“If there is going to be a rally, it certainly won’t be in the UK. People are looking at this country and seeing that we have one of the least enthusiastic chancellors towards business.”He said he was confident that the FTSE would be up in five or two years’ time, but admitted he could not give such a guarantee for this year – or even this week.A bigger issue is whether the current gloom will affect the wider economy. Mr Barrie said the falls were not driven by the state of the UK economy, which was robust “In fact it is the other way round,” he said. “Business investment is already down and the impact on pension funds could feed through to the consumer.”The other sector that is suffering is the City itself. The Treasury has already had to cut its forecasts for tax revenues because of the impact on profits and bonus payments. Yesterday, the Centre for Economic and Business Research said that one in 10 City workers – 35,000 people – would lose their jobs in the downturn.This would in turn feed through to further falls in house prices at the top end of the London market. Yesterday Hometrack, a property website, said prices had fallen 0.5 per cent in January across swaths of the capital..

Sir Howard Davies was in too much of a hurry at Davos yesterday to give reporters his considered views on the continuing market meltdown and disappeared before he could be collared. That is the point at which some of the bigger life companies become forced sellers of equities once more and so fuel the vicious cycle which has seen the London market lose half its value since the peak in December 1999.They have sold off so many shares in the past 18 months – £25bn worth is the FSA’s estimate – that even the sharp fall with which London has begun the new year is not yet testing solvency margins. Suggestions that a big life fund was selling shares very heavily were again rumoured but not confirmed.So the big boys look alright for the time being. Either they still have decent reserves or were able to tap the market for more capital before the tap was turned off.The FSA is much less sangu- ine about a lot of smaller life companies for whom 3,500 was the trigger for the alarm bell to start ringing.

The City regulator is now writing to them demanding to know what their action plan is and, if they have not got one, making a few suggestions.These consist of taking in less business, closing to new business altogether or reducing bonuses. Alternately, they could cut the dividend and/or attempt to secure new capital. Since many of life funds which the FSA is worried about are mutual organisations, the latter two options are not readily available. So it looks quite likely that there will be a lot more pain to come in the months ahead and, quite possibly, a number of failures in the life sector.As for everyone else, we can only watch and wait and reflect on the old adage that shares never decline in a straight line, even in the worst bear market. Do they?Golden goodbyesWhat’s this? A Tory MP demanding a crackdown on fat cat executive pay-offs And not just any old Tory MP either. The call comes from Archie Norman who, unlike most of his fellow MPs, knows what it’s like in the rough and tumble world of business where you can lose your job at any moment and not just every five years.Mr Norman’s Private Member’s Bill to end “payments for failure” has some impressive backers but it has not got the support of the Government and is therefore destined to fail. Which is rather a pity.Labour had a lot to say about boardroom pay when it was in opposition and a very effective weapon it proved too in attacking the soft underbelly of the Conservatives and the excesses of some of their business allies.Since being elected, however, the issue of executive pay is the dog that did not bark.