This piece is meant to be a review of the year, but the year 2010 has closed and 2011 opened, with a quite unusual focus on corruption. In the UK the long awaited Bribery Act has stalled after pressure from business, concerned that the Act’s provisions if enforced, would make trading overseas by the use of intermediaries uncertainly risky, made more so by the threat of prosecution for some forms of corporate hospitality and product or service promotion. This anxiety has apparently been heightened by the reality that facilitation or grease payments, frequently demanded, would be visited by penal sanctions. Overall, at a time of difficult economic conditions certain sections of British commerce feel that in its commitment to make the UK OECD compliant the government will render British business uncompetitive.