Indholdsfortegnelse for 1058 i MoneyWeek

“There’s a reason why US banks have already asked all New York staff back to their desks” Should you go back to the office, or lobby to keep working from home indefinitely? Part of the answer might lie in the productivity levels of classical composers. In a 2011 academic paper, Karol Jan Borowiecki of Trinity College Dublin looked at how much they produced when they worked alone compared to how much they produced when they lived in a geographic cluster. The answer should, I think, have you planning your return to your own cluster as quickly as possible. Prominent classical composers born between 1750 and 1899 were approximately 33% more productive when in a cluster: they created on average one more work every three years than they might have otherwise,…

Hundreds of visitors to Brighton Palace Pier were charged more than £2,100 for tickets by mistake after payment company Worldpay removed the equivalent of the transaction date, rather than the ticket price, from their accounts, says The Guardian. The company is currently processing refunds, but “compounded the anger of customers” after refusing to engage with those who contacted it “on the grounds of data protection”, according to the newspaper. A competition winner who found one of ten “solid gold” beer cans (pictured) “was left feeling short-changed” when he learned it was only gold-plated and worth about £500 rather than the £15,000 claimed, says Sean Seddon on Metro. Mark Craig won the can in a case of beer from BrewDog. The company apologised, claiming that the “solid gold” claim “was a…

Fears that the US is being overrun by corporate zombies may be exaggerated, says Alexandra Scaggs in Barron’s. Many analysts have argued that the US Federal Reserve’s decision to buy junk bonds (debt with a higher risk of default) during the crisis last year helped prop up companies that should have been allowed to fail. “Heavily indebted, cash-strapped firms” have been able to stagger on, “only surviving because of low interest rates”, say critics. Yet the data doesn’t necessarily suggest this is true. The value of outstanding bonds from firms that don’t currently earn enough to cover their interest costs and aren’t early-stage growth businesses where profits should rise was $30bn at the end of 2020, down from $70bn in 2019, reckons Michael Puempel of Goldman Sachs. Much of the…

Transporting goods around the world is becoming far more expensive. The price for shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Rotterdam – a benchmark trade route from China to Europe – hit $11,975 last week, a 626% rise since the same time last year, according to shipping consultants Drewry. Disruption from the pandemic – a shortage of containers in the right places, a lack of workers in key ports and cuts by shipping companies to capacity on major routes – has combined with strong demand as economies reopen and firms try to rebuild their inventories. While transport costs for a container are normally tiny compared to the value of the goods they carry, such a large increase may now feed through into consumer-price inflation.…

Media and news group BuzzFeed is going public after agreeing a deal with a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), says Benjamin Mullin in The Wall Street Journal. BuzzFeed will be acquiring digital publisher Complex Networks for $300m as part of the deal: it is hoping to increase its scale in order to compete more effectively with other tech giants in the internet-advertising market. The combined company would be valued at around $1.5bn. But “there is no guarantee” that BuzzFeed will manage to expand its share of the digital-advertising market, with most of the growth in the area having gone to Google, Facebook and Amazon in recent years.…

Emma Walmsley (pictured), CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has launched “the most radical shake-up” of the group in 20 years, says Hannah Boland in The Daily Telegraph. The plan is to spin off GSK’s consumer-healthcare arm, “which makes toothpaste and... painkillers”, and use the cash raised to boost sales at the core business, dubbed “new GSK”. With several drugs about to lose patent protection, the dividend will be cut, with the money saved reinvested in “a hunt for new blockbuster drugs”. Walmsley is under increasing pressure, says Boland in The Sunday Times. Since 2017 she has “slashed” poorly performing drug programmes, revamped management and “pushed the drugmaker back into oncology”. But this has not satisfied investors irked by GSK’s “perennial underperformance”. Some want new leadership, while the decision of activist fund…

Sajid Javid was not the obvious choice as a replacement for disgraced health secretary Matt Hancock. He has no experience in healthcare for one thing. But against that, he is both an experienced minister and, more importantly, he knows about the economy. This is now as much, if not more, of an economic crisis than a health one. In office, he needs to team up with the chancellor and figure out a workable plan for a virus economy. What would that look like? Here are five places he could start. 1. Forget about “zero Covid-19” We won’t get rid of Covid-19 now. Even the Australians, with closed borders and quarantines, have not managed that, and it is very unlikely the UK will. The virus is likely to be circulating for…

Last week, Eiji Hirano, former chair of the board of governors at Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) – the world’s largest such fund – told Bloomberg that he sees signs of a “bubble” in ESG investing (that is, investing with environmental, social and governance issues in mind). The GPIF was an ESG pioneer in Japan, but now “needs to go back to its roots, and think about how to analyse if ESG is really profitable”. It’s not the only one. Investors once took it for granted that ethical investing (ESG’s predecessor) would deliver worse returns than the market as a whole. The mere fact that ESG investing means buying from a more limited universe of stocks implies that in the long run, you’ll lose out, because there will be…

I recently highlighted the launch of a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the space sector: the Procure Space UCITS ETF (LSE: YODA). Now comes news of another new fund in the same area, an actively managed investment trust called the Seraphim Space Investment Trust (LSE: SSIT). It is set for an initial public offering (IPO) worth £180m. The closing date for applications is Friday 9 July, with dealing commencing on Wednesday 14 July. The fund is targeting a net-asset-value (NAV) total return of at least 20% a year. As I noted in the previous article (moneyweek.com/ investments/stocks-and-shares/share-tips/603343/investing-in-space-a-fund-for-the-final-frontier), the space market is already huge and growing fast. It is not merely a question of launching rockets – satellites for broadband, for instance, are a key subsector too. Two key statistics stand…

“I find what I like most about money is the pride of making it. It’s not about how much, it’s about the dignity that comes from being productive in society. That’s my high.” Actress Salma Hayek (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “I hope it wasn’t expensive. I think my friends drank it.” Lara Jones’s reply after her father Pete, a restaurateur expat in Spain, asked whether she had seen his £2,000 bottle of Chateau Petrus, quoted in The Mail on Sunday. He had kept it for almost 20 years “I’ve done the cars, I’ve done the houses, done the boats —it’s not so exciting anymore when you’ve done all this. If my son needs something for his flat, or my daughter needs a holiday, that gives me more pleasure…

econlib.org What should someone who hates their job do? That was the question put to me and a couple of socialists on a radio panel show, says Bryan Caplan. “Literalist that I am, I tried to offer helpful, relevant advice”: keep your current job for now, but look for a better position. Settle for the first tolerable job offer you get, and keep looking for better opportunities. Virtually any job yields valuable experience and career connections. In time, you’ll find what you’re looking for. The socialists were not impressed. Such efforts would prove “hopeless”, they claimed – only left-wing activism and/ or unionisation offered any prospect for improvement. This despite the fact that such methods are “notoriously ineffective (when they don’t lead to total disaster)”. The socialist attitude makes sense.…

• Thousands of doctors are continuing to opt out of the NHS Pension Scheme, despite government reforms intended to ameliorate the tax problems that had previously hit high earners in the profession. More than 50,000 doctors left the scheme in the 2019/2020 financial year, new data reveals, adding to concerns that the profession still regards pension tax as a serious problem. That may threaten the NHS’s ability to recruit and retain doctors. The issue for many doctors is that their earnings and the generosity of the NHS scheme have seen them subjected to a reduced annual allowance for pension contributions – above this cap, large tax penalties are payable. While the government increased the “adjusted income” and “threshold income” caps by £90,000 this year, many doctors are still grappling wi…

Manolete Partners (Aim: MANO) specialises in insolvency litigation financing. Shares in the company have halved over the past year as the UK’s strong economic recovery and the government’s support for struggling businesses have reduced demand for its services, says Royston Wild on Motley Fool. Pre- tax profits slumped by 26% to £7m in the year to March 2021. The company expects cases to rise as the government’s emergency suppression of insolvencies comes to an end in September, but the share price remains depressed. It is down by 54% in the past year.…

Wine samples arrive thick and fast every day and they usually come from importers, distributors, wineries and merchants I already know. Occasionally, bottles appear from new discoveries and, because of the short lead times at MoneyWeek, I can get them on the page in a trice. From Sarah Fink’s first email introduction, via samples, tasting, research, checking and filing copy to these wines appearing here today has taken less than a month. This means you are hot on my heels in making these epic discoveries. My lead wine, afiano, is terrific, accurate, exotic, bitingly fresh and genuinely rewarding. I adore this stone-fruit-kissed variety and it sums up an Italian summer perfectly. There are three more beauties to recommend: the 2019 Donna Elvira, Fringilla Falanghina (£15) shows accurate fruit and herb…

In April, a pair of rapper Kanye West’s “Grammy Worn” Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototypes sold for $1.8m in a private sale with Sotheby’s. That was almost three times the previous record for the most expensive pair of trainers, set last year when a pair of Michael Jordan’s first-ever Air Jordan 1s, from 1985, sold for $560,000 with Christie’s. Sherlina Nyame, the biggest “influencer for sneakers” on the internet, is paid up to £10,000 a post on social media by brands Nike, Puma and Adidas, according to The Times. She has already made £100,000 so far this year, and if she were to sell her collection of 500 pairs of trainers, the 31-year-old says she could raise the deposit on a four-bedroom house in London. The Air Jordan 1 High…

Two dark clouds hang over the summer. The first one is that, with US stocks at or near all-time highs, there is the threat of a major sell-off in the markets. Some are predicting the “mother of all crashes”. Yet the other cloud is inflation. Won’t that keep stocks aloft? Won’t the Federal Reserve’s money-printing guarantee higher stock prices? And shouldn’t a prudent investor stick with stocks, at least until the inflationary threat is over? Earlier this month we found out that inflation in the US is, officially, running at more than 5% – for only the second time in 30 years. If they calculated it the way they did in the 1980s, it would be more than 10%. Economist Tim Congdon expects the hannu lrate of US consumer inflation…

In a real-life story reminiscent of the animated film Up (pictured), a Florida homeowner is staging a “one-man battle” against the city of Coral Gables, which did not bargain on his strong will when it decided “to build the biggest commercial development in its history”, says Charlie Mitchell in The Times. Orlando Capote has refused more than 60 bids of up to $900,000 for his property from developers who want to build a $600m complex that will feature shops, houses, offices and a hotel. Capote’s father bought the home in 1989 after moving to Florida from Cuba. His mother “implored him on numerous occasions not to sell” before they both passed away. Building is under way around his house, but Capote “has no intention of disobeying his mother’s wishes”, wearing…

“Judging by the slew of half-time investment outlooks being released at the moment, many investors and strategists are asking how far equity markets can run given their impressive gains over the past 16 months,” says Michael Mackenzie in the Financial Times. That’s no surprise, since there are plenty of uncertainties to ponder. Policymakers are likely to scale back fiscal and monetary support, which could mean a slower economic recovery and weaker earnings growth. Taxes may start to rise to begin paying for the extraordinary level of government spending during the pandemic. Investors remain fixated on inflation and whether recent trends for higher prices are transitory: if they are not, interest rates may need to rise, which could mean a bumpy ride for markets. All this complicates any forecasts for which…

“I have been writing about the benefits of a regional equity overweight to the US and emerging markets (and an underweight to Europe and Japan) for a long, long time. Every year, a few intrepid souls in the industry position against this, usually to their detriment … This could have been a year when the barbell [strategy] didn’t work, since Europe is outperforming the US by 2.2%, reversing a tiny portion of Europe’s 160% underperformance versus the US from 2012 to 2020. However, one key macroeconomic principle behind the barbell has been that during a global industrial production and trade recovery, while Europe could outperform the US, the gains in global economic activity would cause emerging markets to outperform Japan. That’s what has happened so far this year, despite the…

Five to buy Hipgnosis Shares Hipgnosis’s shares have gained just 6% in the year since we first recommended them. But in that time the firm’s market capitalisation has increased from £700m to £1.33bn, thanks to a series of capital-raises to fund song-catalogue acquisitions. The idea is to profit from the income from music royalties. The latest £150m raise of new shares at 121p has been set aside for a catalogue made up of “some of the most influential and successful songs of all time”, which presents “substantial revenue growth opportunities”. Since it listed the firm has built a portfolio of songs worth $2.2bn and has delivered a total net-asset-value return of 40.7%, despite “the most challenging social and economic backdrop of our lives”. The investment trust yields around 4% and…

• Facebook’s market capitalisation “temporarily breached $1trn” after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lost an antitrust case this week, says Gina Chon on Breakingviews. The FTC claimed that the social-media giant has used its acquisitions of picture-sharing service Instagram and messaging unit WhatsApp “to create a social-network monopoly”. The judgement said that the agency failed to “define the market for social networks”. The verdict signals that judges are likely to be “sceptical” about “aggressive approaches to antitrust rules”. This is good news for Facebook and other tech giants facing calls for them to be broken up. • Bridgepoint Group, the buyout firm spun out of Royal Bank of Scotland Group in 2000, is to go public, says Bloomberg. The listing should raise £300m, valuing the firm, which focuses on…

An “extraordinary heatwave” has hit large parts of the northwest coast of America and Canada, affecting millions and smashing records with temperatures at “levels normally seen in the Middle East”, says Charlie Mitchell in The Times. Some mountain towns in Canada have had to be evacuated due to rising rivers as a result of melting snow. The immediate cause is a “heat dome” of hot air stacked in the atmosphere, but experts say the heatwave “bears the hallmarks of man-made climate change”, which is thought to “increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events”. The heatwaves will also hurt the economy, says Rachel Layne for CBS News: roads are cracking, shops and restaurants closed, and there are“rolling outages” of power in some areas due to the “surging” demand for…

Hollywood A-Listers, supermodels and royals who don’t want to worry about packing hospital bags or decorating their delivery room need struggle no more. Tiffany Norris, a “mummy concierge”, is now available for hire. She set her business up after having her first child and realising “how little help there was for new parents experiencing this huge change”, she told OK! magazine. For between £120 and £300 an hour, “quite wealthy people” can hire her. Her previous jobs have included commissioning an artist to create a cast of a woman’s pre-birth vagina so her husband “could remember what it was like before”. She has also set up photo shoots on the steps of the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital in London – “so new parents can capture that iconic Kate…

• A little over half of shareholders in video games-maker Activision Blizzard have backed the $155m pay deal for chief executive Bobby Kotick (pictured), says the Financial Times. The vote had been delayed in an effort to avoid “an embarrassing rebuke” from investors over the size of his pay, according to the Council of Institutional Investors, which represents big pension funds. Activision said the annual meeting on 14 June had been postponed until the following Monday in order to address “misleading” information over Kotick’s pay. • Royal Mail has blocked bonuses and share awards to senior executives worth £1.4m after Christmas parcels were left undelivered, says The Mail on Sunday. Stuart Simpson, the former interim CEO, will miss out on rewards worth just over £1m. He had been in line…

When most of us put money in the stockmarket, we go “long” – we buy shares in the belief that they will go up. Short sellers do the opposite – they aim to profit from a share-price falling. Here’s how it works. A short seller borrows the shares from someone who already owns them (usually a fund manager) and sells them in the open market. Then, if and when the price falls, the short seller buys the shares back at the lower price, returns them to the lender and pockets the profit. So, for example, say you want to “short” shares in troubled high-street chain Beta Retail, which currently trades at £1 a share. You borrow 10,000 shares from an index fund (which owns them because it simply tracks the…

Engine No. 1, a small activist investor, recently “scored one of the biggest proxy battle wins” ever seen in the US, says Antoine Gara in Forbes, winning three seats on ExxonMobil’s board. It is now launching an exchange traded fund (ETF) that aims to “reinvent” the index fund. For a low fee, the ETF will invest in a market cap-weighted index of the 500 largest US stocks, but unlike a passive fund it will get a team of active investors to vote on shareholder issues, “set rigorous goals for boardrooms” and spearhead campaigns for change. The firm is promising to hold companies to account for their environmental and social impact, just as it did with Exxon through active voting: it argued that the group’s financial performance was “disgraceful” and that…

conservativehome.com Why is it that businesses seem to have gone “woke”, pulling advertising from mainstream news outlets for infringements against political correctness and trashing conservative attitudes online? After all, probably most of their customers have views aligned with those being maligned, says James Frayne. The reason is not so much cultural revolution as that it is marketing teams that control firms’ reputations, not the board. The people in those roles are generally not very political, and mistake a storm in a teacup on social media with broader public opinion. Companies generally are more concerned with staying out of trouble than with politics per se. Marketing folk tend to misjudge situations, thinking that a woke statement or action will put them on the side of the quiet consensus. But when there…

“Roaming fees are banned in the EU, but that no longer applies to UK users” When the Brexit transition period ended in January, all the UK’s major mobile-phone networks – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – promised us that they wouldn’t be reintroducing fees for using our phones in Europe. Roaming charges had been banned within the European Union since 2017, but the UK’s decision to leave the single market meant these restrictions would no longer apply – both for UK users roaming in the EU and vice versa. However, the Brexit trade deal that the UK and EU agreed in December 2020 included a clause for “transparent and reasonable rates for international mobile roaming services”, which held out the possibility that regulatory and competitive pressures would prevent a return…

For decades Mark Mobius and I have managed various emerging and frontier-markets funds, including Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust, the largest London-listed emerging-market trust. Just over three years ago we founded Mobius Capital Partners, aiming to offer a truly different investment approach to capture the most exciting opportunities in emerging and frontier markets. We decided on four key principles. We focus on one concentrated strategy only and limit the portfolio’s size; we invest in the highest-quality emerging businesses, with deep moats (sustainable competitive advantages that fend off rivals); we use non-traditional sources to underpin our conviction in our choices; and we act as partners and real investors through constructive engagement with our portfolio companies. We believe that active investing can deliver outsized returns, particularly in the rather inefficient small- and…

Wimbledon got under way on Monday. But this year, more money looks set to be made in the auction room with tennis-related sales than on the court. Last week, an auction of 20 items of tennis memorabilia from the record-breaking career of Swiss great Roger Federer raised £1.3m for Federer’s charitable foundation with Christie’s in London. The signed outfit and racket Federer used during his triumph over Spain’s Rafael Nadal in the 2007 Wimbledon final smashed its £50,000 estimate to sell for £187,500, as did the outfit Federer wore for his French Open victory in 2009. “Every item [reminds] me of great moments of my career so far,” Federer said ahead of the sale. It turned out he wasn’t the only one, with buyers handing over four times the combined…

Young Greeks are being offered a “freedom pass” worth €150 as an incentive to get vaccinated, says Eleni Chrepa on Bloomberg. Any 18- to 25-year-olds who get their first dose will be able to use the gift card to pay for travel, accommodation, theatres and museums. The aim is to direct public funds to the sectors that have been hit hardest by Covid-19. After a long battle with a planning committee, retired “newspaper mogul” Florence Fang has been allowed to keep her $2.8m Flintstone-themed home in Hillsborough, California, says Will Pavia in The Times. Fang, whose family owned the San Francisco Examiner, was initially denied a request to make improvements to her “Stone Age dwelling”, which features giant dinosaur statues and a sign that says “Yabba dabba doo”.…

Shareholders stand to gain as Hertz emerges from bankruptcy. The car-rental sector is booming thanks to asurge in domestic travel and a shortage of vehicles. “The way to play” the sector’s rally is through Hertz, whose stock has nearly doubled to $7.15 since mid-May, when a group led by three asset managers won the bidding contest over the company in bankruptcy court. When the company exits bankruptcy at the end of June it will emerge with “little or no net ... debt”, compared with rival Avis’s $3.5bn. Hertz’s new owners plan to invest heavily in modernising the company and improving customers’ experience. The firm is valued at around nine times 2023 earnings.…

Nvidia’s proposed $40bn takeover of British semiconductor group Arm Holdings, which is being sold by Japan’s SoftBank Group, received a boost after three of the world’s largest chipmakers “expressed support” for the “controversial” deal, says Priscila Rocha on Bloomberg. Broadcom Corp, MediaTek and Marvell Technology Group are the first customers of Arm to speak out in favour of the takeover. Their support undermines claims from rival Qualcomm and tech giants including Microsoft that Nvidia could use its control of Arm to “limit the supply of the company’s technology to its competitors or raise prices”. The apparent endorsement from several leading chip firms comes at a “crucial time” for Nvidia’s planned takeover, says Jamie Nimmo in The Sunday Times. This is because the UK competition watchdog is now “preparing to deliver…

On Wednesday, the government set out its “agile and flexible” post-Brexit state-aid system. The Subsidy Control Bill is one of the “most important pieces of post-Brexit legislation” to date, says Richard Partington in The Guardian. State subsidies were the last major sticking point in last year’s trade-deal negotiations. The EU wanted Britain to stay aligned to its rules to ensure a “level playing field” – and will now be scrutinising the bill, notes The Independent’s Adam Forrest – but Boris Johnson refused. Under the EU system, most subsidies had to jump through various hoops at the European Commission in a process Brexit supporters argued was “overly bureaucratic and delayed vital funds from reaching viable businesses in good time”. The trade deal signed with the EU requires Britain to “ban subsidies…

Brazil, like much of Latin America, has a long history of controversial leaders. Its current president, Jair Bolsonaro, is particularly contentious. Often compared to former US president Donald Trump, he was elected in late 2018, benefiting from a wave of discontent at the political establishment. Since then his administration has been generally regarded as a failure, mired in various corruption scandals (including one over a vaccine deal), and responsible for one of the highest Covid-19 death tolls in the world, with over 500,000 dying from the disease. Brazil is due to return to the polls again in late 2022, and already Bolsonaro (pictured) is facing a stiff challenge from a range of candidates, most notably former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “Lula”), who himself  spent time in jail before…

Alex Mahon, chief executive of Channel 4, has seen her salary rise by around £50,000 to almost £1m – more than double what Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, receives, says David Sanderson in The Times. Together, the three most senior figures at the publicly owned broadcaster earned £2.1m “during a year in which advertising sales slumped across the industry”. Last year, Channel 4 predicted a 10% drop in its revenues as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns, which led to the furloughing of staff and the cancellation of productions. Nevertheless, all three figures were awarded their maximum bonuses in light of what Channel 4’s chairman Charles Gurassa said was their “stellar performance” in terms of larger audiences and digital growth. The government is soon to launch…

The boom in US companies being taken public via special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) will end in tears for many, warns short seller Jim Chanos in the Financial Times. Chanos, best known for profiting from the collapse of energy group Enron in 2001, reckons Spacs will hand investors “a pretty expensive lesson”. Spacs are cash shells. They list on the stockmarket, with the goal of merging with a private company (or companies) within a certain sector, to take them public. Some have celebrity backing – everyone from basketball star Shaquille O’Neal to supermodel Gisele Bündchen (pictured) have joined the boards of Spacs or their target companies. Securing a stockmarket listing via a Spac is easier than using a traditional initial public offering (IPO). However, it’s also less tightly regulated, which…

The squeeze in higher education Spencer Jakab The Wall Street Journal American colleges and universities are “facing a reckoning”, says Spencer Jakab. In the last academic year, they recorded the “largest drop in cash inflows in decades” as a result of the drop in enrolment and a fall in boarding revenue from enrolled students who moved to online learning. College Inc, while mostly not-for-profit, is a “huge enterprise” with $670bn in collective revenue and around three million employees. The sector was struggling pre-Covid-19, in part thanks to Donald Trump’s “less-friendly visa policies” for foreign students. It is now estimated that as much as $115bn of revenue may be lost over the next five years. Institutions that specialise in online learning, or universities that have adapted, such as Purdue Global and…

conversableeconomist.blogspot.com The pandemic saw the widespread adoption of digital technologies, as people worked from home and ordered shopping online, says Timothy Taylor. It seems likely that this provided incentives for investments in physical capital, intangible capital (such as software) and in complementary human skills. Indeed, a new report from the G20 and the International Monetary Fund shows that new US patent applications for remote working and ecommerce technologies is on an upward path and that businesses have raised efforts to digitise and automate their operations. Will all this lead to a growth in productivity? It seems likely. But whether such improvements will show up in the statistics is uncertain. As the G20 study says, “mismeasurement of the digital economy had been an oft-cited contributor” to the productivity slump prior to…

Not everyone turning 66 and becoming eligible to draw their state pension needs the money straightaway. In which case, does it make sense to defer taking the cash in return for a more generous pension when you do start taking it? The answer for increasing numbers of people appears to be no: state-pension deferral rates have fallen to an all-time low. In 2021/2022 the state pension, assuming you qualify for the full amount, is worth around £9,340 a year. However, if you are about to become eligible for this money, you are not obliged to claim it. For each year that you defer taking the money, you will receive 5.8% more income when you do start drawing it. So, for example, put off claiming this year’s £179.60 weekly state pension…

Argo Blockchain’s (LSE: ARB) share price reached an all-time high of 284p in February, but by May it had dipped back to 100p, says Liam Roche on UK Investor Magazine. The UK-based bitcoin miner has had a volatile 2021 due to the “tumultuous period” bitcoin has experienced. Nevertheless, the outlook is encouraging. Many investors “see bitcoin as playing a pivotal role in the future of finance”. Argo “delivered strong revenue” of £5.5m for May and it now holds more than 1,000 bitcoins. It has also signed the Crypto Climate Accord. The shares have soared by 2,993% in the last 12 months.…

Russell Wasendorf Sr., the “Madoff of the Midwest”, was born in Iowa in 1948, and went on to study filmmaking at the University of North Iowa. After shooting a short publicity film for the American Soybean Association, he moved into commodities trading, and started a trading firm, Wasendorf & Son, from his basement. The business took off when he suggested clients sell up shortly before the October 1987 stockmarket crash. By 1990 he had moved to Chicago and renamed his brokerage Peregrine Financial Group (PFG); he turned it into a futures commodity merchant two years later. What was the scam? A falling out with a major investor led to a struggle to meet capital requirements, which attracted attention from regulators. Wasendorf decided to temporarily divert $200,000 worth of segregated customer…

Going… In a further sign of cryptocurrencies’ entry into the mainstream, Sotheby’s has said it will accept bitcoin or ether, not for some abstract piece of digital art, but “for one of the earth’s rarest and greatest treasures”. The 101.38-carat pear-shaped D Flawless diamond (pictured) for sale is the second-largest pear-shaped diamond to appear on the public market. It is expected to fetch over HK$78m (£7.2m) at auction on 9 July in Hong Kong, as part of Sotheby’s inaugural “Luxury Edit” sale series in Asia. Sotheby’s, working with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Commerce, notes that it isthe first physical object with a valuation of at least $10m to be offered at auction in exchange for cryptocurrency. Although, not surprisingly, Sotheby’s will also happily take boring, old cash. Gone… A 54.03-carat brilliant-cut…

• Former BBC presenter Andrew Neil (pictured) has rightly slammed big businesses who pulled adverts from his new TV channel, GB News, says Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. So far around 14 companies have pulled out from funding the fledgling station after being put under pressure from “Stop Funding Hate” activists. “Woke nonsense has reached the boardroom,” the GB News chairman said. Neil added that it was “remarkable that serious executives and well-established companies” were going woke. “I agree. This has nothing to do with GB News and everything to do with businesses becoming weak and woke.” There once was a time when businesses held their nerve. It’s “really important” business leaders hang on to those strengths. • “Another year, another inflation-busting increase in public money given to…