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“Money is never diverted from the NHS. It is always diverted to the NHS” “We promise not to raise the rates of income tax, National Insurance or VAT. We not only want to freeze taxes but to cut them too.” That’s the Conservative manifesto in 2019. “I want to see... over time... lower rates of tax because I just believe that its nice for people to be able to keep more of their own money.” That’s Rishi Sunak in 2020. So here we are, a year later, with a tax burden that is about to be one of the highest ever. The new health and social care levy (see page 8 for the details) is a 1.25% tax on income. Add it to the others (National Insurance and income tax)…

Nicole Scherzinger (pictured), lead singer of pop band The Pussycat Dolls, is being sued by the act’s founder, Robin Antin. Antin claims the singer reneged on adeal to take part in a reunion tour, which was delayed by Covid-19. In 2019, Scherzinger took a 49% share in PCD Worldwide, a related business venture, but then this year allegedly demanded it be raised to 75%, reports New Musical Express. Jim Simons, the founder of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, alongside past and present top executives and their spouses, have agreed to pay as much as $7bn in “back taxes, interest and penalties” to US tax authorities, says The Wall Street Journal. The dispute arose over executives’ conversion of short-term trading gains into long-term profits, which are taxed at a much lower rate.…

China has announced plans to establish a new stock exchange in Beijing that will be aimed at small and medium-sized firms. Mainland China already has two exchanges, says Laura He on CNN. The Shanghai Stock Exchange, founded in 1990, “hosts mostly large-cap companies, including state-owned enterprises, banks and energy firms”. Another exchange, in the southern city of Shenzhen, is more tilted towards tech companies. There is also an exchange in Hong Kong, but it is governed by a separate regulatory system. Many Chinese firms, such as Alibaba, have previously opted to list in the US. But they now face pressure from both China, which would prefer domestic companies list at home, and US regulators, who are tightening disclosure rules to protect investors. The new trading venue may be intended to…

Unrest in Guinea (see page 10) has propelled aluminium prices to a ten-year high. A coup has raised concerns about supplies of bauxite, a raw material used to produce the metal. Guinea accounts for about 25% of global bauxite production and more than half of Chinese bauxite imports come from the country. Prices rose to $2,776 a tonne in London on Monday, the highest level since May 2011. Aluminium is up by more than a third this year. The price spike illustrates the “fragility of the Covid-19-era global economy”, says Eddie van der Walt on Bloomberg. With global supply chains already “stretched to breaking point” markets are getting spooked by the mere suggestion that bauxite supplies might be disrupted.…

Brewdog, Britain’s largest craft brewer, has established a joint venture with Japan’s Asahi in order to boost revenue ahead of an initial public offering (IPO) in London. It hopes to use the beer giant’s distribution channels to increase its Japanese sales sixfold in the next five years. The group had planned to list in 2020 but the pandemic delayed the move. It has yet to finalise a timeline but has appointed lawyers and is contemplating floating in New York too. The company is backed by private equity, although it has also raised £79m in crowdfunding rounds over the past 12 years. The last one valued it at £2bn. Brewdog achieved sales of £182m but lost £13.1m last year.…

Part of the largest drilling firm in the Middle East could be about to list, says Simeon Kerr in the Financial Times. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is to float a7.5% stake in its drilling unit. A previous deal involving the unit, currently 95%-owned by Adnoc, valued it at $10bn. The firm will be listed on the Gulf emirate’s stock exchange, but overseas investors will be allowed to take part. Adnoc says the sale will help fund a large rig-fleet expansion and well-drilling programme. Adnoc may pretend that this is to fund expansion, but the real reason is that Abu Dhabi’s rulers are desperately trying to “wean themselves off an overwhelming reliance on crude oil”, say Adveith Nair and Anthony Di Paola on Bloomberg. While they won’t stop…

In a fortnight’s time Canadians will be going to the polls in a general election. Until recently, Justin Trudeau’s government had been doing well. His handling of the Covid-19 crisis was generally approved of. But his gamble in calling an election less than two years after the last one seems to have backfired. His popularity had dipped and his Liberal Party is now behind the Conservatives in the polls. Some pundits are wondering whether Trudeau (pictured) may end up being forced out of office. Despite this, with £1,002 matched on Smarkets, the Liberals remain the favourites at 1.6 (62.5%) to get the most seats. The Conservatives are at 2.16 (46.2%). Although it looks likely Trudeau’s party will end up losing seats, it’s important to realise that the way the Liberal…

In Britain, labour shortages are getting more and more acute every week. Some supermarkets are running low on stock at critical points in the week because there are not enough truck drivers to make all the deliveries (see page 12). Restaurants are turning down bookings, or closing at lunchtimes, because they don’t have enough chefs and waiters. There are already warnings that we may face a modest Christmas, not because of Covid-19, but because gifts and food will be in slightly shorter supply than usual. And this is not just a British problem. The head of Germany’s federal employment agency said last week that the country needed an extra 400,000 workers to fill all its vacancies. American logistics companies are trying to ship in extra drivers from abroad to fill…

Ever since coronavirus vaccines arrived on the scene more rapidly than expected last year, the hope has been that economies could re-open quickly, households flush with savings would go out and spend, and we’d see a resurgence in growth to match the slide seen during global lockdowns. In the stockmarket, this particular bet was known as the “reflation” trade, with the companies hardest hit by lockdowns rebounding, while other “value” stocks such as miners benefitted from surging demand for resources. “Investors should be hoping that we can avoid stagflation” However, while growth has rebounded at a rapid pace, there are signs that the recovery might be running out of steam. The latest US nonfarm payrolls figures (a monthly measure of how many jobs are being added to the US economy)…

Will Xi strangle China? Wang Xiangwei South China Morning Post For a long time, it was not widely appreciated quite how much China’s spectacular economic rise relied upon the Communist Party’s embrace of “raw capitalism”, says Wang Xiangwei. The “scale and influence” of its private sector today is huge: it contributes 50% of tax revenue, 60% of GDP and 80% of jobs. But as China “enters a new era”, President Xi Jinping has decided to scale back on “capitalist excesses”. Since last November, the “regulatory crackdown” was extended from e-commerce giants to other sectors. Last week, it was the turn of gaming companies and “tax-dodging celebrities”. While the “intensity” of Beijing’s actions has “spooked” foreign investors, the US and Europe are similarly addressing concerns about “monopolistic power and data security”.…

project-syndicate.org With the US’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan, the parallels between the 2020s and the 1970s are getting uncanny, says Kenneth Rogoff. So is a Seventies-style period of sustained high inflation on the cards? Until recently I would have said no. “Now, I am not so sure.” Many economists view inflation as a technocratic problem, to be dealt with by central banks. But the truth is that inflation has deeper roots in political economy problems. And that’s why current developments are unsettling. As in the Seventies, we are going through a period in which presidents challenge constitutional norms and flounder in overseas conflicts; the economy is suffering aproductivity slowdown and negative supply shocks; and there have been huge increases in government spending with no corresponding rise in taxes on the…

The ideal investment for uncertain market conditions would be a trust with a great performance record and a strong chance of preserving value in a bear market, yet one whose shares trade at a significant discount to net asset value (NAV). That’s a lot to ask for. Trusts usually have to sacrifice upside to protect the downside and the successful ones trade close to or above net asset value. Yet Pershing Square Holdings (LSE: PSH), the £5bn fund lead-managed by Bill Ackman, trades on a discount of nearly 30% despite having returned 70% last year. First listed in Amsterdam in 2014, it switched to London last year. Though classified as a hedge fund, the fund hasn’t shorted any investment since 2017. Instead, it runs a highly concentrated portfolio of companies,…

Taxes are rising across the developed world as governments struggle to cover the costs of Covid-19. President Joe Biden has announced plans to raise the US rate of corporation tax from 21% in 28%. The conventional view is that tax hikes are generally bad for the market. Firstly, increasing tax reduces demand, leading to slower economic growth. What’s more, some tax rates affect equities directly. Corporate tax hikes reduce the amount of money that companies have for dividends, buybacks and reinvestment, while increasing capital gains tax reduces the appeal of shares. However, the evidence suggests that the relationship between tax rises and stock prices isn’t as simple as you’d think. Investment platform Fidelity recently examined US stockmarket returns during 13 years when taxes were significantly increased (1950, 1951, 1952, 1968,…

Regulators and financial advisers insist that the vast majority of savers with defined-benefit pensions are better off sticking with them, rather than transferring to a defined-contribution alternative. But while the guarantee from a defined-benefit arrangement is usually too valuable to give up, some advisers say there is one group of people for whom transfers may make more sense. Some people want more flexibility. They may want more control over how much pension they draw down at certain times in retirement. They may even need to take all their savings as a cash lump sum. Such savers are often tempted to switch out of defined-benefit plans because they are perceived as less flexible. However, if you’re in this position, it is vital to check what your defined-benefit scheme actually offers before…

Japan is home to a vibrant yet under-researched stockmarket, where the emergence of a dynamic new generation of companies is creating compelling investment opportunities. Of the 2,000 stocks in the Topix index, well over 50% are covered by no more than one sell-side analyst, which can lead to pricing inefficiencies. This makes Japan an attractive market for active, bottom-up investors on the ground in Tokyo. More room for renewables Japan is at a very early stage in its transition to greener energy sources. Around one third of Japan’s energy is currently sourced from coal, and it remains heavily reliant on natural gas. “The e-commerce market still comprises just 8% of total sales” However, the government’s commitment to reducing Japan’s emissions to net zero and realising carbon neutrality by 2050 presents…

A $24m 10-carat pink diamond was yanked from the forehead of American rapper Lil Uzi Vert (pictured), by a fan when he jumped into the crowd during a performance at a music festival earlier this year, he revealed this week. Vert gained recognition in 2015 following the release of his debut mixtape Luv is Rage. The rapper, 26, first revealed his forehead piercing in January, claiming that he had bought it in 2017 and had only just finished paying for it, reports the Daily Mail. According to Lisa Levinson of the Natural Diamond Council, pink diamonds “are the rarest, most precious and coveted of all diamonds […]. Large pink diamonds could be the most valuable items in the smallest volume in the world”, she says. Luckily for Vert, he managed…

“Over the last 15 years Germany has come to be seen by many in Europe as a paragon of political stability”, says Ronald G. Asch in The Spectator. Now Angela Merkel, the country’s “perennial chancellor”, is preparing to retire. An election on 26 September will decide who replaces her at the helm of Europe’s biggest economy. The next coalition The election campaign has proved volatile. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) have soared in the polls in recent weeks at the expense of Merkel’s conservative CDU. Gaffes by the “buffoonish” Armin Laschet, the CDU’s candidate to succeed Merkel, have alienated voters. They have taken a shine to SPD candidate Olaf Scholz, who currently serves as the finance minister in a coalition government with Merkel’s party. Scholz seems “serious-minded” and “pleasantly boring…

“US predators [are] buying up swathes of UK plc... Many of the recent US bids... have been from private equity operators, fuelled by cheap debt and an advantageous exchange rate... Why don’t British businesses give them a taste of their own medicine?... In the past there have been some whopping takeovers in the US, including BP’s purchase of... Amoco in 1998 for $48.2bn... The US market is too big, too innovative and too lucrative to ignore... But UK companies seem to be suffering a confidence deficit. Covid-19 has created uncertainty [and] business investment has fallen sharply since the referendum... The mentality seems to be to batten down the hatches... A defeatist narrative is in danger of taking hold... that the London stockmarket is just ahappy hunting ground for predators... The…

Five to buy Marks & Spencer Shares M&S has had plenty of “false dawns”, but is it now “finally regaining its mojo”? Management has raised full-year profit guidance after an unexpectedly strong start to its financial year. A joint venture with Ocado has “transformed the prospects” of the food business, with sales up by 10.8% on a year before during the 19 weeks to 14 August. The underperforming home and clothing division is also showing signs of life, especially in online sales. M&S may eventually “emulate omni-channel star” Next, which has successfully combined store and online sales. On a forward price/earnings(p/e) ratio of 11.2 for 2023, the shares trade at a discount to Next and offer “great value”. 179p Ted Baker The Sunday Telegraph Once a £1bn business, this luxury…

• Peloton’s shares rose by an “eye-popping” 400% in 2020, says Laura Forman in The Wall Street Journal. But this year they have lost a third: investors are “more focused on the company’s financials today rather than some rosy future”. While the firm has cut the price of its products to “move beyond a niche audience”, this has reduced margins, while the end of lockdowns is hitting demand: there were “23% fewer average monthly workouts per connected fitness subscriber” in the second quarter compared with the first. This “lifestyle” investment “risks going out of style”. • Private- equity firms are currently a “hot property” , says Chris Hughes on Bloomberg. So Goldman Sachs should expect to get a good price when it floats Petershill Partners, which will comprise “holdings in…

• Award-winning actor, writer and producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge (pictured) has translated on-screen success into cash, says The Times. Her company, PMWB, turned over £22m in the last 20 months. The company posted a pre-tax profit of £15.6m and paid £1.3m in corporation tax last year, while Waller-Bridge took £1.4m as a dividend and paid herself a director’s salary of £33,000. During lockdown, she provided grants to those who lost work when theatres closed. • Jenni Murray, former presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, is “infuriated” at how much Emma Barnett, her successor on the programme, is earning, says Louise Burke in The Sunday Telegraph. Murray, who presented the programme for 33 years, was paid just over £100,000 a year; Barnett will get £240,000-£249,999. The BBC said Barnett’s pay is…

The misery index is an economic indicator which is closely associated with stagflationary conditions. American economist Arthur Okun created it in the 1960s, in response to rising joblessness and increasing living costs. The idea was to give a rough measurement of how much economic pain the average American was enduring at any given time. The index simply takes the inflation rate and adds it to the unemployment rate – the higher the combined figure, the greater the level of misery. In the US, the index remained in double-digit territory for the majority of the 1970s. It fell sharply, alongside inflation, in the early 1980s, and since then – with the exception of spikes during recessions, mostly driven by rising unemployment – it has tended to trend lower as both inflation…

“I will do a lot of things for money and I would absolutely do a reboot for that. I have bills to pay and it can only be fun.” Actress Jemima Kirke (pictured) on filming more episodes of Girls, the hit show on which she made her name in 2012, quoted in The Sunday Times “There’s that immigrant thing: ‘Surely the Nazis are going to take it away at any point.’” Comedian, author and playwright David Baddiel says he works so hard because he’s nervous about money, quoted in The Times “Don’t waste your money. They’re failed actors that set themselves up as gurus.” Anthony Hopkins advises young actors not to bother with acting schools, quoted in GQ “Well that really pisses me off… We worked so hard and had…

unherd.com/thepost China is cracking down on videogames, says Peter Franklin. The state has mandated that under-18s may not play for more than three hours a week, and must play at specific hours. Facial-recognition technology will presumably be used to enforce the restrictions. This may sound sinister, but the “real dystopia is in the West”. We have allowed social media and gaming companies to “snare our children’s time” without restriction. Indeed, we don’t even seem to much care about their access to pornography. An attempt by the British government in 2015 to launch a UK-wide porn filter was abandoned in 2019 – “an object lesson in the weakness of Western democracy”. In the West, we are still clinging to the notion of the internet as an abode of freedom. The Chinese…

Robotics firm Blue Prism has become the latest UK-listed company to draw attention from US private equity funds, but an activist investor is urging it not to sell out cheaply, says CNBC. Coast Capital – which earlier this year unsuccessfully opposed FirstGroup’s decision to sell its US bus business – has written to Blue Prism’s management, arguing that the shares remain undervalued. “Were a buyer to pay a premium of 100%, the share price would still be materially lower than its intrinsic value, and well below where the shares were trading as recently as January 2021,” says Coast, which owns a 3% stake. Blue Prism rose 45% after confirming that it is in talks with TPG Capital and Vista Equity Partners, but no offer has yet been made.…

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) explicitly targeting the rise of the silver pound is the iShares Ageing Population UCITS ETF (LSE: AGED), one of iShares’ “megatrend ETFs”. This aims to invest in companies that derive a large proportion of their revenue from people aged 60 or older. Around half the fund is invested in healthcare companies, including Regeneron technologies, a biotechnology company, and Carl Zeiss, which specialises in optical technology. The other half of the fund is invested in financial firms, although with 359 holdings the ETF is very thinly spread. The average price/earnings (p/e) ratio of shares in the fund is 17.5 and the ongoing charge is 0.40% a year. If you would prefer an actively-managed fund focused on a smaller number of healthcare companies, then Kasim Zafar of EQ…

It has been a good fortnight for my four active long tips, three of which have risen by small amounts. Media group ITV climbed from 115p to 116p, homebuilder DR Horton increased from $94.63 to $94.96 and construction firm Morgan Sindall rose from 2,510p to 2,615p. Only spread betting firm Plus500 fell: from 1,498p to 1,400p. However, both broker TP ICAP and US homebuilder PulteGroup remain below the level at which I recommended that you should go long. Overall, my long tips are making a total profit of £4,146, up from £3,884 two weeks ago. Sadly, all my six short tips have also appreciated in the past fortnight. Cloud-computing firm Snowflake rose from $276 to $310, electric-car company Plug Power climbed from $25.32 to $26.40 and electric carmaker Tesla also…

Britons are staying in work longer and in larger numbers than ever before. Already, 8% of people over 66 – the age at which you can begin claiming the state pension – are still in employment, according to research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research and Legal & General Retail Retirement, with the figure set to hit 11% by 2030. In some cases, people are staying in work for longer out of financial necessity, while in others, it is a personal choice. But if you do continue earning an income at an age when you are also entitled to claim pension benefits, it is important to weigh up your options carefully. With state pensions, while you can begin claiming from age 66 onwards, you don’t have to do…

Shares in high-street baker Greggs (LSE: GRG) have been given a further fillip by the announcement that revenue has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Results for the 26 weeks to June revealed that sales in the second quarter of 2021 were up compared to the same period in 2019. Earnings before interest and taxes totalled £546.2m in the first half, up from £300.6m in 2020 and almost back to the £546.3m of 2019 – even though like-for-like sales slipped in the two-year period owing to lockdowns. Greggs is on track to open another 100 shops in 2021 and the stock has risen by 126% in 12 months.…

John Stonehouse was born in 1925. After graduating from the London School of Economics and then serving in the RAF for two years he worked as an economist. He contested various parliamentary seats before getting elected as a Labour MP for Wednesbury in 1957 (and then Wallsall North in 1974-1976). In 1967 he became technology minister then postmaster general, making him briefly a member of the cabinet before the post was abolished in 1969. All this time he was secretly working with the Czech intelligence services. What was the scam? After Labour lost the 1970 election Stonehouse failed to get appointed to the shadow cabinet, prompting him to go into business. He became involved with the British Bangladeshi Trust (later London Capital Securities), but thanks to a combination of poor…

If you are banished to the Highlands for yet another staycation, the Mercedes G400d will bring a touch of off-road extravagance to your otherwise prosaic family trip. A redesign of the iconic G-Class, engineered in 2018, the new model makes a great addition to the German manufacturer’s catalogue. Its hardy-looking and rugged utilitarian exterior open up into typical Mercedes luxury inside – it’s “a vehicle capable of traversing a post-apocalyptic wasteland and can give you a soothing back massage while doing so”, says James Attwood in Autocar. The car boasts a powerful three-litre, straight-six, turbodiesel engine that can generate 700Nm of torque, so it’s more than capable of scaling any incline the Lake District has to offer. For its size, the machine will do it quickly too; hurtling all 2,489kg…

• It is “usually best to ignore” the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s proclamations, says Ross Clark in the Daily Express. But Harry’s latest charge, that the developed world is “somehow depriving the developing world of vaccines”, is offensive. Yes, more people have been vaccinated in developed countries. But Britain has so far donated £548m to Covax, the body responsible for distributing vaccines to the developing world. And it has already sent nine million doses of the 100 million it pledged to donate by June next year, while the AstraZeneca vaccine has been licensed for production in India. That means the vaccine can be accessed “at much lower prices than… if it were produced in Europe”. Having failed to find a “meaningful role” outside of royal life, Harry (pictured) is…

£371bn How much more in total Britons would need to add to their savings accounts in order to feel financially secure, according to the Yorkshire Building Society’s poll of 2,000 people. On average, respondents said they needed savings of £17,465 each to feel comfortable. £1m The sum Sweden’s government had to pay a jailed drug dealer when the bitcoin he had earned illegally appreciated while he was in custody. The bitcoins were seized from him, and the amount recorded in dollars. When a court ordered the amount must be repaid, only three of the original 36 coins had to be sold to generate the amount demanded. The remaining 33 bitcoin, worth about £1.1m, were also returned to the man. £100,000 The asking price for a single parking space in St…

Marvel Studio’s new superhero film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, beat the US Labor Day weekend box office record, with estimated ticket sales of $71.4m, says the Hollywood Reporter, despite rising coronavirus cases. Halloween held the previous record of $30.6m, set in 2007. An employment tribunal has awarded £185,000 to Alice Thompson, an estate agent, for sex discrimination. Thompson’s boss had rejected her request to work a four-day week and to leave work at 5pm “to collect her daughter from nursery”, rather than 6pm, says The Times. The tribunal found that the 6pm requirement put Thompson at a “disadvantage” relative to her colleagues.…

Founded in 1993, Switzerland’s BB Biotech has become one of the biotechnology sector’s key global investors, says Wirtschaftswoche. It boasts stakes in 33 listed biotech firms, with subsectors including antibodies, RNA and gene therapy, and a market value of almost SFr5bn (£3.9bn). The biggest holding, comprising 12% of the portfolio, is Moderna, one of the producers of a Covid-19 vaccine. This testifies to the management’s ability to spot promising investments: BB Biotech bought into Moderna when it was still private in early 2018. Biotech’s 20% premium to net asset value (NAV) is justified by the quality of the company, while a dividend yield of 4% is unheard of in the sector.…

Grace periods covering post-Brexit trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland have been extended indefinitely by the UK government to ”provide space” for further discussions on the contentious Northern Ireland protocol, it was announced Monday. While Brussels “withheld its formal agreement”, an EU spokesman did say that the European Commission would not launch legal proceedings, says Aubrey Allegretti in The Guardian. The row, dubbed “the sausage wars”, began within days of Brexit being enforced in January, and grace periods, devised as a way to “smooth the transition to new bureaucratic requirements” on the export of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, were extended unilaterally by the UK in March and then again in June. On 1 October, the British government was due to introduce customs enforcements on parcels arriving…

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro may be preparing the ground for a power grab next year, say Samantha Pearson and Luciana Magalhaes in The Wall Street Journal. His supporters have taken to the streets in 100 cities, with 125,000 coming out in the capital alone. Predictions of violent clashes between his supporters, who accuse Brazil’s Supreme Court and Congress of plotting against the right-wing leader, and the police failed to materialise, but Bolsonaro’s “fiery” rhetoric has frightened many people. The president repeated promises that next year’s election could have only three outcomes: “My arrest, my death or my victory.” Bolsonaro’s situation is desperate, says the Financial Times. He is the subject of several investigations and his popularity has been “declining sharply”. His “anti-democratic rhetoric” has frightened many one-time supporters, notably in…

Last month, private-equity firm Bridgepoint became the first to list on the London Stock Exchange since 1994. But a “complicated structure” stops shareholders knowing just how much executives are paid under the “carried interest” payment scheme, says the Financial Times. UK-listed firms are required to disclose the total pay of senior managers. But carried interest payments “are not remuneration, but a return on investments that incur capital-gains tax rather than income tax”. Bridgepoint says that the money flows through “a series of corporate entities” that it “does not control”. Bridgepoint’s executive chair, William Jackson, could have received up to £32.6m under the scheme in 2019, says the FT, but “it is impossible to tell how close to the true figure this is”. Jackson was paid £700,000 in salary and £630,000…

There is “nowhere to go but up” for US Treasury yields, warns Bill Gross, in a note published on his personal website. Gross, who co-founded asset manager Pimco in 1971 and retired from managing money in 2019, was once known as the “bond king”. Most of his career coincided with a long bull market in bonds as interest rates declined relentlessly in the early 1980s (bond yields and prices move inversely to one another). Gross – who has been bearish on bond prospects for a while – now believes that the yield on ten-year US government debt will rise from its current level of around 1.25%. That might not hurt too much if it happened gradually, but he believes yields will instead jump to 2% within the next 12 months,…

adamsmith.org/blog Some commentators are calling for governments to set up a “Department for the Future” to reward long-term stewardship over short-term exploitation. But we already have such a department, says Tim Worstall: it’s “that capitalist free market out there”. Which organisations have the longest planning timelines? Not governments, run as they are by politicians with an eye on the next election. It’s almost certainly the oil and mining companies who regularly plan and make 50-year investments. In capital markets, concentration upon short-term gains is also known as capital destruction, and valuations do fall as a result of it. Perhaps the only human institution that plans longer term than corporations is the family – “by a likely time of death these days, one might well have met one’s own great grandchild…

■ The first exchange-traded fund (ETF) focused on “cleaner living” (ie, a healthier and more moral lifestyle) will list on the London Stock Exchange this month under the ticker “DTOX”, says ETF Stream. The Cleaner Living ESG-S ETF invests in food, building and infrastructure, health and beauty, transport and energy, with the requirement that each company “derives at least 80% of their revenues or earnings from the structural change powering cleaner living”. Stocks are also screened against sustainability criteria, including environmental protection, human rights, labour practices and anti-corruption policies. Holdings include vegan-burger producer Beyond Meat, exercise-equipment firm Peloton and carmaker Tesla. The ETF was developed by sponsor Quikro, issuer HANetf and index provider Tematica Research, who previously launched a Digital Infrastructure and Connectivity ETF last year. The total expense ratio…

One of the most unlikely winners from the last 18 months has been Royal Mail. At the start of 2020 it was in disarray. Mail volumes were falling and it had a fractious relationship with its staff; the share price languish h d50% b b low 2013’s flotation price. It then halved again amid the brief market crash that followed the imposition of anational lockdown. However, over the past 18 months the shares have been on a tear, at one point nearly rising to five times their March 2020 price. Even today they are still up by aou d300%. Royal Mail has benefited from the huge rise in parcel volumes caused by the shift to online shopping as stores closed. For the first time in its history sales from parcels…

Closed shops have led many people to discover the pleasures of regular deliveries of goodies. The trend endures, despite reopening. Barclaycard noted last month that “81% of UK households are signed-up to at least one subscription”, up from 65% a year before. Entertainment (such as video streaming services) is the biggest spending category, followed by food or meal boxes and technology. The pandemic has also driven a rise in more niche items, including “cheese, musical instruments and underwear”. The average subscriber now spends £620 per year; one in five British households report receiving regular “subscription boxes” through the post. Alcohol is the most popular shipment, followed by shaving products, recipe boxes and coffee and tea. Regular deliveries can mean you end up receiving more of a product than you need.…

• The average single pensioner would have run out of money on 3 September if they were relying only on state pension benefits to get by in retirement. The typical pensioner couple would have exhausted their yearly income on 31 August. Analysis from Just Group suggests that for both groups, “state pension shortfall day” – the day when state pensions run out for eligible households with average spending habits – arrived 13 days earlier this year than in 2020. Advisers warn that while the day is theoretical, it points to the need to make private pension savings to get by in retirement. • Do you ever receive cold calls offering you advice or information about your pension planning? If so, hang up immediately . Such calls have been illegal since…

Pharmaceutical company Shield Therapeutics (Aim: STX) fell into the red in the first half as sales fell and costs rose, says StockMarketWire. Revenue totalled £500,000 thanks to royalties from another company that sells Feraccru, a treatment for iron deficiency, in Europe on Shield’s behalf. In 2020 revenues had reached £8.9m, almost all of which was due to an upfront payment from another firm relating to a licensing agreement. Pre-tax losses for the six months to 30 June jumped to £7.6m from a £2.7m profit for the same period the year before. Still, Feraccru has now been launched in the US.…

I am out on a limb this week because, as I write this column, nothing is confirmed. I am crossing my fingers that Waitrose receives its stock on time so that come Monday you can be first in the queue to buy the finest-ever release of this exquisite wine. Hot on Waitrose’s heels, thefinestbubble.com should also have receive their allocation of 242. Roederer is a serious House and the wine trade has held its breath, willing this wine to work. The 2017 vintage is the 242nd at this illustrious wine business and forms the base of this Champagne. Blended into the picture are reserve wines from 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, and oak is more than present in the whole. Does it work? Yes, yes and yes again.…

In 1855, 50,000 postage stamps were due to arrive in British Guiana, Britain’s South American colony, from Britain, according to Stanley Gibbons. Only 5,000 showed up. That posed a problem. If the colony’s letters and newspapers were to be delivered, the local postmaster had to find an alternative. So he asked the local newspaper to print stamps to keep the post moving while more official ones were sent from Britain. A stock of one-cent stamps for newspapers and four-cent stamps for letters were printed, imitating the illustration of a ship and bearing British Guiana’s motto, “We give and we ask in return”. Eventually, the new stamps arrived and the postmaster removed the ersatz stamps from circulation. Most of the one-cent stamps disappeared. One, however, survived. It was found in 1873…

Some people work for wages. Some work for pleasure. Some just work out of habit. And some don’t work at all. In today’s America, fewer and fewer people are working. The labour-force participation rate has been going down for the last 20 years. And last year, more than 100 million households earned so little money, they owed no income tax. “The 2020 election was decided by people who are supported by the state” According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Centre, 107 million households owed no income taxes in 2020, up from 76 million – or 44% of all taxpayers – in 2019, reports CNBC. The share of Americans who pay zero income taxes is expected to stay high, at around 57% this year, according to the Tax Policy Centre. This…