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“Instead of seeing the UK as the be-all and end-all for dividends, [investors should] look at Asia... Dividends in Asia were resilient throughout the coronavirus pandemic (falling 19% between 2019 and 2020 compared with a 34% fall in Europe and the UK) and have rebounded strongly. Dividends in Asia in 2021 were 8.6% higher than they were in 2019. In the UK, 2021’s dividends were 15.5% lower than in 2019. The Australian miner BHP was the biggest dividend payer in the world in 2021. Five other Asia Pacific firms were in the top 20... There are 15 funds and six trusts that yield more than 2% investing in companies across Asia Pacific, according to the [investment] platform Hargreaves Lansdown... Asia’s economy was once at the forefront of the world order…

Shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group fell by 4% last week amid “escalating concerns that the stock may be booted off” the New York Stock Exchange in two years “for failing to comply with US disclosure rules”, says Jenny Yu on Bloomberg. The US on Friday added the stock to a “growing roster” of Chinese companies facing removal from US exchanges. The problem stems from the fact that a law passed two years ago means that Chinese companies are required to submit their audits to regulators so that their quality can be reviewed, something that Beijing refuses to allow. Alibaba could temper the impact of a potential delisting in the US by accelerating its plans to upgrade its Hong Kong stock-exchange presence from a secondary to a primary listing,…

Mahindra & Mahindra is a play on India’s growth, says Börse Online. It is an industrial conglomerate with a presence in a wide array of sectors. It is the market leader in agricultural technology, while its tractor business boasts a presence in 40 countries. The group also produces motorcycles, buses and military vehicles, using its own steelmaking division, and dabbles in hotels, software, and the production of solar panels. India is expecting a record harvest, which explains why tractor orders were up 44% on last year in April and May. India’s rapid GDP growth and the government’s drive to mechanise agriculture augur well for shareholders.…

Tory leadership candidate Liz Truss, already facing criticism for her quickly withdrawn proposal for cutting the wages of public servants outside of London, “came under fire from across the political spectrum” for her comments on Scotland’s first minister, says Kieran Andrews in The Times. She said Nicola Sturgeon was an “attention seeker” and that the best way to deal with her demands, including those for a second referendum on Scottish independence, was to “ignore her”. The intervention was condemned by figures in the SNP and Labour and described as “unhelpful” by a prominent Scottish Conservative MP. Boris Johnson’s likely successor clearly won’t be able to “ignore” Sturgeon, given that “the Scottish parliament and its devolved government are here to stay”, says Alan Cochrane in The Daily Telegraph. Still, claiming that…

A slowing economy plus higher inflation, represent a tougher environment for investors more used to low interest rates and steady growth. Fund managers are now talking up the “pricing power” and “inflation-proofing” characteristics of their holdings. But what traits can really shield a company from the worst ravages of inflation? In his latest letter to investors, fund manager Terry Smith makes two key points about how owning “quality” stocks makes his portfolio more resilient against both inflation and slowing growth. Firstly, Smith looks at the impact inflation has on a company’s material costs. The average company in his portfolio has a gross margin of 60%, against his estimate of 40% for the average large listed company. These higher margins offer inflation protection – if the average cost of goods sold…

The public thinks of care homes as synonymous with old people’s homes but, as Rupert Barclay, chairman of Impact Healthcare (LSE: IHR) explains, these can be divided into three categories: residential homes for the elderly, for those who are infirm and for those with dementia. “People don’t put their relatives into homes because they are old but because they can no longer look after themselves or be looked after at home. If they are incontinent or immobile, they need care... it takes two people to lift someone out of bed into a chair or wheelchair,” says Barclay. This means Britain’s ageing population is not necessarily a driver of increasing demand for care-home places. People live at home for longer, even if home involves stairs – doctors regard exercise as essential.…

Revive an old idea: tax the land Free Exchange The Economist Land was central to the ideas of 18th- and 19th-century political economists, says The Economist. They believed the distribution of rents from land ownership could explain the “yawning gaps between rich and poor and all sorts of other economic ills”. A more recent strand of research shows they had a point. Real estate is the largest asset class in the world. In 2020 it made up around 68% of the world’s non-financial assets. Land accounted for just over half of that. As values have risen, the share of land in non-financial assets has increased. In Britain it rose from 39% in 1995 to 56% in 2020. As firms’ ability to borrow tends to depend more on their existing assets…

economist.com/the-economist-explains Private citizens have chipped in to help in times of war for centuries, says The Economist. A writing tablet found near Hadrian’s Wall mentions a gift of clothing for Roman soldiers. The US government asked civilians to knit warm clothing for troops during the World War I. The war in Ukraine has been no different. This month Aerorozvidka, a Ukrainian drone unit, took delivery of four drones from a German group of civilians. Since the outbreak of war in February, Ukrainian crowdfunding has focused on high-tech gear that cannot be obtained locally. In July the government launched an initiative to raise money and attract donations of kit. The Kalush Orchestra, who won the Eurovision Song Contest this year, auctioned their trophy, raising $900,000. “Social-media platforms have helped such efforts…

Good news for those thinking of using their pension savings to buy an annuity in retirement: the rates available on annuities, which pay a guaranteed income for life, have kept climbing in line with rising interest rates and gilt yields. They are now at their most generous level in almost a decade. Last month, a £100,000 pension fund would have bought a typical 65-year-old man an annual income of £6,168 for life, according to financial-planning website SharingPensions. This level of income is around 20% higher than what was available at the beginning of the year – and compares with an all-time low of £4,696 in August 2016. The income you can actually secure for a given amount of pension savings will vary enormously, depending on what you want from your…

The share price of high-street tycoon Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group (LSE: FRAS) has soared as shoppers return to shopping in person, says The Guardian. Frasers owns high-street brands such as Sports Direct, Flannels and Missguided, and has announced plans to increase its rate of acquisitions and store openings on the back of rising sales, which grew by 31% to £4.7bn in the year to 24 April. The firm expects profits to rise by 23% this year. CEO Michael Murray will expand Flannels to 100 stores and revamp larger Sports Direct outlets. The stock has climbed by 47% in 12 months.…

Gordon Brown was born in Renfrewshire, Scotland, in 1951. He studied history at Edinburgh and earned a doctorate while working as a lecturer at the Glasgow College of Technology, and then as a journalist. In 1983 he was elected as MP for the Labour Party in Dunfermline East. By 1985 Brown was opposition spokesman on trade and industry, then served in a number of roles before becoming chancellor of the exchequer following Labour’s victory in 1997. What was the trade? After peaking at $860 an ounce in 1980, the gold price had languished for most of the 1980s and 1990s, and was at just under $350 an ounce in May 1997 when Brown became chancellor. This poor performance, especially marked after accounting for inflation, led many central banks to draw…

Eight professed heirs of Jamalul Kiram II, the last sultan of the archipelago of Sulu, are trying to seize $14.9bn of Malaysian assets in a dispute over an agreement made in 1878, says the Financial Times. The state of Sabah was leased to a British trading firm by a previous sultan of Sulu, then became part of Malaysia on independence in 1963. Jamalul Kiram II, the last recognised sultan, died in 1936, after which a series of residents of the Philippines – of which Sulu is now part – have claimed the throne, including the late Esmail Kiram II (pictured), whose followers tried to stage an armed invasion of Sabah in 2013. The claimants say they are entitled to a share of Sabah’s oil wealth and are now attempting to…

Spacs, “once Wall Street’s hottest tickets”, are a ”hated trade” this year”, says Yun Li on CNBC. Special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) are shell firms that list on the stockmarket to raise cash. They then use the money to buy an existing company. A CNBC index that tracks the shares of firms that have gone public via a Spac is down almost 50% this year, more than double the fall on the S&P 500 index. At least the banks made money from Spacs. Many then enjoyed “a second payday” by advising on mergers after the Spac’s listing. Regulatory scrutiny has now seen banks step back. Founders, the people who launch a Spac, are also in a pickle. As of early June, there were “more than 600 Spacs that have listed…

The £30.5bn listing of consumer-healthcare firm Haleon last month was the London Stock Exchange’s biggest flotation in more than a decade, but there’s not much to celebrate, says The Economist. Haleon is not a particularly exciting tech or life-sciences business; the seller of “smartly packaged ibuprofen” is being spun off from parent GlaxoSmithKline. London has been eclipsed by New York and Hong Kong as a favoured destination for big listings in recent years: “Britain’s stockmarket has accounted for less than 1% of the capital raised in global IPOs so far this year”. A key problem is that pension funds, who are long-term investors, have reduced the proportion of their assets held in equities to 3% over the past 20 years.…

BP has unveiled its largest quarterly profit in 14 years amid months of high energy prices as Russia’s war on Ukraine compounded global shortages, says Rachel Millard in The Daily Telegraph. The energy giant reported earnings of $8.4bn in the second quarter of 2022, triple the figure in the same period last year and more than $2bn higher than the previous three months. As a result, BP is raising its dividend by 10% and increasing its share buyback programme to $3.5bn for the quarter. The company also plans to invest about $14bn-$15bn this year, up from $13bn last year. BP isn’t the only oil company enjoying a profits bonanza thanks to higher energy prices, says Jasper Jolly in The Guardian. Shell last week reported record quarterly earnings of nearly £10bn…

Thai Life Insurance launched Southeast Asia’s largest initial public offering (IPO) of 2022 last week, says Reuters. The insurance broker sold 2.3 billion shares at 16 baht each, raising 34.4bn baht (£781m) on the Bangkok stock exchange. Thai Life plans to spend 13.6 bn baht (£309m) of the proceeds on a digital revamp and improving online distribution channels. The shares ended their first day marginally below the listing price; financial markets are struggling with geopolitical uncertainty and rising interest rates, so interest in IPOs in Southeast Asia has dwindled. There were $2.45bn worth of IPOs in the first half of 2022, down from $6.1bn last year.…

With the latest YouGov poll giving Liz Truss a 34 point lead in the contest to become the next Conservative leader, it’s no surprise that punters are even more firmly convinced that the current foreign secretary will end up as Boris Johnson’s successor. With a grand total of £8.86m matched on the markets for next prime minister and next Conservative leader, Truss is now at 1.13 (88.5%) to win with rival Rishi Sunak out at 8.8 (11.4%). While Truss is most likely to enter Downing Street, there might still be a smidgen of value in backing Sunak, given that other polls suggest the gap between the two candidates is much closer. Even if they are wrong, and she is on course for a landslide, the furore over her public-sector pay…

Right across Europe, governments are cutting back on power usage to get ready for what looks likely to be a harsh winter. Berlin has stopped illuminating public monuments at night; Hanover has switched off the hot water in showers in public buildings. Paris is stopping illuminated signs and preventing shops from running the air conditioning while their doors are open. The Spanish are ditching their ties to make stuffy offices more bearable. Why? Russia has reduced its supplies of gas into Europe, making it impossible to fill crucial storage facilities over the summer, and may well limit supplies even further over the winter when demand is at its highest. Emergency plans are being put in place to cope with that, mainly by rationing the use of energy. A Covid-like blow…

Cash flow is vital because if a business runs out of cash it will go bust, even if it appears to be making a decent profit on paper. Hence the oft-quoted business cliché, “cash is king”. Reporting of cash flows is also harder to manipulate in a flattering manner than reporting on earnings (which can be heavily influenced by choice of accounting conventions). This is one reason why investors should look at company valuation using measures based on cash flow as well as those based on profits or book value. With that in mind, the free cash flow yield (FCFY) is a ratio used to work out the cash flow return on a share as a percentage. Mechanically, if free cash flow is, say, £100m, and the firm’s market capitalisation…

Elliott Investment Management is building a stake in electronic payment provider PayPal with the intention of pushing the company to accelerate its attempts to reduce costs, says Bloomberg. The size of the stake has not been disclosed, but Ellliott could become one of the firm’s five largest shareholders, according to unidentified sources. PayPal’s shares have fallen 75% over the past year as growth in e-commerce slows due to supply-chain disruptions, rising inflation and the return to in-store shopping by many consumers. In addition, eBay, PayPal’s former parent company, is shifting payments away from PayPal’s platform. The firm is firing employees and closing offices, and says it ultimately expects to save $260m per year in staff costs.…

“If I wanted to take a six-month break, I don’t have income to cover that… I don’t have someone supporting me, I don’t have anyone I can turn to, to pay my bills or call for help… They don’t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals.” Actress Sydney Sweeney (pictured) laments that television streaming services don’t keep paying for reruns once the work is done, quoted on Lainey Gossip, a celebrity news site “What the f*** is this s***??? Why would anybody choose to take such a f***ing ENORMOUS discount relative to boutiques?... They pay 80-120 [thousand dollars] in bonus…and I just took home 44k. What the actual f***.” An anonymous Morgan Stanley banker is unhappy with the size of his bonus, quoted…

theconversation.com It is currently holiday season, yet instead of “drinking cocktails on the beach or hiking the mountains”, a surprising number of people are staying in the office, says Jolanta Burke. Research in Ireland has shown that one in five people do not take their full holiday entitlement. In the UK, two in five have taken less leave in the wake of the pandemic. Why? An inability to switch off may leave some people thinking they may as well work on. Others prefer working to holidays, perhaps because of the family conflict or the costs involved. But regardless of the reason, it is a mistake. We need time off to reduce the risk of “stress and burnout”, and to give us the time we need to recover from demanding jobs.…

In January 2022 I recommended several cheap defence companies, all of which I owned; they took off when the invasion commenced. I will keep holding these shares and buy more on any downturns for two reasons. The first is that in January the sector was too cheap, and although prices are now higher, so is earnings visibility. Defence expenditure, and hence companies’ order books, will rise significantly for many years. Most Western militaries are short of either basic armaments or sufficient stockpiles – or they own outdated or useless new equipment (the alarmingly bad next-generation Ajax tank ordered by the British Army doesn’t work). I suggest staying with the sector’s leaders. The easiest pick is still BAE Systems (LSE: BA), which despite trading close to an all-time high is still…

We’re all feeling the pinch as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite, so there has never been a better time to check whether you own a valuable forgotten asset. Research by tracing service Gretel estimates there is almost £50bn stashed away unclaimed. Forgotten assets can be in a variety of places, from investments and savings accounts to insurance policies. But the biggest source of forgotten wealth is money in pension funds. Gretel estimates that £37bn is waiting in lost pensions. No wonder. Most of us have switched jobs a few times in our careers, leaving behind workplace pensions. Combine that with a house move and it is easy for pension firms to lose track of us. Where to start Tracing lost assets has so far been a relatively simple process,…

● The families of pensioners who missed out on pension income because of government errors may now be able to claim an average compensation payment of £8,900 each. The government is working its way through 40,000 cases of pensioners – mostly women – thought to have been underpaid state pensions for years, or even decades, but many of those affected have died. Now ministers have launched a website to allow their family members to investigate such cases and to claim compensation for heirs where errors are identified. ● Financial advisers are increasingly worried that clients are withdrawing too much pension cash from income drawdown plans, new research warns. A survey by AKG, Abrdn and Scottish Widows found that 47% of advisers feel anxious that clients are ignoring their advice and…

Social-media platform Snapchat’s parent firm, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), saw its stock slide after posting a $422m loss for the second quarter of 2022, says Forbes – double the loss in the second quarter of 2021. The company cited a downturn in advertising revenue as the culprit and now plans to reduce its rate of hiring “substantially”. Snap made a promising market debut in 2017, but struggled last year amid changes to Apple’s privacy policy that gave iPhone users the option to block advertisements that tracked their behaviour across different apps. This hampered advertising sales. The share price is down 86% in a year.…

It’s incredible that the vast area of the southernmost Pantanal wetlands, in Brazil’s southwestern cattle-farming region, is privately owned, and not a national reserve, says Lisa Grainger in The Times. Fortunately, Roberto Klabin, owner of Casa Caiman’s newly refurbished lodge, turned 131,000 acres of his family estate into an ecological reserve. On the way to the lodge, “I trained my binoculars beside a pond and there, licking a paw, was a jaguar with a playful three-month-old cub”. It’s a rare sighting, as jaguars are solitary animals, of which only around 15,000 are left in the wild. Their habitat is dense jungle. That we could watch “the giant cat’s fat white belly, flicking tail and distinctive black rosettes, is in large part thanks to the conservation efforts of Klabin”. Arriving at…

Stay warm with Scandi cool “Anyone who’s been to Scandinavia and marvelled at [the locals] eating outdoors in temperatures that would send a Mediterranean crying to his mother will know that there’s some sleight-of-hand involved: lots of their restaurants use top-end infrared heaters,” says The Telegraph. The Opranic Thor is one such patio heater. “Light and portable” and with a good reflector to “spread the heat evenly,” Swedish firm Opranic has built a versatile bit of kit, perfect to keep your outdoor cinema toasty in the cooler months. It has five energy settings, from 1,200W-2,000W, and can comfortably warm about four or five people with its soothing glow. It “looks nicer than most patio heaters too”, with a sleek black or white design. £259, Amazon.co.uk A big screen for the…

Walmart cut its profit outlook last week in a surprise warning ahead of the retailer’s earnings report, sending its shares tumbling and “raising new questions about US consumers’ ability to sustain their voracious spending habits with inflation at a four-decade high”, says Bloomberg. Walmart is where ordinary households buy stuff. But they’re not buying as much as they used to. Two legs hold up American family finances – houses and income. Homeowners can no longer count on “taking out equity” from rising house prices because there won’t be any excess equity to take out. Nor can they refinance at lower mortgage rates – because mortgage rates are going up. Already, refinancing applications are down 80% and new house plans are being cancelled. Soon, house prices should go down too. “Two…

£9,724.54 The record high price per megawatt hour Britain paid on 20 July around midday to import electricity from Belgium in order to prevent a blackout in east London – roughly a 5,000% rise on the usual price. High demand and a bottleneck in the grid were to blame. €77bn The “social-asset value” of the Colosseum in Rome, according to Deloitte. It asked Italians how much they would contribute to its upkeep. Romans answered €90 on average; other Italians €57. It contributes €1.4bn to Italy’s economy annually. £1m How much the BBC will spend on polling technology from technology firm Culture Amp over five years to conduct staff surveys, including exit surveys and snapshot polls, despite a £1.4bn funding shortfall. The broadcaster says it wants to improve its working culture.…

Recession? What recession? The US economy shrank at an annualised pace of 0.9% between April and June, its second successive quarterly contraction. In many countries that would meet the definition of a recession, but with unemployment close to a 50-year low and two vacancies for every jobseeker in May, the White House has rejected the label. “That doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” says president Joe Biden. “The official designation is determined by eight economists” at the National Bureau of Economic Research, who also look at measures of jobs growth, income and spending to make a recession call, say Nicole Goodkind and Tal Yellin for CNN. They don’t think this slowdown qualifies. Beyond the technical arguments, “what’s clear to everyone is the economy is slowing, prices are rising at…

Three to buy Hays Shares Recruitment firm Hays repeatedly delivers double-digit increases in income from fees, pays out growing dividends and invests heavily in future growth. The firm offers recruitment services across 20 sectors in over 30 countries and expects to generate around £1.25bn in net fees this year. This is only a third of the net fees generated by international rivals, but Hays has outlined an “aggressive” five-year growth plan to help it deliver results while navigating “macroeconomic uncertainties”. 124p Unilever The Mail on Sunday Unilever “told a tale of price inflation” when it reported results last week, but assured consumers sales remained strong. The company is a “global tangle” of over 400 well-known brands. In the first half the volume of sales declined by 1.6%, but their value…

● ”Many chief executives in the recent past have tried to make Barclays boring. CS Venkatakrishnan, who was supposed to mark a break from the era of regulatory thrills and spills under Jes Staley (and others before him), isn’t there yet,” says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The banking giant has seen a 40% slump in profits after taking a £581m net charge for selling more structured notes – securities that track the performance of assets such as stocks, bonds or commodities – than it was authorised to do, owing to a paperwork error. This was followed by a “$200m whack” from US regulators for traders sending work messages via WhatsApp, and a penalty for “past larks with timeshare loans”. The bank’s actual operational profit in the first half of…

The US faces three big problems today, Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates tells The Hustle website. Firstly there’s internal strife – “political conflict between the left and the right, the haves and the have-nots, and people with different values”. This is being driven by rising inequality – “the bottom 60% of the population hasn’t seen a rise in per-capita income since 1980... a fairer society minimises these conflicts”. How can this be resolved? “There needs to be a transfer of wealth” which will “have to come significantly from taxes” on wealth, perhaps in the form of inheritance tax. Secondly, there’s China, which is set to continue growing much more rapidly than the US. “We’re going to have a great power conflict.” That doesn’t necessarily mean military conflict,…

■ Investors might have expected actively-managed funds to do better than passive index-trackers in current market conditions, says the Financial Times. But a report by AJ Bell has shown the opposite is true. In the UK only 12% of active funds managed to outperform a passive counterpart. The average active fund returned -13.5% in the first half of 2022 compared to a -4.4% return from the average passive fund. “Either way, you would have lost money — but investors in passives would have lost substantially less.” Passive funds have been aided by the “relatively buoyant FTSE 100”, which is skewed towards oil and commodities, sectors where the typical active fund is “considerably underweight”. Active funds tend to have a bias towards smaller stocks, which have been hit by recession fears.…

lrb.co.uk “After decades of hype about the men’s team, it is satisfying that England’s women finally brought football home,” says Emma John. Despite enjoying a long winning streak, the women’s game “still gets attacked like no other sport” and has had to battle against the odds. Just before the World Cup finals in 2015, the Football Association formally apologised for the harm it had done by deliberately keeping women out of the game, “stifling a sport that had thrived in the early decades of the 20th century”. Money will determine the future of the women’s game. Barcelona’s Champions League semi-final this spring was watched by a crowd of more than 90,000; some of the games in the Euros championship that just ended have had viewing figures a hundred times larger.…

Like it or not, oil remains a vitally important commodity. While the price has dipped from its highs in the first half of 2022, the International Energy Agency (IEA) still expects global demand for crude to grow by 2.2% in 2023, thus topping pre-pandemic levels. Even if this is overoptimistic – the IEA admits that figure could well be lower – global oil usage only tends to drop during deep recessions. Meanwhile, world oil supply is also uncertain, with ongoing concerns over Russia and oil-exporters’ cartel Opec. To cut a long story short, there’s a constant need for oilfield-engineering firms to provide a steady stream of “black gold” for consumers. As and when renewable-energy sources manage to supply most of the world’s energy needs, industry expertise will be vital in…

● Savers are benefiting from rising interest rates, so it’s not the time to lock your money away for too long. However, those prepared to wait three months can get an annual equivalent interest rate (AER) of 2.1% from Investec’s new 90-day notice savings account, says the Sunday Times. You can pay in between £5,000 and £250,000. ● The end of July brought with it the end of mortgage affordability stress tests. “It is hard to imagine a more bizarre time to kill off the Bank of England’s (BoE) affordability test, which for the past eight years has ensured that home buyers could cope with a three percentage point-rise in interest rates,” says the Financial Times. Households are “being stretched” by rising costs. Recession is “all but inevitable”; unemployment levels…

Central banks around the world are raising interest rates to temper demand and counteract persistently high inflation. In this situation it makes sense to look for companies whose revenues and growth are relatively insensitive to the economic cycle – those with products or services that are always in demand. One good way of finding these is to look for firms that consistently generated a high return on capital (a key gauge of profitability) over the last economic cycle. As the outlook for inflation and interest rates remains uncertain, it is also important to identify businesses with robust balance sheets. Those that meet these criteria often pay nice, predictable dividends that grow throughout the economic cycle. “Look for stocks whose sales and growth are insensitive to the economy” Life-changing treatments AbbVie…

£21.50, The Wine Society 01438-741177 It has been stiflingly hot at times this year, and while many people reach for chilled whites and rosés, we drink as many chilled reds as we do other styles. The rules are simple when chilling red wine. Seek out youthful bottles that are fruit-forward in flavour with little noticeable oak or tannin. I have two sensational candidates this week, and both are wines I first found in chilled form while on hols. Vertente is Niepoort’s finest value red wine, and in 2018 it is nothing short of celestial. Made from old vine tinta roriz, touriga franca and other indigenous varieties from hillside plots (vertente means aspect or hillside) along the length of the region. This is a forward-drinking slice of genius, and at 12.6%…

Nazi Billionaires The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties David de Jong William Collins, £25 The ancestors of many prominent German business families, including the Quandts, Flicks, von Fincks, Porsche-Piëchs and Oetkers, benefited from their complicity with the Nazi regime. This book by journalist David de Jong reveals just how, says Max Hastings in The Sunday Times. Huge fortunes were made by rich families close to the Nazi regime who bought up Jewish assets at fire-sale prices, raked in cash from the “hugely profitable pillaging of occupied Europe”, and exploited slave labour. These profits from services to the “worst causes in human history” were so great that even today they keep their descendants in “castles, boats, ski chalets, Impressionist paintings and cocaine”. Balzac’s claim that “behind every great fortune…