Supermarkets under the cosh
There'll be the sound of teeth gnashing in Cheshunt (home of Tesco) and other supermarket headquarters this morning as the Competition Commission has stoked the fires already started by the Office of Fair Trading. The CC has recommended changes to planning laws to ensure that one big supermarket is unable to dominate a whole area, sometimes by banking land to stop its rivals building there.
The CC has also said there should be an independent ombudsman to mediate in disputes between retailers and suppliers.
A couple of years ago, the supermarkets would have pretty confident about running rings around any such person but watchdogs seem to be acquiring teeth these days.
Over at the Office of Fair Trading boss John Fingleton seems to have taken a leaf out of the training manual of the Spanish Inquisition, launching a series of "raids" on supermarket head offices to try to find evidence of price fixing.
Tesco's Sir Terry Leahy, among others, will be furious. He reckons Tesco has done more than anyone to keep UK price inflation within reasonable limits over the past decade or so.
If suppliers suffer, then so be it.
Turning back the tide of supermarket dominance is probably beyond even the hyperactive Mr Fingleton (and no one supposes that we will ever revert to be a nation of small shopkeepers once again).
Tesco's market share has risen 10 points to just over 31% in the past decade, while independents’ share has dropped from 27% to 19%.
Actually the biggest threat to the remaining niche food retailers is a slowing economy that will see their customers trooping miserably into the supermarkets to try to save money.
Sales of organic produce in supermarkets are already slowing as soaring worldwide food prices (in part driven by those stage nasties the hedge funds) make even staples like bread and rice much more expensive.
Mervyn hammers the City boys
On the one hand you have the banks going cap in hand to the Bank of England saying please pump more liquidity into the system.
On the other you have beadle Mervyn King saying you can’t have any more (or not on the terms you want anyway) until you clean up your act.
Bank of England pressure has already helped to force Royal Bank of Scotland and, yesterday, Halifax Bank of Scotland into taPping their shareholders through whopping rights issues; surely Barclays and maybe even Lloyds TSB will come next.
The Bank of England has offered £50bn of extra liquidity to the markets in return for mortgage assets but it is pitched on pretty tough terms, so may not have the effect on the credit crunch lots of people hope for.
Speaking yesterday to the Commons Treasury Committee, King referred to the "unattractive" habit of bankers paying themselves too much.
His ostensible point was that their bonus culture led traders into taking wilder and wilder risks. If you manage to pass the parcel before the music stops, you can retire on the basis of a couple of years' bonuses before someone else gets landed with your damaged investment goods.
Which is roughly what's happened in the credit crunch.
But King was also making the rather more radical point that bankers pay themselves too much anyway; up to 60% of bank earnings goes on salaries and bonuses in some of the investment banks.
Turning back this particular tide (a bit like the OFT/Competition Commission with supermarkets) may be beyond King.
But it's a big hint to the shareholders investing in bank capital-raising exercises to try to ensure that all this money isn't blown on the next round of bonuses.
Is the oil bubble about to burst?
It's a good job oil executives don't pay themselves City-type bonuses or they'd be able to buy up the whole country.
This week Shell and BP produced record first-quarter profits (around £1bn each more than the market expected, a huge amount) purely on the back of the soaring oil price.
Pressure is mounting for some kind of control on this. If the oil companies won't narrow their margins when they're making more money than they know what to do with, then the government might do it for them.
Certainly a windfall tax would appeal to Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, although with the government under attack from all kinds of businesses for its costly and complicated tax regime (WPP is the latest big company to threaten to move its tax flag to Ireland) they might not have the guts.
The oil companies would argue that current prices are unsustainable (oil futures fell from $120 a barrel to $117 yesterday), being driven more by speculation than supply and demand.
So, strangely enough, the oil majors will be hoping for lower prices and lower profits too.
Stephen Foster is a former news editor of 北京赛车pk10, former editor of Marketing Week and Evening Standard ad columnist. He is a partner in Editorial Partnership and writes the blog and Politics of the Media for Brand Republic.