Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 952 i MoneyWeek

Global investors are more bearish today than at any point since the financial crisis. That, at least, is what the latest Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) survey of fund managers tells us. They have, they say, the lowest allocation to equity markets since March 2009. Some data even suggests that, in the US at least, the bond weighting in portfolios exceeds that of equities. That’s highly unusual (if you want to make inflation-beating long-term returns, you need equities). So what’s spooking managers? BAML’s chief strategist, Michael Hartnett, puts it down to worries about recession; about trade wars; about high levels of corporate debt; and about “monetary policy impotence” – the possibility that central bankers can’t do much more to stimulate debt-ridden economies. This makes some sense. But long-term readers…

Denmark’s Ambu is a hidden gem, says Der Aktionaer. Few have heard of the 53-year-old company, but its products can be found in operating theatres around the world. Offerings range from face masks and breathing bags to endoscopes and electrodes used in electrocardiograms (ECGs). The long-term outlook for medical devices is encouraging and Ambu has just announced a record quarter: sales jumped by 14% to €105m as operating earnings reached €26m. The group’s promising product pipeline includes new endoscopes, which should allow it to reach its sales target of 750,000 devices by the end of the year. A recent dip in the share price is a good buying opportunity for long-term investors.…

Will it be a case of “Kier today, gone tomorrow”? asks Alistair Osborne in The Times. New chief executive Andrew Davies, who has only been in the post for eight weeks, has been forced to rush out the publication of a strategic review a month early to calm markets still reeling from this month’s profit warning. High debt levels have left the engineering group looking “increasingly rickety” and have prompted comparisons to failed outsourcers Carillion and Interserve. The group’s net debt at the end of June will be between £420m and £450m. “Not bad for a company now valued at just £175m”. The share price has slumped by more than 85% over the past year. Now management will cut 1,200 jobs, with 650 to go at the end of this…

Boris Johnson, the Tory leadership frontrunner, headed into Wednesday’s third round of voting with a substantial lead. His vote rose by 12 to 126 out of 313 votes on Tuesday, with Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Rory Stewart also getting enough votes to make it into the following round. Hunt again came second, with 46 votes, but it was Stewart who “made the biggest stride forward, nearly doubling his backing from 19 to 37 votes”, says the BBC. Once the list is trimmed down to two, 160,000 Tory party members will elect the next party leader, who is “virtually guaranteed to become the next prime minister”. On Wednesday, Stewart said he was in talks with Gove to combine forces, giving them 78 votes – almost certainly enough to…

If the Federal Reserve is planning to cut interest rates this year as far as markets are predicting, there’s one trade that should beat the rest, reckons hedge-fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones. “If I had to pick my favourite trade for the next 12 or 24 months, it’d probably be gold,” he tells Bloomberg News. “I think if it goes through $1,400 an ounce, it goes to $1,700... quickly. It has everything going for it in a world where rates in the US are conceivably going to zero.” It’s not so long ago – most of last year, in fact – that the US central bank was aiming to keep raising rates steadily. What has happened to derail the process so rapidly? Tudor Jones blames escalating protectionism and the trade…

Bosses at energy firm SSE have seen their total pay fall this year after profits fell short of expectations and board members missed their bonus targets, says Mark Williamson in The Herald. Despite a 3% rise in salary to £890,000, chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies’s total remuneration for the year to the end of March fell to just £1.656m, down from £2.719m the previous year. Finance director Gregor Alexander had his total remuneration cut from £1.989m to £1.261m. However, board members did still receive long-term bonuses of up to £390,000. In the same year, SSE lost around 570,000 customers. Since taking over in July 2013 – a period in which SSE’s share price has fallen by a quarter – Phillips-Davies has been paid almost £14m, says Oliver Shah in The Sunday…

economist.com/graphic-detail There is “no shortage of hand-wringing” on Wall Street over the prospects of a looming recession, says The Economist. But precisely when will it strike? The yield curve, a widely watched economic barometer, is flashing red. The Economist’s “R-word index”, which counts how often the word “recession” appears in news reports, is also predicting gloom. But a new measure based on joblessness levels, devised by economist Claudia Sahm, gives reasons to be cheerful. Her measure would have correctly called every recession in the US since 1970. It suggests that the chance of a downturn occurring in the next year is just 10%. Where Sahm’s indicator falls short is timeliness. Both the yield curve and the R-word index predicted the 2001 and 2008 recessions a year in advance. Sahm’s measure…

■ Neil Woodford has so far resisted calls for him to waive fees – reportedly making the firm £100,000 per day – for investors with money in his suspended Equity Income Fund. “The suspension of trading has provided... Woodford with some breathing room to fix his fund; he should afford his investors the same space and waive the fund’s fees while the fund is suspended”, said Nicky Morgan, chair of the Treasury Committee, quoted on the BBC. Morgan has also successfully pushed for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator, to formally investigate the events leading up to the suspension; an enquiry was announced this week. The “debacle” has raised concerns that the FCA may have been “asleep at the wheel” as the fund manager “tumbled into crisis”, Morgan…

• What will your business do? Boundary will offer a state-of-the-art home-security system that you can install and monitor yourself and control with your smartphone. We want to produce an alarm system with impressive features, unbeatable reliability and seamless integration. We will also offer affordable monitoring plans with no long-term contracts. You’ll be able to choose from self-monitoring or professional monitoring with a police response. This will be possible because our alarm will conform to UK and European standards. • What is your greatest achievement? In our last business, we built a software-as-a-service product and not only scaled that into different countries but also built a team of 80 people and successfully exited from the venture. • What has been your biggest challenge? Starting my first business was probably the…

In his 1976 book, The Denationalisation of Money, economist Friedrich Hayek made the case that businesses should issue their own currencies to compete freely for use against government currencies. The result would be a general improvement in monetary standards. Hayek’s vision took a step closer to reality this week as social media giant Facebook published the white paper for its own new currency: Libra. Hayek envisaged that the most successful money in his scenario would be based on a basket of commodities – and thus its value would be relatively stable. Facebook appears to be taking his advice. It is not backing its coin with commodities, however, but with “a collection of low-volatility assets”. Libra will effectively be backed by a basket of currencies. This would make it not dissimilar…

Philip Green’s retail group Arcadia was granted a stay of execution last week as creditors voted to approve seven company voluntary arrangements (CVAs), a controversial process that allows companies to restructure their debts in order to fend off administration. CVAs commonly involve a reduction of the amount of rent companies need to pay their landlords. As so many retailers have entered into CVAs in recent years, this has led to accusations that they are using the mechanism merely to duck out of rental responsibilities. Indeed, the vote on the CVAs was originally postponed when it became clear that not enough parties would vote in favour of the arrangements. Despite the delay, shopping centre owner Intu, one of Arcadia’s largest creditors, voted against the proposal: “we firmly believe that any rent…

There is a lot of change going on at Trifast, mostly acquisitions and the renewal of the company’s internal processes and IT system, expected to cost £15m in total over several years. The standard accounting treatment of acquisitions such as PTS and “Project Atlas”, its IT upgrade, requires Trifast to deduct the associated costs to arrive at the profit figure. However, the company believes these are one-off costs and do not reflect the underlying performance of the business. In 2019 Trifast chose to exclude more than £3m of expenses related to Project Atlas, nearly £1.5m in acquisition related costs, and share-based payment charges of more than £2.5m from its preferred profit figure. Operating profit, so adjusted, was more than £24m, 42% higher than the £17m figure reported in its income…

Fashion brand Ted Baker (LSE: TED), which operates around 500 outlets in the UK and abroad, has had a lousy year. The high-street downturn has seen rivals offer deep discounts on their products, and the “hug-gate” scandal saw its founder Ray Kelvin resign after being accused of forcibly hugging staff. A profit warning in February was followed by another last week. Chairman David Bernstein has told shareholders there is “definitely no crisis”, adding he is “very confident” the company will bounce back. The share price is down almost 60% in the last year.…

This wine is made from 65% pinot noir grapes and 35% pinot meunier, making it a fascinating “white from red” tipple – even my fading eyesight can spot that there is a lot of red fruit in this sparkler because it is ever so slightly pink. This terrific, pale hue catches you unawares and then you are hit with the double-whammy of a haunting cherry-skin nose and a silky, hedgerow-kissed palate, which confounds the senses. What is going on here? I can tell you that, although this wine seems to be intentionally playing tricks with your mind, it is also utterly delicious and drinking perfectly already. And just in case you were tempted to think that this must be just a one-off, then try the 2016 Sparkling Rosé Brut (£33.95,…

As one Conservative prime minister prepares to leave office, the BBC is running a five-part documentary about one of her predecessors. On the 40th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory, this documentary takes an in-depth look at the reign of the most controversial leader in British history. The first episode deals with Thatcher’s rise from grocer’s daughter to education secretary to Conservative Party leader and PM. The second looks at the economic and social tensions that underpinned her first years in office. The third deals with the war in the Falklands and the fourth looks at the mid-1980s before concluding in the fifth with her decline and eventual removal from power. Each episode includes a large number of interviews with some of the key players in the Thatcher government,…

Swiss bank UBS has been excluded from a $1bn bond sale despite apologising for remarks by its global chief economist, Paul Donovan, which infuriated social-media users in China. In a note, Donovan noted that “sick pigs” are behind rising pork prices. “It matters if you are a Chinese pig. It matters if you like eating pork in China. It does not really matter to the rest of the world.” The reference to Chinese pigs was misinterpreted as a racist slur. China Railway Construction Corp says it will now not work with UBS on its bond sale; at least one Hong Kong brokerage has cut ties; and the Chinese Securities Association of Hong Kong has demanded further apologies. Donovan is now on leave while UBS reviews the matter. Good week for:…

“The gold bugs are out in force,” says Garry White in The Daily Telegraph. The dash for this “financial teddy bear” suggests that investors see rising risks in markets and are seeking out an asset traditionally seen as the ultimate safe haven. Soft Chinese data and rising tensions in the Middle East have sent gold prices towards 14-month highs around $1,340 an ounce. The main drawback of holding gold is that it pays no interest, but with government bond yields continuing to plumb the depths, reflecting fears over global growth, gold is looking more attractive on a relative basis. Interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve would also help gold by weakening the dollar. They would make the currency less appealing – and gold more attractive since it is priced in…

America’s retail sector has reached a major milestone. In the first quarter, online sales overtook in-store sales for the first time on record, says Justin Walters of the Bespoke Investment Group. The trend was confirmed by the latest figures from the Commerce Department, which noted that the “general merchandise” category comprised 11.8% of overall retail sales in May, compared with non-store sales’ 11.9%. In the US the general merchandise category refers mainly to supercentres, such as Walmart, department stores, and warehouse clubs, such as Costco. Food and drink, cars, petrol and restaurants are counted separately. Cars and car parts jointly make up the biggest sector, accounting for a fifth of overall sales.…

Airtel, Africa’s second-largest mobile network operator after MTN, will float in London at the end of June. The group will have a free float of at least 25% of the equity and the price range for the initial public offering (IPO) will be 80p-100p, implying a market capitalisation of £3bn-£3.6bn. That is the sort of market value associated with mid caps in the FTSE 250 Index. Airtel, which has its headquarters in the Netherlands, will list in Nigeria at the same time. The telecoms and mobile money transfer company operates in 14 African countries and has nearly 100 million subscribers. It is owned by India’s Bharti Aitel International.…

Could Boeing have broken its 737 Max (pictured) curse? The plane is still grounded worldwide following two fatal accidents in the past year and it remains an open question when it will fly again, says Bruno Trevidic in Les Échos. Yet the second day of the Paris Air Show brought an “enormous coup de théâtre” in the form of an unexpected order from IAG. The parent company of British Airways and Iberia plans to buy 200 of the troubled planes. The deal is worth $24bn. Airbus has been doing brisk business too, say Robert Wall and Andrew Tangel for The Wall Street Journal. The European aircraft maker has used the biennial show to announce plans to develop the A321XLR, “its longest-range single-aisle plane yet”. Airlines have traditionally focused on making…

Is value investing dead? The popular investment strategy – which, at the risk of oversimplifying, just involves buying cheap stocks rather than expensive ones – has underperformed the wider market badly (particularly in the US) since the post-financial crisis rally began back in 2009. Josh Brown on The Reformed Broker blog noted last week that no fund manager tells their investors that “we buy the most expensive assets, and add to them as they rise in price and valuation”. A shame, he says, because it’s “the only strategy that could possibly have enabled an asset manager to outperform in the modern era”. “There is really nothing unusual about value’s travails” Value is well known as a “factor” (see below) that consistently beats the market over the long run. But frustration…

It probably sounded like a good idea at the time. Last year Channel 4, which is owned by the government but funded privately, decided to move its headquarters to Leeds, as well as opening “creative centres” in Bristol and Glasgow. According to its chief executive, Alex Mahon, the relocation out of London would mean the channel was “even more open to new talent and new voices from underserved areas” and would “better reflect the diversity of all of the UK”. The only trouble is, no one seems to have bothered to ask the staff. When the moment to pack up their desks and start house-hunting came, nine out of ten staff members decided to stay in London and look for new jobs instead. All its senior executives ducked the opportunity…

Germany’s shrinking plutocrats Editorial The Economist If rich Americans think they are too low on the rich-list rankings, they “fume”, says The Economist. Rich Germans complain when their ranking “looks suspiciously high”. The country isn’t short of super-rich people; it has the most of any country after the US and China. In February, Forbes magazine identified 114 German dollar billionaires, more than double the tally in Britain, and the German Institute for Economic Research estimates that the combined assets of the richest 45 Germans are “roughly the same” as those of the bottom 50% of the population. But German business barons dislike the limelight. This is partly because they own “staid businesses” – supermarkets (Lidl, Aldi) or cars (BMW, VW). It’s also because they are nervous of arousing envy…

bloomberg.com/opinion New Zealand’s government has produced the world’s first “well-being” budget, focused explicitly on a single goal – using its limited funds to make its citizens happier, says Cass Sunstein. Among other things, a lot of money will now be devoted to combatting mental illness, child poverty and family violence. New Zealand has clearly been influenced by decades of research on the topic. That research shows that money spent on mental-health interventions and helping people shift away from activities that they especially dislike, such as commuting, will pay dividends. Social-support systems are also critical: self-reported happiness surveys show that this is the most important determinant of how happy people are. But it would be wrong to take this to mean that all this is more important than growth. GDP per…

Hedge funds have existed for many decades, but it was in the late 1990s and the early years of the new millennium that they first attracted popular attention. Stripped bare, hedge funds are just flexible investment funds that seek to provide consistent long-term returns while protecting their investors from the volatility of financial markets. The popular perception, however, is far more alluring. Hedge funds, operating from discreet offices in Mayfair, Geneva and Manhattan, promoted themselves as exclusive investment clubs taking financial innovation to the limit. They made use of financial instruments and strategies such as futures, options and short-selling (betting on a price decline by borrowing an asset and selling it in the hope of buying it back more cheaply later). They jumped between equities, bonds, currencies, commodities and assets…

When it comes to engineering, few investors would immediately think of the UK. The “Mittelstand”of successful medium-sized engineering companies is widely known as the backbone of the German economy. There are also smaller countries that boast several excellent engineering companies, Sweden being one example. Yet there is also a set of British engineering companies, they are global leaders in their market niches and are the equal of – or superior to – their German counterparts. Britain’s Mittelstand Engineering is a broad field. This analysis excludes defence-engineering companies (in which the UK is also strong) and the many successful unlisted UK engineering businesses, such as Dyson and JCB. It concentrates on firms in electrical, electronic, mechanical, fluid, automotive and chemical engineering. They are all market-leading specialists with a global presence. In…

Nearly 60% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have yet to begin using cloud computing services (where software and other technology is accessed online rather than installed on company premises), according to research by financial-services group Close Brothers. One problem is a lack of understanding: 73% of senior decision makers at SMEs said they did not know enough about what cloud computing entails. Security is also an issue: 36% feared they could not trust cloud solutions. It’s important that SMEs now overcome these hurdles, for cloud computing can level the playing field as they compete against larger rivals with deeper pockets. The pay-as-you-go model employed by cloud platforms means SMEs do not have to make large upfront investments in technology installations, while they also receive ongoing tech support. When they…

Shares in German landlord Deutsche Wohnen (DW) have fallen by almost a fifth in two weeks following news that Berlin’s senate has approved a draft bill for a rent freeze, or Mietendeckel, which means landlords will be blocked from putting up rent on residential properties for five years. “If we don’t want to end up like London, where even lawyers and doctors have to live with flatmates because they can’t afford their own apartment, then we have to do something about it,” Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister and vice chancellor, told newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germany is a country of renters. However, monthly rents in Berlin, where 85% of people rent, have gone up by 103% since 2008. This is largely because the population has increased more rapidly than the…

House hunters looking for seclusion can buy half of a small tidal island in the Menai Strait, North Wales, for £1m. Ynys Faelog is one of a collection of islands off the coast of Menai Bridge town. It boasts “spectacular views” over the “magnificent splendour” of the Menai suspension bridge, according to estate agents Williams & Goodwin. The lot is owned by Bangor University, and the 3,860 sq ft building was until recently used as a base for educational sessions. The near-2.5 acres of land features beach headland and water frontage, as well as woodlands and landscaped areas, while there is also scope for owners to develop the land.…

Global consumer goods companies are prioritising phasing out plastic packaging. The World Economic Forum estimates that 95% of the value of plastic packaging, or $80bn-$120bn annually, is lost to the global economy because it is only used once. A large amount of this plastic waste finds its way into our oceans. Around eight million tonnes of the stuff enters the marine environment each year. With these kinds of statistics making the headlines, plastic pollution has risen to the top of the public agenda. This has forced businesses to adjust their approach to packaging away from a “linear” single-use model towards more sustainable methods. Consumer activism “Public concern over packaging is forcing firms to change their ways” Consumer-goods companies have grasped that the tide of consumer activism on plastic waste has…

Bitcoin Billionaires A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption Ben Mezrich Little, Brown, £20 In The Accidental Billionaires, later made into the award-winning film The Social  Network, Ben Mezrich told the tale of how Facebook was founded. Although the film didn’t exactly show Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in a positive light, it had even less time for the Winklevoss twins, who claimed that Zuckerberg stole their idea for a university-linked social network. Indeed, they were portrayed as rather entitled, complacent student athletes, who were outwitted by a person they thought they could control. In Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal and Redemption, Mezrich details how the Winklevoss twins “regained” their lost fortune by becoming bitcoin moguls. Like most of Mezrich’s other books, Bitcoin Billionaires is an attempt…

Venezuela, we learn, is on the road to recovery – it has managed to get inflation down to only about 815,194%, from previous highs of around 1,300,000%, reports Reuters. The feat was managed by restricting the domestic money supply – imagine that. Still, running water remains unreliable, electricity is in short supply in what might be the most energy-rich country on earth, and despite having some of the largest oil reserves on the planet Venezuelans are queuing at petrol stations for days. How did Venezuela get to be such a mess? Long-term sufferers of our column will know that we are connoisseurs of disaster. The great vintages – a Weimar 1921, for example, or a Zimbabwe 2008, or, of course, a nice Venezuelan blend from 2018 – are always a…

The powers that be might shrug off popular discontent, but they will “listen to money”, says Pete Sweeney on Breakingviews. That explains Hong Kong’s decision to shelve a controversial extradition bill. Plans to allow residents to be sent to face mainland courts have sparked mass protests that ultimately forced Carrie Lam, the city’s leader, to suspend the bill indefinitely. Yet that gesture did not calm the unrest. Organisers claim that up to two million people, nearly 30% of Hong Kong’s entire population, turned out last Sunday regardless. China’s leaders do not want to kill the fabled golden goose, says Sweeney. Hong Kong accounted for about 12% of the mainland’s exports last year and is the single largest source of “realised foreign direct investment” to China. Its stock exchange gives mainland…

“Private equity has a rotten track record when it comes to listing companies on the stockmarket. Debenhams never recovered from its ownership by a trio of buyout firms more than a decade ago… the chain flogged off its freehold property, cut costs to the bone, and was lumbered with more than £1bn of debt. It is now in the hands of lenders. It is far from alone. Foxtons, Convatec, and Pets at Home have all flopped as public companies, having spent time in the hands of private equity. But few can match the wretched legacy of Acromas, which spawned not one, but two stockmarket dogs: roadside rescue experts the AA and over-50s holiday specialists Saga…. Private equity’s big play is that it has the freedom to invest in companies away…

Three to buy Renalytix AI The Mail on Sunday The travails of Neil Woodford’s fund highlight the dangers of investing in early-stage healthcare businesses, but the sector still has promise. This Aim-listed group helps with early diagnosis of kidney disease, which affects more than 850 million people worldwide. Its KidneyIntelX diagnostic system uses a simple blood test to determine which patients are most at risk of developing advanced kidney problems. Revenues should soar in coming years and city brokers have “high hopes”. 240p Chemring The Sunday Telegraph This defence contractor produces countermeasures such as flares, decoys and “chaff” to help jet fighters evade detection. Its also offers cybersecurity and produces equipment to detect chemical, biological and explosive threats. A “heavyweight” management team boosted the order book by a third in…

• The first email was sent in 1971, says James Titcomb in The Daily Telegraph. Now the technology is thought to “take up almost a third of the working day”. One alternative is office messaging app Slack, known as the WhatsApp of business, which office workers actually seem to enjoy using. The group is set to receive a $17bn (£14bn) valuation when it lists in New York today. A valuation of 42 times sales is steep given a loss of $138m last year. Yet if it can chip away at the tyranny of emails it will be worth every penny. • Consolidation of the global oncology industry continues apace, says James Dean in The Times. US drugs giant Pfizer has agreed to buy Array BioPharma for $10.64bn. Pfizer is best…

A factor is a characteristic of a share (or other asset) that has been shown to contribute to market outperformance. Research into factors was largely driven by academics trying to figure out why certain stocks tended to generate higher returns than theories about efficient markets would have predicted. For example, widely accepted factors include size (the observations that small companies tend to beat large firms over time); value (cheap companies beat expensive ones); yield (high-yielding stocks do better than low-yielding ones); and momentum (stocks that go up just keep on going up). To be clear, these factors will not always beat the market over any given time period – but looking at historical data over the long run, they have generated superior returns in many different markets across the globe.…

• Warwick Brady, the chief executive of support services company Stobart Group, could be in line for a £30m bonus if the firm can sell Southend Airport for £2trn – the top end of valuations – reports This Is Money. However, a “more likely” sum for the sale is £1.4bn, which will net Brady £23m. The company capped the bonus to ”minimise shareholders’ anger”, saying it ought to have put the bonus to a shareholders’ vote, but its remuneration consultant had said there was no need. A third of shareholders voted against the remuneration report last year. • Mark Carney (pictured), the governor of the Bank of England, has been handed an “incredibly generous” payment of £149,545 towards his pension, says The Mail on Sunday. The sum took his total…

“When I was asked to be a model, at first I said no, I wanted to finish studying marketing at college. My mum had been saving up to pay for it. Then I realised modelling would be a good way to help my family. Money was my main driver.” Supermodel Irina Shayk (pictured), who grew up in a small village in Russia, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “In Britain, the Marxist hatred of profit subsists happily with a Jane Austen-like coyness about where one’s money actually comes from. In Jane Austen, Trade is ungentlemanly; in Marx, it is wicked; in British literary circles, it is both. Given the nature of the output of British literary circles, this wouldn’t matter very much, except for the fact that the attitude has filtered…

Shares in Sony went up by 3% last week on the news that activist investor Dan Loeb owns a $1.5bn stake and is pushing for “dramatic changes” at the company, says Bloomberg. Loeb’s hedge fund Third Point suggested that Sony sell its insurance business and stakes in stocks such as Spotify, and that it spin off its semiconductor business. The newly independent entity could be worth £35bn within five years, it reckons. “We rarely find companies like Sony that have a depressed valuation, high-quality underlying businesses, numerous options for portfolio optimisation, and a capable management team.”…

The results of the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation into the treatment of small businesses by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have sparked widespread anger. But while there is fury over the City regulator’s refusal to admonish RBS bosses, whose actions the bank itself now accepts were unfair, much of the criticism is misplaced. For victims of the RBS affair, the injustice is keenly felt, but the bigger issue at stake here is whether such a scandal could happen again. Small-business lending is still not within the FCA’s remit. So if you run a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) and feel you have been mistreated by your bank, your ability to seek redress is limited. It’s not all bad news, however. In April, the government extended the reach of the Financial…

Most people are aware that travel-insurance policies can be fiendishly complex and that you can end up with nasty unexpected bills if you don’t get the right level of cover. Most people also, understandably, neglect to read the small print carefully before selecting a policy. Here are some of the key pitfalls to look out for. In one story, reported in The Observer last year, a woman ended up with a bill for £30,000 to cover the cost of medical treatment abroad for kidney problems. Her insurance provider, Axa, would only cover a third of her care costs because she had not declared a single prescription for sleeping tablets when she bought the cover from broker Coverwise. When asked if anyone on the policy had in the last five years…

This Grade II-listed, semidetached thatched cottage was originally a three-bay hall house, and dates from the 16th century. It has been fully restored and retains its original beams, brick floors, and timber frame. It has a dining room with a large inglenook fireplace with a bressumer beam, and a triple-aspect study with a vaulted ceiling. The cottage is set in brick and flint-walled gardens, which feature an enclosed area accessed from the breakfast kitchen, as well as a water pump and nearby well head. But can you guess the asking price? See the side of this box for the answer.…

Bad news in the British car industry breaks almost daily. Plant closures relating to the sudden fall from grace of diesel vehicles, fears for the industry post-Brexit, and falling car prices have been major worries. One company putting a more positive spin on events, however, is Trifast (LSE: TRI), which announced its annual results earlier this month. Trifast, which manufactures fasteners (nuts, bolts, rivets and screws), reported sales and profit growth of 6% at constant exchange rates in the year to March 2019, but slightly more than half of the gain in revenue came from PTS, a company it acquired at the beginning of the financial year in April. A third of Trifast’s revenue comes from the automotive sector. Trifast fasteners hold dashboards together, for example. Despite all the bad…

Puretech Health (LSE: PRTC) is an American biotechnology group specialising in treatments for diseases of the brain, stomach, and immune system. It conducts research through its own internal laboratories and through a network of affiliates, of which it retains “significant ownership”. It also has partnerships with universities and pharmaceutical companies, including Roche and Bristol-Myers Squibb. It has yet to make a profit, but US regulators have approved its affiliate Gelesis’s Plenity obesity drug, so investors have piled in.…

Jabez Spencer Balfour was born in London in 1843 and went on to found the Liberator Building Society in 1868. Thanks largely to Balfour’s connections, through his family, with the Nonconformist community, its assets quickly ballooned. Within a decade it was the largest building society in the land. Balfour also set up a variety of property and development companies, making the most of the fame he had garnered through their apparent success to launch a modest political career. What was the scam? The building society promised to invest its depositors’ money in building affordable houses for working families. A large chunk was actually lent to speculative property schemes that Balfour was involved in, as well as to other parts of his empire. To sustain the illusion of profitability, Balfour overinflated…

Fully Automated Luxury Communism A Manifesto Aaron Bastani Verso Books, £16.99 Left-wing provocateur Aaron Bastani argues that an updated form of communism should be 21st-century society’s organising principle. Given that even Vietnam is now embracing free markets, that might seem like “some sort of joke: a satire, or a political prank”, says Andy Beckett in The Guardian. Far from it. In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Bastani makes the case that “artificial intelligence, solar power, the mining of asteroids and the replacement of most edible meat with synthetic flesh” will make communism viable. Technology, guided by activist left-wing governments, should be used to intensify our “mastery” of the planet, he says. The result will be “the creation of a new world of social justice and limitless abundance, with goods produced at…

• It’s annoying when writers don’t get the recognition they deserve, so “I’m thrilled to bits” that Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been “invented”, says Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun. She’s “become something we’ve never really had before” — a “superstar writer”. Waller-Bridge (pictured) first came to our attention with TV series Fleabag and the “brilliant” first series of Killing Eve. She’s been invited to “liven up” the new Bond film’s scrips. In the world of modern-day television and film, “women are cleaning up”. They’re “not demanding better pay on social media. They’re sat at their laptops working long into the night. I hope they’re being rewarded for it. Because they’re putting some va-va-voom into what is easily the most important part of any production. It’s not the direction or the acting…

394.5m The price in Vietnamese dong (£13,400) of the new Fadil hatchback. The car is the first to be rolled out from Vietnam’s new carmaker VinFast – a new division within conglomerate Vingroup. 9.78bn The total cost in Indian rupees (£111m) of India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon, set for launch next month, according to Isro, the country’s space agency. If successful, India will become only the fourth country after the US, Russia and China to perform a “soft landing” on the lunar surface. £39.9m The debt racked up by the publicly owned Prestwick Airport, according to Glasgow’s The Herald newspaper. The Scottish government bought the struggling airport for £1 in 2013 to prevent closure. Last week, the Scottish government said it would seek buyers. £200,000 The cost to Allan…