The Great Debate UK

Resilience in the luxury market amid downturn

- Ben Hughes is deputy CEO and global commercial director at the Financial Times. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Last month Italian luxury fashion house Fendi unveiled a handbag made of python leather and dipped in 24-carat gold. Price? A cool $36,000.

You would expect the bag to last the buyer for quite a while. This, after all, is the point of difference between a ‘luxury’ item and a ‘designer’ one.

As well as being the beautiful creation of a famous name, luxury goods should be manufactured to the highest standards.

Borrowing from the 1930s to solve the financial crisis

- Alan Beattie is world trade editor at the Financial Times, and author of the recent book “False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World”. He studied history at Oxford and economics at Cambridge, and worked as a Bank of England economist before joining the FT. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Those who forget history are condemned to listen to historians going on and on about it, a fate almost as bad as listening to economists doing the same. (And I write as a double agent with a foot in both camps attempting the delicate task of bringing the two together in my new book)