Secrets of a “super-fixer” in Libya
BENGHAZI/LONDON (Reuters) – Flanked by two colleagues, a 60-something Englishman quietly worked the lobby of Benghazi’s Tibesti Hotel last week, targeting people likely to be the power brokers in a new Libya.
Approached by a Reuters reporter, the man declined to give his name or even shake hands, describing himself as “a very private person.”
Evenings, he was at the bar, smoking cigars and talking to friends — not in short supply given the number of former British military currently in Benghazi, a rebel stronghold. The men are there, a few of them told Reuters, as fixers or “pathfinders.” Their mission is to gather intelligence and build relationships on behalf of UK companies in post-Gaddafi Libya.
His rivals said this man is a “super fixer.”
They identified him as John Holmes, a highly decorated former SAS commando and retired British army Major General. This was confirmed by a western diplomat and a member of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) who has held talks with his client, British firm Heritage Oil.
Heritage declined to comment when asked about its activities in Libya and Holmes’ presence there. A representative of his own company, Mayfair-based Titon International, said only that he would pass on a message when told Holmes had been spotted in Benghazi. Reuters did not receive any response to that message.
Former members of the highly secretive Special Air Service (SAS), or “The Regiment” as it is also known, have a “frontiersman spirit” that makes them particularly well suited to this sort of work, says one person with detailed knowledge and experience of the inner workings of Britain’s special forces.
Constitution in crisis as tyrannical journalists devour cowed politicians
A sordid tale of excess and brutality, of a world dominated by journalists with their ears to the keyhole, of tyrannical newspapers wielding remarkable power and of a political class not only cowed, but consumed, by that power.
Sound familiar? With two of Britain’s most senior policemen out of a job, the prime minister under pressure for his serenading of News Corp and one of the world’s most powerful press barons, in the form of Rupert Murdoch, summoned to testify to parliament, it would be one way of describing the current state of affairs.
In fact, it is how Irish writer and wit Oscar Wilde saw the state of Britain 120 years ago.
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising,” Wilde wrote in 1891, several years before a court case in which intimate details of his own private life became the centre of a media storm.
Wilde believed that in America “the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever” but that its power there had been diminished in the eyes of the public having “carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme”.
In England, having not been pushed to ”such excesses of brutality”, the press remained a really remarkable force: ”The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary,” he wrote in his 1891 essay “The Soul of Man under Socialism”.
Then, as many are doing now, he debated whether newspapers had the power to mould peoples’ minds or whether they merely held up a mirror to the public mood.
Insight: Rebekah Brooks to revisit her parliamentary past
LONDON (Reuters) – Rebekah Brooks has reduced a prime minister to tears, threatened a member of parliament who inquired about bullying at her newspaper and told another troublesome politician she was surprised he wasn’t out cruising for gay sex.
Brooks resigned on Friday as the head of News International, Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm. Together with Murdoch and his son James, who leads the international operations of Murdoch’s media empire, the former editor will still face politicians probing News Corp’s hacking scandal next week.
On the few occasions she has accepted requests to testify to parliament she has charmed her audience into submission. Things are likely to be less friendly next Tuesday.
Brooks will not only have to deal with a panel of angry inquisitors but will do so with her past testimony, and that of colleagues, hanging over her.
She is one of at least eight News International executives and senior journalists to have testified to parliament in the past decade. Their words are sure to be combed over before next week’s hearing, as Britain heads toward a judicial inquiry into phone hacking, police bribery and press regulation.
“The whole committee feels quite betrayed by the evidence that has been given to them by News International executives in two or three inquiries. They will be expecting apologies,” said Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications at the University of Westminster.
They may be disappointed. Brooks told committee chairman John Whittingdale in a letter on Thursday that a police investigation “may prevent me from discussing these matters in detail.” She said on Friday her resignation would make it possible to cooperate fully with the committee and other inquiries.
Murdoch rivals jump, BSkyB wavers as paper shut
LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) – BSkyB stock wavered as uncertainty persisted over whether Rupert Murdoch’s decision to shut the News of the World newspaper in response to a hacking scandal would help his battle to take full control of the British satellite broadcaster.
Shares in the owners of rival publications such as the Sunday Mirror and the Sunday Mail jumped, however, as analysts predicted they would be quick to hoover up readers and advertisers left behind by the demise of the News of the World.
Analysts noted that the direct financial impact on Murdoch’s British operations would be relatively small and from the perspective of the overall News Corp group would hardly register.
“I’m guessing it (News of the World) does 50-ish million pounds of revenue. But Sky is 8 billion of revenue, a billion of profit. You make a very public and obvious scapegoat of an influential but very small profit centre,” Alex DeGroote, media analyst at brokerage Panmure Gordon said.
With advertisers quitting the News of the World in their droves, analysts said closing the 168-year-old paper had limited the immediate potential for contagion to spread to other Murdoch titles in the UK such as The Times and The Sun.
“The stain on the brand was going to be permanent, and this is a perfectly sensible decision,” said Claire Enders, head of media consultancy Enders Analysis.
The burning issues of alleged hacking and police bribery are unlikely to go away soon, however, and News Corp, which also owns the Wall Street Journal in the United States, still has a tough damage limitation exercise on its hands.
Ignore the data, Royal Wedding and sunshine give Britain Plc a Q2 kickstart
A lot of the economic data in recent days has made for pretty grim reading, reinforcing expectations that interest rates will remain at record lows for some months yet.
But a string of bullish updates from British retailers and manufacturers suggest that the second quarter could have got off to a flying start, with fine weather, the Easter holiday and the Royal Wedding all improving the national mood.
Anybody who ignores such signals from within the real economy does so at their peril. In January the pound tumbled when it emerged that the British economy had suffered a shock contraction in the final three months of 2010. The market was caught off guard again a month later when revisions painted an even bleaker picture.
Those of us who had been following closely the steady stream of profit warnings from UK retailers, travel groups and builders were not quite so surprised, particularly as we churned out long lists of companies hit by December’s big freeze and predicted a looming standstill in the construction industry.
The big question now is whether the glow left by a month of unusually sunny weather and two holidays in swift succession for Easter and the Royal Wedding will translate into a sustainable recovery, or at the very least be enough to dull some of the pain of government cutbacks and job losses.
Supermarket group Morrison is sounding very cautious this morning. In common with a growing pack of retailers it has reported stronger than expected sales thanks to a bumper April but has not raised its forecasts for 2011 as a whole, citing falling disposable incomes and economic uncertainty.
Special Report: Why London can live without its big banks
LONDON (Reuters) – “Let me be crystal clear,” Barclays’ star investment banker and new Chief Executive Bob Diamond told members of the British parliament in January. “We are going to be here in the United Kingdom, and this is the place that we want to succeed.”
It may be a reflection of how bankers still struggle to be taken at their word in the wake of the global financial crisis, but Diamond’s statement convinced nobody. Rumors that Barclays and its bigger rival HSBC are ready to move their headquarters to Hong Kong or New York have flourished ever since.
Speculation has intensified in the run-up to the April 11 publication of an interim report into the future of British financial services by the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB). The banks fear it will recommend costly reforms. A public admission by Diamond last week that he had “an obligation on behalf of shareholders” to look at alternative tax bases, and repeated warnings from senior city figures about the consequences of a high-profile defection, are seen as thinly veiled attempts to influence the commission’s thinking.
But research by Reuters shows the commission should be in a strong position to counter such threats, since the impact of any big bank departures on the economy, government finances and the City of London’s pre-eminence as a financial center would be extremely limited. In a crucial year for global finance, as the regulatory landscape is substantially redrawn, this may embolden the committee. That in turn would help the Conservative-led UK government strike the balance it needs between sounding tough on an industry whose excesses anger the public, and appeasing some of the Conservatives’ top donors.
In any case, the banks’ threats to quit the UK may prove overblown, says Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative member of parliament’s influential Treasury Select Committee: “I think it’s unlikely — I’d say no better than evens — that any one bank will move offshore, and if they do move what that means for tax take will depend on the bank involved but is likely to be fairly limited.”
Leadsom, a former senior executive at Barclays and one of those who grilled American-born Diamond during January’s testimony, says senior bankers often tell her the government is on the verge of driving them away, but she is not impressed.
“I’m not an advocate of ever tighter regulation,” she told Reuters. “What we need is clever regulation. But I don’t think it’s as simple as saying ‘if you keep annoying us we’ll just leave’. I think that’s a nonsense argument.”
Libya crisis could scupper British aircraft carriers once and for all
So the world has unfurled a no-fly zone over Libya, apparently undeterred by the lack of Royal Navy aircraft carriers. Judging by the uniforms gracing the steps of 10 Downing Street on Friday and the attacks launched over the weekend, Britain’s military top brass haven’t been put off either.
The Libya crisis has, until now, provided a platform for the “Save our Aircraft Carriers Campaign” to champion its cause but in the process they’ve thrown down some whopping red herrings.
First we were told Britain could have done a better job extracting citizens from Libya if it had an aircraft carrier. In the event nature’s own aircraft carrier, Malta (immune to rough seas and mechanical failure) proved a perfectly good operations centre from which to manage rescue efforts. If Britain’s response was slow, that had more to do with the speed of decision making than the available military hardware.
Even if HMS Ark Royal had been in service, victualled, crewed and ready to put to sea from Portsmouth, she would have taken a good four days to reach Benghazi sailing at full steam the whole way, through still waters. Had she been in the Gulf of Oman supporting operations in Afghanistan, it would have taken closer to five days at best. Once in theatre she would have required defence from air attack and even the threat of submarines should any of Gaddafi’s Soviet-era vessels still be operational.
The C-130 Hercules aircraft the Royal Air Force and Special Forces used in the end to land in Libya’s Eastern Desert and to evacuate people can fly from Wiltshire to Tripoli in under 5 hours.
A second strange conclusion was that without aircraft carriers, Britain would be forced to police a no-fly zone from Cyprus – putting its jets out of easy range of Libya. Why Cyprus? NATO allies Italy and the United States run an airbase at Sigonella in Sicily which is less than a third of the distance from Tripoli.
Another argument deployed in favour of carriers has been the Falkland Islands but the smartest strategy there must be to defend them properly in the first place, maintaining or bolstering the Typhoon jets and Rapier surface-to-air missiles already based there. In the unlikely event the islands were left open to occupation, retaking them would be almost impossible –aircraft carriers or not – because unlike in 1982 there is a proper airfield from which any enemy should be able to establish and maintain air superiority. Land-based aircraft, with much higher sortie-rates, have a huge strategic advantage over marine-based jets and whoever controls Mount Pleasant Airfield controls the Falklands.
Trade ties bind Britain closely to Ireland’s fate
LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Neighbouring Ireland remains one of Britain’s largest export markets despite efforts to woo the big emerging economies, a factor that could draw the British into efforts to prop up the Irish economy.
Finance minister George Osborne has so far offered only verbal support for Ireland, but the Financial Times reported on Wednesday there were signs that Britain was considering providing its own direct loans as part of an aid package.
“Ireland is our closest neighbour and it’s in Britain’s national interest that the Irish economy is successful and we have a stable banking system,” Osborne said ahead of a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Brussels.
“So Britain stands ready to support Ireland in the steps that it needs to take to bring about that stability,” he added.
Britain is not part of the euro zone but could be asked to contribute some 6 billion pounds ($9.5 billion) under the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, leaving aside any bilateral aid.
A Treasury spokesman said Ireland has yet to ask for help and declined to comment on speculation about how Britain might get involved.
Prime Minister David Cameron has led trade delegations to China and India this year, but British trade with Ireland is still greater than its business with the huge BRIC emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — combined.
Political ructions narrow Irish debt options
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland is betting it can borrow more cheaply in 2011 — but the threat of political upheaval in the first half and poor prospects for cross-party backing for austerity plans mean the window for tapping investors is small and closing.
Faced with sky-high borrowing costs, Ireland has pulled its bond auctions for the rest of the year, hoping that a credible four-year plan for tackling its budget deficit, set to be published by the government next month, will bring yields down.
With enough money to keep the wheels of state turning until mid-2011 — despite the collapse of its banks, a burst property bubble and rising borrowing costs — Ireland also aimed to show jittery debt markets it did not face a Greek-style liquidity crisis and could handle the worst budget deficit in the EU.
But it may well find itself trapped in a pincer movement of its own making.
Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s already slim parliamentary majority will likely be all but wiped out when by-elections for three vacant seats are held before the end of April, and analysts expect this to trigger a snap election that will kick him out of power.
An election would be unlikely to produce an outright winner and could leave Ireland rudderless or embroiled in political wrangling for at least 6 to 8 weeks, the usual length of time between the calling of an election and formation of a government.
“The political risk in Ireland is well understood but the question is whether there’s a tipping point, and the by-elections are clearly a source of concern for the market,” said Harvinder Sian, interest rate strategist at RBS in London.
Emigration and history keep Irish off the streets
DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland is vying with Greece for the title of Europe’s problem child but Dublin has yet to be rocked by Athenian-style riots, instead demonstrating a widespread sense of resignation about the economic crisis.
Ireland’s deeply unpopular government unveiled a bill for cleaning up its banks on Thursday that could top 50 billion euros ($68 billion) and warned of more savage spending cuts as it grapples with a public debt pile set to balloon to 100,000 euros per household.
The latest attempt to prop up banks rocked by a property market collapse comes after two years of deep cuts to services and wage cuts for public servants — yet there is no sign of individual frustration spilling over into collective unrest.
“I think there is quite considerable anger out there at the moment but it remains hidden,” said Andreas Hess, a lecturer in sociology at University College Dublin.
Figures published last month showed net outward migration running at the highest rate since 1989 and Hess noted that ever since the Great Famine of the mid 19th Century, Irish people had shown a readiness to move abroad when times get tough.
“The potential for exit in terms of emigration is huge and it’s a major part of the Irish story,” said Hess, who has lived in Ireland for 10 years. “You speak to anybody in Ireland and they have an uncle or a cousin who lives in Chicago or Sydney.”
Gary Redmond, president of the Union of Students which plans an anti-austerity protest in Dublin on November 3, said that of those who graduated in 2009, 100 students a week were moving abroad.
-
About Paul
-
Follow Paul
