Theres mutterings in the city about a fundamental change in the way britain (and america) does business. Basically its a rejection of public companies in favour of private equity ie instead of raising capital via shareholders you go to banks/private institutions.
Blair himself has urged Labour not to criticise this trend too much, which just goes to show how far New Labour has moved from its roots espcially given the critcism from unions. This is basically becoming an increasingly important issue as more companies turn to the so called 'dark side' of PE and start aping corporate raiders of the 80s. Its just a heads up on something that will probably come into the wider public sphere at some point.
Robert Peston has an excellent blog at the bbc thats actually very respected, and hes commented quite a lot of entries in recent months on the trend (impact on employees/unions/corporate practises/does it actually create wealth etc). One of the problems that may arise is an 80s style increase in corporate raiders. I'm not making an argument in this thread as such, just pointing out an area that will potentially be of interest.