In the last twenty years top managers of British companies have experienced an unprecedented boom in pay and perks, while their counterparts in the City have earned millions. Just reward for achieving high performance and superior shareholder value one might say. If indeed that was the outcome. The reality, though, is somewhat different as this hard-hitting book reveals. Having their Cake... is a damning account of neglect, greed and incompetence, and the irresponsible destruction of corporate Britain's wealth. For the first time, the little publicized informal relationships between the City institutions and top management in UK's largest public companies is examined in great detail. While passionate in their quest to expose this destruction and propose positive changes, the authors provide us with cool and compelling evidence that: financial markets are the dominant influence over the appointment and careers of top managers of public companies; these symbiotic relationships represents a seismic shift in the balance of power between the stakeholders in industry and the economy; many high-profile corporate deals are made at the expense of company performance or even survival; the combination of City pressures and management practices are having an increasingly corrosive effect on British businesses. And the consequences are alarming: there is now little or no larger British presence in many key industrial sectors that require consistent investment in innovation and technology; Some 40% of British-based exporting companies are now foreign owned; Approa
"An excellent read - so clear and well laid out that you can digest it in just a day and retain most of what you read. I recommend it warmly to all those interested in the UK economy - but the book is not blind to events in the rest of the world."-The Times Higher Education Supplement "The authors, themselves once industry insiders, write in a style that is short on sentiment and substantiate what they write with hard facts."-Mortgage Finance Gazette " 'I have yet to read a more devastating analysis' of relationships between chief executives and investment banks, said Richard Donkin in the FT. 'Everyone concerned with the future health of corporations' should read this book."-Money Week, March 2004
"Compelling evidence combined with a description of alarming consequences." -Long Range Planning Journal, January 2005
"An excellent read - so clear and well laid out that you can digest it in just a day and retain most of what you read. I recommend it warmly to all those interested in the UK economy - but the book is not blind to events in the rest of the world."-The Times Higher Education Supplement "The authors, themselves once industry insiders, write in a style that is short on sentiment and substantiate what they write with hard facts."-Mortgage Finance Gazette " 'I have yet to read a more devastating analysis' of relationships between chief executives and investment banks, said Richard Donkin in the FT. 'Everyone concerned with the future health of corporations' should read this book."-Money Week, March 2004
"Compelling evidence combined with a description of alarming consequences." -Long Range Planning Journal, January 2005