It's that time of year again, when executive pay league tables hit the headlines and set off a chorus of union leaders, professors of ethics and the plain jealous who yowl about fat cat pay.
The Monks Partnership issues the most-watched listing and has given The Observer a sneak preview. This year, the finger-waggers won't be disappointed. The bosses' pay is up by an average 9 per cent over last year's £546,000, excluding share options. Take away inflation and that's three-and-a-half times the percentage pay hike for the average British employee. (Show me more...)
The story of Bank of Scotland's painful association with American TV evangelist Pat Robertson can easily be told as a hilarious tale of misjudgement, a public relations disaster that provided huge entertainment for all. (Show me more...)
The Bank of Scotland has appointed the controversial American TV evangelist Dr Pat Robertson as chairman of its US retail banking holding company. The fundamentalist minister is known in America as founder and president of the 1.2-million member far-right Christian Coalition and for his statements attacking feminists, homosexuals, Democrats and Hindus. (Show me more...)
Talks on Friday failed to boost Scottish Power's $4.7 billion bid for the US electricity company PacifiCorp. Earlier in the week it was dealt a possibly fatal blow when analysts at the Oregon state utility commission urged regulators to reject it. (Show me more...)
While we were in jail in Washington during the war in Vietnam, my comrades and I spent part of our night as guests of the state singing several choruses of the song, 'Waist Deep in the Big Muddy'.
I would not compare Scottish Power chairman Ian Robinson to President Lyndon Johnson. And Robinson's invasion of the US power industry through his plan to purchase PacifiCorp of Oregon is not exactly the landing at Da Nang. But there is a little bit of LBJ's resolute optimism, while marching deeper into the quicksand, which has me humming that old song. (Show me more...)
Holy week is especially solemn in Chenega. On Good Friday 1964, a tidal wave swept over the Chugach native village on Chenega Island in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Every home was washed out to sea. One-third of the residents drowned. (Show me more...)
Thirty years ago this month, Alaskan natives sold Exxon and its partners an astronomically valuable patch of land -- the oil terminal at Valdez -- for a single dollar.
The Chugach Natives of the Prince William Sound refused cash. Rather, in 1969, they asked only that the oil companies promise to protect their fishing and seal hunting grounds from oil. (Show me more...)
In an attempt to salvage its troubled takeover of US electricity company Pacificorp, Scottish Power on Friday presented a detailed list of the benefits to customers. (Show me more...)
British Petroleum failed to act on warnings of an environmental catastrophe in the run-up to the Exxon Valdez disaster, whose effects are still being felt a decade later, an investigation by The Observer has established. (Show me more...)
Guardian/The Observer, London
By Gregory Palast
The captain, Joe Hazelwood, was below decks, sleeping off his bender. The man left at the helm, the third mate, would never have hit Bligh Reef had he simply looked at his Raycas radar. But he could not. Why? Because the radar was not turned on. The complex Raycas system costs a lot to operate, so a frugal Exxon management left it broken and useless for the entire year before the grounding. (Show me more...)
