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UK schools have been surveyed in terms of examination performance and the top 1,000 schools have had their results published in a survey. Schools take part in this exercise, organized by the Financial Times, on a voluntary basis. Some schools place a higher proportion of candidates for vocational examinations and these have to be equated to the more academic Advanced Level examninations. School with fewer than ten candidates have been excluded due to the likelihood of statistical distortion.

UK schools have been surveyed and ranked according to examination performance using A-levels, the UK pre-university examination, as a guideline. Large single sex schools with a selective intake of academically able students have tended to perform well, but it is difficult to assess how much of their performance comes from initial selection. Able students will also encourage each other to perform well, reinforcing the impact of selection. Many state schools which do not use selction have performed well in this ranking.

State schools are gaining ground in a survey of the performance of schools in the United Kingdom, carried out by the Financial Times, and boarding schools have tended to perform less well than day schools. This may be due to the recession having reduced their market, thus pressurising them to become less selective. Single sex schools tend to perform well in academic terms, though may affect students' development in other ways. The survey examines 1,000 schools, and 23 publc sector schools were among the top 200 in 1993, compared with 3 public sector schools in 1992.

Potential investors should be very cautious when taking advice, as the financial services industry is becoming extremely competitive. It is very difficult to find a financial adviser who fully understands an individual's requirements, and many investors, particularly those living off their savings, have seen considerable difficulties over recent years. Those with large sums to invest shold regard tax as a very important issue, and the advantages and disadvantages of the various tax breaks available should be carefully considered.

Industry and the public sector are increasingly buying-in services, which is also referred to as outsourcing, contracting out, market testing, interim management, compulsory competitive tendering and facilities management. Traditionally, this has been restricted to non-core company activities, but it now includes some of the more basic activities of a company. Information Technology lends itself particularly well to contracting out and civil service contracts for information technology could be up to 750 million pounds sterling.

Adetailed evaluation of Chancellor Norman Lamont's March 1993 budget is presented. Tax increases on domestic power and fuel and car tax are sheduled for April 1994, but there are few changes for 1993 as the Chancellor does not wish to choke off economic recovery. The stamp duty threashold was doubled to 60,000 pounds sterling, the advance corporation tax will be phased out and a programme started for the long-term unemployed.

Charities are increasingly providing services that would formerly have been the obligation of government social services. Their donations income has not increased, however, due to the recession and public spending cuts may reduce financial support from the local authorities. The Charities Act passed in 1992 will strengthen the Charity Commissioners' powers to regulate the industry, will legally require accounts to be submitted and will increase regulations on fund raising activities.

In 1991, the Prince of Wales commissioned Sir John Fairclough to establish a working group on innovation to investigate methods of improving co-operation between academic and commercial research. Its proposals are also supported by the government, thus two new bodies, called Faraday institutes, will be set up. Because of a lack f funding, however, they run the risk of being of more use to marketing rather than innovation.

Lloyds of London, the insurance organisation, has reported losses for 1991, and Names are expected to pay losses of 1.35 billion pounds sterling for 1989. Many Names have left the syndicate and will be obliged to sell assets to meet claims. Lloyds of London wishes that the Lloyds Council will implement recommendations proposed by its taskforce which include altering the principle of unlimited liability and reviewing the system of governance.

An evaluation of Norman Lamont, the UK Chancellor's budget of March 1992 is presented. He has announced that a lower rate of taxation for the lower paid of 20% for the first 2,000 pounds sterling of taxable income will be introduced. Pensioners will have their allowance increased and the tax on new cars has been suspended to try to stimulate the industry. The government claims that the budget defecit will increase in the year 1992 to 1993. Exise duties on tobacco and leaded petrol have also been incresed.

Against expectations, 2010 has been the year when it was hard to lose money. Previous Long Views at this time of year detailed the exploits of Hindsight Capital LLC, a [...]

Are emerging market (EM) nations a better credit risk than western countries? As the FT's very own John Authers recently noted, there is now a sizeable group of institutions that [...]

We have been waiting for the bond vigilantes for two years. They are still not doing their damnedest but this week they appeared to be waking up. Vigilantes in the [...]

On the face of it, this was another awful week. The pressure on eurozone sovereign debt boiled over into a classic contagion crisis once investors decided they disliked the bail-out [...]

This year still has a month to go, but its greatest loser is already clear. This turns out to have been the year of the great chastening of the eurozone. [...]

'I can see our next problem,' the chairman of a large multinational told me the other day. 'It will be this: 'What are you going to do with your cash?'' [...]

Do we have the emerging markets all wrong? When money goes into China, Brazil and other hot destinations in the emerging world, traders call it a 'risk on' trade. Whenever [...]

Decoupling used to be a good thing. Throughout the years of the credit bubble, the belief that China and the rest of the emerging world had found a way to [...]

Was this week the watershed? Many different developments round the world suggested that it was - but left wholly unclear in which direction we are heading. In politics, the US [...]

It is easy to put a value on a company. All you need to do is foresee the future. If not, it is impossible. And that is where the problems [...]

I never enjoy writing about gold. It is not that I have anything against the metal; its importance to the financial system is undeniable. Over the past few years, gold [...]

When PD James, the English whodunit writer, turned her hand to predicting the future, she produced a terrifying read. In The Children of Men , she portrayed a future world [...]

Military analogies should be handled with care. As finance ministers from the most powerful nations prepare to meet this weekend, the talk was of a currency 'war'. What does this [...]

JOHN HENRY John W. Henry, the veteran US hedge fund manager and sports team owner who is poised to buy Liverpool football club, knows what it is to look failure [...]

Background When John Henry emerged as surprise winner of the 2002 auction for the Boston Red Sox, expectations were low. The hedge fund manager's previous baseball investments, the minor-league Tucson [...]

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. That simple idea has won at least one Nobel Prize in economics; the economist James Tobin said the work that won him [...]

Two years ago, it seemed that the world had changed utterly. After the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the week of wild trading that followed, this column was headlined 'Increased [...]

Traders and investors arriving back at work this week after the summer lull might as well have taken the whole year off. After eight months of trading, stocks and commodities [...]

The world trades in unison. Many bright people spend many long hours pondering which stocks, sectors or countries to buy but, of late, it scarcely seems to matter. You can [...]

What has happened to the Great Re-regulation? After the financial crisis, it was beyond argument that existing regulations had failed, and would need to be rethought. Only a few months [...]

Benoit Mandelbrot, a great mathematician who decades ago showed that the assumptions of modern finance were flawed, understood why investors would want to reject his ideas. Bubbles and crashes, he [...]

Do we gain anything by paying fund managers to try to beat the market? It is a central question of investment, and during the past two decades, the popular answer [...]

Something odd happened this week. The US Federal Reserve, the world's most powerful central bank, volunteered that inflation was coming down. This was not the week's most dramatic event. Only [...]

Cassio: Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. Othello, Act II Scene 3 The oil [...]

The financial world seems to turn faster on its axis every year. Inflated asset bubbles have burst in Japanese equities and real estate, in global tech stocks, and in US [...]

Stories - Extract In spring 2007, John Authers - then writing the FT's 'Short View' column - found himself trying to make sense of the looming global financial crisis through [...]

It was March 2007 when I realised that two of the world's markets held each other in a tight and deadly embrace. A week earlier, global stock markets had suffered [...]

Byron once dreamed that Greece might still be free. That ideal seems distant this weekend, as the crisis in the markets' confidence in Greek government debt has left the country's [...]

Negative feedback can be constructive. It can also be annoying and mistaken. Very occasionally, it is all three. Here, therefore, is my reply to a Mr Bull (I do not [...]

It is as though Lehman Brothers fell just yesterday. That at least is how the US stock market is behaving, as the S&P 500 - its most widely followed index [...]

How much of the blame for the financial crisis rests on the shoulders of investment managers? The role of bankers in the ghastly mess is well documented. But numerous asset [...]

So much for US traders hoping for a long weekend break for Easter. Positive jobs data yesterday could have provided some comfort that tomorrow's all-important payrolls data would live up [...]

In recent years, this column has followed Jewish tradition and asked four questions to celebrate Passover each year. For those not up to speed with Hebrew customs, Passover is the [...]

If Alistair Darling had tried to design a Budget to cause the minimum of market reaction, he could scarcely have done a better job. In the middle of intense anxieties [...]

Ten years on, what have we learnt? Last week's market coverage was dominated by the bursting of the tech bubble, which is now a decade in the past. Readers will [...]

Over the next few days, the Financial Times will be holding a series of 'Great Debates' in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, asking whether China will be a superpower in [...]

Over the next few days, the Financial Times will be holding a series of 'Great Debates' in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, asking whether China will be a superpower in [...]

News analysis After the peak of a decade ago, techs have yet to reclaim lost ground - but don't write off the sector, say John Authers and Michael Mackenzie In [...]

Some investment managers do better for you than others. Why? Traditionally, financial theorists approach this by dividing the components of a fund's performance into two. First, there is asset allocation [...]

One of the tiredest excuses in the investment world is to blame poor returns on the weather. Generally, in all but the very short term, there are far more important [...]