Accounting niceties don’t fool investors

That, at least, is a twist on the official statements from Ireland and Greece, both of which insisted there would be no need for a bailout, right up to the moment the begging bowl came out.

However, with Portugal’s credit rating hovering one notch above junk status and with bond redemptions of €4.2 billion and €4.9 billion falling due this month and in June, it is a matter of when, not if, such a rescue is sought.

Adding to Portugal’s woes, and indeed Ireland’s, will be an interest rate rise next week. The European Central Bank seems certain to raise rates after yesterday’s surprisingly high consumer price inflation figures.

Both countries, after following recent distractions in Libya and Japan, are now back on investors’ radar.

Both should stop messing around and pursue a debt restructuring.

A very real fear of arrears

Those doubting that a modest increase in interest rates will severely affect the UK housing market and, by extension, consumer behaviour, should read the annual report and accounts published yesterday by UK Asset Resolution.

This publicly owned corporate skip, into which the “bad bank” parts of both Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley have been dumped, continues to provide home loans to some 610,000 borrowers with the former and a further 240,000 with the latter. They reveal that 38,515 mortgage customers, across both lenders, were more than three months in arrears at the end of 2010. A rise in interest rates is likely to push those numbers higher.

Nationwide Building Society pointed out yesterday that a one percentage point rise in interest rates would add a further £39 to the cost of a typical monthly mortgage payment. That may not sound like much but, with at least a quarter of all UK mortgage borrowers on a standard variable rate, it helps to explain why Richard Banks, UKAR’s chief executive, is warning that arrears are likely to start rising this year.

Rummage deeper into the skip and it emerges that 107,000 Northern Rock customers are in negative equity, more than one in six of the total, along with a further 65,000 Bradford & Bingley customers. No wonder UKAR modified lending terms with 44,000 of its borrowers last year. Should such customers default, it gets very ugly.

Losing the power struggle

So when, exactly, will that clean, green energy revolution we keep hearing about actually happen?

The Department of Energy & Climate Change revealed yesterday that UK carbon dioxide emissions actually rose last year. Given the aggressive targets for decarbonisation of the economy, a rise in CO2 pollution of 3.8 per cent is not small.

The pace at which industry bounced back during the second half of 2010 partly explains the rise. But it does not explain why, according to DECC, the proportion of electricity consumed that was provided by renewables fell, year on year, from 7 per cent to 6.9 per cent. Meanwhile, as Britain’s ageing nuclear fleet saw its contribution fall by 2 percentage points to 15.6 per cent, we burnt more coal, the dirty old man of the sector, which accounted for 28.4 per cent of power generated.

News that Scottish & Southern Energy — Britain’s most active clean energy investor — has hit planning, construction and geological problems at three of its standout wind and hydro projects is equally revealing.

DECC can talk a fancy game on the green energy revolution.

But the jury remains out whether it can be delivered, safely, affordably and in a timely fashion.

Buffett heir is not so apparent

Will the real successor to Warren Buffett please stand up? David Sokol, who has resigned from Berkshire Hathaway under a cloud, is just one of many names touted as a possible heir to the Sage of Omaha. Only last week, after Mr Buffett heaped praise on him, Ajit Jain, who runs Berkshire’s reinsurance operations, was being tipped. Before him it was Todd Combs, who was poached last October from hedge fund manager Castle Point Capital.

Then there is Matthew Rose, who joined Berkshire last year when it took over Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the railroad operator. Other potential candidates include Gregory Abel, who runs the Berkshire-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings and who was recently described by Mr Buffett as a “terrific manager” and Tony Nicely, head of Geico, the car insurer owned by Berkshire whose television commercials are inexplicably fronted by a gekko with a Cockney accent. Then there is Tad Montross, who runs General Re, Berkshire’s reinsurance business.

The truth is that no one really knows who will succeed Mr Buffett. The question is — does Mr Buffett?

Been there, done that?

It seems that Yuri Milner, the Russian chief executive of Digital Sky Technologies, who has amassed a fortune from his investments in internet companies such as Facebook, Groupon and Zynga, is just as keen on old-fashioned assets as new ones.

He has just been outed as the buyer of a 25,500 sq ft French château-style mansion in Los Altos Hills, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for which he paid $100 million. It is thought to be the highest price paid for a single-family home in the United States.

For some, it may be queasily reminiscent of the first dot-com boom, in which Gary Winnick, the former Global Crossing chairman, paid $90 million for a Bel Air home in 2000. The company sought bankruptcy protection less than two years later.