Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 942 i MoneyWeek

“Saudi Arabia has raised funds for its reform plan without having to flog the family silver” Saudi Aramco, the giant oil company owned by the Saudi Arabian government, is the most profitable company in the world (that’s what happens when you produce 10% of the world’s oil and you’re able to pump it for less than $3 a barrel). It has a pristine balance sheet. It’s the kingdom’s corporate crown jewel. However, the Saudis, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have decided, correctly, that their economy is too dependent on oil, particularly in an era where the US has become a major energy rival. Bin Salman, under his “2030 vision” plan, wants to invest in building more sustainable, diverse income streams. But that takes a lot of money. And so,…

Single-person households are on the rise, while more and more people are finding jobs, says WirtschaftsWoche. So people have less time at home to do the dusting and hoovering, which bodes well for America’s iRobot, the largest producer of household robots. It has sold 20 million of them and recently reached the $1bn sales mark. The gadgets are popular in the US, but there is still ample growth potential in Europe. The technology can also be applied to other areas, such as assisting with medical procedures and operations, or defusing bombs. The group has applied for 1,000 patents. iRobot’s net profit margin has reached 8.6% and the balance sheet is solid, with no debt and $162m of cash.…

Debenhams’ “four-month battle with Sports Direct and its billionaire founder Mike Ashley” is over, says Jonathan Eley in the Financial Times. The 206-year-old department store’s management has tipped it into administration in a “pre-pack deal” involving an immediate sale to the group’s lenders, wiping out shareholders – including Ashley, who spent £150m on shares – but allowing the business to keep operating. The move prompted a furious response from Ashley, whose “eleventh hour” offer of support was rejected. Ashley accused Debenhams’ advisers of “skulduggery” and said that they should “go to prison” for “undermining shareholders and other stakeholders”. Around 50 stores are expected to close, with Debenhams hoping to renegotiate leases on the rest. “It’s been a good old-fashioned shoot-out,” says Ashley Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. But Ashley’s “scattergun”…

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rival Benny Gantz appear to be virtually tied according to preliminary results from Tuesday’s election, says Anshel Pfeffer in The Times. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White alliance both took about 29% of the vote and 35 seats each in the 120-seat Knesset, but Likud has far more options to strike coalition deals with other right-wing parties. Should Netanyahu be confirmed as the victor he will soon become Israel’s longest-serving leader since the creation of Israel in 1948. Netanyahu has overcome unprecedented obstacles, says Raf Sanchez in The Daily Telegraph. Both he and his wife face indictments on multiple counts of bribery and fraud. Gantz is a decorated former army general. A majority of voters told pollsters that they were…

After a “nationwide debate” organised by President Macron, billed “as one of the greatest advances in democracy since Athens”, the French government is “poised to begin a second wave of reforms”, says Adam Sage in The Times. The results of the consultation, which included 1.9 million posts on a website, as well as suggestions from books placed in 16,337 town and village halls, seem to indicate that voters want “honesty and lower taxes”. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe acknowledged frustration at tax rates that are “the highest of any developed country” and promised to “lower taxes and lower them faster”. But it’ll take more than that, says Pauline Bock in The New Statesman. The results suggest that the French want any reductions focused on sales tax, which disproportionately affects the poor.…

If you want to beat the market, you can’t just track the index – you have to do something different. One strategy that has made outsized returns in the past (yes, the past is no guide to the future, but it’s all we’ve got) is to buy assets when they’re cheap. This goes for entire markets as well as individual stocks. One ratio that we’ve always liked for valuing markets is the cyclically adjusted price/earnings (or Cape) ratio. It’s defined in the box below, but put simply, if you invest when the Cape is low (and the market is cheap), subsequent returns are higher than if you buy when the Cape is high. A recent review by The Brandes Institute notes that if you’d bought the US market on a…

Earlier this year, Greece successfully managed to complete its first bond issue since the debt crisis of 2010 and it is planning another one over the summer. The country has already raised €5bn from the markets this year, and has indicated another €5bn will be sold in June. On the day, the bonds had little trouble finding buyers. This for a country with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 180% that just about everyone agrees is unsustainable, and which has only just started to grow again after the deepest and longest recession of modern times. Greece also has a long record of defaulting on its debts – it first reneged in 1826, and has failed to pay what it owes on another six occasions since then. On the surface, it is hard…

Bonfire of regulations must end Will Hutton The Guardian The more we learn about the crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 planes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, “the more shocking the story becomes”, says Will Hutton. Back in 2011, Boeing needed to develop new planes to compete with European rival Airbus. But as the process of developing planes is expensive and takes up to ten years, it opted instead to bolt new, more fuel-efficient engines onto its older models. This is at the root of the technical problem that caused the crashes. Boeing’s judgement in this matter should have been vetted by third parties. But for decades, regulation in the US has been “hamstrung” by libertarian ideology. The Federal Aviation Authority has an enviable technical reputation, but over the past…

Anthony Bolton remains a legend, 12 years after he stepped down as manager of the Fidelity Special Situations fund. In his 28 years at the helm, an investment of £1,000 would have been turned into £147,000, a compound return of 19.5%. In 1994, Fidelity launched a similarly managed investment trust, Fidelity Special Values (LSE: FSV), which performed even better. Bolton timed his departure well, as the financial crisis and consequent savage bear market unfolded within a year. The next four years were not easy for his successor, whose performance at FSV lagged the FTSE All-Share Index. Back on form Since Alex Wright took over as manager in 2012, however, there has been a return to form. In the five years to the end of March the return was 47%, 13%…

You can barely move in central London for construction sites at the foot of enormous skyscrapers. But who on earth is going to occupy all of these shiny new buildings once they’re built? Apparently, the demand is there. According to property investment firm CBRE, a “phenomenon” is occurring across all central-London office markets. For the first time, “a clear difference in performance has emerged between new and secondhand – existing – space”. Demand now far outstrips the supply of new space, while there is an oversupply of secondhand space. So while this doesn’t bode well for landlords of older lets, it hints at continued momentum in the market. And overall, central London’s office market is doing better than expected. Last year, £18bn was spent on deals, 10% more than the…

Imagine dying of an infected cut on your finger. Or being told that a hip procedure or liver transplant could end up killing you. This may sound like a medical disaster film, but it could well happen fairly soon. Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics used to cure common ailments and illnesses, or to prevent infection during surgery. If these resistant “superbugs” prevail, antibiotics will be ineffective and “modern medicine will be lost”, says Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England. As antibiotics stop working, a growing list of infections – notably pneumonia, tuberculosis, blood poisoning, gonorrhoea, and food-borne diseases – are becoming harder, and sometimes impossible, to treat, says the World Health Organisation (WHO). What would once have been easily treated afflictions could once again…

Almost a quarter of us travel abroad without insurance, according to the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA). Yet travel insurance is essential. The number of claims is steadily increasing, with one a minute in 2017 and £1m paid out every day. The average pay-out is nearly £1,300; medical expenses make up the majority of claims. A common misconception is that if you are travelling within the EU you only need a European Health Insurance Card (EHIC). But EHIC only gives you the same free healthcare as a local. In some countries that amounts to little. It also doesn’t cover the costliest part of medical claims – getting you home. Use comparison websites to find the best price for travel insurance, but don’t simply go with the cheapest option. Make…

Marshalls (LSE: MSLH) makes concrete and stone paving for retail outlets and the construction industry, operating throughout the UK. Business has held up well despite “ongoing macroeconomic and Brexit uncertainty”, as the group’s chair Vanda Murray puts it. A combination of organic growth and bolt-on acquisitions boosted revenue by 14% to £491m in 2018, while pre-tax profits climbed by 21% to £62.9m. Early 2019 seems to be continuing in the same vein, with sales up by 16% year-on-year in the first two months. The share price has risen by 57% in the last year.…

Born in Sweden in 1880, Ivar Kruger graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology, then set up Kruger and Toll in 1908 to take advantage of advances in building technology he had come across in the US. He then turned his attention to his father’s match company, floating it, then merging it with other firms. Swedish Match would go on to become the largest match company in the world. What was the scam? Kruger initially raised funds through a flotation, but he supplemented this with bank loans and further stock sales in the US, paying investors dividends of up to 15%. To create the illusion of profitability, he would shuffle funds and assets around his business empire, in some cases using money he had borrowed through one company to repay…

The Case for Trump Victor Davis Hanson Basic Books, £25, from 25 April With President Donald Trump’s approval ratings in the low 40s and many of his policy pledges either unfulfilled or deeply unpopular, most pundits think that he is doomed to be a one-term president. Military historian and conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson disagrees. In The Case For Trump, he argues that, despite what Hanson sees as a systematic attempt to undermine him, Trump’s two years in office have been extremely successful. He believes Trump has a good chance of being re-elected, but even if he isn’t, that he deserves to regarded as a heroic figure. This is certainly a bold argument, but Hanson’s case for it is weak. He spends a lot of time looking back at why…

JK Rowling’s former assistant, Amanda Donaldson (pictured), has been ordered to repay the Harry Potter author £18,734 after she used the writer’s credit cards and petty cash “without approval over three years”, says The Guardian. Donaldson began working for Rowling in 2014. The unusual transactions escalated shortly thereafter “to a point where it was almost out of control”, the court in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, heard. An “extraordinary” £3,629 was spent on toiletries from Molton Brown (a brand that Rowling pointed out she finds too perfumed), £2,139 on cards and stationery, and £1,636 at coffee shops. One Christmas, Donaldson gave her employer a Liberty notebook, only for the item to then turn up on Rowling’s credit-card statement. Sheriff Derek O’Carroll disagreed with Donaldson’s claim that the transactions had been authorised. She…

In the first week of April bitcoin gained 15%, surpassing the $5,000 level for the first time since November. It had fallen a long way from its record peak of $20,000 in January 2018. “But good luck finding a reason to explain the sudden spike,” says Paul La Monica on CNN. Some say bitcoin’s sudden price rally was sparked by “a large trade order from a mysterious buyer”, notes Billy Bambrough on Forbes. This set off a wave of “algorithmic buying as computer programs scrambled to place orders of their own” to partake in the sudden price surge. Dramatic price swings are nothing new with bitcoin. As with previous rallies, the current spike has led some investors to believe that bitcoin is back, fuelling cryptocurrency investors’ hope that the currency…

“Just as its oil sector looked set to stage a recovery, Libya is heading back towards bloody chaos that puts output and exports at risk,” Julian Lee notes on Bloomberg. A disruption to supplies from the North African country could give oil prices a big short-term boost. Global oil supplies already look tight due to the chaos in Venezuela, US sanctions on Iran and output cuts by oil-cartel Opec. The biggest buyers of Libya’s crude are Mediterranean countries in Europe. Fears that the conflict might spread through the region have already driven oil prices higher above $70. However, US shale production hit a new record recently, so higher supplies could soon undermine the rally.…

Loungers is defying the gloom in the casual-dining sector by seeking an initial public offering (IPO) on London’s junior stockmarket, Aim. The Bristol-based group’s flotation will value it at £300m, or 18 times earnings; most stocks in the industry are worth 50% less. Loungers insists that its all-day cafe-dining concept sets it apart from the likes of Giraffe, Jamie’s Italian and Gourmet Burger Kitchen, which are all retrenching. The idea is that the “all-day concept attracts different demographics for coffee hour, lunch and/or cocktail hour”, notes Matthew Vincent in the Financial Times. So far, at least, this seems to be working. Loungers aims to open another 25 restaurants this year.…

The idea of Facebook as “a neutral, global platform” may become a thing of the past as countries begin to impose their own standards for acceptable content, says Liam Proud for Breakingviews. On Monday, home secretary Sajid Javid (pictured) outlined plans for a “statutory duty of care” on social-media sites, search engines and messaging apps designed “to protect their users”. The plans suggested that “an independent regulator could fine the likes of Facebook and its senior managers for failing to remove harmful posts”. But the problem with that notion of “unacceptable content” is that it’s “ill-defined”, while a lack of single global standards could create “a balkanised” internet. “Hosing out the grubbiest corners” of the internet “will be labour intensive”, says Lex in the Financial Times. So it is no…

As expected, Labour won the Newport West by-election, so my tip that you should back Labour to win paid off. The bad news was that it got only 39.3% of the vote, which meant that my tip on Labour getting into the 40s narrowly failed. The next major political event is the upcoming European elections. While they could still be cancelled if an exit deal is passed by parliament, Ladbrokes has stated that it will cancel any bets and return all money to punters in that scenario. Ladbrokes is offering a market on the party that wins most seats, with Labour at 11/10 (47.6%), followed by Nigel Farage’s (pictured) Brexit Party at 2/1 (33%), the Conservatives at 5/1 (16.7%), and Change UK and Ukip at 12/1 (7.7%) each. You can…

Investors often use the price/ earnings (p/e) ratio to judge whether a stock is cheap or not. It’s easy to calculate (hence its popularity) – you simply divide the share price by earnings per share. A low number (below ten, say) suggests that you aren’t paying much for each £1 of earnings, while a high number indicates that a stock may be expensive, or that it is growing rapidly. However, the basic p/e is highly flawed. Using just one year of profits means a stock – particularly one in a cyclical business, such as mining or house building – can look cheap because profits happen to be peaking at that point, and are set to plunge when business turns back down in line with the economic cycle. So in the…

• Centrica chief executive Iain Conn has received a 44% pay rise for 2018, despite the British Gas-owner admitting it had faced a “challenging year” – the shares have sunk to a 20-year low. Nevertheless, Centrica said Conn had “shown significant resilience”, and the company remains Britain’s biggest energy supplier. Conn was paid £2.4m last year, up from £1.7m in 2017, bolstered by two bonuses worth £388,000 each. • The founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, has been paid his first salary since returning to the social-media platform as CEO four years ago – $1.40. Dorsey (pictured) had long elected not to receive any salary, bonuses or stock awards from the social-media platform “as a testament to his commitment to and belief in Twitter’s long-term value creation potential”. The number of…

“He had a bigger storyline. And for the last series he had something crazy like 70 night shoots… I thought, ‘You know what... you keep that money.’” Actress Sophie Turner (pictured) on her Game of Thrones co-star Kit Harington receiving more money than her, quoted in Harper’s Bazaar “Sometimes when I have nowhere to stay, or I’m on a rail replacement bus at midnight, I think, ‘How is this possible that I’m the England captain?’ It would never happen to a footballer.” Ama Agbeze, captain of the England netball team, quoted in The Sunday Times. Her annual salary is £30,000, a sum some footballers earn in a day “Originally, I was offered £50 per week, which I managed to push up to £150, but even so I earned more than…

Campaigns by activist investors in Asia were up 20% last year, putting the region second only to the US in terms of activist investors’ activity, says Jada Nagumo in Nikkei Asian Review. A record 111 companies with headquarters in Asia received requests from activist shareholders to improve corporate governance in 2018, according to a report from consultancy Activist Insight. Of those, 47 were Japanese, up 40% from 2017. This comes in the wake of reforms in Japan designed to improve shareholders’ engagement and corporate governance, a key element of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempt to boost growth. In total, 22 of the 111 companies were in China (including Hong Kong). South Korea and Singapore had 11 each.…

This Grade II-listed Victorian house may be familiar to fans of nineties TV sitcom Spaced, starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, which was filmed here. It was for sale last year for £4m, but failed to sell and is now on the market for a reduced price. It is close to Tufnell Park tube station and has an 80 ft garden, two off-street parking spaces, and retains its original fireplaces, staircase, and stained-glass window in the hallway. The house has seven bedrooms and a self-contained two-bedroom flat with its own entrance. But can you guess the asking price? Answer on the side of this box.…

Three of the big pharmaceutical names are working on their antibiotic pipeline. They are by no means a pure play on antibiotic resistance, and nor are they cheap, but they do yield between 3% and 5%, so investors will be paid to wait for signs of progress, while the generally auspicious backdrop for the sector, thanks to the ageing population, bodes well for dividend rises. GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) ranked first among large pharmaceutical companies in the “Access to Medicine Foundation’s Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark” in 2018. It has vaccines against diseases such as diphtheria, meningitis and pneumonia designed to prevent bacterial infections that would require antibiotics. Its pipeline also contains gepotidacin, the first in a new class of antibiotics. GSK is trading on a price/ earnings (p/e) ratio of 22. Roche’s…

■ With a general election looking possible and Labour currently ahead of the Conservatives in polls, what would a government run by Jeremy Corbyn mean for your tax bill? “Prepare for a tax hit,” says Mark Atherton in The Times. Two years ago Labour promised to reintroduce the 50p tax rate on annual income of more than £123,000. It also proposed the 45% rate coming in at £80,000. “This looks like a racing certainty for an incoming Corbyn government,” says George Bull of RSM UK in The Times. Labour has proposed increasing capital gains tax to 18% for basic-rate taxpayers and 28% for higher earners. Meanwhile, your pension allowance could be cut, according to Danny Cox of Hargreaves Lansdown. He also believes a Corbyn government could reverse the recent introduction…

One of the biggest problems facing Britain’s small businesses is late payments. Payments processor Bacs estimates that small companies are now collectively owed £6.7bn in overdue invoices. But what if it were possible to unlock the value of those bills? Invoice finance is designed to do exactly that, and small businesses are signing up in record numbers. Some 40,000 firms took on this form of funding last year, according to figures just published by trade association UK Finance. Total advances now stand at £22.7bn. The principle of invoice finance is that you are borrowing money against bills your customers have yet to settle. Rather than waiting for payment, you ask an invoice-finance provider to advance you the cash straight away, minus its fee for lending; when the customer finally coughs…

Anglo-German tour operator TUI (LSE: TUI) was already under pressure even before it was caught in the fallout from two recent Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashes. It issued a profit warning in February, blaming the hot summer weather in the UK and a weakening pound, which meant it would not hit its 10% annual-growth target. Now it has issued another, saying the disruption caused by having its 737 Max planes (10% of its fleet) grounded could cost it up to $300m, depending on when the planes are allowed back in the air. The stock has fallen by 50% in a year.…

• “Forget the pink and the blue and the colourful mobiles,” says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Grey is now the most popular colour for decorating the nursery, according to John Lewis. That says plenty about the parents, and nothing about the children. “Their little buggy eyes must yearn for something bright to alight upon, but they have to realise mummy and daddy’s good taste must come first.” Take Harry and Meghan. They are using expensive Auro paints to decorate the nursery at Frogmore. A ten-litre pot of the non-toxic paint costs £120 – “several times the price of Dulux”. Even the names of the colours are marvellous. Wood Spurge, Constance Spry, Meconopsis or Yorkshire Fog Grass, anyone? • “I needed to buy a toilet seat this week,” says…

Scandal, like cigarette smoke, brings back memories. For as long as we can remember, it has been a feature of Maryland politics. Our own experience with it began in 1965, when we were about 17. We wanted to know how politics worked. What better way than to get into it… and get our hands dirty? So, we volunteered as unpaid labour in a political campaign for Anne Arundel County’s chief executive. We knew nothing of his ideology or his record, but he seemed like a likeable sort. He had the rare ability to cry on cue, which, it was said, endeared him to sentimental voters. As the campaign grew more intense, we were given cash. “What’s this for?” we asked. “It’s ‘walking around money’,’’ we were told. “What should I…

“Over the past six months, the stockmarket has gone from inconsolable to imperturbable,” says Michael Santoli on CNBC. The S&P 500 is just shy of its record high of last September. Wall Street tends to set the tone for global equities, so it’s no wonder the pan-European Stoxx 600 Index is at a seven-month high. This is partly due to improved data. After last year’s wobble, the US economy is regaining its strength. “Mortgage applications... and durable goods orders indicate a steadying of the ship,” says Tan Kai Xian in a Gavekal Research note. In other positive news, both Chinese and US manufacturing data have improved. The two superpowers may also be on the verge of a trade deal, another development fuelling confidence. What’s more, the section of the yield…

“You may have heard about ‘helicopter parents’, hovering over their children to ward off any and all threats. The problem is, they keep the children from gaining independence. Similarly, ‘helicopter’ monetary and fiscal policy that seeks to protect the economy can instead accomplish the opposite. Access to capital is necessary for economic growth, but free and/or subsidised capital is its long-term enemy. Managers and entrepreneurs have less incentive to innovate and operate efficiently when they can always count on another venture capital funding round or leveraged loan. When they don’t actually have to compete with more innovative competitors, thanks to low-cost capital and their huge scale, creative destruction gets short-circuited. We no longer live in the world Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter envisioned.”…

Three to buy Prudential Shares Shares in this multinational insurer have underperformed since a plan to demerge the UK and European operation was announced last March, but investors should not lose heart. This is an “excellent opportunity” to buy a more focused business geared to Asian growth. The Brookings Institution estimates that by 2030 two-thirds of the global middle class will live in Asia. That implies new demand for insurance and savings products and “long-term double-digit growth”. 1,564p Hurricane Energy The Sunday Times Hurricane is an Aim-listed business with “huge potential”, but big risks too. The North Sea oil explorer owns licences that could yield 2.3 billion barrels of oil and gas, the “largest undeveloped resource base in the UK”. Yet extraction from “basement reservoirs” – natural fractures in the…

• The death of Cho Yang-ho, the chairman of the South Korean group that controls Korean Air, caused shares in the main holding company to surge by more than a fifth. Investors hope the Cho family’s grip on the company will loosen, say Kyunghee Park and Sohee Kim on Bloomberg. Before Cho’s death, shareholders at the conglomerate, tired of “scandals involving family members” – including allegations of embezzlement and tax evasion – forced Cho to stand down as CEO. This activism follows a wider trend of “assertive minority investors demanding more accountability from controlling families”. • Carlos Ghosn (pictured), who is currently in jail awaiting trial, has been “formally kicked out of the company he saved from collapse 20 years ago”, says Alan Tovey in The Daily Telegraph. But ditching…

“It’s frightening, they’re talking about communism. It scares any investor.” Mark Mobius, probably the best-known emerging markets investor in the world, is very used to dealing with political regimes that are corrupt, incompetent, or both. But in his latest interview with London’s Evening Standard newspaper, he reveals that it’s not the government in a developing nation that’s unnerving him – instead, it’s the contenders for power in the US and the UK. Mobius is unimpressed by both Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (pictured), and popular US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His concerns about Corbyn’s talk of nationalising key industries may stem from bitter experience of investing in Venezuela. As soon as Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, notes interviewer Mark Shapland, the 82-year-old investor sold his holdings in a local electricity…

Google’s British-based workers earned an average of £226,000 last year, says The Guardian. With UK staff numbers now at 3,658, the firm forked out £829m in wage and salary bills for the year to 30 June, up 26% on the £656m paid in 2017. Bumper earnings, including £342m worth of share-based bonuses, were fuelled by Google’s soaring stock price and its financial performance. Pre-tax profits in Britain rose from £200m to £246m last year on revenues of £1.4bn, up from £1.2bn the year before. Google’s shares, meanwhile, rose by 35% in the 12-month period ending in June 2018. This year’s windfall was split between 1,451 marketing staff, 1,783 research and development employees and 424 people working in management and administration. Google has increased its headcount by 400 over the past…

■ Broker Interactive Investor has changed its fee model, says Gavin Lumsden on Citywire. It has put up its main service fee, but cut most of its transaction costs, making the platform more expensive for buy-and-hold investors, but cheaper for frequent traders. The company’s long-standing quarterly fee of £22.50 has been replaced by monthly charges of £9.99, £13.99 or £19.99, depending on your trading habits. So while these higher fees are offset by a sharp drop in most fees for buying and selling funds and shares, the company acknowledges that the new tariffs will penalise customers who don’t trade regularly. ■ The best fund manager over the past 20 years has outperformed his fund’s index by 7.5 times, notes Jonathan Jones in The Sunday Telegraph. Fund supermarket Hargreaves Lansdown looked…

A converted US Coast Guard ship is on the market for $5.2m, says Forbes. With its bright red hull and enormous white lettering, Nantucket Lightship is not your typical houseboat. Inside is a “mahogany masterpiece”. There are six staterooms, a professional kitchen, a climate-controlled salon, six en-suite bathrooms, and 4,000 sq ft of living space. There’s also a set of four-poster bunk beds. The vessel was rescued from the scrapheap in 2000 when a couple bought it on eBay for $126,100. Following a multi-million pound renovation, in which the crow’s nest, foghorn and beacon were preserved, the boat is for sale through estate agent Douglas Elliman. £3.25m Dexters 020-7267 5530.…

In recent years we’ve seen several airlines and holiday firms go bust. Thousands of holidaymakers have been affected by the collapse of firms including Monarch, FlyBMI and Low Cost Holidays. So how can you protect your summer holiday? The simplest way to ensure you have maximum consumer protection for your holiday is to book a package. With a package holiday, you book more than one part of your trip through the same travel agent or website. Package holidays have full financial and legal protection. Known as ATOL protection, this means if your travel firm goes bust you are entitled to a refund. In cases where the travel agent goes under while you are on your holiday you can complete your trip and will be brought back to the UK. You…

Few investors have heard of Diploma. Yet it is well worth a look. This global provider of specialised technical products and services is a member of the FTSE 250 Index. It boasts sales of nearly £500m following a 60% increase in sales between 2014 and 2018, and a market capitalisation of £1.7bn. It has three divisions producing essential components for industrial companies worldwide. A finger in three tasty pies These divisions are life sciences, seals and controls. The life-sciences business accounts for 28% of its sales and includes a section called healthcare clinical diagnostics (this spans instruments, consumables such as reagents and related services designed to facilitate testing blood and other samples). Instruments and products for surgery and endoscopies are another sub-division, as are environmental measuring devices, such as emissions…

Buying cheap stocks and holding onto them for a very long time is a winning investment strategy. While this may sound obvious, investors aren’t stupid and cheap stocks are often cheap for a reason. This is the challenge for contrarian investors. In times of extreme negativity, a company might appear uninvestable at any price. Take a closer look, however, and there may be an opportunity investors have missed. A transformed oil major Oil companies are often seen as a punt on the oil price. But what matters to a business owner is profitability. By cutting costs, BP (LSE: BP) has undergone a major transformation in just a few years. BP has also snapped up attractive assets at low prices, most recently buying BHP’s US shale acreage for less than BHP…

This year is shaping up to be a big one for Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani, the flamboyant billionaire behind Japan’s largest e-commerce outfit, Rakuten. Long renowned as a talented trend-spotter, several of his long-term bets are coming to fruition at the same time. So far, so lucrative. As Reuters notes, Rakuten’s shares are up 38% this year “on rising investor expectations of returns on its technology investments”, which in turn has propelled Mikitani’s personal wealth to around $6bn. “We have seen the future and this is it,” declared Mikitani in 2015 when Rakuten took a 12% stake in the US ride-hailing company Lyft for $300m. When the latter recently floated at a lofty $72 per share, Rakuten booked a $989.7m gain before shares fell below their initial public offering (IPO) price.…

I am always on the lookout for top-flight English sparkling wines and, as the years pass, the number of estates making world-class fizz continues to grow at an alarming rate. I happened to taste this wine twice in a week at two different events and it elicited exactly the same notes, scores and shorthand squiggle – an M and a W in a circle. This is the exciting “MoneyWeek-worthy” symbol denoting a wine of sufficient class to grace this page. So, I am delighted to introduce you to Cottonworth Rosé, a 48% pinot meunier, 47% pinot noir and 5% pinot précoce, so you can see that this is a genuine Blanc de Noirs. What I like so much about this relative newcomer is that the wines from the brand are…

10 The percentage rise in the number of “Suspicious Activity Reports” filed in Britain last year – often a sign of money laundering, according to the National Crime Agency. Authorities and banks are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help spot criminal transactions. £790 The price of a cotton “White Scribble 2029 Shirt” designed by Parisian label Vetements. The shirts, which resemble those that school leavers get signed by their class mates, are covered in messages such as “Happy Birthday! Xx”, and they have already started to sell out, says The Sun. £300m The value of the BBC’s biggest ever “content deal” that will see its natural-history programmes streamed on an online service provided by the Discovery Channel. $155,286 How much Zimbabwe’s Judiciary Service Commission has set aside to…