk82X4

Around 40% of all Mitie's work is in the public sector, spanning healthcare, social housing and providing security for Britain's courts. For a relatively low-profile company, Mitie also has a lot of high-profile private sector customers. Its staff guard Marks & Spencer stores and the British Museum, as well as cleaning for Royal Bank of Scotland, Brittany Ferries and Everton Football Club.

National interest, or vested interests?

Outsourcing is a con and Mitie are in it for the long haul. The argument presented in favour of outsourcing is that it is cheaper to get someone else to do something for you than to do it yourself. This may be true if the task involves a technical complexity that you would not want tackle yourself; most of us bring in a plumber when we need one after all. But large scale business and public sector outsourcing does not work like this. The jobs that are outsourced to parasites like Mitie are the low-skill, low-pay, non decison-making jobs that overpaid CEOs think are beneath them to even manage let alone do. This is treating people as cattle or pawns on a chessboard, to be sacrificed for the good of the Queen.

Speaking of whom, Ruby McGregor-Smith has been Chief Executive Officer of Mitie Group plc since March 30, 2007. Previously, she served as Chief Executive of Mitie Services (Retail) Ltd. She served as Chief Operating Officer of Mitie Group plc from September 9, 2005 to March 30, 2007 and its Group Finance Director from December 2002 to April 2006. Prior to that, she was employed in senior financial posts at Babcock International Group PLC and Serco Group PLC. She has been an Executive Director of Mitie Group PLC since December 2, 2002. Ruby McGregor-Smith has been an Independent Non-Executive Director of Michael Page International plc. since May 23, 2007. After school and sixth-form college, she studied economics at Kingston Polytechnic, then joined accountancy firm BDO before leaping into the world of outsourcing by joining Serco in 1991. She climbed the Serco ladder for nine years in a variety of finance and operational roles.

Her current Total Annual Pay Package at Mitie is £1,037,000 (Business Week).

On 18th October, Ruby McGregor-Smith signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's. She was no doubt thinking of the lucrative contracts her tory friends would be passing her way as they sacked underpaid public servants and employed Mitie at twice the cost and half the service.

For this reason Ruby McGregor-Smith is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Mitie Businesses.

Boycott BT

2010-11-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

There can't be many people in the UK that don't know and have had to deal with BT. This information is provided mainly for overseas visitors.

BT provides communications solutions and services, Operating in more than 170 countries. Their principal activities include networked IT services, local, national and international telecommunications services, and higher value broadband and internet products and services.

BT is the current name of what was formerly British Telecom, formely British Telecommunications, formerly the telecommunication part of the General Post Office. The organisation that became BT was owned by the British people until 1982, when in a blaze of publicity it became the first part of the nation's 'family silver' (quote Lord Stockton) to be handed over to investors and asset strippers at below value.

One of the things that prevents people from completely boycotting BT is there strangehold on the local loop, the line that run from your home or business to the telecom provider's network. Local loop unbundling is addressing this but there is another way to bypass BT.

I moved home in March 2008 and at my previous address I receive telephone and broadband services from Tiscali, but they rented the line from BT so I was effectively paying BT even though I had given up their services a year earlier due to appauling service from their call centre in Bangalore who spent a month denying my report of a fault on the line even though we had to have several conversations about it on my mobile because trying to talk on the house phone was impossible due to the bad line. Yes, you did read that right.

Anyway after that I moved to Tiscali and wanted to take them with me when I moved to my current address but here's the thing, the house had no landline connection. The previous occupant, who had been here over 50 years, used a mobile for phone calls and had cable broadband installed for accessing the Internet. All it took for me to have a non-BT house was to add a phone service to the cable broadband service and it was done.

I won't say I never have problems but they are nothing as compared to the nightmare I had with BT.

Ian Livingston was appointed chief executive of BT Group on June 1st 2008.

When appointed he was offered a basic salary of £850,000, up from the £554,000 he received as head of BT Retail. On top of this, he could expect to add £1.7 million in annual bonuses, £1.7million as a deferred bonus in shares that vest after three years, and £2.55 million in incentive shares if the group hits its top performance targets, taking the total to £6.8 million.

In May 2010 Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) voted overwhelming for a full strike ballot after rejecting a 2pc pay rise. The union, which represents 55,000 BT employees called for a 5pc rise.

Staff were angry that Mr Livingston's bonus more than tripled to £1.2m, taking his total pay to £2.1m. He will also collect £1.2m worth of shares if he stays with the company for a further three years. A year earlier Mr Livingston's total pay was £1.2m after he collected a bonus of £343,000 in the wake of the company's second-ever full-year loss.

Let's remember this company was once a national asset. Now it is a cash cow for executives. Someone should 'Tell Sid'.

Previously, he was chief executive of BT Retail, a position he held from February 2005. Prior to this, Ian was group finance director for BT Group from April 2002.

Before joining BT, Ian was group finance director of the Dixons Group from 1997. He joined Dixons in 1991 and his career with the electrical retailer spanned a number of operational and financial roles, both in the UK and overseas.

Earlier in his career Ian worked for 3i Group and the Bank of America International. He was previously a director of Hilton Group plc (now Ladbrokes plc) and also a director of Freeserve from its inception.

Ian is also a non-executive director of Celtic plc althoguh he lives in Elstree. He holds a BA in economics from Manchester University and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1987.

On 18th October, Ian Livingston signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's. This would have been unthinkable were BT still in public hands and it's board answerable to the public.

For this reason Ian Livingston is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all the BT Group's Businesses.

Boycott Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussaud’s

2010-11-16T13:36:00.000-08:00

Health warning : There appears to be a degree of inconsistency in the information I have been able to find out about both Prestbury Group and Nick Leslau. For instance, some reports describe Nick Leslau as a rags-to-riches success story, and other sources say he attended a prep school and then the same private boarding school that gave us Richard Dimbleby and Denis Thatcher.

Equally whilst Prestbury are a property company and own interests in The Trocadero, a number of properties on Oxford Street, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussaud’s, I cannot establish whether they own a 100% interest in those properties and I cannot establish a portfolio of their interests.

In this light you may wonder why I'm posting about Prestbury. The answer to that is that this blog will, when complete, have a page containing the relevant details concerning the business interests of each of the signatories to the Offending Letter and these will all be subject to the possibility of updates as and when information comes to light or when it changes.

Prestbury Group Plc is a property investment company that owns the likes of The Trocadero, a number of properties on Oxford Street, Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussaud’s.

In 1997 Nick Leslau and Nigel Wray started their own small property company Maybeat Limited, which they reversed into one of Michael Edelson's Alternative Investment Market listed shell companies called Prestbury Group plc. This company was floated on the alternative investment market with the two property entrepreneurs delivering a 150% increase in net asset value in just two years. While the collapse of the property market towards the end of the 1990s impacted heavily upon the value of Prestbury Group, and other property companies, this did not stop the two property giants from taking the business private nearly 10 years ago.

A company by the name of Prestbury Investment Holdings was set up to acquire the old Prestbury Group with an array of property giants happy to become involved, including the likes of Sir Tom Hunter. Leslau is currently chairman and chief executive of Prestbury Investment Holdings which now has a property portfolio valued at £2.2 billion – owning the likes of Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussaud’s.

Max Property

In 2009 Nick Leslau launched Max Property onto the alternative investment market with the backing of the American Och-Ziff hedge fund. It is rumoured the US investor ploughed £25 million into the operation, a figure which will be matched by the company’s management. The directors list is very impressive and includes Aubrey Adams, a former chief executive of Savills the estate agents and Mike Brown the former chief executive of property group Helical Bar.

Prestbury Investment Holdings stands to receive fees of around £18.75 million over the next seven and a half years in a complex management arrangement which will see a minimum fee of £625,000 a quarter received by Nick Leslau’s company.

Max Property appears to be registered in Jersey and I'm not sure of its full relationship with Prestbury, or its tax status. This is taken from Max Property's website:-

The company’s strategy is to exploit the current cyclical weakness in the UK real estate market through opportunistic investment and active management with a view to realising cash returns for shareholders over an investment cycle of approximately seven and half years from listing on 27 May 2009.

The company will invest in assets over a five-year period. After the end of those five years it will not seek new acquisitions and it will manage and realise its assets with a view to making a final return to shareholders over an investment cycle which, depending on prevailing market conditions, is anticipated to be seven and a half years from May 2009.

Which sounds like carpetbagging to me.

Nick Leslau is a Chartered Surveyor who filled the role of Chief Executive of Burford Holdings plc for approximately ten years until his resignation from the board of Burford in 1997. He became non-executive Chairman of Prestbury Group Plc in December 1997 and was appointed Group Chairman and Chief Executive of Prestbury Group Plc on 1 January 1998. Nick has been Chairman and Chief Executive of Prestbury Investment Holdings Limited since it commenced business in October 2000. Nick is the Chairman of Prestbury Investments LLP. He has sat on many quoted and unquoted company boards and is a Member of the Bank of England Property Forum.

Nick Leslau lives in a £30 million property he bought in Mayfair, London. He owns a Mediterranean based yacht. As a lover of sport, Leslau owns one of W.G. Grace's cricket bats, and is a part owner of Saracens F.C. Rugby Union club. Nick Leslau is estimated to have a personal fortune in the region of £200 million.

Thanks to his friend Tom Hunter, Leslau became interested in solving the world's problems: in 2006 they had a working holiday in Ayacucho, Peru; in 2007 to Malawi to help build an orphanage. In early 2008, Leslau took part in the Channel 4 programme Secret Millionaire, giving away £400,000 in a ten day visit to Possil, Glasgow.

So he does have a good side.

On 18th October, Nick Leslau signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Nick Leslau is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Warwick Castle and Madame Tussaud’s.

Post script added 4th November 2011

Property Weekly reported on 10th June that Prestbury were the owners and landlord's of 21 nursing homes operated by the now failed company, Southern Cross. As you may remember Southern Cross went bust threatening the care of thousands old elderly people. I don't know if was the rent they had to pay to Nick Leslau's Prestbury Group that forced them into liquidation but it couldn't have helped.

Nick didn't worry about the victims of the Southern Cross scandal for long though as the following month he embarked on the grandest undertaking of his career, he bought the historic St Katharine Docks near the Tower of London for £156m.

Boycott Hornby, Motability and Umeco

2010-11-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

Neil Johnson signed the offending letter as Chairman of Umeco, but he is also the Chairman of Hornby and Motability.

Hornby

Hornby is a household name and is famous as the UK brand leader in the model railway hobby. All Hornby manufacture was moved to China in 1995, losing more British jobs.

Motability

Motability Operations is a not-for-profit company that runs the Motability Car Scheme, and more recently, the Powered Wheelchair and Scooter Scheme. The largest fleet operator in the UK and the biggest supplier of used cars to the trade, we are owned by the major banks: Barclays Bank plc, Lloyds Group plc, HSBC Bank plc and Royal Bank of Scotland plc.

Motability sell over 145,000 used cars a year. The number of cars they purchase each year accounts for no less than six per cent of all the new cars sold in the UK.

Umeco

Another tricky one to boycott directly as their supply chain does not involve retail sales, but like ARM Holdings, Umeco can be boycotted through a boycott of the companies they supply. So a significant part of this blog describes Umeco's relationship with other companies. As has become standard practice for this blog, companies and brands to be boycotted are shown in bold.

Umeco describe themselves as 'a leading provider of value-added distribution and supply chain management services, and composite materials primarily to the aerospace and defence, automotive and motorsport and wind turbine industries'.

Umeco is managed through two business streams:-

Umeco Composites - comprises a Structural Materials business and a Process Materials business. With seven operating units located throughout the UK, Europe and the US, it provides a range of services, products, design expertise and tooling solutions principally to the aerospace market and other users of advanced composite materials.

Customers include Boeing, Airbus, BAE Systems, manufacturers of wind turbine blades, a number of manufacturers of high performance super cars and Formula 1 teams.

Umeco Supply Chain - a leading international provider of value-added distribution and supply chain outsourcing services to customers in the aerospace & defence market. With its specialisation in the supply of small and medium value components and sophisticated IT systems, its growing global customer base can enjoy significant operational, cost and working capital benefits. The Supply Chain businesses trade globally as Pattonair.

Customers include Rolls-Royce plc, BAE Systems, Safran Group, Parker Aerospace, Goodrich, Thales Aerospace, Turbomeca, ATK, Lockheed Martin and the US Department of Defense.

Umeco started in 1917 with the name University Motor and Engineering Company Limited, and it is an acronym of this title that is the source of the Umeco name. For many years the Group traded as a motor vehicle distributor in the south of England, before acquiring various businesses involved in the electrical and marine industries.

In 1983, Umeco made its first entry into the aerospace sector when it acquired Fluid Transfer Limited, a manufacturer of aircraft refuelling equipment. This was followed in 1987 by the acquisition of Pattonair, a specialist distributor of components to the aerospace sector. With a developing specialisation in the aerospace sector, the businesses involved in other industrial sectors were gradually disposed of.

During the 1990s, increasingly sophisticated services began to be offered to aerospace customers as expectations of service grew beyond the basic role of a distributor. The Group expanded its capabilities in order to provide direct line feed, kitting and service provider facilities.

In addition to acquisitions, significant growth has been achieved, most notably through the long term contract with Rolls-Royce plc originally signed in November 1999. Now extended, the contract will now run until December 2015. Under this contract, the Group provides a dedicated logistics service to manage the supply of a wide range of components to Rolls-Royce plc's European aerospace operations. Recent extensions to the contract, including that signed in November 2007, have led to a broader range of parts and services being supplied to Rolls-Royce plc.

Umeco's Supply Chain activities were expanded in November 2005 through the acquisition of Provest (now renamed Pattonair), based in Italy. This acquisition was funded by a 4 for 9 rights issue, which raised £48.4 million, net of expenses. In France, Pattonair announced major long term contracts with Thales and Turbomeca in December 2006 and February 2007 respectively.

More recently, in November 2008 Pattonair in North America announced it had secured a long term contract with ATK.

In March 1999, Aerovac was acquired and provided the Group with its first composites activity, focused principally on the European composite market. Coverage of the global composites market was enhanced in September 2000 with the acquisition of Richmond. In May 2004, the Group completed the acquisition of ACG, a leading supplier of advanced composite materials to the motorsport, automotive and aerospace & defence sectors with manufacturing operations in the UK and the US.

In August 2007, the Group acquired JD Lincoln. Based at two sites in California, JD Lincoln formulates and manufactures a range of pre-preg materials primarily used by aerospace tier 2 suppliers for the manufacture of composite interior structures of commercial aircraft.

In December 2008, IPM was acquired. Based in Northern Italy, IPM is a leading manufacturer of vacuum bagging films for the composites industry. Aerovac and Richmond are major customers for IPM, who onward supply to the rapidly growing wind energy market.

During the year to March 2008, Umeco undertook a strategic review as a result of which the Board decided to focus the Group on its larger and faster growing business activities of Composites and Supply Chain. This led to the divestment in November 2007 of the Group's smallest business stream, Repair & Overhaul; and, in March 2008, of the Group's aerospace chemicals distribution businesses. The cash consideration received from this divestment programme was £49.0 million.

In August 2009 Brian McGowan retired as Chairman and in October Neil Johnson was appointed to replace him.
Neil Anthony Johnson, OBE has a long and complex history of board room operations. He started his business career in the engineering and motor industry. He served as a Director at Jaguar, Land Rover and Rover Group.

He was the Chief Executive Officer for the RAC Holdings from 1994 to 1999.

He was also the Managing Director of European Automotive Operations for British Aerospace.

He has been the Non-Executive Chairman of Hornby PLC since December 22, 2000.

He is currently Chairman of Motability Finance Limited (MFL) and Motability Operations Group (a financial business owned by the UK clearing banks).

He was the Chairman of Autologic Holdings Plc from May 25, 2006 to October 2007.

He was Chairman of RSM Tenon Group plc (formerly, Tenon Group PLC) until December 5, 2006.

He has been a Non Executive Director of Hornby plc. since July 1, 1998 and UMECO PLC since October 19, 2009.

He served as Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Autologic Holdings Plc from January 23, 2006 to October 2007.

He served as a Director of Tenon Group plc and RSM Tenon Group plc. He served as a Director of Tenon Ltd.

In the 1980's he was seconded to the Ministry of Defence for a Command Appointment. He also directed the Engineering Employers Federation ("EEF") for a term of office in the early 1990's.

Until January 2010, he was a Director of Cybit Holdings Plc.

He has been Chairman of UMECO PLC since October 19, 2009 when he left Promethean World PLC and his 2009 pay and stock option package of £306,745 (source: Business Week).

He is also a member of a Ministry of Defence Advisory Board and an 'Independent' Member of the Metropolitan Police Authority where in 2009/10 he attended 12 out of 35 meetings he was due to attend. His claims of 'Independence' will be tarnished by his public support for the financial policies of George Osborne.

He was HM Representative Deputy Lieutenant for the City of Westminster for fourteen years until 2007, and also served for five years as a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Panel for the Citizen’s Charter.

On 18th October, Neil Johnson signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Neil Johnson is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Hornby, Motability Operations Group and Umeco through their customer like Rolls-Royce.

NOTE: An earlier version of the post stated the Hornby also owned the Meccano brand. Meccano have been in touch with me and assured me that this is not the case. I apologise for this error which was caused by Meccano appearing prominently on the Hornby corporate website and my misinterpretation of this. Although Meccano was devised by Frank Hornby, of the Hornby Brand Meccano became a separate company some time in the past ans has no connection with Neil Johnson. The call to boycott Meccano is therefore rescinded.

Boycott Tullow Oil

2010-11-14T12:57:00.000-08:00

This entry is included for completeness so that the companies of all 35 fat cats can be profiled. It is not completely clear what the mechanics of boycotting Tullow Oil would involve as I've been unable to establish their supply chain.

Tullow Oil is the largest independent oil company in Britain and has a market valuation of $13bn (£7.8bn) (2009 valuation). It operates in 22 countries. Its largest activities are in Africa, where it first explored gas fields in Senegal and has discovered new oil provinces in Ghana and Uganda, produces oil and gas in five countries and has exploration projects in 13 countries.

In 2000 it bought BP's North Sea Gas Fields for £200m. Tullow Oil's big gamble came in 2004 when it bought Energy Africa. The deal doubled the company's size and gave it a large presence in Africa.

Tullow Oil plc is one of the largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in Europe. The Group has interests in over 85 exploration and production licences across 23 countries and focuses on four regions: Africa, Europe, South Asia and South America. The Group has production from eight countries and two development projects in Ghana and Uganda where it has discovered new oil provinces.

Aidan Heavey is from Castlerea, Co. Roscommon and educated at Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare and at University College, Dublin. He trained with R. J. Kidney & Co. from 1974 to 1978 when he qualified as an accountant. He left R. J. Kidney & Co. in 1979 to join Aer Lingus as a Financial Controller before joining Tullow Engineering in 1981.

Tullow Engineering was a small family-owned firm based near Dublin. The firm had a subsidiary, Tullow Oil, running fuel oil tankers. Heavey decided to buy out the subsidiary, relaunching the company in 1985 as an oil-producing company with horizons far beyond the shores of Ireland.

He got the idea after being tipped off by a banker who told him that the world was littered with valuable oil fields that were ignored by big companies because they were too small. Heavey plumped for Senegal to base his new venture, even though he was not entirely sure where it was.

He mortgaged himself up to the hilt and sold his collection of vintage cars to raise the cash for the new company.

A founding Director and shareholder of the Group, Aidan Heavey has played a key role in the development of Tullow from its formation in 1985, to its current international status as a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production group. A Chartered Accountant, he previously held roles in the airline and engineering sectors in Ireland. Aidan is a director of Traidlinks, an Irish-based charity established to develop and promote enterprise and diminish poverty in the developing world, particularly Africa.

Aidan Heavey's pay at Tullow Oil is £1,525,378 as of 2009.

On 18th October, Aidan Heavey signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Aidan Heavey is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Tullow Oil.

Boycott Whitbread and Reed Elsevier

2010-11-13T07:48:00.000-08:00

The posts on this blog are becoming more complicated and the research for each is taking longer as the network of corporate backscratching emerges.

The subject of today's post is Anthony Habgood who manages to spread his time between being Chairman of Whitbread and Reed Elsevier, two seemingly unrelated businesses. Because of the large number of brands related to these two businesses the brands to be boycotted are shown in bold in what is fast becoming a convention on this blog.

Whitbread is a global hotel, coffee shop and restaurant company headquartered in Dunstable. Its largest division is Premier Inn, which is the largest hotel brand in the UK with around 580 hotels and over 40,000 rooms. Its Costa Coffee chain has around 1,600 stores across 25 countries and is the second largest international coffee shop chain in the world. Its other brands include the restaurants Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Taybarns.

Reed Elsevier is a global publisher and information provider. It is a FTSE100 and FT500 Global company. The Reed Elsevier group is a dual-listed company consisting of Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The company came into being in Autumn 1992 as the result of a merger between Reed International, a British trade book and magazine publisher, and the Dutch science publisher Elsevier NV.

In 1880, Jacobus George Robbers started a publishing company called NV Uitgeversmaatschappij Elsevier (Elsevier Publishing Company NV) to publish literary classics and the encyclopedia Winkler Prins. Robbers named the company after the old Dutch printers family Elzevir, which, for example, published the works of Erasmus in 1587. Elsevier NV originally was based in Rotterdam but moved to Amsterdam in the late 1880s.

In 1894, Albert E. Reed established a newsprint manufacturing mill at Tovil Mill near Maidstone, Kent. In 1903, Albert E Reed was registered as a public company. In 1970, Albert E. Reed merged with the International Publishing Corporation and the company name was changed to Reed International Limited. The company originally grew by merging with other publishers and produced high quality trade journals as IPC Business Press Ltd and women's and other consumer magazines as IPC magazines Ltd. The original family owners, the Reeds, were Methodists and encouraged good working conditions for their staff in the then-dangerous print trade.

Up to the 1930s, Elsevier remained a small family-owned publisher, with no more than ten employees. After the war it launched the weekly Elseviers Weekblad, which turned out to be very profitable. A rapid expansion followed. Elsevier Press Inc. started in 1951 in Houston, Texas, and in 1962 publishing offices were opened in London and New York. Multiple mergers in the 1970s led to name changes, settling at Elsevier Scientific Publishers in 1979. In 1991, two years before the merger with Reed, Elsevier acquired Pergamon Press from Robert Maxwell (yes THAT Robert Maxwell).

Reed Elsevier conducts its business through the following divisions:

* The science and medical publishing division is Elsevier.
* The legal publishing division is LexisNexis.
* The business division is Reed Business Information.

Key products

ScienceDirect contains over 25% of the world's science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information.

Scopus is the world's largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality web sources. Scopus is updated daily.

Reed Business, Reed Elsevier's global Business division, is a provider of magazines, exhibitions, directories, online media and marketing services across five continents. Its prestige brands serve professionals across a diverse range of industries. These brands include Variety, New Scientist, totaljobs.com, Elsevier, Kellysearch, and the World Travel & Tourism Market.

Reed Elsevier has been criticised for the high prices of its journals and services, especially Elsevier and LexisNexis. Members of the scientific community have called for a boycott of Elsevier journals and a move to open access publications such as those of the Public Library of Science or BioMed Central. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html

Well known publications include The Lancet and Grey's Anatomy. Their Health Sciences division publishes over 700 journals and 2,000 books and clinical reference works annually and offers a portfolio of online tools in education, practitioner reference and point of care.

A full list of periodicals published by Elsevier can be found here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periodicals_published_by_Elsevier.

Organisation of Arms Fares

Members of the medical and scientific communities, which purchase and use many journals published by Reed Elsevier, agitated for the company to cut its links to the arms trade. Two UK academics, Dr. Tom Stafford of Sheffield University and Dr Nick Gill, launched petitions calling on Reed Elsevier to stop organising arms fairs. A subsidiary, Spearhead, organised defence shows, including an event where it was reported that cluster bombs and extremely powerful riot control equipment were offered for sale.

In February 2007, Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, published an editorial in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, arguing that Reed Elsevier's involvement in both the arms trade and medical publishing constituted a conflict of interest. He suggested that if academics began to disengage with Reed Elsevier, the company would be likely to end their arms fairs, as arms fairs only comprise a small proportion of their business.

On 1 June, 2007, Reed Elsevier announced that they would be exiting the Defence Exhibition business during the second half of 2007.

This means that the company no longer organises arms fairs around the world. The decision followed a high-profile campaign, co-ordinated by CAAT, which highlighted the incompatibility of Reed's involvement in the arms trade and their position as the number one publisher of medical and science journals and other publications. CAAT welcomed the decision and applauded the board of Reed Elsevier for recognising the concerns of its stakeholders.

They do however still organise non-arms related exhibitions including The London Book Fare.

So pressure on them can work. This is not pointless posturing.

Anthony Habgood was appointed chairman of Whitbread PLC in August 2005. He was appointed Chairman of Reed Elsevier in 2009. He was director/chief executive of Tootal Group plc from 1986-1991 having previously spent 16 years with the Boston Consulting Group Inc., 9 of them as a Director. He has also been non-executive director of Geest plc, Powergen plc and NatWest Bank plc and Marks & Spencer plc from 2004-2006. He was formerly Chairman of Bunzl plc and of Mölnlycke Healthcare Limited.

He received his BA Economics from Gonville & Caius College at Cambridge in 1968 and his MA in 1971. He received his MS in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University in 1970.

Business Week estimates Tony's pay from Reed Elsevier alone at £291,667 p.a., not bad for a part-time job.

On 18th October, Anthony Habgood signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Anthony Habgood is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Whitbread and Reed Elsevier brands, hotels, restaurants, publications, exhibition and overpriced coffee shops.

Albert Edward Reed was a philanthropist who established good working conditions for his employees at a time when this was almost unheard of. He must be spinning in his grave at the news that the head of the business that still bears his name can call for government action designed to cause widespread poverty amongst the descendents of those same workers who lot he sought to improve.

Boycott ARM Holdings

2010-11-11T14:51:00.000-08:00

Another tricky one for a lot of people but this time I can offer some assistance. Some of you may be saying 'Who?'.

Amongst other things ARM make chips that go into phones, PDAs and handheld games consoles. The brands you will have to boycott are shown in BOLD.

ARM Holdings is a British technology company headquartered in Cambridge. The company is best known for its processors, although it also designs, licenses and sells software development tools under the RealView and KEIL brands, systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip infrastructure and software. It is probably the best-known of the Silicon Fen companies. The company was founded as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology (as Advanced RISC Machines), intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine's RISC chip, which was originally used in the Acorn Archimedes and is now the processing core for many custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

The company is considered to be market dominant in the field of mobile phone chips.

ARM processors are used as the main CPU for most mobile phones, including those manufactured by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung; many PDAs and handhelds, like the Apple iPod, Nintendo Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, Game Park GP32 and GamePark Holdings GP2X; as well as many other applications, including GPS navigation devices, digital cameras, digital televisions, network devices and storage. The WLAN processor of Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) is an ARM9.

Unlike other microprocessor corporations such as AMD, Intel, Freescale (formerly Motorola) and Renesas (formerly Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric), ARM only licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing its own CPUs. Thus, there are a few dozen companies making processors based on ARM's designs. Intel, Texas Instruments, Freescale and Renesas have all licensed ARM technology. In 2007, 2.9 billion chips based on an ARM design were manufactured.

The ARM architecture is licensable. Companies that are current or former ARM licensees include Alcatel-Lucent, Apple Inc., Atmel, Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Digital Equipment Corporation, Freescale, Intel (through DEC), LG, Marvell Technology Group, Microsoft, NEC, Nuvoton, Nvidia, NXP (previously Philips), Oki, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, STMicroelectronics, Symbios Logic, Texas Instruments, VLSI Technology, Yamaha and ZiiLABS.

The iPhone uses a 620MHz ARM CPU.

Warren East was appointed Chief Executive Officer of ARM Holdings in October 2001. For this role he is paid an annual salary of £415,000 and an annual bonus of £286,501. Hence his total annual remuneration is £701,501. Not a lot of recession in his house then.

He joined ARM in 1994 to set up ARM’s consulting business. He was Vice President, Business Operations from February 1998. In October 2000 he was appointed to the board as Chief Operating Officer and in October 2001 was appointed Chief Executive Officer. Before joining ARM he was with Texas Instruments. He is a chartered engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. He is a non-executive director of Reciva Limited and a non-executive director and Chairman of the Audit Committee of De La Rue plc. hE was educated at Monmouth School and Oxford University where he studied Engineering
Science, and Cranfield University where he did an MBA.

On 18th October, Warren East signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Warren East is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott those products that use ARM Holdings components, patents, designs and software.

Boycott Arup

2010-11-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

This one might be a bit tricky as Arup are not a company with a retail or public facing business, so advice on the merchanics of a boycott would be welcomed. They are included on this site for completeness as I am trying to compile similar information on all the 35 plonkers who think because they make more than the cleaner in their offices that they are entitled to call for wholesale cuts and jobs losses without repercussions.

Arup are an independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists offering a broad range of professional services in construction. The firm is present in the Americas, Australasia, East Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and now has over 10,000 staff based in 92 offices in 37 countries.

Arup was founded in Ireland 1946, as the Danish Ove N. Arup, Consulting Engineers by Sir Ove Nyquist Arup. Sir Ove set out to build a firm where professionals of diverse disciplines could work together to produce projects of greater quality than was achievable by them working in isolation. In 1963, together with the architect Philip Dowson, Arup Associates was formed to offer multi-disciplinary architectural and engineering services. In 1970, the firm reformed as "Ove Arup & Partners".

Arup has no shareholders or external investors, and is owned wholly by trusts whose beneficiaries are its past and present employees who receive a share of the firm's operating profit each year.

Arup are best known for their design work for the built environment. Projects to which it has contributed include the Sydney Opera House, which is largely credited with launching Arup into the premier league of engineering consultancies, 30 St Mary Axe, known as The Guerkin, and the famous 'wobbly' Millenium Bridge which opened for one day and had to be closed for two years for repairs.

Philip Dilley joined Arup as a graduate engineer in 1976 and worked his way up the company, with stints in Japan and the Gulf. In 1993 he became Director of Ove Arup & Partners following his successful win of the £700million Kansai International Airport in 1989 and by 2004 he was appointed as Head of Arup’s Europe and Middle East Region where he was responsible for delivering over 50% of the firm’s global turnover.

On 18th October, Philip Dilley signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

This was ironic as Arup sacked 400 people in 2009, so claiming, as the letter did, that the private sector could create replacement jobs for those lost was a triumph of hope over experience for Dilley.

For this reason Philip Dilley is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Arup in any way you can, although in effect it mat be that only those responsible for commissioning building projects will have the opportunity to directly exclude them from the process.

At the time of this posting Philip Dilley is on a tour of China and South Korea as part of a trade delegation with David Cameron, George Osborn, Vince Cable and other signatories to the letter including Stefano Pessina, Executive Chairman of Alliance Boots (registed officce address in Switzerland), Paul Walsh, chief executive of Diageo, Ben Gordon, chief executive of Mothercare (registered office address in the Netherlands), and Bob Wigley, Chairman of Yell Group plc where they will all be spending your taxpayers' money promoting the interests of their companies and not the UK.

We're all in this together? You're having a laugh!

Update 19th January 2011

The tour of the Far East may not have been a great success for Arup as they've just announced that they are sacking 15% of their UK staff. See - Arup Culls 670 UK Jobs - for details. Philip's still there of course.

It would seem that the replacement jobs promised by the 35 signatories to replace the 500,000 lost as a result of the cuts they supported aren't going to come.

Boycott Dhillon Group Hotels and Inns

2010-11-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

The Dhillon Group is an independent hotel group, owned and run by husband and wife team Tej and Sarina Dhillon. With a collection of five properties including country inns and urban retreats.

The Buckinghamshire-based Dhillon Hotels group, started by Tej and his sister Bobby has assets of £29m and rising. With other wealth, the Dhillons are worth £70m.

The Inns

The Olde Bell Inn, High Street, Hurley, Berkshire
The Crown Inn, 16 High Street, Amersham, Bucks

The Hotels
Stoke Place Hotel, Stoke Green, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
The Paragon Hotel, 145 Alcester Street, Birmingham, B12 0PJ
The Liongate Hotel, Hampton Court Road, Hampton Court, Nr Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey,

The Dhillon group also has a number of residential properties in and around London.

Tej Dhillon is the Chairman and CEO of the Dhillon Group.

On 18th October, Tej Dhillon signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Tej Dhillon is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Dhillon Group properties.

There is always another pub, restaurant or hotel round the corner that is just as good. Try to make sure your work do is not held at one of the Dhillon's establishments and you won't be feeding your hard earned money to fat cats like Tej Dhillon.

Boycott Towergate Insurance

2010-11-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

We venture now into the land of the City Fat Cats where hardship means being down to your last billion and the only signs of a recession are more applications for every post you advertise and a wider choice of lapdancer.

Towergate Partnership was founded in 1997 and is Europes largest independently-owned insurance intermediary. Towergate operates through five main areas of operation: Broking (Towergate Risk Solutions), Underwriting (Towergate Underwriting), Networks for independent brokers, Towergate Financial and Paymentshield.

Since 1997, when Towergate entered the insurance market, they have become Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary turning over more than £2 billion of gross written premium across their companies. Towergate offer general and specialist insurance for niche markets ranging from holiday homes to private helicopters. Towergate are also the most significant insurance provider to the UK SME market.

In February 2010 for a nominal sum, Towergate bought the John Charcol mortgage broker out of administration, taking with it IT systems and more than 100 staff.

Peter Cullum is a Norfolk born businessman, the executive chairman of Towergate Partnership. His personal fortune is estimated most recently at £1.7 billion.

Cullum began his insurance career in 1969 with the Royal Insurance Group and progressed to sales and marketing positions within Commercial Union and ITT London and Edinburgh where he became marketing director in 1988. At the age of 21, he became the youngest person to pass the Chartered Insurance Institute fellowship examinations. In 1991, Cullum joined Economic Insurance and led their return to profitability in 1993. In December 1993, he led the management buyout of Economic Insurance that was sold in 1995 to Hiscox plc. He joined Hiscox as group marketing director, a role he held until he left in 1997 to create Towergate Underwriting Group.

On 18th October, Peter Cullum signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Peter Cullum is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Towergate businesses.

The Co-op Financial Services will cover all your insurance needs without feeding your hard earned money to fat cats like Peter Cullum.

Added 2nd September 2011. Towergate also trade under the name Insurance4carhire. Please boycott this brand as well.

Boycott Dunelm Mill and Pausa Coffee Shops

2010-11-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Dunelm Mill, also known as 'Dunelm Soft Furnishings Ltd', is a British-based home furnishings retailer with over 100 stores and over 40 implant Pausa coffee shops throughout the United Kingdom. One of the largest homewares retailers in United Kingdom Dunelm Mill's headquarters are based on the Fosse Way in Syston in Leicestershire. It also has its own UK Manufacturing Centre for curtains, blinds and accessories also based in Leicester.

Dunelm Mill was founded in 1979 by Bill and Jean Adderley initially trading in home textiles from a market stall in Leicester. The first Dunelm Mill store opened in Churchgate Leicester in 1984 with the first superstore opening in Rotherham in 1991. Bill is still a member of the board.

Will Adderley, Chief Executive Officer, joined Dunelm in 1992 and aftyr leaving university took over the running of the Group from his father in 1996. Nice that he never had to look for a job, unlike millions of others. Will has had everything handed to him on a plate. Will Adderley has decided to relinquish the role of Chief Executive from February 2011, when he will assume the new role of Executive Deputy Chairman, a full-time Board position. Fifteen years of work is clearly too much for him.

On 18th October, Will Adderley signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Will Adderley is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Dunelm Mill and Pausa Coffee Shops.

There are a wealth of alternative places to buy stuff from your home. Let me know your favourite.

Boycott L.K. Bennett

2010-11-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

I will admit I was unaware of L.K. Bennett before 18th October 2010. I presume, as a man in his 40s, I am not exactly their target market. I hope the names of the companies on this post make sense. Let me know if there are any mistakes.

L.K.Bennett sell expensive women’s fashion in the UK.

L.K.Bennett was founded in London in 1990 by Linda Kristin Bennett. Bennett learned her trade as a cordwainer at Hackney’s Cordwainers College (now part of the London College of Fashion) after attending Haberdashers’ Aske’s School (fees as at 2010 £11,490 p.a.), Elstree and Reading University, where she read Land Management. Bennett worked on the factory floor for French designer Robert Clergerie and on the shop floor of fashion chains Whistles and Joseph before setting up her first shop in Wimbledon Village, London.

L.K.Bennett originally sold just shoes before adding bags and then clothes and other accessories to its range in 1998. Since the creation of the original store, L.K.Bennett has expanded into an international chain of shops (including in-store concession and outlet stores), with 109 stores in operation in the UK, Jersey, Ireland and France.

Bennett first tried to sell L.K.Bennett in 2004 for a £75m asking price. Four years later, she sold the business to Phoenix Equity Partners and Sirius Equity, a retail and branded luxury goods investment company, in a deal believed to have netted her around £70m. The sale valued the business at £100m.

Robert Bensoussan, co-founder of Sirius Equity, has a history in luxury retail operations. Previously chief executive officer of Jimmy Choo Ltd, he also served as managing director of Gianfranco Ferre and chief executive officer of Christian Lacroix.

Between 1980 and 1984, Robert Bensoussan was responsible for the implementation of the relaunch of the Lacoste brand (Groupe Prouvost) in Brazil; he was also Director of Ready-to-wear & Accessories for Charles Jourdan in Paris from 1984 to 1986. As Director of Sales for Sonia Rykiel (Paris) from 1986 to 1989, Robert Bensoussan was responsible for sales worldwide. Robert Bensoussan joined the Escada Group (Munich) in 1990, as Director of International Sales and member of the management team in Munich. As Chief Executive of Christian Lacroix (Paris) - subsidiary of LVMH – from 1993 to 1997 and Chief Executive of Gianfranco Ferrè (Milan) in 1999 and 2000.

In 1994, Robert Bensoussan joined the Board of Interparfums Inc (New York), a prestige perfume licensing company, listed on the Nasdaq. In 1998, he was retained by Rose Marie Bravo as her personal advisor to work on the repositioning of the Burberry (London) brand in Europe and Asia, concentrating on production and products as well as distribution. In 1999, he put together the Joseph (London) £100 million deal (LBO), bringing as partners Albert Frère (CNP) and LV Capital (LVMH). In November 2001, together with Phoenix Equity Partners, a leading private equity fund management business, Robert Bensoussan set up Equinox Luxury Holdings Ltd which acquired a 51% stake in Jimmy Choo (London).

In July 2008, Sirius Equity and Phoenix Equity Partners bought a large majority control of LK Bennett, the quintessentially English Brand of women’s ready to wear, shoes and accessories for an undisclosed amount.

In addition to his various responsibilities, Robert Bensoussan is a member of the Board of Jimmy Choo, Interparfums (Nasdaq: IPAR), Celio (French Menswear Retail Group, €1 Billion sales), Bremont Watches, and Aurenis (French publishing group).

On 18th October, Robert Bensoussan signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Robert Bensoussan is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott L.K. Bennett. I think we should consider expanding the botcott to include Robert's other business interests, Jimmy Choo, Interparfums, Celio, Bremont Watches, and Aurenis, especially Jimmy Choo as the company has just launched an expensive advertising campaign for a perfume in the run up to Christmas, the main gift buying season.

Boycott Microsoft

2010-11-03T14:43:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is one of the giants of the IT industry. It's most well known products include the Windows operating system, the MS Office application set and the X-Box. Microsoft also produce server software, middleware and other software.

Gordon Frazer is the Managing Director at Microsoft UK and is a Vice President of Microsoft International. Gordon was appointed to the UK MD role in July 2006, prior to this appointment he spent four years as Managing Director for Microsoft South Africa. Outside of Microsoft, Gordon is on the UK E-skills Industry Board and the UK CBI Higher Education Task Force.

During his long career at Microsoft Gordon has held many key roles. Before becoming Managing Director for South Africa he was responsible for the Enterprise and Partner Group, focusing on Microsoft’s largest customers and partners in the country. Prior to this, he was head of the Business Solutions Group, working with Microsoft partners to develop and deliver line of business applications to organizations. Gordon joined Microsoft in November 1995 in a marketing role, where he concentrated on intellectual property and software licensing issues.

Before joining Microsoft, Gordon was Technical Director at a software development company and had previously worked in financial services and the mining industry. Gordon holds a Bachelors degree from Rhodes University in South Africa.

On 18th October, Gordon Frazer signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Gordon Frazer is considered to be a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Microsoft products.

Microsoft will be one of the hardest companies to boycott due to their saturation of the operating system market. Most people don't buy Microsoft PC products, they find them pre-installed on their new laptop or desktop and either choose not to remove them or don't feel technically capable of removing them.

Alternatives to the main MS products include

Windows > Linux or Apple
MS Office > Open Office (free)
Internet Exp. > Firefox or Google Chrome (see comments below though)
X-Box > Wii or PlayStation Move
Bing > Google

Please suggest others.

Boycott Veetee Rice

2010-11-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's complex corporate labyrinth I though I'd keep things a bit more straightforward.

Veetee are one of the largest rice suppliers in the UK retail trade, supplying both Veetee and supermarket own-brands. Veetee are also unique in rice manufacturing, as they are the only company to have factories in both India and Pakistan, making them perfectly place to supply both communities.
Moni Varma had his early education in Ludhiana before moving to Malawi and the UK. He grew up in Malawi. The youngest of eight siblings, he was born to Indian parents, both from business families, but spent his formative years in Africa. After completing his O levels, Varma headed to India to continue his studies, but returned to Malawi soon after with the ultimate view of moving to the UK.

He started as a salesman for a printing firm and demonstrated the passion for business that came to characterise his career. Despite a starting salary of only £30, he was regularly taking home up to five times that with commission. His talent for selling had been recognised, and the desire to study began to recede.

Varma invested £300 in a small machine to manufacture barbed wire - the company desperately needed a salesman but couldn't afford to pay. Not for the last time in his career, Moni Varma took the risk and the job - solely on commission and a stake in the company. Within 3 years, capitalising on the developing country's need for steel, Varma had grown the company enormously and had become a major player in the burgeoning steel industry.

In 1987 he founded Veetee Rice.

On 18th October, Moni Varma signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Moni Varma is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Veetee Rice.

On the 19th October Moni Varma was interviewed on Channel 4 News anout the letter. This is a transcript of the converstion -

Jon Snow: Alan Johnson’s told us that this letter is just a wheeze got up by Conservative Party central office. Do you feel part of a wheeze?

Moni Varma: No not really.

Snow: Who asked you to sign?

Varma: Who asked me to sign? I think, you know I have several friends there who…but I agree with the policy. Let’s forget about who asked me to sign. I can name that if that makes any difference, right? I can name the person. Stanley Fink who is now the treasurer of the party mentioned and then I looked through all the aspects of the cut, I fully agree that somebody has got to take this measure.

Stanley Fink is a Hedge Fund Manager and Treasurer of the Conservative Party. It looks like the organisation of the letter came not from the business people themselves but from Tory Central Office, not that anyone would be surprised at that. What would be interesting would be to know which business people were asked and refused to sign it.

This is not the first time Veetee has run into trouble.

In 2002 Veetee Rice had its knuckles rapped by advertising watchdogs for "misleading" magazine ads. Veetee's problems came after rival Tilda complained about a trade ad in which it boasted being the number one supplier to UK retailers. Veetee submitted research suggesting its share of the own label rice market was bigger than its competitors. But the ASA noted the ad was for Veetee branded rice and did not say the claim included own label. It asked Veetee not to repeat the ad. The ASA also upheld a complaint that the total weight of rice Veetee sold annually was not enough to make the 360 million servings claimed in the ad. Veetee said it stood by its claims but would abide by the ruling.

In 2006 Veetee Rice Ltd pleaded guilty to contravening regulation 11(1) of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.

On 11 September 2006 Veetee Rice employee Balwinder Singh Aulkh accessed a rice silo and his leg became trapped in the underfloor screw conveyor. He died from his injuries. The company had failed to ensure that dangerous parts of the machinery could not be accessed by members of staff, or that dangerous moving parts were stopped before anyone entered the danger zone. Mike Walters, HSE Principal Inspector in Kent, said: "This incident could so easily have been prevented if Veetee Rice Limited had ensured that a suitable system was in place to prevent access to the silo unless the screw conveyor was electrically isolated. "If the company had fitted a simple padlock on the access hatch to the rice silo - which could have cost as little as £10 or £15 - then this tragic incident would not have happened. The level of fine and costs awarded in this case should act as a stark warning to all employers to take their responsibility for health and safety seriously." Veetee Rice was fined £140,000 and ordered to pay costs of £20,500.

There are many other brands of rice on the market,including Tilda, but be wary of supermarket own brands as these can be Veetee products repackaged. I am still trying to establish which supermarkets Veetee supply and if you know would welcome this information.

Update 7th November 2011

There are two bits of news concerning Moni Varma. Firstly he is apparently suing Lakshmi Mittal over a dispute concerning Nigerian oil fields, and secondly he is reported to be trying to Sharwoods, the food company. If he succeeds in buying Sharwoods the boycott will obviously be extended to include this brand. I'll try to keep an eye on events.

Boycott GlaxoSmithKline, Panadol, Aquafresh, Macleans, Niquitin, Lucozade, Ribena and Horlicks

2010-11-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

GlaxoSmithKline plc is a global pharmaceutical, biologics, vaccines and consumer healthcare company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's third largest pharmaceutical company measured by revenues (after Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer). It has a portfolio of products for major disease areas including asthma, cancer, virus control, infections, mental health, diabetes and digestive conditions. It also has a large consumer healthcare division which produces and markets oral healthcare products, nutritional drinks and over-the-counter medicines, including Sensodyne, Horlicks and Gaviscon.

The organisation that calls its GlaxoSmithKline or GSK for short was created through a myriad of mergers and acquisitions. Please bear me with on this.

GSK was formed in 2000 by the merger of GlaxoWellcome plc (formed from the acquisition of Wellcome plc by Glaxo plc), and SmithKline Beecham plc (from the merger of Beecham plc, and SmithKlineBeckman Corporation).

In 1880, Burroughs Wellcome & Company was founded in London by American pharmacists Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs.

Glaxo was founded in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand in 1904. Originally Glaxo was a baby food manufacturer processing local milk into a baby food by the same name: the product was sold in the 1930s under the slogan "Glaxo builds bonny babies".

Glaxo became Glaxo Laboratories, and opened new units in London in 1935. Glaxo Laboratories bought two companies called Joseph Nathan and Allen & Hanburys in 1947 and 1958 respectively. After the Company bought Meyer Laboratories in 1978, it started to play an important role in the US market. In 1983 the American arm Glaxo Inc. moved to Research Triangle Park (US headquarters/research) and Zebulon (US manufacturing) in North Carolina. Burroughs Wellcome and Glaxo merged in 1995 to form GlaxoWellcome. In the same year, GlaxoWellcome opened its Medicine Research Centre in Stevenage. Three years later GlaxoWellcome bought Polfa Poznan Company in Poland.

In 1843, Thomas Beecham launched his Beecham's Pills laxative in England giving birth to the Beecham Group.

In 1830, John K. Smith opened its first pharmacy in Philadelphia. In 1865 Mahlon Kline joined the business which, 10 years later, became Smith, Kline & Co. Subsequently, in 1891, it merged with French, Richard and Company. It changed its name to Smith Kline & French Laboratories as it focused more on research in 1929. Years later, Smith Kline & French Laboratories opened a new laboratory in Philadelphia; it then bought Norden Laboratories, a business doing research into animal health.

Smith Kline & French Laboratories bought Recherche et Industrie Thérapeutiques (Belgium) in 1963 to order to focus on vaccines. In 1982, it bought Allergan, a manufacturer of eye and skincare products. The Company merged with Beckman Inc. later that year and then changed its name to SmithKline Beckman.

In 1988, SmithKline Beckman bought its biggest competitor, International Clinical Laboratories, and in 1989 merged with Beecham to form SmithKline Beecham plc. The headquarters of the Company were then moved to England.

In 2000, Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham merged to form GlaxoSmithKline.

GSK market over-the-counter (OTC) medicines including Panadol, dental products such as Aquafresh and Macleans, smoking control products such as Niquitin and nutritional healthcare drinks such as Lucozade, Ribena and Horlicks.

Controversies involved GlaxoSmithKline

Paroxetine (Seroxat, Paxil) is an SSRI antidepressant released in 1992 by GlaxoSmithKline. In March 2004 the FDA ordered a black box warning placed on SSRI and other antidepressants, warning of the risk for potential suicidal thinking in children and adolescents. Since the FDA approved paroxetine in 1992, approximately 5,000 U.S. citizens have sued GSK. On January 29, 2007, the BBC in the UK broadcast a fourth documentary in its 'Panorama' series about Seroxat. There is as yet no proven link between SSRI's and actual suicide, and the addition of blackbox warning labels was said to be controversial. But many recent analyses prove the link, even with older patients.

In November 2007, a United States Congressional committee released a report describing intimidation of Dr John Buse (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) by GlaxoSmithKline over his concerns about the cardiovascular risks associated with the company's antidiabetes drug Rosiglitazone (Avandia).

In March 2006, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced that "GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will pay $14 million to resolve allegations that state-government programs paid inflated prices for the firm’s anti-depressant drug Paxil because GSK engaged in patent fraud, antitrust violations and frivolous litigation to maintain a monopoly and block generic versions from entering the market."

At the AGM on 19 May 2003, GSK shareholders rejected a motion regarding a £22 million pay and benefits package for CEO, JP Garnier. This was the first time such a rebellion by shareholders against a major British company has occurred, but was regarded as a possible turning point against other so-called "fat cat" deals within executive pay structure.

The company and its shareholders have been targeted by animal rights activists because it is a customer of the controversial animal-testing company, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). HLS has been the subject since 1999 of an international campaign by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), ever since footage shot covertly by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which was shown on British television, showed staff punching, kicking, screaming and laughing at the animals in their care. On 7 September 2005, the ALF detonated a bomb containing two litres of fuel and four pounds of explosives on the doorstop of the Buckinghamshire home of Paul Blackburn, GSK's corporate controller, causing minor damage.

In November 2005, AIDS Healthcare Foundation accused the company of boosting its short-term monopoly profit by not increasing production of the anti-AIDS drug AZT despite a surge in demand, hence creating a shortage that affected many AIDS patients in Africa. GSK announced that it had halted clinical trials of the CCR5 entry inhibitor, aplaviroc (GW873140), in HIV-infected, treatment-naive patients because of concerns about severe hepatotoxicity. In June 2006 GSK said it was further cutting, by about 30%, the not-for-profit prices it charges for some of these medicines in the world's poorest countries.

In December 2003, Allen Roses, the then worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them. "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent - only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people."

GlaxoSmithKline's Consumer Brands (some of them)

* Aquafresh
* alli
* Beechams
* Biotene
* Breathe Right
* Corsodyl
* Eumovate
* Flixonase
* Horlicks
* Imigran
* Lactacyd
* Lucozade Energy
* Lucozade Sport
* Macleans
* Nicabate
* Nicoderm CQ
* NiQuitin CQ
* Nytol
* Panadol
* Piriteze
* Piriton
* Poligrip
* Ribena
* Sensodyne
* Solpadeine
* Solpadeine Max
* Solpadeine Plus
* Solpadeine Headache
* Tums
* Zovirax

Sir Christopher Gent is currently the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline. He is the former chief executive officer of Vodafone. From 1977–79, he was Chairman of the Young Conservatives.

Prior to joining Vodafone, Sir Christopher was Director of Network Services at ICL. In this role, he was Managing Director of Baric, a computer services company owned jointly by Barclays and ICL, and was responsible for ICL's computer bureau services worldwide.

From October 2005 to October 2006 he served on the Tax Reform Commission, established by the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

He is a non-executive director of Ferrari SpA and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc; a member of KPMG's Chairman Advisory Group; a Senior Adviser at Bain & Co; and a member of the Advisory Board of Reform.

Other Knights on the board of GSK include Sir Robert Wilson, Sir Deryck Maughan, Sir Crispin Davis, Professor Sir Roy Anderson. Another member of the board is James Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation, Europe and Asia.

On 18th October, Sir Christopher Gent signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Sir Christopher is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all GSK brands.

As you can see GSK area huge diverse company with many different products from Horlicks to Panadol. Please feel free to suggest alternatives.

Boycott Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Bailey's and Moët & Chandon

2010-10-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

This posting marks the point where the boycott is no longer limited to retail outlets but expands to include brands that you could find in many shops. It is also one I personal will find most awkward over the festive season, as a bottle of Bailey's at Christmas is a tradition in our house, for sipping after the kids are in bed, you're too full of turkey to move and there's a film on the TV or a new DVD to watch.

The subject of today's boycott call is Diageo.

Diageo is a global alcoholic drinks company headquartered in London. It is the world's largest producer of spirits and a major producer of beer and wine. Its brands include Smirnoff (the world's largest-selling vodka), Johnnie Walker (the world's largest-selling whisky), José Cuervo (the world's largest-selling tequila), Baileys (the world's largest-selling liqueur) and Guinness (the world's largest-selling stout). It also owns 34 per cent of Moët Hennessy, which owns brands including Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot and Hennessy. It sells its products in approximately 180 countries and has offices in 80 countries.

Diageo was formed in 1997 from the merger of Guinness plc and Grand Metropolitan plc.

In July 2009, Diageo announced that, after nearly 200 years of association with the town of Kilmarnock, they would be closing the Johnnie Walker blending and bottling plant as part of restructuring to the business. This would make 700 workers unemployed and caused outrage from press, local people and politicians. A campaign against this decision was launched by the local SNP MSP Willie Coffey and Labour MP Des Browne. A petition was drawn up against the Diageo plans, which also involves the closure of the historic Port Dundas Grain Distillery in Glasgow.

In February 2009, it was reported in the Guardian that the company had restructured itself so as to avoid paying tax in the U.K., despite much of its profits being generated in the U.K. Diageo is engaged in a tax scheme in the United States of America, commonly referred to as the "Rum Bailout". The National Puerto Rican Coalition plans to run a series of ads in New York City and Puerto Rico urging a boycott of Diageo-owned alcoholic drinks to protest the giant British-owned corporation’s controversial production move of its Captain Morgan rum from Puerto Rico to the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Diageo is the holding company for some of the most recognisable alcohol brands, including:

* Beer: Guinness, Tusker, Smithwick's, Red Stripe, Harp Lager, Kilkenny, Kaliber (non alcoholic)
* Scotch whisky: Johnnie Walker, Buchanan's, Cardhu, Justerini & Brooks (J&B), Bell's, Black & White, Caol Ila, Vat 69, Oban, Talisker, Lagavulin, Glen Ord, Glenkinchie, Dalwhinnie, Cragganmore, Singleton, Haig, Royal Lochnagar, Glen Elgin, Knockando
* Baijiu: Shui Jing Fang
* Vodka: Smirnoff (Smirnov in Russia), Cîroc, Silent Sam, Popov, Ketel One
* Gin: Gordon's, Tanqueray, Gilbey's, Booth's
* Rum: Captain Morgan, Bundaberg, Pampero, Myers'
* Bourbon: Bulleit
* Canadian whisky: Crown Royal, Seagram's
* Irish whiskey: Bushmills
* Tennessee whiskey: George Dickel
* Schnapps: Black Haus, Goldschläger, Rumple Minze
* Mixed drinks: Archers, Pimm's, TGI Friday's
* Liqueur: Baileys, Sheridans, Yukon Jack, Godiva's
* Wines: Sterling Vineyards, Piat d'Or, Barton & Guestier, Beaulieu Vineyard, Blossom Hill, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, Acacia, Moon Mountain, Dynamite, Chalone, Provenance Vineyards, Hewitt Vineyard, and Rosenblum.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diageo

Paul Walsh was appointed CEO of Diageo plc in September 2000, having been appointed a Director in December 1997. He attended the Royton and Crompton School. He initially wanted to become an RAF pilot but failed the medical due to colour blindness. He studied Accounting and Economics at Manchester Polytechnic. After leaving university, he spent six years with the Co-op as an accountant. In 1982, he joined the brewers Watney, Mann and Truman as a Financial Planning and Accounts Manager. This company was owned by Grand Metropolitan. In 1986 he became Finance Director of the Brewing Division. In 1987 he moved to America when he became CEO of Pillsbury, and joined the GrandMet board of directors in 1995, which became Diageo in December 1997.

He is Chairman of the Scottish Whisky Association despite neither being Scottish nor living in Scotland. He has a £4m house on a 35-acre (140,000 m2) country estate in West Sussex, and earns around £4m a year. He also has a 2,400-acre (9.7 km2) estate in South Africa. To put the size of that estate in context, were he to declare independence, his new country would be larger than Gibraltar, Monaco and the Vatican City combined.

In February 2010 Paul Walsh the CEO of Diageo issued a threat to take Diageo out of the UK altogether if his demand for lower personal and corporate taxation were not met.

"We enjoy operating out of London; it's got many advantages. However, if the UK, either from a corporate perspective or a personal tax perspective, becomes uncompetitive, we will be forced to look at alternatives," said Walsh in a television interview.

"We are a global business, we operate in 180 countries around the world. Our location here in London should not be taken for granted," he added – just weeks after speculation that Diageo was being courted by low-tax Switzerland to move its head office there.

On 18th October, Paul Walsh signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Paul Walsh is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott all Diageo brands.

If you like a Guinness, you should enjoy a Murphy's but for other drinks please suggest suitable alternatives.

Boycott Britvic and Moneysupermarket.com, Durex, Scholl, Robinsons, Tango, J2O, Pepsi, 7Up, R. Whites Lemonade

2010-10-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

This post may seem confusing but that is because Gerald Corbett appears to be a man with his fingers in many pies, so please bear with me.

Britvic plc is a British producer of soft drinks. They are the number two soft drinks producer (by volume and retail sales value) in the UK. The Company owns a number of leading brands in the UK including Britvic itself, R. White's Lemonade, Tango, Robinson's and J2O - as well as being the licensed bottler for PepsiCo products within the UK. In 2008 Britvic launched Gatorade in the UK, after securing the rights to do so from PepsiCo. In May of 2010, Britvic launched a UK exclusive drink called Mountain Dew Energy. It mostly tastes the same as its American counterpart, but has higher contents of caffeine and real sugar. The Company owns a number of leading brands in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, including, Ballygowan water, Britvic, Cidona, MiWadi, and Energise Sport as well as the rights to Pepsi and 7 Up brands in the territory through its bottling agreements with PepsiCo.

Current Brands includes 7 UP franchised from PepsiCo, Amé, J2O, Mountain Dew Energy franchised from PepsiCo, Drench, Gatorade franchised from PepsiCo, Robinsons, Pennine Spring, Pepsi franchised from PepsiCo, Tango, R. White's Lemonade, Purdey's, Red Devil Energy Drink, Shandy Bass, Britvic 55, Really Wild Drinks Company (Only available in Schools) and Idris.

Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC is a British price comparison website-based business specialising in financial services. The website enables consumers to compare prices on a range of products, including mortgages, credit cards and loans. The business was established in 1993 by Simon Nixon (a student at Nottingham University) and Duncan Cameron as a provider of off-line mortgage information to Independent Financial Advisors under the name Mortgage 2000. Since late 2009, comedian Omid Djalili has appeared in adverts for moneysupermarket.com.

SL International is the rapidly growing international consumer healthcare group whose major brands Durex and Scholl are sold in over 50 countries with manufacturing facilities primarily in India, China and Thailand. Gerald is also Chairman of Moneysupermarket.com, a price comparison website which floated in July 2007.

Gerald Corbett is Chairman of Moneysupermarket.com, SSL International plc and Britvic plc.

After studying history at Cambridge University, where he was a foundation scholar, he attended London and Harvard business schools. He joined Boston Consulting Group, which advises on corporate strategy, in the mid-1970s. In 1982 he joined electrical retailer Dixons, where he became group Financial Controller and Corporate Finance Director. Since then, he has been a director of 10 public companies and Chairman of four - including Woolworths and Britvic. He was Chief Executive of Railtrack from 1997 to 2006.

In 1993, he became Group Finance Director of Grand Metropolitan, the food and drink giant. In February 1996 in The Mail on Sunday, Patience Wheatcroft identified Corbett as one of business' "high powered hot shots" who would lead British business into the new millennium. When "Grand Met" merged with Guinness to form Diageo, he lost his job to his counterpart at Guinness. Good call Patience.

We'll come back to Diageo in a later post. The draft Diageo posting is even more confusing than this one.

In March 2001, he was at the helm of Woolworths, appointed to oversee the demerger of Woolworths Group from Kingfisher. Once this was completed in August 2001, he remained on the board as Chairman. Woolworths have since gone out of business and Kingfisher are now subject to this boycott.

He is Chairman of the Royal National Institute of the Deaf, the UK's largest Charity representing the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. We are NOT calling on people to boycott the RNID, that would be stupid.

He is also a Non Executive Director of the investment bank and stock broking business, Numis Securities. He is the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire for 2010/11 and is a member of the council of the High Sheriffs Association.

Described by David Freud in his book "Freud in the City" as "immensely approachable, a short and jovial figure, full of impromptu quips relayed to the accompaniment of short, barks of laughter".

On 18th October, Gerald Corbett signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Gerald Corbett is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Moneysupermarket.com, SSL International plc and Britvic plc.

There are other fizzy drinks. There's always confused.com, mates condoms, and I'm sure Lloyds Pharmacy can recommend something for your feet. Other suggestions welcomed.

Update on Moneysupermarket.com as of 20th June 2011.

News has reached me that Moneysupermarket.com will be pausing all online affiliate activity as of Monday 27th June 2011. The official line is that their current affiliate program is being reviewed with an aim to upgrade the channel and improve security measures to minimize invalid transactions. However the statement also says that affiliates will be notified when the program is ready to be reactivated, which implies of course that is deactivating, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not. Sensible affiliates will switch to alternative channels in the meantime and are unlikely to switch back.

Affiliate marketing is key for any online business like Moneysupermarket.com. It's the way they generate traffic, outsource their pre-sales function and gain a good position on search engine return pages when someone types 'price comparison' into Google.

Turning this off could be the beginning of the end for them.

Boycott Ocado

2010-10-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

Ocado was founded in January 2002 by Jonathan Faiman, Jason Gissing, and Tim Steiner, former merchant bankers with Goldman Sachs. When the company first started they ran every part of the business themselves. Ocado is a British Internet retailer specialising in groceries, headquartered in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Although an independent business, Ocado is partly owned by the John Lewis Partnership pension fund.

Ocado deliver Waitrose Goods. Waitrose is a subsiduary of John Lewis.

In September 2006 Michael Grade became non-executive chairman of Ocado, shortly after Goldman Sachs were appointed as financial advisors. This led to perennial speculation that the business would seek a listing on the stock market. In July 2009 Ocado confirmed it was planning a stock market flotation. In November 2008 the John Lewis Partnership transferred its shareholding of 29% into its staff pension fund. It also agreed a five year supply deal with the business, replacing its previous one year rolling deal. This deal was replaced in May 2010 with a 10 year branding and supply agreement. Procter & Gamble took a 1% stake in the company the same year.

Ocado operates in England's South East, South Coast, Midlands, North West and most of Yorkshire.

The online grocer announced total yearly sales up 25% to £427 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of just £9 million.

With the flotation of the company widely regarded as a shambles Ocado shares fell to 146p, a sizeable discount on its 180p July flotation price, which had been slashed from a hoped for 200-275p range in order to get investors to sign up. Analysts remain divided over the merits of the loss-making business which picks customers' orders from a hi-tech warehouse in Hatfield.

As at March this year Ocado had not made a penny in pre-tax profit. Still, the company has got one million-plus customers, including at least half of all London home grocery shopping. Sceptics in the City doubt that Ocado can ever make money, given high delivery costs, and certainly not on orders of less than £100. Of all the companies represented in the shameful list of 35 Chairmen and CEO's this is the one we can shut down.

Tim Steiner is the Chief Executive Officer of Ocado, and a founding director.

Prior to Ocado, Tim spent eight years as a banker at Goldman Sachs. During his time there, he was based in London, Hong Kong and New York in the Fixed Income division. As CEO, Tim oversees all aspects of the business.

Tim Steiner, 39, went to Haberdashers' Aske School in Elstree before reading economics, finance and accountancy at Manchester University. He then worked in fixed income for Goldman Sachs for eight years, meeting Jason Gissing, who did a degree at Worcester College, Oxford, where he was famously in the same Bullingdon Club photograph as Chancellor George Osborne (below).

Jason Gissing of Ocado is shown as number 8, Osbourne is number 1.

On 18th October, Tim Steiner signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor, his business partner's old drinking buddy, to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Tim is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Ocado.

You can get everything you need from the Co-op and they don't charge for deliveries.

Boycott Alliance Boots

2010-10-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Alliance Boots is an international, pharmacy-led health and beauty group. It has two core business activities - pharmacy-led health and beauty retailing, and pharmaceutical wholesaling and distribution - and has a presence in more than 20 countries. It has revenue in excess of £22.5 billion. It was formed in 2006 through a merger of the listed British high street pharmacist Boots Group and the pan-European wholesale and retail pharmacy group Alliance UniChem. Alliance Boots was initially a British plc listed on the London Stock Exchange. In 2007 it was bought out in a private equity transaction. In 2008 the trading business was transferred to a Swiss GmbH, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of a British company, AB Acquisitions Holdings Limited, which is owned by the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and the Italian businessman Stefano Pessina, who built Alliance UniChem and is now the executive chairman of Alliance Boots.

The Group's operations are mainly carried out under the Boots and Alliance Healthcare brands. Boots UK is the UK's leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer. Alliance Boots is also the largest pharmaceutical wholesaler in the UK through its Alliance Healthcare (Distribution) Ltd business.

Alliance Boots has its registered office in Zug, Switzerland, so people like me who are of an age to associate Boots with the fair city of Nottingham are sadly out of date.

Boots operate more than 3,000 retail promises in UK.

Stefano Pessina was appointed Executive Chairman of Alliance Boots in July 2007 having previously been its Executive Deputy Chairman. Prior to the merger of Alliance UniChem and Boots Group he was Executive Deputy Chairman of Alliance UniChem, before that having been its Chief Executive for three years up until December 2004. Stefano was appointed to the Alliance UniChem board in 1997 when UniChem merged with Alliance Santé, the Franco-Italian pharmaceutical wholesale group which he established in Italy in 1977. He is an engineer by profession.

Pessina is unknown to the public in his native Italy, having long since left to live in the tax haven of Monaco.

On 18th October, despite it having nothing whatsoever to do with an Italian who lives in Monaco, Stefano Pessina signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Stefano is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Alliance Boots, through it Boots The Chemist chain of pharmacies.

You can get everything you need from a Lloyds Pharmacy or a pharmacy in one of the larger supermarkets.

Boycott Harvey Nichols

2010-10-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

Harvey Nichols ("Harvey Nicks"), founded in 1813, is an expensive department store chain. Its original store is in London. In the United Kingdom, Harvey Nichols has stores in London, Leeds, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol. It also has a store in Al-Faysaliyah Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a store at Dundrum Town Centre, Dublin in Ireland and one in Central, Hong Kong. It opened a store in Istanbul's Kanyon Shopping Mall on October 13, 2006. In February 2006, it opened a store in Dubai, designed by architecture firm Callison in the Mall of the Emirates. In addition they have a store in the Grand Indonesia in Jakarta which opened in October 2008 to serve their South East Asian based customers. The London flagship store is located in Knightsbridge.

In October 1991 the Harvey Nichols group was acquired from the Burton Group by Dickson Concepts, an international retailer and distributor of branded luxury goods based in Hong Kong and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

In April 1996, Harvey Nichols obtained a full listing on the London Stock Exchange and for the subsequent period of almost 7 years stayed as a listed company.

February 2003 saw the return of Harvey Nichols to private ownership and Harvey Nichols Group Limited is now owned by the Hong Kong-based businessman Dr. Dickson Poon, the ex-husband of Michelle Yeoh, whose retail businesses extend to North America, Europe, Japan, China and South East Asia. Poon is the executive chairman of his Hong Kong listed vehicle Dickson Concepts (DCIL), which owns companies including Harvey Nichols and S. T. Dupont. Through trusts, he controls 40.13% of the voting capital of DCIL as at 31 March 2008.

Joseph Wan is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Arbitrator. He became Chief Executive of Harvey Nichols in August 1992, having previously been the group finance director of Dickson Concepts for five years. Prior to that he spent nine years working for KPMG in Hong Kong and London. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Directors and The Royal Society of Arts. He is currently the non-executive chairman of S.T. Dupont SA, which is listed on the Paris Bourse, a fellow subsidiary of Harvey Nichols.

During the credit crunch he famously changed the Harvey Nichols advertising strapline to 'and now with shorter queues' trying to make fun of the fact fewer people had disposable income.

In 2008 Wan spoke out against UK government proposals to crack down on non-doms. He told The Sunday Times that if the crackdown on wealthy immigrants went much further he would flee the UK when he retires at 60. “Depending on how much further things go – reluctantly I would leave on retirement,” he said.

Wan, then 53, said several of his friends were already making preparations to leave. Hong Kong-born Wan admits he is a non-dom himself, but claimed he pays more than £100,000 a year in British taxes. He said that wealthy overseas people created jobs and spent money in Britain, an important stimulant to the economy.

Wan’s comments came as a survey by Grant Thornton, the accountant, found 42% of South Asian high-net-worth individuals considered as non-doms were preparing to leave the UK.

Wan continues to reside in the UK.

On 18th October Joseph Wan signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Joseph is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Harvey Nichols.

Never having shopped there I do not know a suitable alternative, so please suggest some if you post comments.

Boycott ASDA This Christmas

2010-10-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

Asda Stores Limited was founded as Associated Dairies & Farm Stores Limited in 1949 in Leeds. The adoption of the Asda name occurred in 1965 with the merger of the Asquith chain of three supermarkets and Associated Dairies; Asda is an abbreviation of Asquith and Dairies. Asda is a supermarket chain which retails food, clothing, toys and general merchandise. It also has a mobile telephone network, Asda Mobile. It has its head office in Leeds.

Asda became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, in 1999, and is the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco, having overtaken Sainsbury's in 2003. In 2010, 17% of UK grocery shoppers used Asda for their main shop, with 'special offers' the most cited reason for its popularity. From 1991 until 2000, Archie Norman was Chief Executive and then Chairman of Asda. From 1997 to 2005 he was also the Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells and a shadow front bench spokesperson. He is now the Chairman of ITV.

Andrew James Bond, part-time Chairman, began at Asda as a marketing manager for Archie Norman, when aged 29 in April 1994 after completing as MBA. He had previously worked in the gas industry. He has an engineering degree from Salford University.

He was Chief Executive of ASDA from 2005 until earlier this when he surprised the business world by resigning that post to take up the Chairmanship. He reputedly did not wish to have to move his young family to Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart. He preferred to raise them in Harrogate, so he's not all bad.

On 18th October Andy Bond signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Andy is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott ASDA.

There are other supermarkets, like the Co-op, or Sainsbury, or some of the smaller ones that are trying to compete with the big boys you can support. I'd also like to ask that alternatives are suggested in the comments to this post.

Boycott Marks and Spencer

2010-10-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

What can be said about Marks & Spencer that hasn't already been said? Just this - Boycott them, here's why.

Marks & Spencer may have had humble origins on a market stall in Leeds but they have changed beyond all recognition since then. Marks & Spencer is the largest clothing retailer in the United Kingdom, as well as being a food retailer, and as of 2008, the 43rd largest retailer in the world. M&S have over 600 stores throughout the United Kingdom and over 300 stores in over 40 other countries.

Since Sunday opening became legal the trip to M&S has replaced organised religion in some of our more well-heeled suburbs.

Sir Stuart Rose is the Chairman of M&S and an experienced boardroom player. He joined M&S as a trainee manager in 1972 and stayed there until 1989. He returned to M&S in 2004 as Chief Executive. During his interval away he had been Chief Executive of Burtons, Argos, Booker and Arcadia Group. This period seems to have been dominated by mergers and acquisitions. Reputedly the deal Rose made when he sold Arcadia netted a cool £25M for him personally. He was knighted in 2008 for services to retailing. He plans to step down from M&S in 2011.

On 18th October Sir Stuart Rose signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Sir Stuart is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Marks & Spencer.

Suggesting alternatives for Marks & Spencer is likely to spark a negative response from their incredibly loyal customers but there are other supermarkers and clothes shops that are just as good and which do not support actions which could throw this country into recession. While the credit crunch was a world wide problem, remember what we are facing is not just a recession, this is a British-made, corporate promoted coalition gamble, with added unemployment and reduced hope for the future, double-dip recession.

UPDATE: There is a comment posted below from 'Anonymous' which calls attention to the leasing of a Marks & Spencer owned property to the 'Hooters' restaurant chain.

This has been confirmed by the Daily Telegraph and the restaurant is in Bristol. Hooters is not a well known brand in the UK but in the US it is known mainly for the skimpy outfits worn by its all-female serving staff, referred to 'Hooters Girls'. After a quick image search it is clear that the clothing may be suitable for Southern California in summer, but is not very practical for the West Country in December. Practicality is of course the least of Hooters concerns.

Quite what M&S's female clientelle would make of such a business relationship should they be aware of it I dread to imagine.

Boycott Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk

2010-10-24T03:55:00.000-07:00

The Carphone Warehouse has over 800 stores across the UK and is in fact the largest independent mobile phone retailer in the world with 2400 stores operating across 10 countries.

In Europe and America they are known as The Phone House. In 2003 they launched the TalkTalk brand providing telephony and broadband services. Initially a subsiduary of The Carphone Warehouse, TalkTalk became its own company in March 2010.

Charles Dunstone is the Chairman and co-founder of both The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk. He reputedly started selling phones out of a flat in Marylebone. It is fair to say that he spotted the mobile phone market earlier than anyone else and was one of the business success stories of the 80's and 90's. As well as the positions he holds in Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk Charles is also a non-executive director of HBOS and The Daily Mail General Trust. In the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 he was listed in 64th place, with an estimated fortune of $1.66 billion.

To his credit he actively supports the re-habilitation of offenders, employing an ex-con by the name of Ernest Saunders as a business consultant for Carphone Warehouse prior to flotation.

On 18th October Charles Dunstone signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Charles is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk.

Rather than provide a list of alternative mobile phone shops or mobile phone and broadband network providers I'd like to ask that alternatives are suggested in the comments to this post. This is not a one-way street, please provide your ideas and input.

Update 7th march 2011

TalkTalk have just got away with a slap on the wrist from Ofcom for stealing at least £2.5 million from customers threatening them with bailiffs and bad credit ratings if they didn't pay up...money they didn't owe! If Talk Talk get away with it,the others will follow...
http://www.moneywell.co.uk/blog/phones/big-companies-need-not-worry-about-the-law

Twitter Account

2010-10-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, this campaign is now on Twitter.

I've never used Twitter before, which I know makes me something of a relic, but thought it would offer the easiest way for people to follow this campaign and spread the word to friends.

The Twitter account is @boycottbgbizsoc and I'm sure anyone who has read this far knows better than I do how to set themselves up as 'followers'.

Hope to Tweet you soon.

Boycott Mothercare and Early Learning Centre

2010-10-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Mothercare group is comprised principally of two iconic retail brands with strong international presence; Mothercare and Early Learning Centre.

The group's brands operate through three distinct channels to market; UK stores, Direct (being the in-home and in-store internet-based businesses and catalogue mail order), and International, under which the group franchises (or participates in joint venture) operations delivering the Mothercare and Early Learning Centre brand retail operations in overseas markets.

Mothercare is one of the most familiar names in UK retailing, and is probably the first store that comes to mind when thinking of the needs of pregnant women, babies and children up to the age of 10. There is a lot of overlap with ELC in the post-natal market and so their merger and co-location of stores makes sense from a business perspective. As well as their strong UK presence the Group own 450 Mothercare and 150 Early Learning Centre stores abroad. This is Big Business.

I hope the Mumsnet people follow up this boycott option.

Ben Gordon is their Chief Executive. Appointed in December 2002. Formerly Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Disney Store, Europe and Asia Pacific. Has also held senior management positions with the WHSmith Group in Europe and the USA and L'Oreal S.A., Paris. Non-Executive Director of Britvic plc. (We'll come back to Britvic in another post.)

On 18th October Ben Gordon signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since, well since the last time the tories took power and tanked economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Ben is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Mothercare and the Early Learning Centre. Despite their ubiquitous presence on the High Street Mothercare and ELC are far from the only brands address the parent-to-be and younger child market. We would urge consumers to look at Baby Planet, Bras4Mums, Kiddicare.com and kiddies-kingdom.com for example. Why should we boycott Ben's businesses? Because, as an ex senior manager at L'Oreal, he's worth it (sorry couldn't resist that).

It seems we are not the first to boycott B&Q

2010-10-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

This is not the first boycott campaign to affect B&Q.

In 2005 Mel Rowson starting boycotting B&Q after they slapped an £85 parking ticket on his car.

This is not the only time B&Q have sought to enhance their income by fining motorists. Graham Wilson received a £75 parking ticket for parking in the B&Q car park in Dewsbury on a sunday morning, even though he left before the store opened.

That is not the worst, though. In 2005 B&Q had 72 year old Thomas Radcliffe arrested by the police because he had taken an old plug in with him to ensure he purchased a new one that was the correct size ansd they accused him of stealing it, even though they had to later admit that their stores did not stock that model of plug.

I'm beginning to think we should have been boycotting B&Q for years.

We are not Alone in This

2010-10-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

It seems that we are not alone in thinking that a boycott of the Big Business Society is a good idea.

The idea is also being discussed on Mumsnet.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1064369-to-boycott-M-amp-S-Next-Mothercare-Asda-and-all

If you are a member of Mumsnet please contribute to the discussion and help convince their visitors of the worth of this cause.

Thanks.

Boycott NEXT this Christmas

2010-10-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

Next are a well known and familiar sight on more than 500 High Streets in the UK and Ireland selling clothing for men, women and children. The Group include the Lipsy and Ventura brands as well as Next itself. Lipsy specialise in womenswear. Ventura appear to run call centres in the UK and India, and include the Department for Work & Pensions in their client list. Here's a way to reduce public spending, the DWP could stop spending it on Ventura.

Simon Wolfson is their Chief Executive. Sorry, maybe I should be more polite and refer to Simon by his title, Baron Wolfson of Aspley Guise, of Aspley Guise in the County of Bedfordshire. That's right our Simon, as well as being a successful shopkeeper also has time to sit in the unelected House of Lords. He's a Conservative Peer, don't you know. He was given his life peerage a month after the General Election of 2010. He had ably co-chaired the Conservative Party's Economic Competitiveness Policy Review and prior to that, with a good eye for backing a winner, he had donated to David Cameron's leadership campaign in 2005.

It would wrong however to say that Simon owes his place in the legislature to his contacts and money or that his donation to Cameron played any part whatsoever in any way, absolutely not. no. I'm sure he's a really decent bloke, as that Harry Enfield character used to say.

Simon, sorry Baron Wolfson, is familar with unelected and unqualified appointments. You see his dad, David, also a Conservative life peer, this time Baron Wolfson of Sunningdale, was Chairman of Next from 1990 to 1998 and it was during this time that Simon started at Next, in 1991, as a sales consultant in the Kensington Branch (well it wasn't likely to be the one in Scunthorpe or Bethnal Green was it?). By 1997 he was on the board of Next, a stunning career progression which I'm sure is available to all of their sales staff, and he was made Chief Executive in 2001, at the ripe old age of 33.

A lot of this information is available on his wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Wolfson) but my favourite bit is where it says that 'Wolfson is known to be publicity-shy'. Oh dear, because on 18th October Simon Wolfson signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since, well since the last time the tories took power and tanked economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Simon is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott Next, Lipsy and Ventura. The larger Co-ops stock clothes and there are a lot of alternatives in the rag trade for the savvy shopper.

At the time of writing this Next is leading in our Poll of which companies people to this site have pledged to boycott.

Update 29th October 2011

Business Week reported on 5th October here that Ian received a total of £1,757,000 in pay, bonuses and stock options from Next in the last year.

Boycott Poll

2010-10-22T02:45:00.001-07:00

I've just added the boycott poll which you can see on the right.

This will allow people who wish to support the boycott to register anonymously without having to become 'followers' although the more followers the better. Let's see how many boycott promises we can get, and also who our favourite boycottee turns out to be. Maybe favourite isn't the right word.

Boycott B&Q this Christmas.

2010-10-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

Kingfisher are the company that is best known for trading in UK as B&Q and Screwfix. They have 330 B&Q stores in the UK. They also have over a hundred Castorama stores in France, around same number of Brico Depot stores across France, Spain and Poland. They have 27 Koçtaş stores in Turkey and own 21% of Hornbach in Germany.

Ian Cheshire was appointed to the Board of Kingfisher in June 2000 and as Group Chief Executive in January 2008. He was previously Chief Executive, B&Q UK from June 2005. He was appointed Chief Executive International and Development in September 2002, Chief Executive of e-Kingfisher in May 2000 and was Group Director of Strategy & Development. Before joining Kingfisher he worked for a number of retail businesses including Sears plc where he was Group Commercial Director. He is also a member of the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change and a Member of the Employers’ Forum on Disability President’s Group.

He opposed the proposed expansion of Heathrow Airport, which is to his credit.

However on 18th October Ian Cheshire signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since, well since the last time the tories took power and tanked economy in the early 80's. It's a bit like trying to pay off your mortgage by not feeding your children, it can only make sense to an accountant.

For this reason Ian is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott his business Kingfisher PLC which trades as B&Q and Screwfix. It's not like you can't get anything they stock from HomeBase or a decent local hardware store or builders' merchants.

Update 28th October 2011

Business Week reported on 5th October here that Ian received a total of £1,972,100 in pay, bonuses and stock options from Kingfisher in the last year.

Ian has added another string to his bow since the original post. He was appointed to the Board of the Department of Work and Pensions as a non-Executive Director by Iain Duncan Smith. I'm sure the staff there feel really motivated knowing that one of their directors wanted them to be sacked just so he could line his pockets even more luxuriously.

About The Big Business Society

2010-10-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Big Business Society, what is it ?

David Cameron's big idea is called 'The Big Society' and apparently he's really keen on it. He tried to explain it to the Conservative Party during their Conference and they were sufficiently envigorated by the concept that most managed to stay awake.

So, very few people actually know what it means in practice, but it sounds to me like public services being handed over to philanthopic business people. This breed of business person was declared extinct in the 1890's but it seems no one has told Cameron.

When details of Gideon Osborne's post-election 'Comprehensive Spending Review' were leaked in advance there were concerns raised by the usual suspects. The result was that 35 self-appointed business people decided to intervene in what we laughably refer to as our democracy to ensure that the interests of business were placed before those of the peoples of these islands. It was clear from that moment that The Big Society was really for the benefit of those who control the Conservative Party's purse strings, hence the parody name of The Big Business Society.

Now, no one, at least no one here, is going to deny these business people the right to voice their political opinions and to say which government policies they support, collectively or individually, or say which party they support. However actions have consequences, and their actions mean that supporters of the boycott will wish to take their trade elsewhere.

In short, you can be a coalition supporting business fat cat who stores his money in an offshore tax haven if you like but don't expect me to contribute to your tax avoided wealth.

The current idea I'm working to (subject to the views of followers and contributors to this blog) is that we'll publish details of the 35 company directors one at a time, their businesses, brands, products etc so that people know where not to shop this Christmas. We'll also list alternative, politics free suppliers of the same type of goods, because we are not asking people to go without, just change where they shop.

Boycotts have long history and some have been successful. For example, in the early 80s Barclays Bank was the number 1 bank for new student accounts in the UK. Then the NUS launched a boycott campaign as Barclays were involved with the then apartheid regime in South Africa. By the time Nelson Mandela was released Barclays were bottom of the big four High Street banks in terms of student accounts. As people tend to stay with a bank for life they are probably still losing custom because of links they severed a long time ago.

It's time to take our country back.

Please help.

FaceBook Page

2010-10-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

This is a quick link to a FaceBook page set up to support this Boycott.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-Big-Business-Society/170360522981279?v=wall

The Offending Letter

2010-10-21T03:50:00.000-07:00

Here is the text of the Offending letter that the CBI 35 signed.

This text is taken from the Daily Telegraph, the Conservative Party's in-house rag.

SIR – It has been suggested that the deficit reduction programme set out by George Osborne in his emergency Budget should be watered down and spread over more than one parliament. We believe that this would be a mistake.

Addressing the debt problem in a decisive way will improve business and consumer confidence. Reducing the deficit more slowly would mean additional borrowing every year, higher national debt, and therefore higher spending on interest payments.

The cost of delay would result in almost £100 billion of additional national debt by the end of this parliament alone. In the end, the result would be deeper cuts, or further tax rises, in order to pay for the extra debt interest.

The cost of delay could be even greater than this. As recent events in some European countries have demonstrated, if the markets lose faith in Britain, interest rates will rise for all of us.

There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery.

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

So, each writing in our personal capacity, we would encourage George Osborne and the Government to press ahead with his plans to reduce the deficit.

In the long run it will deliver a healthier and more stable economy.

While these 'business leaders' sit confortably in their boardrooms the lives of millions of working people are being ruined. Let us make the Conservatives' claim that 'we are all in this together' come true. Let's share our pain with those supporting those who cause it by boycotting their stores and products.

Welcome to the Boycott Big Business Society Blog.

2010-10-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

This blog is for those of us who do not want to be told what to do by Big Buisiness and who think Big Business should keep it's nose out of our affairs.

This week the following people issued a statement (copy to follow) supporting the British Government's plans to institute widespread cuts in public services and state benefits.

Will Adderley, CEO, Dunelm Group
Robert Bensoussan, Chairman, L.K. Bennett
Andy Bond, Chairman, Asda
Ian Cheshire, Chief Executive, Kingfisher
Gerald Corbett, Chairman, SSL International, moneysupermarket.com, Britvic
Peter Cullum, Executive Chairman, Towergate
Tej Dhillon, Chairman and CEO, Dhillon Group
Philip Dilley, Chairman, Arup
Charles Dunstone, Chairman, Carphone Warehouse Group, TalkTalk Telecom Group
Warren East, CEO, ARM Holdings
Gordon Frazer, Managing Director, Microsoft UK
Sir Christopher Gent, Non-Executive Chairman, GlaxoSmithKline
Ben Gordon, Chief Executive, Mothercare
Anthony Habgood, Chairman, Whitbread, Chairman, Reed Elsevier
Aidan Heavey, Chief Executive, Tullow Oil
Neil Johnson, Chairman, UMECO
Nick Leslau, Chairman, Prestbury Group
Ian Livingston, CEO, BT Group
Ruby McGregor-Smith, CEO, MITIE Group
Rick Medlock, CFO, Inmarsat; Non-Executive Director lovefilms.com, The Betting Group
John Nelson, Chairman, Hammerson
Stefano Pessina, Executive Chairman, Alliance Boots
Nick Prest, Chairman, AVEVA
Nick Robertson, CEO, ASOS
Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman, Marks & Spencer
Tim Steiner, CEO, Ocado
Andrew Sukawaty, Chairman and CEO, Inmarsat
Michael Turner, Executive Chairman, Fuller, Smith and Turner
Moni Varma, Chairman, Veetee
Paul Walker, Chief Executive, Sage
Paul Walsh, Chief Executive, Diageo
Robert Walters, CEO, Robert Walters
Joseph Wan, Chief Executive, Harvey Nichols
Bob Wigley, Chairman, Expansys, Stonehaven Associates, Yell Group
Simon Wolfson, Chief Executive, Next

The reponse of this blog is to organise a boycott of these businesses so that they can feel the cuts they support.

This has been launched quickly. More details will come later