Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 929 i MoneyWeek

“It is striking just how much human behaviour can mess with sensible-looking forecasts” A journalist friend, James Fergusson, recently visited the once-gorgeous art deco Montazat Al-Lido hotel on the Dead Sea’s northern shore. In the 1920s, it was a cosmopolitan beach resort (think guests arriving by Imperial Airways sea planes). Today it is far from the beach; long-abandoned; and distinctly unglamourous. Yet it isn’t entirely empty. From thick layers of dust in the lobby, James picked up a couple of books. One made him think of me: The Economics of the 1960s by Colin Clark, published by MacMillan and Co Ltd in London in 1942. Yes, a forecasting book – and and one that should act as a salutary reminder to all writers to forecast as little as possible, even…

“Patrick Connolly of Chase de Vere, a financial planner, says… that investors who have previously steered clear of emerging markets because they regarded them as too ‘niche’ or too reliant on commodities may have to think again. In 2007 commodities made up 38% of the emerging markets index, while IT was 12% . Today the commodities weighting has fallen to 16%, while IT stands at 26%. ‘This is a big transformation,’ he says. Jason Hollands, managing director of Tilney Group, a wealth manager, says that emerging market nations make up 35% of global GDP, but only 11.3% of global equity markets, so they are heavily under-represented. The escalating trade war between China and the US has made people nervous of investing in emerging markets, so they look cheap.”…

An improved political backdrop bodes well for pharma and biotech in the year ahead, reckons Fortune. A split Congress means Obamacare “isn’t going anywhere”, while drug price cuts won’t happen either. One promising company not only improving people’s health but also lowering overall medical costs is Illumina, a major player in genomics. It produces systems used for genetic testing; applications range from oncology to agriculture. It has been churning out cheaper models of its products in recent years, “making genetic testing affordable enough to go mainstream”. Researchers are also finding new treatments in which genetics may play a part, so the group’s technology seems far more widely applicable than originally estimated. Analysts expect the Nasdaq-listed company to grow earnings at an annual average rate of 20% over the next five…

President Trump delivered a “forceful and fact-challenged” televised plea to the nation on Tuesday night for his long-promised border wall, declaring a “growing humanitarian and security crisis” at the southern border and blaming Democrats for the partial government shutdown that “he helped instigate three weeks ago”, say Philip Rucker and Felicia Sonmez in The Washington Post. (See also page 14.) In the speech, Trump made no mention of terrorism – a key if “largely bogus” argument advanced in favour of the wall – but he made a number of other false claims. He said the wall would be paid for by the “great new trade deal we have made with Mexico”; a deal that has not been ratified by Congress, and which does not, in any case, necessarily translate into…

It has become usual for US president Donald Trump to make “norm-shattering pronouncements” while his top advisers work behind the scenes to preserve the status quo, says The New York Times. But the latest row over policy towards Syria “is in a category all of its own”. Shortly after Trump “stunned the world” last month by ordering a rapid US withdrawal from Syria, “the administration began backtracking”. Secretary of state John Bolton has now made the withdrawal conditional on destroying Islamic State and guarantees from Turkey on the fate of the Kurds (allies of the US, which Turkey sees as terrorists). The U-turn is a pity, because “when an entire political establishment says a decision is mad, I tend to think something in it must be right”, says Simon Jenkins…

As Niels Bohr, the father of the atom bomb, famously pointed out, “predictions are difficult, especially about the future”. But this column isn’t bad at it. At the start of January last year, I suggested that Amazon might buy Waterstones, Barclays might buy Worldpay, Philip Green might sell Top Shop, and Facebook might buy WPP. None of those predictions came to pass exactly, but they were in the right territory. Waterstones was indeed sold, to the private-equity firm Elliot Advisers. Worldpay was sold to Vantiv. Green was reported to have tried to sell his flagship fashion chain. WPP was in enough trouble to get rid of its long-serving CEO Martin Sorrell. So, keeping in mind that none of them might actually happen, here are five potential deals that might shake…

The numbers are in for 2018 and overall it doesn’t look great. Let’s start with the deepest and broadest pool of funds, global equity funds. The MSCI World index was down 4% over the full year and 11% over the last quarter. Data from Numis reveals that the 23 global-equity investment trusts delivered a price return over three months of -11.5% and -2.2% over one year. But Caledonia managed positive gains at both the three-month and 12-month level, as did Hansa Trust, Miton Global Opportunities and Henderson Alternative Strategies. Sticking with this global theme, did the much smaller sector of defensive equity funds provide some respite? Yes. Numis tracked nine of these funds – with familiar names, including Personal Assets, RIT and Lindsell Train – and overall they managed to…

Asia’s ecocrisis is taking its toll Brahma Chellaney Nikkei Asian Review Asia is the epicentre of the global air-pollution problem, with city dwellers inhaling air contaminated with particulates multiple times over the World Health Organisation’s safe limit, says Brahma Chellaney. It is also a sign of Asia’s larger crisis – its deteriorating natural environment – which poses a “potent threat” to the continent’s future. In per-capita terms, Asia is the world’s most resource-poor continent. Water availability is less than half the global average and Asia is the largest importer of fossil fuels, including coal. Its over-exploitation of natural resources, such as tropical timber, and introduction of Western-style agriculture, is taking its toll. Desertification in the north of China causes the sand squalls over Beijing and state-sponsored irrigation has led to…

Inc.com This is the time of year when the pundits make their predictions, says Geoffrey James. Instead of following suit, I’m going to “pull a Penn and Teller” and “reveal the secrets behind the prediction biz”. 1. Be bold. The more outlandish a prediction, the more likely it will attract attention. “AI will replace 47% of all jobs” is publicity gold. “Self-driving cars will continue to need human baby-sitters” is unlikely to get much traction. 2. Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. As long as you attach a long enough time frame to your prediction, you can make it year after year and still get the same publicity. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has been predicting that fully conscious AI is 20 years off for the past three decades. 3. Be generous.…

As it’s the new year, many of us will be embarking on a new diet or fitness regime, hoping this will be the year we finally transform ourselves. But take the same energy and desire for change and apply it to your finances and you could be much better off by the time next Christmas rolls around. First, consider moving your savings to the new personal banking arm of Goldman Sachs, Marcus (named after founder Marcus Goldman), and you could significantly improve your returns. The instant-access savings account pays 1.5%, compared with an average of 0.63% for no-notice savings accounts. And don’t forget your individual savings account (Isa) allowance. Virgin Money is paying 1.45% on its instant-access Double Take E-Isa. Isa transfers are accepted into the account, but you can…

Getting on top of your finances is one of the most common resolutions for the new year. But that doesn’t have to mean taking drastic action: when it comes to pensions, at least, there are some simple measures that can increase the value of your retirement benefits substantially. None should take more than a few minutes to organise. Boost your state pension The state pension is a solid base from which to build your retirement income, but you won’t get the full amount if you haven’t made sufficient national insurance contributions. You need 35 years’ worth in total, so check your national insurance record at Gov.uk to find out where you stand. If you’re likely to fall short, you can make voluntary class-3 national insurance contributions, currently charged at £14.65…

If you live abroad for six months or more per year, HMRC will consider you a “non-resident landlord” (NRL), even if for tax purposes you’re a UK resident. If you’re already an overseas landlord, and you’re looking to pay tax on your 2017-2018 income, you will probably already have your situation sorted. But for those who will be paying tax in future years, it’s useful to know where you stand. You can either receive your rental income with the tax already deducted by your letting agent or manager, or you can opt to pay tax through self-assessment on the gross rent. In the former case, the agent must adhere to the non-resident landlord scheme, and take away basic-rate tax from your rent (after their expenses) before passing it on to…

Carr’s Group (LSE: CARR) is an agriculture and engineering company formed in Carlisle in 1831. Its agricultural division manufactures animal feed and operates retail stores for farm equipment; the engineering division designs and manufactures equipment for the nuclear energy sector. 2018 was a good year, with revenue up by 16.5% and profits up more than 50%. The British UK agricultural division performed particularly well while the engineering division received a fillip from recent acquisitions. The share price has risen by almost 30% in the last 12 months.…

We devoted the final trading page of last year to assessing our performance. We had a mixed 2018, with a small number of very profitable positions outweighed by a large number of smaller losses. So over the holiday I had a think about which elements of my strategy might need changing, especially in light of market turbulence. I’ve come up with five new-year trading resolutions. • Continue to ditch losers While taking a long-term view is a good idea for investors, traders don’t have that luxury, especially if they are using leverage (as you do in spread-betting). Last year we employed a new strategy of closing all positions that hadn’t made a profit within six months. It kept losses on each position to a manageable level, so we’re keeping this…

Forrest Gump is a comedy-drama film based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom. Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks, pictured) is a naïve, kind southerner who gets caught up in key moments in US history, such as teaching Elvis how to dance, and accidentally bringing down Richard Nixon. Thanks to some good fortune, combined with genuine bravery, Gump becomes a war hero, star table-tennis player, famed marathon runner and multimillionaire. He also marries his childhood sweetheart Jenny (Robin Wright). The key moment After leaving the army, Gump becomes a shrimp fisherman with Lieutenant Dan Taylor (whose life he saved in Vietnam). They eventually make a fortune from their fishing venture and Lieutenant Dan invests their profits “in some kind of fruit company” – which turns out to be Apple. Gump gives…

2015 Rosso di Montalcino, Vigneto Gauggiole, Castiglion del Bosco, Tuscany, Italy £32, Harrods, 020-7730 1234, Harrods.com I have to cast my mind back to last June and a dinner hosted by Massimo Ferragamo to recommend this wine. It was, curiously, a golf dinner to which I was invited by a golfing friend. It turns out that Castiglion del Bosco is not only a brilliant winery, but it is also an epic hotel and a top-class golf resort, too. Anyway, I was only really interested in the wines and during the course of the dinner I noticed we had jumped from a delightful chardonnay straight to the big guns – Brunello di Montalcino, Cru Campo del Drago and Riserva Millocento – missing out my featured wine. Of course, Massimo…

“Miami mania” took hold last month as the 17th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, plus more than a dozen satellite fairs, opened for business in Florida, says Melanie Gerlis in the Financial Times. Many of the 268 galleries had brought works reflecting “the new art-world order that seeks minority-ethnicity and female artists with socio-political overtones” in their work. “Buyers responded well.” Among the “VIP-day” sales, Mark Bradford’s Feather (2018 – pictured) sold for $5m, while Strained Roots (2014), by Ghanaian-born artist El Anatsui, sold for $1.2m. Yet looks can be deceiving, says Brett Sokol in The New York Times. Many of the “dizzying” accompanying celebrity-studded fashion shows and private dinners, that at best had a tenuous connection to the world of…

• “Every time a boffin says he needs a billionty million pounds to fund a mission to the third moon of Jupiter, we’re always told it’ll further our understanding of where we came from,” says Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun. “And it never does.” In 2006, a probe was launched to fly past Pluto. We were told the furthest outpost in the solar system was very cold. And before anyone said “you don’t say”, Professor Boffin was back with his begging bowl. If he could have another couple of trillion, he would like to look at “Ultima Thule”. The ultimate roof box? No, as it turned out last week. It’s a 20-mile lump of rock in the shape of a peanut. Can we please “stop pretending that space is a…

Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli, 33, (pictured) is facing charges of tax evasion, money laundering and perjury in Israel, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Refaeli is suspected of hiding almost $2m in income between 2005 and 2007, and around $6m from 2009 to 2012, in offshore accounts, says the paper. She is also accused of receiving undeclared freebies, such as the use of luxury cars. Refaeli denies any wrongdoing, and her lawyers hope to clear her name in a pretrial hearing, reports the Times. However, according to Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan is reconsidering asking Refaeli to present the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv this year – they fear she may be too busy. Good week for: Britain’s Olivia Colman (pictured) scooped an award for best actress…

Bad news, says Lex in the Financial Times. “The bulls are back.” More than 70% of stocks in the S&P 500 have been given a consensus “buy” or “strong buy” rating. Only Campbell Soup has been deemed a “sell”. The trouble is that analysts usually get it wrong. Just before the financial crisis, analysts were piling up buy recommendations, but once prices were actually at rock bottom, in March 2009, they “were screaming” sell. Since 2007, if you had gone against the Wall Street consensus, you would have “saved or made... a lot of money over the next six months”. It’s not just shares – analysts are also lousy forecasters of year-end index levels. One study of S&P 500 predictions made by 22 strategists at major investment banks between 2000…

“It has never been easier for Americans to find a job,” says Matthew Rocco in the Financial Times. US companies have more job openings than there are unemployed Americans. This is the first time such a scenario has occurred in at least 18 years, since the labour department first began tracking the data in December 2000. The number of jobs on the market first surpassed the number of job seekers in March 2018, when job openings rose to 6.64 million, compared with 6.59 million job seekers. With companies having to compete for workers it’s no wonder wage growth is at a ten-year high and people are quitting their jobs at the fastest rate since 2001, says Abigail Hess on CNBC. More than three million people voluntarily leave their work each…

Investors Chronicle The tax on sugary drinks and the collapse of Conviviality, a major distributor, have damaged sentiment towards the soft drinks business. That makes for a perfect entry point into high-quality Britvic, which boasts “big-brand, low-or-no-sugar beasts” such as J2O and Robinsons (824p). The high street may be ailing, but a majority of WH Smith’s revenue now comes from its high-margin travel stores in airports and stations and the business is also expanding in the US (1,764p). Airlines rarely bring much joy to investors but falling fuel costs and easyJet’s strong brand may bring out your inner contrarian. A 5.5% dividend yield also makes the shares an income play (1,068p). BT shares have been rocked by an Italian accounting scandal and regulatory challenges, but a new CEO and a…

As far as London flotations were concerned, last year went out with a bang. The fourth quarter of 2018 saw 25 companies launch an intial public offering (IPO), the most since 2014, according to consulting group EY. They raised £4.4bn. The year ended with a total of 79 IPOs raising £9.5bn, down from 2017’s £12.4bn from 95 flotations. The biggest flotation was Aston Martin, which raked in £1.1bn. The stock finished the year down by almost 40%. The year’s second-biggest IPO was Smithson Investment trust. It secured £823m, the largest sum ever raised by a fund in London. The rush to market is partly due to the uncertainty surrounding our departure from the EU, notes EY; some firms will have wanted to avoid the volatility widely expected in the first…

Paddy Power has opened the year by offering a flurry of Brexit-related bets. Some of these are serious, such as whether Article 50 will be extended beyond the end of March. In this case you can get even odds (50%) on the deadline being extended, and 8/11 (57.9%) on it not being extended. Paddy Power is also offering evens (50%) on a live TV leaders’ debate on Brexit taking place before the start of April. They are also offering 1/10 on next week’s meaningful vote being rejected by the Commons. Some of Paddy ’s offerings are more towards the novelty end of the spectrum (or at least we hope so). So, if you believe that the process will result in a crisis with shortages of basic goods then Paddy allows…

It’s the time of year for forecasts. Most analysts aren’t worth listening to – price targets for the FTSE 100 aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on and aren’t much use anyway (see page 5). But it can be worth reading “out-of-consensus” predictions – potential “surprise” outcomes that banks or analysts believe the market is underpricing. Even if many of these “surprises” are nothing of the sort, it’s useful to know what analysts believe represents radical thinking. “The European Union could announce a massive debt jubilee” For example, Blackstone analyst Byron Wien issues a list of ten surprises each year – events that he thinks have a better than 50% chance of happening, but that the average investor only thinks has a one in three chance of happening. The problem…

• The vice-chairman of West Ham Football Club, Karren Brady (pictured), was paid an extra £438,000 for consultancy work on top of her £898,000 salary last year, reports The Times. The money was paid via her company BKB Media, and was in connection with the sale of 10% of the club to American billionaire Albert “Tripp” Smith. Smith founded GSO Capital Partners and sold it to private-equity and financial services firm Blackstone for $1bn. He is now managing director of Blackstone. West Ham made a net profit of £17.3m in 2017-2018, down from £43m the season before. • Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the professional footballers’ association (PFA), was paid a total of more than £2m last year – the same as last year’s “scandalous” amount, says the Daily Mail.…

Edward Bramson, the activist investor targeting Barclays, has “lost faith” in his dealings with the bank, say David Hellier and Stefania Spezzati in Bloomberg. Having been spurned in his offer to become non-executive director, Bramson told shareholders in a letter that he would seek a vote to change the composition of the board. The activist Sherborne Investors, which revealed its stake in the bank last year, is keen to shrink the corporate and investment bank, which has reported lower returns on equity than other units. This puts Bramson at odds with the bank’s CEO Jes Staley (pictured), who has bet his reputation on boosting returns and overhauling that division, say Hellier and Spezzati.…

“They gigged seven nights a week for me and my brothers… It’s not much money for a gig and they did it in snow, rain, maps out — there was no satnav trying to find these pubs: working men’s pubs in the back-end of wherever.” Actress Sheridan Smith (pictured) on her parents’ struggle to pay the bills, quoted in The Times “I love eBay, but I’ve stopped a bit now because it was getting ridiculous, I was buying stupid things and had nowhere to put them. But I was such a young age and I didn’t know what to spend my money on.” Rupert Grint, 30, who starred in the Harry Potter films as a child, quoted in The Times “I can’t say I ‘lost’ a huge part of my…

ScientificAmerican.com Shelves groan with self-help books promising to give you the secrets of success, network scientist Albert-László Barabási tells David Noonan. You might conclude from looking at 100 such books that getting up at 6am and starting work straight away is the magic formula, for example. Yet perhaps ten million people do likewise with no effect at all. Barabási, the author of a book on the subject, approached the question more scientifically, looking at big data sets to determine what the “universal laws” of success are. One finding that emerged from the research is that although performance is obviously vital (you have to be good at what you do), in many fields it is networks that drive success (whether you are recognised and rewarded for what you have done). You…

1 January – The energy price cap came into effect at the beginning of this month. This means the bill for a typical dual-fuel customer paying by direct debit cannot exceed £1,137. 31 January – Deadline for filing your tax return and paying what you owe. 1 March – Broadband providers will have to start providing a minimum guaranteed speed when you sign up. If they fail to provide that speed for a month, you can switch without penalty. 5 April – This is the last day of the 2018-2019 tax year. Use up your Isa and pension allowances before midnight. 6 April – The Personal Allowance (how much you can earn tax-free) rises from £11,850 to £12,500. The 40% income tax threshold rises from £46,350 to £50,000, except in…

In 1997, Netflix was established as a mail-order film and television show delivery service. Slightly more than two decades later, it has become a technology giant spearheading a dramatic shift in the television industry. As internet speeds gradually improved, Netflix began to offer a streaming service, delivering programmes to televisions or home computers through the internet, in return for a monthly subscription. It soon caught on, not least because viewers could “binge-watch” entire television series’ and were not bound by the package and channels offered by a cable or satellite television provider. Today, having changed the way we consume television, Netflix has amassed 137 million subscribers worldwide. It offers an extensive line-up of acquired films, dramas and documentaries as well as its own original programmes, or “content” – big hits…

If you’re about to file your tax return for rental income you receive from letting out property, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the scaling back of the various reliefs you can claim. With that in mind, it’s even more important to be aware of what you can claim for. The rental income you need to declare, unsurprisingly, consists of the money your tenants pay you in rent. But note that it also includes any payments you get from tenants for the use of furniture and charges for additional services (such as cleaning of communal areas, hot water, heating and repairs). From this pre-tax income, you can then deduct the money you spent on things like buildings insurance, contents insurance, repairs, utility costs (such as water bills and council tax),…

A castle built on the ruins of a Royal household is on the market for £2.5m, says Joseph Curtis on Mail Online. Devizes Castle in Wiltshire was owned by the Crown for around 500 years after it was claimed by King Stephen of Blois in the 1130s. Known as “the most gorgeous in Christendom”, the castle was visited by monarchs such as King John, Henry III and Edward I. Henry VIII gifted it to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, before reclaiming it after their divorce. The castle was then destroyed in 1648 during the English Civil War, and a new one was built on the site in 1840s. During the Second World War, this building housed Italian prisoners of war.…

Intu Properties (LSE: INTU) owns shopping centres across the UK, including Lakeside in the southeast and the Trafford Centre in Manchester. The sector has been under pressure as retail moves online and consumers remain wary before Brexit. After a steady decline, the share price was lifted towards the end of last year on news of a £3bn takeover bid by a consortium of UK, Canadian and Saudi-Arabian firms. But the bid was abandoned and the share price fell by a third. A similar bid from Hammerson fell through in April. The shares have lost 50% in the last year.…

Over the last few weeks, four of our five long positions have gone up in value, with Greene King rising to 553p (from 523p), Cineworld increasing to 273p (from 269p) and John Laing Group reaching 333p (from 313p). In addition, Takeda’s takeover of Shire finally went through with Shire shareholders getting the equivalent of £46.90, which means that we made £365 in profit from the trade. However, Saga fell below our stop-loss of 102p, which meant we closed our long position for a loss of £525. Overall, we are making a collective profit of £180 on our three remaining open positions (Greene King, Cineworld and John Laing Group). Nonetheless, the value of our shorts has increased, too. Bitcoin went up to $4,018 (from $3,250); Netflix increased from $274 to $297;…

This is the time of year when columnists get their crystal balls out. There are no crystal balls in the financial markets. But we’ll keep an eye on the weather. There are patterns, trends, and moral lessons that make some outcomes more likely than others. It’s not like flipping a coin where every flip is independent of the last one. The longer and higher the bull market goes, the less likely it is to continue. Why? Because there are feedback loops and automatic stabilisers that bring an out-of-whack market back into whack. High prices bring low ones. And vice versa. Yet when something is widely expected, it usually doesn’t happen, because if you knew in advance what was coming, you would race ahead. It would be like knowing where you…

“Yes, stocks do go down sometimes,” says Carleton English in the New York Post. US equities surged in 2016 and 2017. But 2018 was their worst year since the financial crisis. The S&P 500 index, which tends to set the tone for the world, fell by around 6%. It slumped by 10% last month, the worst December performance since 1931, when America was suffering from the Great Depression. The technology-dominated Nasdaq index lost 4%. Other markets fared worse. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped by 12.5%; Germany’s blue-chip DAX index lost a fifth. There are plenty of reasons for markets to be “skittish”, says The Economist. A sea of troubles... Headwinds have strengthened over the past few months. The earnings growth of US companies is fading as domestic and global economic growth…

• What a “shameful episode”, says Christopher Thompson and Ed Cropley on Breakingviews. Three former employees of Credit Suisse were arrested last week for allegedly helping to arrange kickbacks on $2bn of loans to state-owned companies in Mozambique. This “embarrassing... failure” underscores “lax controls”. The compliance division was “kept in the dark” about staff concerns. With the bank having made $44m in fees from its share of the loans, it is in for “more awkward headlines” as it is helping to restructure the debt. • When the Sainsbury’s board promoted Mike Coupe (pictured) to chief executive five years ago, they didn’t realise he planned to “build an empire”, says Sam Chambers in The Sunday Times. However, since then, Coupe has “set about a plan to make Sainsbury’s the country’s biggest…

No-deal Brexit HSBC’s overseas dollar earnings could prove invaluable in the case of a disorderly Brexit, says The Independent. What’s more, the shares offer a prospective dividend yield of 6% that looks secure (646.9p). An internationally diversified defensive stock like Diageo is a way of hedging your bets for the year ahead (2,795p). Industrial software specialist Aveva merged with France’s Schneider Electric this year and a significant proportion of earnings are in foreign currencies (2,420p). Brexit deal concluded For those who think Brexit will turn out fine, challenger bank CYBG could prove “ridiculously cheap” on six times earnings (181.2p). Lloyds Banking Group is profitable and offers a prospective dividend yield of 5.5% – expect a rebound if the economy emerges unscathed (51.85p). British Airways owner IAG’s share price was hit…

Stockmarkets could be getting ready to rally from their recent sharp sell off, reckons Jeremy Siegel. However, investors may need to be patient for a little longer – and if the US fails to avoid recession, all bets are off. The finance professor, who wrote the 1994 investment bestseller Stocks for the Long Run, told CNBC that the first quarter of the year might be hard going. But overall he thinks the market slide last year was simply due to investors getting ahead of themselves. “I think we swung too positive last summer and now I think we’ve swung too negative... We went from a rosy view to... ‘oh my God there’s going to be a recession’.” Siegel acknowledges that if a recession does arrive in the next 12 months,…

By lunchtime last Friday, the bosses of Britain’s biggest companies had already earned as much as the average worker earns in a year, says Bloomberg. It took until 1pm on 4 January to surpass the average worker’s pay packet – and until just 8:30am to overtake the average female employee. Chief executives of FTSE 100 companies now earn 133 times the average worker’s pay – £3.9m compared with £29,574 – up from 47 times in 1998, despite Theresa May declaring in 2017 that excessive executive pay is the “unacceptable face of capitalism” that is “damaging the social fabric of our country”. The figures come from a report by the CIPD, a professional association for the human resources sector, and research group the High Pay Centre. In the US, things are…

• Famed stockpicker Richard Buxton has stepped down as chief executive of Merian Global Investors, the investment boutique he spun out of Old Mutual last year, says Owen Walker in the Financial Times. Buxton, who made his name working as a fund manager at Schroders, will instead concentrate on running his investment portfolio. He heads the UK equities team at Merian in addition to managing the company’s UK Alpha fund. The move is “surprising”, but may prove good news for investors in UK Alpha, says Jonathan Miller of Morningstar: it has underperformed while his two roles were combined, trailing the market by 5% from August 2015 to the end of December 2018. • A row has erupted between fund manager Terry Smith and investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown (HL) after it…

Blogs.Spectator.co.uk MP Nigel Evans was acquitted on charges of sexual assault in 2014, but while the case against him fell apart, so too did his finances, says Ross Clark. The fight swallowed up his entire £130,000 life savings, which has led him to denounce David Cameron’s legal-aid reforms. I sympathise with Evans, but he is wrong about legal aid. A report in 2014 found that UK taxpayers were spending £2bn a year on legal aid, compared with just £290m in France and £272m in Germany. Per capita, UK taxpayers were paying £26.59 a year, compared with a European average of £7.10. And far from slashing legal aid to the bone, the government’s reforms only sought to save £215m a year. UK costs are so high because our lawyers are paid…

• The Financial Conduct Authority, the City regulator, has fined Santander almost £33m for “systematically failing to distribute the assets of deceased customers to bereaved families,” says Harry Brennan in The Daily Telegraph. The bank hadn’t passed on more than £183m in cash and investments to the rightful owners, affecting 40,428 customers. The problems relate to Santander’s bereavement process, with the bank failing to trace customer accounts, meaning money was sometimes lost and not passed on. It also failed to monitor the process properly, meaning sorting out loved ones’ affairs took far longer than it should have. If you think you have money in lost or dormant accounts, or a deceased relative may have forgotten funds, you can search for them via the website MyLostAccount.org.uk. • Around 14,000 mini-bond owners…

Of all Netflix’s rivals, Disney (NYSE: DIS) may be best placed to give it a run for its money. It plans to launch its own streaming service, Disney+, later this year. The service will have a formidable array of content on offer, with films from Disney’s main entertainment studios, including Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm, as well as TV and movies from the recently acquired 21st Century Fox. Catching up with Netflix’s head start and 137 million global subscribers in the streaming market will be tough – and very expensive. But Disney has ample scope to absorb losses given its large and diverse operations; divisions range from theme parks to cruises. The well-run group has a global footprint and is also valued much more reasonably than its…

This 56-metre yacht was built in 2011 and featured in the James Bond film Skyfall . It can reach 14 knots, with a typical cruising speed of 12 knots, and has six cabins that can accommodate 12 people, along with quarters for crew. It’s fitted out in mahogany and marble and has satellite TV and jet skis for guests. Daniel Craig and Bérénice Marlohe (pictured) are just two of the celebrities who have stayed on it since its launch. Can you guess what price it sold for?…

The tax burden in Britain has reached a 49-year high. Higher earners have been hit the hardest: their share of the nation’s tax bill has almost trebled since the 1970s. At the same time, investing tax-efficiently has become considerably harder over the past few years. For instance, not only has there been a crackdown on the buy-to-let sector, with the relief on mortgage-interest payments reduced and stamp duty for second homes raised, but the pensions annual allowance has been cut too. Many fear tax relief for higher earners could be on the way out. So where can wealthier investors turn? One of the last relatively straightforward and tax-efficient investments left is a venture capital trust (VCT). In exchange for the greater risks of investing in young innovative companies, VCT investors…

Shareholders in JD Sports Fashion (LSE: JD) had a turbulent 2018. In the first nine months the stock soared by 40% to a peak of 508p. But the company fell victim to investors’ shift away from growth stocks during the autumn. By Christmas the shares were down to 339p. A recent rally has boosted them to 380p. So what next? JD Sports has done well over the past few years, with revenue tripling between 2014 and 2018. Some of this was due to acquisitions, including the decision to buy Go Outdoors in 2016. However, most of it has come from correctly anticipating that people increasingly want to wear sports clothes that are fashionable, not just functional. Another thing to note is that growth has been remarkably consistent, with sales expanding…

“Ocado begins with an ‘o’, ends with an ‘o’ and is worth zero,” quipped one London-based analyst shortly after the company floated in 2010. Founded by three former Goldman traders a decade earlier, the outfit had broken new ground as Britain’s first online delivery grocer. Yet it was written off for years as “a middle-class indulgence” by cynics in the City, later equally quick to scoff at tales of its miraculous reinvention as a technology company. By the summer of 2017, notes Bloomberg, Ocado was the most shorted stock in Europe. Vindication at last for co-founder Tim Steiner – the only one of the original three still in place. In an otherwise dismal year for stockmarkets, Ocado nearly doubled its value to £5.2bn – propelling itself into the FTSE 100…

Going… An anonymous Dutch princess has put up for auction a number of artworks from the collection of William II, who reigned in the Netherlands from 1840 to 1849, according to website Dutch News. Among the lots for sale at Sotheby’s in New York on 30 January is Nude study of a young man with raised arms, a drawing by Dutch master Peter Paul Rubens that served as a study for an altarpiece in the cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp in Belgium. In the 1980s, it supposedly hung from the wall of the New York apartment of Princess Christina, the youngest sister of the former Dutch queen, Beatrix. The early 17th-century black chalk drawing is expected to sell for between $2.5m and $3.5m. Gone… A dress worn by Princess…

£216m The cost to NHS England every year from patients failing to show up for their GP appointments, according to the healthcare body. At an average cost of £30 each, the 15.4 million missed appointments could fund 58,320 hip-replacement operations. £6.5m The estimated economic boost to London’s economy from visitors attending the New Year’s Eve firework display. London mayor Sadiq Khan was criticised for politicising the celebration this year – the London Eye Ferris wheel was turned into an enormous European Union flag at one point in the display. This was to convey the message that London would be open for business after Brexit, the mayor claimed. 95p The fare per mile for travelling from Manchester to London by train, making it the most expensive rail route in Britain, measured…