Indholdsfortegnelse for 1057 i MoneyWeek

“The UK pensions system is simple – until you hit an allowance limit. Then it’s admin hell” You’re a deeply-in-debt government. Your deficit is running at 11.8% of GDP. That’s not as bad as it could have been. But, given the national debt is now at its highest since the 1960s, it isn’t exactly good either. You’ve also made a lot of promises – green revolutions, levelling up, and the financing of social care. Your prime minister has promised that no one will have to sell their totemic “family home” to pay for the latter. What do you do? In an ideal world you’d find a pile of cash that, while technically owned by voters, is mostly inaccessible to them in the short term; that many don’t even know they…

Singles players at Wimbledon are competing for aprize of £1.7m, 28% lower than when the tournament was last held in 2019, “as tennis continues to grapple with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic”, says Samuel Agini in the Financial Times. The overall prize fund has been cut to £35m, a 5.2% drop from 2019. Street artist Banksy was stripped of two more trademarks for some of his most famous work after the EU’s Intellectual Property Office ruled his anonymity meant he could not secure copyright, says Steve Bird in The Daily Telegraph. Judges said he was claiming in “bad faith” and only “pretending” to want to trademark his pieces, after stating that IP laws are “for losers” and encouraging people to “copy, borrow, steal and amend” his work.…

Investors in the uranium market are having a “meltdown”, says Jinjoo Lee in The Wall Street Journal. A “performance issue” reported at China’s Taishan nuclear power plant has sent prices of uranium miners down by 10%. The incident seems to have been a “routine operational issue”, with “no abnormal radiation” reported in nearby Hong Kong or Macau. Any story involving the words “nuclear” and “leak” gives investors painful flashbacks to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. That incident precipitated a long-term drop in nuclear fuel demand as countries such as Germany began to de-nuclearise. Global nuclear electricity generation “has recovered over the last five years to pre-Fukushima levels”, says Eoin Treacy of Fuller Treacy Money. Decarbonisation will bring “a significant increase in demand for electricity” over the coming years. Nuclear fuel…

Investors facing miserable yields on government debt can opt to take on more risk in return for a higher yield. Yet with US inflation at 5% year-on-year last month, even buying risky “junk bonds” provides little protection, says John Authers on Bloomberg. Junk bonds are issued by companies and countries with a credit rating below “investment-grade”, which implies a higher risk of default. This chart shows the real yield (the yield minus annual US consumer price inflation) on the Bloomberg Barclays US Corporate High Yield bonds index. “For the first time on record, even junk bonds [are] yielding less than inflation”. Such bonds are also known as “high-yield” bonds, but that name looks “increasingly inappropriate”.…

Abu Dhabi is preparing for its first initial public offering (IPO) since 2017. Satellite operator Al Yah Satellite Communications, known as Yahsat ,will float next month, say Nicolas Parasie and Manus Cranny on Bloomberg. It is fully owned by the kingdom’s $243bn sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, which plans to list more assets locally as part of an effort to bolster the domestic equity market and “diversify the economy away from oil”. Yahsat notched up sales of $408m in 2020, “underpinned by long-term UAE government contracts”. Mubadala is also considering floating Emirates Global Aluminium PJSC.…

Soho House has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in New York that is “expected to value the celebrity members’ club chain at more than $3bn”, says Dominic Walsh in The Times. The group will list under the name of the Membership Collective Group, reflecting the “variety of venues and services” it now offers. These not only include the “twenty-eight Soho House members’ clubs and nine Soho Works workspaces”, but also “The Ned hotel and members’ club in London, the Scorpios beach club in Mykonos and Soho Home, an online platform that sells the products used in its properties”. Lockdowns “hit the company hard”, say Jack Sidders and Crystal Tse on Bloomberg. Sales fell from $642m in 2019 to $384m in 2020. While the firm has never been able…

In a “disappointing twist” for French president Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, both “fared worse than expected” in the first round of regional elections, say Ania Nussbaum and Samy Adghirni on Bloomberg. Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) party won about 19% of the vote overall, almost ten points behind her score in the last election. Macron’s En Marche party, which ran in regional elections for the first time since its creation in 2016, did even worse, taking around 11% of votes. The contest is the last nationwide race before the presidential ballot next April. A new image does little for Le Pen The results are a big setback for Le Pen – she was hoping that her party could build on gains in last…

The Morrisons takeover promises plenty of high-stakes drama (see page 7). The buy-out firm, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, (CD&R) has already tabled an offer worth almost £9bn once the company’s debt is included. Sir Terry Leahy, the man who ran Tesco during its glory years, is on board as an adviser, and may well make a return to the sector where he made his name. The offer was rejected, but on Monday morning the shares were up more than 30% on the prospect of a takeover battle for the chain. Welcome the foreign asset-strippers It is far from alone. Asda has already been bought by the Issa Brothers along with TDR Capital. UDG Healthcare has received a £2.8bn offer, also from CDR. KKR is trying to buy John Laing for…

Supermarket chain Morrisons is the highest-profile UK-listed company to be targeted by private equity this year (see pages 7 and 16). But it’s by no means the first – and it almost certainly won’t be the last. As the Financial Times points out, private-equity firms have now bid for 13 UK-listed businesses since the start of 2021, the highest figure since 1999. If you include private firms in the UK too, the figure rises to 345, the highest on record (going back to 1984). “Fund managers fear private equity is getting assets cheap” What’s driving this? On the demand side, private equity has access to lots of very cheap debt, while institutional investors are crying out to invest in private-equity funds, which can’t just sit on all that cash once…

Many investors rightly adopted a wait-and-see attitude when Biopharma Credit (LSE: BPCR) raised $762m in its March 2017 flotation. The prospective return of 8%-9%, including a dividend yield of 6%, looked attractive, but how risky were its returns? BPCR’s manager, Pharmakon, is a specialist lender to the life-sciences sector, having invested $4.7bn in 40 transactions over 12 years. This, Pharmakon says, is a $1.1trn industry growing at 6% per annum. The loans to companies are “predominantly secured on approved, commercial-stage products” but the servicing and repayment of the loans is dependent on their success. An average rate of return in double figures implies a material risk of the products not selling. Thirteen top investments Pedro Gonzalez de Cosio, CEO of Pharmakon, says that companies have to move fast to capitalise…

A right to WFH is ludicrous Jeremy Warner The Daily Telegraph Brexit was supposed to lead to deregulation, so why is the government reportedly suggesting making remote working a legal right? asks Jeremy Warner. This is a “ludicrously right-on and potentially destructive idea”. Yes, the pandemic has shown that working from home (WFH) is a “perfectly viable way of operating” –for some. But it is also “far from satisfactory” and if continued would “permanently impair many city centres” and create a “kind of slackers’ charter”. More disturbing, it would reinforce the “almost dystopian idea of a two-tiered workforce”, which has emerged during the Covid-19 crisis, of the generally well-heeled, well-paid and protected middle classes and the “horny-handed” men and women of toil, obliged to work in high-contact jobs. “To effectively…

cato.org/blog Most research on the minimum wage has focused on whether firms cut jobs or hours, says Ryan Bourne. But there are other options for firms seeking to mitigate raised costs. A new study in the US compared how a medium-sized fashion retail chain in California coped with a hike in the minimum wage compared with its stores in Texas, astate which did not raise its wage floor. It found that raised wages had no impact on overall hours worked at the Californian store. Looking only at that metric, you might conclude that the minimum wage is an unvarnished success. Yet the researchers found that the business made other changes instead – it used more workers working shorter hours, saving the company money by reducing the number of workers eligible…

It’s hard to believe it’s been six months since I wrote Five Aim stocks with plenty of potential for 2021 (27 December 2020). We’re now closer to next Christmas than the miserable last one. But money never sleeps – and neither should you when it comes to stock picking. The market moves constantly. Being asleep at the wheel is a cardinal sin when managing your own money. The five stocks I picked in December have done well. Four have risen and two have doubled. It would be easy to proclaim my own genius, but the reality is that all stocks have performed strongly. What’s more, these are investment ideas, and rarely does an investment thesis play out over a six-month sprint. Let’s look at how they have performed before moving…

Unlike previous setbacks to the UK’s efforts to reopen its economy, the latest four-week delay on easing lockdown will not be accompanied by further support for businesses. While many companies now face extra costs, having expected the remaining Covid-19 restrictions to fall away this week, they will not be able to claim any additional financial relief during the period up to 19 July, when lockdown is now due to end. This is problematic for many companies still struggling with the impact of Covid-19. That includes firms hit directly – those in hospitality, for instance, where the most stringent restrictions still apply – and also those indirectly affected. They may be hampered by changes in consumers’ behaviour, say, or ongoing supply-chain disruption. Across the board, businesses are conscious that the existing…

There have been sizeable gains in stockmarkets since last year’s Covid-19-induced lows, but there remains ample opportunity to make handsome returns as economic activity rebounds. Yes, some of the low-hanging fruit has been picked (and much of it from the floor), but as a longterm investor I’m thinking beyond the next year, compounding returns into the future. British equities are benefiting from a double tailwind: amore positive post-Brexit outlook and the strong performance of cyclical sectors since the discovery of the vaccines heralded an economic recovery. Factor in the UK’s successful vaccination programme and our prospects look as good as they have for some time. A different kind of kettle chip Strix Group (Aim: KETL) might not be a household name, but you are likely to be using its technology.…

Prices are information. They are meant to put their hand on the Bible and swear to tell us the truth about what things are worth and what they cost. When the feds “inflate” the currency, they suborn the witness. Yet, despite the arm-twisting, bribery, and tomfoolery, the numbers are beginning to move forward. Inflation is on the rise. In the US, durables were up more than 10% in May 2021 compared with May 2020. Nondurables rose 7.4%. Services, not including energy, gained 2.9%. And energy itself rose 28.5%. Now what do Federal Reserve governors say? “Don’t listen to them; they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re just passing through… Things will be back to normal soon.” “Inflation is more like a handgun than amurder – a means to an…

The UK’s biggest producer of cannabis for pharmaceutical usage is urging the government to make changes to post-Brexit immigration policy as it struggles to recruit seasonal workers, reports the Financial Times. British Sugar, which supplies US company Jazz Pharmaceuticals with ingredients for anti-epilepsy drugs from an 18-hectare site in Norfolk, has been unable to use a pilot scheme to recruit seasonal workers. The scheme, which allowed UK farmers to bring in up to 30,000 workers from abroad for up to six months, is meant to help replace short-term workers who previously were recruited under the EU’s freedom of movement regime. However, it is not open to those who grow non-edible crops. The shortages come as investment into cannabis companies has surged, following the legalisation by several countries of the use…

Has Jerome Powell turned into a hawk? The chair of the US Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, has repeatedly insisted that surging inflation is “transitory” and that monetary policy must be kept ultra-loose for the foreseeable future. The annual rate of US inflation hit a 13-year high of 5% last month, while other data also shows that the US economy is red-hot. Hence a rethink: last week Powell finally acknowledged that “inflation could turn out to be higher and more persistent than we expect”. The end of the reflation trade Fed policymakers have signalled that they expect to hike interest rates twice in 2023, earlier than previously suggested. While that seems far off, the mere hint that the Fed is taking inflation more seriously was enough to send markets into…

“When prices are zooming up... the easiest way to tolerate other people getting rich is to assume that it’s because they’re getting temporarily rewarded for stupidity. On the way down, bubbles generate even more commentary; the pessimists were vindicated... But... though the term ‘bubble’ is usually pejorative, the right kind of bubble... can exert a powerful positive effect on the world. A bubble is [a] shared belief in a better potential future... The first big smartphone bubble... was [based on] Apple’s conviction that a... touch-based, internet-connected device could be put in the hands of millions of consumers for a few hundred dollars... The first demos of the touch interface... were incredibly clunky... but it was rapidly refined into something that worked the way it should.” Byrne Hobart, future.a16z.com…

Three to buy Lennar Barron’s Lennar is one of America’s top homebuilders, and it looks poised to benefit from the country’s “severe shortage” of housing. Lennar reported strong quarterly results last week, showing that demand remains robust. The company also operates a house-rental business and will benefit from the increase in people leaving apartments for more spacious homes. On a price/earnings(p/e) ratio of just eight, this is a “multiyear opportunity”. $98 Sage The Daily Telegraph Renowned fund manager Terry Smith has sold his fund’s stake in this business-software group, but it has “a bright future”. The firm is transitioning from selling its software as a one-time purchase to providing it as a service hosted in the cloud. The shift “requires investment”, but after a year or two investors “will have…

• Last week, Made.com floated with a market value of £775m, says Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. But “all the velvet armchairs in the world” can’t justify the online furniture retailer’s price tag. Despite the hype about a “pandemic boom” that boosted sales to £315m last year, the group remains unprofitable. And can the boom in sales endure “as... people start buying in shops again”? If in-person buying returns, Made.com’s “couple of showrooms in central London and West Yorkshire”, won’t be much help. • Japanese semiconductor makers are losing market share to foreign rivals, says Lex in the Financial Times. They specialise in less sophisticated chips used for data storage at a time when semiconductors “are becoming smaller and more advanced”. Taiwanese and South Korean firms dominate the market…

On Sunday, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iran’s president in an “engineered election” where all but four of 600 candidates had been barred from standing, says The Guardian. In an “all-time nadir” for a presidential race in the Islamic Republic, turnout fell drastically – only 26% voted in Tehran; 3.7 million spoiled their ballots. Raisi, who played a key role in “the summary and extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners” in 1988 and oversaw a “brutal crackdown” in 2019, is seen as a “protégé” of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. His election represents a “fundamental shift” in the balance of power towards the clerics. Still, a conservative regime in Tehran, “with theocrats and elected officials on the same page”, should makes the forthcoming nuclear talks with world powers “easier”,…

• Just over a third of Whitbread’s shareholders voted against the company’s pay report, which handed Alison Brittain (pictured), the boss of Whitbread-owned Premier Inn hotels, a £729,000 annual bonus despite the company falling to a £1bn loss last year, says This Is Money. In total, Whitbread planned to dish out £1.5m in performance-related payouts, including £492,000 for financial director Nicholas Cadbury. The vote is “embarrassing” for Whitbread, which received £250m in support from taxpayers during the pandemic –it comes less than two years after a similar revolt over executives’ pay. • Gemfields, the Aim-listed parent company of Fabergé, was heading for a confrontation with shareholders ahead of its annual meeting this week, says The Times. Advisory groups Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services both urged investors to reject the…

Private equity simply refers to an ownership stake in a company that is not publicly listed. Private-equity investors (usually backed by big institutions, although there are also listed private-equity funds that small investors can buy easily) either invest in unlisted companies, or buy listed companies – typically ones that are seen to be underperforming – and take them private. Private-equity managers aim to be very hands-on owners, unlike traditional shareholders in listed companies. By working with unlisted (or de-listed) companies, the private-equity owner escapes the short-term focus of the equity markets. In theory, this gives them the space and time needed to make the companies more efficient (if the company is a “turnaround” play) or to “unlock its true value” by pursuing a longer-term or more radical strategy than public…

Legal &General Investment Management (LGIM) has called on Irish food giant Kerry, whose offerings range from dairy products and enzymes to cocoa, to do more to “underpin its green credentials”, says Eoin Burke-Kennedy in the Irish Times – even though Kerry has done “better than its industry peers in settling sustainability targets”. LGIM, which wants the group to shift its portfolio “towards lower climate-impact alternatives”, was also part of the “shareholder rebellion” against Shell’s climate strategy last month. It has subjected 130 companies to voting sanctions this year after they failed to meet minimum climate-change standards and blacklisted four companies for failing to take action on climate change.…

“There was almost nothing she loved so much as pottering around M&S buying knickers.” Rory Green on her mother Jackie Collins (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “At the Daily Express in the 1950s one Middle East correspondent submitted his [expenses] – one camel: £125. The narrow-eyed managing editor pointed out that if the camel was bought, it must have been sold, and they would be grateful if the claim was adjusted. Another form turned up 30 minutes later – burying a dead camel: £200.” Kelvin Mackenzie, writing in The Spectator “Why have we not grown any giant companies? I’m not expecting everybody to be like Jeff Bezos... It seems to me there is a real problem here… The FTSE 100 is really a 19th century and not even a…

spectator.co.uk The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge pulled up at an event recently in an old jalopy with sagging springs, ill-fitting doors and seats consisting of a metal box with a thin covering of plastic-covered foam, says Simon de Burton. But it’s not just English royals who love their classic Land Rovers. “The agricultural relics, which demand the limbs of Hercules to steer and stop, drink like the late Oliver Reed and leak more oil than the Exxon Valdez, have been adopted as expressions of four-wheeled chic by every well-to-do type imaginable.” As a result, the price of old Land Rovers of all types has gone through the roof. A new limited-edition model produced by Land Rover’s “Heritage” division is priced at an “insane” £195,000. Most buyers are deluded into…

No matter how good a stock’s story sounds , always go through the financial statements properly. Many people spend more time trying to save £50 on a television than they do on researching where they’re putting their hard-earned cash. Is it any wonder some investors lose money? Management teams are well aware of this and along with trying to shift debits from the profit and loss statement into a credit on the balance sheet, they will hide what they don’t want you to see where they know you won’t look: their annual report. Before investing in any company, you should take some time to go through at least the most recent annual report. I like to print the two most recent annual reports and read the older one first so…

The government has announced an extension of the ban on commercial evictions introduced during the pandemic. The ban had been due to be lifted on 30 June but will now apply until March 2022. But while this is a vital lifeline for businesses struggling with the fallout from Covid-19, it does not stop landlords getting tough. This is because the moratorium on evictions does not require landlords to negotiate with their tenants over how rent arrears should be settled. Many landlords have agreed deals, but others are refusing to compromise. And if a landlord wants to play hardball, the law remains on their side. Some landlords are still taking tenants to court over rent arrears, even if they cannot yet secure eviction orders. Still, the best bet for tenants and…

Kin and Carta (LSE: KCT) advises companies “on how best to exploit digital technology”, says Proactive Investors. Its latest trading update revealed soaring demand for its services as the economy begins to recover and companies attempt to make themselves as internet-accessible as possible. Revenue for the year to July is set to grow by 10% to £150m, and profits are expected to rise by up to 40% to £14.5m. A“backlog of orders” presages sales growth of around 20% over the next year. The shares have soared by 286% over the last 12 months.…

How did it begin? Tom Petters was born in 1957 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. After dropping out of St. Cloud State College after only one semester and working at a job selling Yellow Pages advertisements, Petters moved to Colorado, working for a chain of discount electronics stores, five of which he later bought only for them to go bankrupt. He then set up a company selling pills to cure hangovers. In 1993 he set up three companies: Petters Company Inc (PCI), Petters Group Worldwide (PGW) and PAC Funding. Later he would set up a string of companies selling discounted goods, including online retailer RedTag. What was the scam? PGW and PAC borrowed large amounts of money from investors at high interest on the understanding that it would be loaned to…

The Aristocracy of Talent How Meritocracy Made the Modern World Adrian Wooldridge Allen Lane, £25 In recent years politics has been characterised by a widespread feeling of revulsion at the elites, says John Lloyd in the Financial Times. Several books have argued that modern life is dominated – economically, socially and culturally, and to an excessive extent – by the highly educated, who then “monopolise the top positions” and get richly rewarded as a result. In The Aristocracy of Talent, Adrian Wooldridge leaps to the defence of these modern-day “aristocrats of talent”, arguing that, although inequalities can result, “throwing out the meritocratic baby with the populist bathwater” would be a big mistake, both morally and practically. Wooldridge’s “robust defence of meritocracy” looks at how the idea has evolved from Plato’s…

$2.7bn How much MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is donating to 286 organisations involved with racial injustice, education and the arts, in her latest, third round of charitable giving. Last year, she gave away $6bn. 27 The percentage of total payments that were made using contactless methods, such as via smartphones, last year, representing a 12% increase to 9.6 billion, according to banking industry body UK Finance. In 2016, 7% of payments were contactless. The number of people registered to use their devices for contactless transactions has risen by more than seven million in 12 months, accelerating the “death of cash”. $37m The asking price for Tesla founder Elon Musk’s ten-bedroom mansion in San Francisco, boasting a ballroom, formal banquet room, flower-arranging room and library.…

The world’s third-largest gem-quality diamond, a 1,098 carat stone, was unearthed in Botswana by Debswana Diamond Co., a unit of De Beers, reports Mbongeni Mguni on Bloomberg. Only the Cullinan diamond (discovered in South Africa in 1905) and the Lesedi la Rona (found in Botswana in 2015) are larger. Excitement for numismatists as a 23-carat gold coin known as a “leopard”, thought to have been lost after the Black Death, was found by a metal detectorist in Norfolk, says Arthi Nachiappan in The Times, with another gold coin called a “noble”. The coins, which would have had spending power of about £12,000 in today’s money, likely came from an owner from “the wealthiest levels of society”. They were pulled from circulation shortly after being minted in 1344.…

The pandemic has made the global rich richer, as Wirtschaftswoche points out: endless money printing has inflated the value of assets such as equities. It also stopped them shopping for luxury goods, but they are now returning to stores. Sales at Richemont, the Geneva-based group whose 20 exclusive brands include the jeweller Cartier and the watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne, bounced by 30% year-on-year to €3.5bn in the first quarter of 2021. E-commerce and Asian sales were especially impressive. The group looks well placed to keep cashing in on rising global wealth. It boasts net cash of €3.4bn, which will allow it to go on its own shopping spree.…

Shares in Wm Morrison, Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket, surged by 30% on Monday following a takeover approach from US private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), says Jonathan Eley in the Financial Times. CD&R’s 230p-a-share offer gives Wm Morrison an enterprise value of £8.7bn. It has rejected the approach, claiming it “significantly undervalued” its business and prospects. The only surprise about CD&R’s approach “is that it has taken so long for a bidder to emerge”, say Andrea Felsted and Chris Hughes on Bloomberg. This is because pandemic shopping habits, combined with “lacklustre” share-price performances, have made grocers “alluring buys” What’s more, Wm Morrison has “all the ingredients” to be an “attractive” target, with “almost £5.8bn of freehold property” on its books, compared with the pre-bid market capitalisation of £4.3bn. And relations…

Five years after the Brexit referendum, what does the “balance sheet” look like? asks Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian. “Two weakened unions, the British and the European,” and tensions between them. Economically, some of the negative consequences are “emerging from the Covid-19 fog”, with figures revealing a decline in food and drink exports to the EU by nearly 50% in the first quarter of 2021. One study estimates services exports were “cumulatively £113bn lower over the four years between 2016 and 2019”. Although it is “less immediately obvious” that the EU has been weakened, the loss of a large and influential member is considerable and levels of Euroscepticism are “alarmingly high in core member states”, not because of Brexit, but because of “concerns similar to those that drove many…

France is due to hold a presidential election next April. The latest results in the French regional elections may not have been good for incumbent Emmanuel Macron and his party (see main story), but he still remains the clear favourite to be re-elected president. Betfair punters have him at 1.77 (56.5%), far-right rival Marine Le Pen (pictured) in second place at 4.5 (22.2%) and the centre-right Xavier Bertrand and centre-left Arnaud Montebourg in third and fourth places at 9 (11.1%) and 10 (10%) respectively. As I’ve said before, I think punters are overestimating the chances of Le Pen winning the presidency. Although polls currently have her neck-and-neck with Macron in the first round, they still show Macron beating her in the run-off, with a gap between the two currently at…

Mark Carney was paid £557,786 as governor of the Bank of England for the year to the end of February 2021, making him the second highest-paid official at the Bank, despite only working for 14 days – from 1 March to the 15th, says Philip Aldrick in The Times. That figure includes a one-off £113,821 relocation expense to move back to Canada. The pay was for the six months during which he was restricted from taking another job. He also got close to half the £250,000 annual housing allowance he negotiated on joining the Bank in 2013, along with £25,846 for 14 days’ holiday he was owed, and £60,890 in pension contributions. Taxpayers do not foot the bill directly because the Bank makes a profit from its activities. During his…

Small investors who have bought into the excitement around cryptocurrencies and so-called “meme” stocks such as video game chain GameStop and cinema operator AMC, are likely to suffer massive losses when the “mother of all crashes” comes, reckons hedge fund manager Michael Burry. Burry, who made a fortune – and his reputation – by betting on rising US mortgage defaults during the global financial crisis in 2008 (his trades feature in the book and film The Big Short) was writing on social media website Twitter. “When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, #MainStreet losses will approach the size of countries. History ain’t changed,” he posted in a series of tweets he has since deleted, reports Charlie Wells on Bloomberg. Burry arguably helped to create…

■ Schroders has launched the Schroder ISF BlueOrchard Emerging Markets Climate Bond fund in partnership with BlueOrchard, an investment manager. It will invest mainly in emerging-market green bonds and attempt to align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Green bonds are focused on “green” and socially beneficial projects such as renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean transportation. Emerging markets are highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, while overall green bond issuance is expected to double from $1trn in 2020 to $2trn by 2023. Climate change is a “key threat”, says Schroders, and the fund will “allow investors to play a direct role in its abatement”. It will draw on Schroders’ expertise across its public and private markets and will also benefit from BlueOrchard’s independently verified environmental, social…

thereformedbroker.com People who argue that the current uptick in inflation will be temporary are missing something, says Joshua Brown. When a recession hits, companies fire staff rather than cut wages because if they did the latter they’d be stuck with lots of depressed and angry workers doing the same job for less money. A bonus can be cancelled; pay rises can’t. They stick. Customers of businesses currently raising wages to attract staff will therefore see rising prices, and these won’t be reversed because the wage rises can’t be. And wages will continue to rise because there aren’t enough people ready to take all the jobs that currently need to be filled. So will the inflation rise be transitory? Rising prices of petrol, lumber, copper and used cars – the stuff…

The 30-person cap on marriage ceremonies in England and Wales was scrapped this week. But weddings are still puritanical affairs, with tight curbs on singing and dancing. Social distancing must be respected, which can limit guest numbers. In Scotland hard limits are still in place and depend on the “protection level” in force in the local area. The removal of the 30-person cap is a relief to couples, who have avoided the heart-breaking prospect of having to disinvite people over the guest limit. But some will still postpone the big day. The new rules are “like giving you a trifle and not putting the jelly in it”, Kathy Leather from Malvern, who with her partner has decided to postpone her wedding, tells the BBC. “You can’t have a celebration without…

• No business will be legally required to allow its staff to work from home, say ministers. It was reported last week that employees will be given a legal right to work from home in post Covid-19 employment-law reforms. But the government insists that while workers could be given a right to request such arrangements, employers would not be forced to say yes. Around two-thirds of businesses expect to retain more flexible working arrangements even after the pandemic, research from the Institute of Directors suggests, but business groups are adamant that such arrangements should be negotiated, rather than dictated by employees. • A new scheme from UK Export Finance, the government’s export-credit agency, could help many more companies increase overseas trade, ministers say. The agency’s new General Export Facility guarantees…

Cloud-computing company Iomart (Aim: IOM) was hit by the pandemic as people began to work from home, says stockmarketwire.com; many of its projects take place in companies’ offices. The group’s organic cloud-services revenue also fell as Covid-19 reduced corporate spending. The upshot was that pre-tax profits fell by 26% to £12.5m in the year to 31 March 2021; sales declined by 0.6% to £111.9m. While the company is offering a dividend of 4.5p per share, which represents a9% increase from the year before, the stock still costs a fifth less than a year ago.…

2018 Susana Balbo, Brioso Single Vineyard, Agrelo, Mendoza, Argentina £22, thewinesociety.com I usually prefer the entry-level red wines from the top Argentinian wineries to their top-of-the-range creations. More often than not the expensive wines are excessively concentrated and raucously overoaked. Not so the wines from Susana Balbo. I listed her wines back in the Nineties on my Bibendum Restaurant wine list and she was so pleased she paid me a visit. Susana is not obsessed with scale and power in her reds, but with complexity, harmony and length. Try her 2020 Susana Balbo Tradición Malbec (£12, Marks & Spencer) to get you in the mood for my featured wine. Brioso is the finest Argentinian red I can remember tasting. It is deep, long, controlled and luxurious, and every element of…

• In TV’s Life on Mars a policeman travels back in time from 2006 to work with tough 1970s copper DCI Gene Hunt (pictured), says Ruth Sunderland in the Daily Mail. If such time travel were to happen in reverse, Hunt would today be “amazed by technology, woke culture, a lack of kipper ties –and the alarm over inflation”. The 2.1% rate would seem “inconceivably low”. Inflation peaked at 27% ayear in 1975 when “Hunt was screeching around in his mud brown Ford Cortina”. So why the fuss? The official line is that inflation is temporary. It would be comforting if that were true. But no one under 60 has any lived adult experience of rampant price rises and their corrosive effects, economically and socially. “We trifle with inflation at…