Forex trading store

We should have an election called this week, and if there was any doubt how the City was going to be treated, it was dispelled yesterday by Lord Mandelson, the business secretary.

He laid into Bob Diamond, the boss of Barclays Capital, describing him as the “unacceptable face of banking”, and lambasted him for being paid too much. This followed George Osborne’s attack on bankers earlier in the week during a television debate, where he vied with Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats to put the boot in. For bankers, this election is going to be a race to the bottom.

It won’t just be the banks. There are already signs that the attack is broadening to include big business and chief executives in general. Even Richard Lambert, the director-general of the CBI, the business lobby group, has given up trying to defend executive pay, saying that the people who run companies risk being seen as “aliens” if they continue in their well-paid ways. As we reveal this week, the latest alien to land among us is Frank Chapman, the boss of BG, who took home £28m last year.

Politicians have calculated, quite rightly, that there are more votes in going to war with the business elite than cosying up to it. The banks, in particular, will probably have to resign themselves to a bombardment throughout the campaign and it’s difficult for them to mount much of a comeback. If governments around the world hadn’t supported the banking system, none of you would be here, will be the refrain, so don’t take the micky by paying yourself outrageous amounts of money.

One of Mandelson’s bullets went astray. He said Diamond hadn’t built a business or created long-term value, but was just “shuffling paper around”. I think Diamond deserves more credit. Barclays Capital now employs 22,000 people and last year paid £10 billion in UK tax. You shouldn’t be sniffy about that, just because its employees aren’t blacksmiths.

Falklands furore WE reported last week how the first well being drilled in the Falklands by Desire Petroleum, the oil explorer, hadn’t found a commercial prospect. Our report came ahead of a company announcement to that effect later in the week and had a devastating effect on its shares, as our chart shows. Having closed the previous Friday on 100p, they opened trading last Monday morning at 40p. Ouch.

Some of Desire’s shareholders were furious, accusing us of everything from sloppy journalism to insider trading.

Let me give you the edited highlights of the emails sent to Danny Fortson, the reporter who broke the story.

“Due to Fortson’s column yesterday the share price has plummeted and I have lost all of my savings,” said Tony Gravener. Ian Ashworth said: “I am writing to advise you that I have just written to formally complain to the FSA about the article in yesterday’s paper.” David Kaye said: “This share carries the hopes of many current and ex-servicemen that the lives that were lost in saving a group of windswept islands in the South Atlantic were not all for nothing … if it turns out to be incorrect, I will never read the paper again.”

To calm the fears of the wilder conspiracy theorists, Fortson doesn’t have any interest in Desire shares. He is, however, a good reporter, and found out what the well report was going to say from contacts built up over a number of years of tracking the industry.

He did, in essence, what we expect our reporters to do. The story he wrote was accurate and, as he highlighted in the piece, was not the final word on Desire’s exploration efforts in the South Atlantic. It has more wells to drill, and said last week it would go a bit deeper on the first one to make doubly sure. Other companies will be drilling round the Falklands later in the year.

The surprising aspect of all this is that members of the public are happy to put money — and, if the correspondence is to believed, sizeable amounts that they can’t afford to lose — into risky shares.

Oil exploration shares are gambles. Nobody knows what is under the ground until the wells are drilled. You might get lucky and invest in a Tullow Oil or a Cairn Energy and double or triple your money. Or you might not. Even a cursory look at the Desire share price chart shows that it has already had one big boom and bust in its history.

And if you fervently believe that there is oil in Desire’s Falkland fields, you should be happy that the shares have crashed in reaction to one well result.

It’s a chance to double up your bet at a knockdown price.

Steeled for conflict INDEXES that track the price of iron ore are probably not your first choice of reading for an Easter Sunday. Iron ore is a boring, dirty, dusty substance — it is, after all, just red earth. But it is also the key ingredient in steelmaking and a staple of the world economy. Of late, it has been a much better investment than gold, silver or any of the precious metals.

Last week the TSI iron ore index (confusingly TSI stands for The Steel Index, an industry publication) hit its highest-ever point. It stands at $155 for a dry tonne of standard grade iron ore. The price a year ago was $55.

Normally you haven’t needed to pay much attention to this index as it tracked spot prices and big steel mills never paid the spot rate, setting lower prices in annual contract negotiations with BHP Billiton, Vale and Rio Tinto, the three big producers.

All that has changed. It looks like the recent round of annual negotiations will be the last and in the future, mill owners will have to pay prices more closely linked to the spot rate. This is big news for them, and for anyone who buys anything with steel in it — so just about everybody. If iron-ore prices climb, so do the prices of products made from it, such as cars, buildings and food cans.

Steelmakers are not happy. The World Steel Association, the trade body, said the iron-ore producers had “imposed” the changes, and that the lack of long-term, sensibly priced contracts would mean less investment in the industry. They also came mighty close to accusing the leading suppliers of operating a cartel, pointing out that the big three had 70% of the market for iron ore shipped by sea. “There is now an urgent need for the competition authorities around the world to examine the market for iron ore, and the market behaviour of the three companies that dominate the business,” the association said.

This is a dispute that has only just begun and will put some of the biggest industrial companies — and economies — in the world at odds.

dominic.oconnell@sunday-times.co.uk