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One should not treat investors or a person who has set up an industry and is a successful businessman as criminals in this country. I am fully aware that everybody has a right to succeed, and success should be with ethics.

Once you privatize something, it becomes a for-profit business.

You can't have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

Do I think it is good policy for the government to own companies? Normally, I'd say 'no.' But in my world, if a firm puts itself in a position that it needs a last minute rescue, and the future is uncertain at best, then the investor who steps into that breach ends up owning the company. Full stop.

Our criteria is that it's okay to invest in companies so long as they stop lobbying in Washington, stop exploring for new hydrocarbons, and sit down with every one else to plan to keep 80 percent of the reserves in the ground.

Governments take too long to get things done and there are far too many varied interests at stake. If you were starting a business today and needed a partner, you would never choose a large bureaucratic institution like the government.

I am not in favour of the takeover of excellent and strategically important British companies by struggling foreign firms whose actions are fuelled by tax avoidance, and who want to asset-strip the intellectual property of the British company and then dismember it.

People should have an escape valve for their money, their assets. If you have substantial financial assets, the government is going to confiscate the purchasing power of those assets and spend it.

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.