Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 969 i MoneyWeek

Most pharmaceutical companies are grappling with a political and regulatory environment likely to reduce their pricing power. But Zoetis doesn’t have to worry about that, says Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. The world’s biggest animal health group provides vaccines, medicines and diagnostic tools for farm animals and pets. It has established itself as a major, trusted brand and faces little competition from generic drugmakers. The regulatory backdrop for animal drugmakers looks relatively benign, while the growth outlook is positive. Credit Suisse is impressed by the group’s drugs pipeline and expects earnings to rise by 14% this year and 11% next.…

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group is preparing a takeover bid for WeWork, says The Wall Street Journal. The office management company, now the “poster child for start-up excess”, is “bleeding cash and [being] shunned by mainstream investors”. In exchange for injecting enough money into WeWork to relieve its “looming cash crunch”, SoftBank would take control of it. The proposed deal would further sideline WeWork’s controversial founder, Adam Neumann, who recently resigned as CEO but retains “substantial” voting power. SoftBank, which has already invested over $10bn in WeWork, reckons it “needs at least $3bn to get through the next year”. SoftBank may want to take over WeWork, but WeWork may have other ideas, says Bloomberg. In order to “avoid having their stakes severely diluted”, Neumann and other major stakeholders are hoping that…

“Some things just don’t pass the gut test” and the jailing of Catalan separatist leaders is one of them, says Stephen Daisley in The Spectator. On Monday, Spain’s Supreme Court passed tough sentences against 12 key figures behind the independence referendum held in October 2017 in contravention of the Spanish constitution. Nine defendants, including former ministers, were jailed for up to 13 years for offences including sedition and misuse of public funds. While it’s true that they broke the law, this “was a rogue ballot” that was very unlikely to lead to formal secession. “You do not lock people up for doing democracy wrong.” The sentences are harsher than expected – and have sparked angry protests resulting in more than 130 injuries – but the law was deliberately flouted, says…

Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has “suffered his first electoral blow since coming to power in 2010”, thanks to a “shock” defeat in Budapest’s mayoral race, says The Guardian. Despite a negative campaign by the incumbent, backed by Orbán’s Fidesz party, the “mild-mannered” opposition candidate won 51% of the vote. What’s more, the opposition managed to win votes in ten out of 23 main cities in last week’s local elections. It may be “popping Champagne”, but it shouldn’t get carried away, says Bloomberg. After all, victories in “rich population centres” don’t necessarily translate into gains on the national stage, “where the big economic and cultural policies are forged”. Indeed, last year the Polish opposition parties “crushed” the ruling Law and Justice party in municipal elections. However, last week the…

With Neil Woodford shutting his fund management group, what happens to his funds? Woodford was fired from running his flagship Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF) by Link Asset Services, the authorised corporate director of the fund. It will be renamed the LF Equity Income Fund and wound down – in other words, the portfolio will be sold and the leftover cash returned to investors. In effect, the portfolio will be split into two – Link has appointed BlackRock Advisors to sell the more liquid stocks, while specialist broker Park Hill will keep trying to find buyers for the unquoted firms. Money will be returned in stages. Link hopes to make the first payment at the end of January. What might investors get back? It’s impossible to say. But the fund’s…

Agricultural subsidies paid by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy totalled £3.5bn in 2018, notes The Sunday Times. The top 10% of beneficiaries received about half the total. The top four spots were taken by public bodies, with Natural England, the government’s adviser on the natural environment, in the number-one spot with £15.1m. The National Trust received £8.6m and the RSPB £3.3m. The Department of Agriculture’s Farm Policy Branch received £6.1m and the Welsh Assembly £6m. James Dyson, Eurosceptic maker of bagless vacuum cleaners and extra-strong hand-dryers, is paid over £2m a year in European farming subsidies. His Beeswax Dyson Farming received £2.6m in the year to 15 October 2018, and £2.36m the year before that. Payments are made in euros, which means recipients have benefited from the fall in sterling…

hbr.org More people than ever report feeling “in over [their] heads”, writes Rebecca Zucker for the Harvard Business Review. Faced with a growing workload, we just “put in longer hours”. But that promotes “cognitive fatigue”. The solution is to work smarter. Pinpoint the primary source of work stress and see if you can break the task down into smaller chunks, secure more resources or delegate it. Set boundaries around your time and workload and be ready to say “no” to unproductive requests. Avoid perfectionism. Most importantly, “challenge your assumptions”. One of my clients said that “If I’m not there to help others, I won’t be needed and people will question my value”, another that “If I lose control, others will mess up, and the company will fail”. Yet such beliefs…

■ A “star stockpicker’s” departure could cost Jupiter Fund Management a total of £3bn, says Ben Martin in The Daily Telegraph. Investors have withdrawn around £1.1bn since Jupiter announced Alexander Darwall’s (pictured) departure in July; he plans to run his own fund company. Darwall oversaw two open-ended European funds, along with an investment trust that he stopped managing in April. The two unit trusts, which jointly made up Jupiter’s European Growth Strategy, have suffered outflows of £1.6bn since then. Darwall had £7.9bn in assets under management at the end of May. Jupiter’s shares have lost a fifth since July. ■ Property funds are preparing for volatility over the next few weeks by building up “war chests”, says The Mail on Sunday’s Jeff Prestridge. Funds run by Janus Henderson, Legal &…

Winter is coming and it is time to check what you are paying for your energy before the central heating goes back on. Last January the government introduced the energy-price cap, but that doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. The price cap limits what a company can charge if you are on its standard variable rate: the tariff you’ll be moved to if your fixed deal ends and you don’t switch. You can still save a lot of money by shopping around for the best deal. “People should not see the price cap as a blessing or a safeguard – rather, merely a cap on the absolute amount of money they should be paying for their energy,” says Peter Earl, head of energy at comparethemarket.com. The comparison service…

One of the most volatile stocks over the past 18 months has been the American online retailer Wayfair (NYSE: W). It nearly tripled from $66 in April 2018, reaching a peak of $171 in March. However, since then the stock has tumbled to $105, a drop of around 40% from its spring peak. It’s easy to see why the market used to be so enthusiastic about the group. It has been growing so quickly that sales are expected to be over ten times higher this year than in 2013. Poor profitability “Consumers spend ages shopping around for sofas while returns are common” However, if you take a closer look, it’s even easier to spot why investors have started to get cold feet. For one thing, the company has a poor…

The JP Morgan Japanese Investment Trust contains innovative and fast-growing companies. We seek out what we consider to be the best investment ideas in Japan to maximise returns, concentrating on firms with excellent long-term growth prospects that are not dependent on the economic cycle. “Robot usage in China and India is very low, so there is ample scope for growth” We believe that an active style of portfolio management that focuses on stock selection conducted by experienced, locally based investors offers the greatest opportunity to add value. We use extensive bottom-up research to identify undervalued earnings growth. Our approach can be summarised as aiming for growth at a reasonable price. There are several key structural trends that we have identified as promising long-term sources of return. Examples of these themes…

In June, social-media giant Facebook (founder Mark Zuckerberg, pictured) unveiled ambitious plans for a digital currency called Libra, which it hoped would be used globally as a secure and trusted means of payment. It had lined up a host of financial institutions, including PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and eBay, under the umbrella of the “Libra Association”, to lend it authority. Now, it looks to be unravelling. Seven of the original 28 backers, including those just mentioned, have pulled out. The world’s financial regulators and central bankers were never happy about the idea that Libra would compete with sovereign currencies. US president Donald Trump dismissed it on Twitter and France and Germany both said they could block it. Meanwhile, the Financial Stability Board (an international body that monitors the financial system) told…

“When stock investors chase after winners, it is striking how often they end up in the US,” says Michael Mackenzie in the Financial Times. So complete has the country’s equity dominance become that “all of the top five stocks in the FTSE All World index by market weight” are American tech giants. Wall Street stocks have “eclipsed” others over the past decade and continued to outperform this year. Yet as Emily Bary points out on MarketWatch, the S&P 500 has officially entered an “earnings recession” after corporate profits fell in both the first and second quarters of this year. Upcoming US third-quarter earnings are expected to be little better, says John Authers on Bloomberg. Brokers are warning clients of another outright decline, although we will have to wait for the…

Global trade (exports plus imports) averaged less than 10% of GDP before the 1800s, says Deutsche Bank. It then tripled by 1914, thanks to advances in communication and production triggered by the industrial revolution. The two major wars of the 20th century caused a hiatus, but the advent of shipping containers, along with falling tariffs due to successive rounds of multilateral trade talks, underpinned further progress after 1945. Today, however, trade is struggling to recover from the massive recession caused by the financial crisis. A multi-decade downtrend in US protectionism is reversing under Donald Trump, with the average tariff for all imports ticking up in recent years for the first time since the 1950s.…

An investment of £150,000 two decades ago could now earn two brothers aplace among Britain’s richest 30 families, says Callum Jones in The Times. Mohsin, 58, and Zuber Issa, 47, from Blackburn are co-chief executives of the EG Group, a petrol stations and convenience stores business considering a flotation that could value it at £10bn. EG Group was created three years ago when the brothers’ Euro Garages merged with TDR Capital’s European Forecourt Retail Group, leaving the siblings with 56% ownership. The Issas employ 25,000 staff across Europe and North America. They bought their first petrol forecourt in Greater Manchester 20 years ago.…

British cybersecurity company Sophos is a “homegrown success story” with “good prospects”, says the Financial Times. So it’s not surprising that the American private-equity firm Thoma Bravo has offered £3.1bn for it. Those who bought the stock when it floated in 2015 have more than doubled their stake. While there will be the inevitable “hand wringing” at the idea of a British tech firm being taken over by a foreign company, fears of losing local tech expertise are “overdone”: Thoma Bravo intends to keep Sophos as a standalone business. It’s easy to see why Thoma Bravo is interested in Sophos, says Liam Proud for Breaking-views. Its network of 45,000 sales partners, such as regional computer shops and consultants, which sell its products to businesses, means that the new owner “can…

Even though there may not be an election until next year, Ladbrokes recently extended the range of parliamentary seats that it istaking bets on. One obvious opportunity is Burnley, currently held by Labour’s Julie Cooper. She won the seat in 2015 and retained it in 2017 with an increased majority of 6,373. Ladbrokes put a Labour victory at the next election at evens (50%), with the Conservatives at 2/1 (33.3%). The Liberal Democrats are at 4/1 (20%) and the Brexit Party is at 10/1 (9.1%). The Lib Dems won this seat in 2010, so you’d think that they would be in with at least a chance of victory. However, since the area is heavily pro-Leave with two-thirds of the constituency voting to quit the EU, it’s no surprise that they…

Neil Woodford was once deemed Britain’s most successful fund manager. Now his reputation lies in tatters, his fund empire has collapsed and the faith of investors across the UK in the financial industry has been dealt yet another massive blow. For holders of his funds, we look at what the next steps are in the box below. But in terms of the lessons investors can learn from this mess, there are three big ones to highlight. “If you invest in an active fund, you have to stay on top of it” Size matters: US investor Warren Buffett often bemoans the fact that he now has far too much money under management (not that he’s keen to hand any of it back). Why? Because if you have billions of dollars to…

You will be taxed more than anywhere else for parking your car at work. You will have to pay an extra levy if you spend the day exploring a historic site. If you buy or sell a property there will be another charge, and you will owe higher income tax as well. In the first few years after Scotland was given the power to raise its own taxes, it used it sparingly. Now, however, it is really getting into its stride. New tax rules are passed all the time. The trouble is, they only ever go into one direction – upwards. And that is going to start undermining the country’s competitiveness. Scotland’s latest taxes Last week Scotland approved plans to allow local councils to levy a tax on car parking…

Dwindling innovation bodes ill Wim Naudé The Conversation The idea that we are living in a technologically disruptive age akin to a new “industrial revolution” is a “pervasive modern myth”, says Wim Naudé. Yet the fact is that since the 1980s entrepreneurship and innovation have been “steadily declining”, particularly in the US. There the ratio of new firms to all firms slid by around 50% between 1978 and 2011, while the number of people working for big firms (250 workers-plus) climbed from 51% in the late 1980s to 57% by 2006. Job-to-job mobility, within job mobility and geographical mobility, “all indirect measures” of business dynamics, has also been decreasing. Since 2000, more low-paying than high-paying jobs have being created and the share of entrepreneurs with a college degree declined from…

nationalreview.com President Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky are both outsiders whose television fame catapulted them to high office, says Matthew Continetti. Both are also at the centre of a scandal that has seen the president accused of leveraging national security for personal gain and sparked impeachment efforts. This “ineptitude and insinuation” would be familiar to citizens of Ukraine, a country “beset by corruption, cronyism, and war”. Yet now America is going the same way. America’s bipartisan political elite have long regarded the “wreckage of the Soviet Empire” as a lucrative playground for their skills and connections. Trump got himself into the latest mess by trying to highlight the Ukrainian business activities of Hunter Biden, the son of former vice-president Joe Biden. Yet these politicos seem to have returned home…

When renewable energy funds were first listed, it was easy to be sceptical. In the early days of wind and solar energy generation the technology was expensive and inefficient. So public subsidies accounting for half or more of expected income were required to give investors a competitive rate of return. The other half of the funds’ income was to come from electricity sold to the grid at wholesale prices that were expected to rise steadily. They didn’t, perhaps because of the additional capacity. Understandably, the UK government saw this enthusiasm for investment as an opportunity to limit the subsidies by closing what is known as “the Renewables Obligation” for new generating capacity in March 2017. “Improvements in panels have made solar more efficient” This caused howls of outrage from the…

When we think of medical technology, miracle drugs and biotechnology tend to spring to mind. However, medical devices, long considered the poor cousin of the healthcare industry, have been undergoing a quiet revolution. Intelligent limbs, which mimic the action of the original body part, and exoskeletons – robotic suits designed to aid movement – are starting to be go mainstream. Even medical devices that can communicate directly with the human brain may not be as far off as you think. What’s more, with medical and social-care systems struggling with age-related problems, the long-term demand for such devices will be immense. Artificial limbs are getting more sophisticated Artificial limbs have existed for thousands of years. But in the 1990s new types of “intelligent” prostheses emerged. Instead of being passive lumps of…

■ Within the Queen’s Speech there was confirmation that “the pensions dashboard will go ahead as planned”, says Danielle Richardson in Which. The dashboard is intended to make it easier for everyone to view their pension savings. It is “an online tool to track how much you have saved in all of your pension pots”, including private pensions, occupational pensions and your state pension money. “Pensions dashboards have the potential to bring huge benefits for savers by bringing together all their pensions in one place, which should help millions of people to keep track of their savings and understand them better,” says Gareth Shaw, head of money at Which. The pensions bill also includes plans to target scams, with pension firms being given the power to refuse a transfer if…

Over the last fortnight six out of my eight long tips have risen. JD Sports has increased from 750p to 769p, Safestore from 671p to 692p and Superdry from 423p to 439p. Bausch Health Companies has increased from $20.59 to $20.91. Volkswagen has also moved up, from €153 to €163, while International Consolidated Airline Group has climbed too, from 468p to 502p. Sadly, however, Bellway has dropped from 3,354p to 3,291p and Ted Baker has collapsed from 925p to 494p, triggering the stop-loss at 709p. Overall, my long tips are making a profit of £2,358, down from £2,856. My short tips have also had mixed results. While there hasn’t been a dramatic Ted Baker-style reversal, three out of the five tips have appreciated. Tesla went up from $241 to $257,…

Highland Gold Mining (LSE: HGM) is an Aim-listed gold explorer and producer with four mines operational in the far east of Russia and Central Asia. A fifth mine is expected to start producing in the next few years. The group produced 269,000 ounces of gold in 2018 and made a net profit of $56m. The first half of 2019 saw production increase by 10% compared with the same period in 2018, while operating profit rose by 14%. The company has benefited from the recent rise in the gold price, and investors have been piling in. The shares have jumped by more than 50% in the last year.…

How did it begin? Born Abraham Gottheimer in Dublin in 1831, Albert Grant set up the Mercantile Discount Company in 1859, which failed two years later. In 1864 he set up a brokerage house, Crédit Foncier and Mobilier of England, which he used to promote various companies that he helped float on the stock exchange. By 1865 he was rich enough to own a large mansion in Surrey, get elected to parliament asMP for Kidderminster and buy Leicester Square as a gift to the public. He was also created an Italian baron in 1868. What was the scam? Albert Grant made his money buying worthless companies and using fraud, hype and manipulation to sell them to the public at vastly inflated prices. Perhaps his most notorious case was his involvement…

Modern art has its roots in the late 19th century, when spiritualism was flourishing, says Caroline Marciniak in Frieze Masters Magazine. It was also an era of profound technological and socio-economic change. “Railways were vastly extended, suburbs sprouted factories and cities towered upwards.” But with technological progress came disillusionment, and “a sense of longing and decay”. Impressionism was too “formal, based on fleeting sensory impressions and grounded in everyday life”, says Marciniak.  “The renewed interest in occultism was driven by a search for alternatives and origins, for a world that holds both chaos and coherence... its rhythms hinting at key truths.” “At the turn of the century, modern artists and Modernists were all into versions of spiritualism,” The Gallery of Everything’s James Brett told the BBC’s Kelly Grovier. “So spiritual…

• In the “dark days” of the 1980s, “most chain restaurants came across as tasteless totems of capitalism”, says Alex James, the former bassist of Blur (pictured), in The Sun. Pizza Express was different. “It was a shining beacon. Somehow it made everyone, regardless of age or background, feel special.” We had “never seen torn basil… restaurants were in cool locations.” When Iwas in the band, “we lived off those pizzas for years. I’d order two margherita pizzas at a go because they were so cheap”. It is “so sad” that the British restaurant stalwart, which opened in 1965, is struggling with debt. “Some 75p of every £8.45 margherita it sells goes directly to paying off interest. That’s before salaries and rent costs.” Jokers on social media quip that when…

America is already two decades into a long, dark climb down from the top of the world to, well, somewhere else. Great empires do not go gently into that good night. Typically, they spend too much, pick fights… while their own people get restless. “The US military has had no victories to speak of since World War II” We’ve already seen what’s behind the financial door. Crash, bankruptcy, and inflation. What we haven’t explored yet is the possibility of a real military defeat or a real domestic upheaval. When a military machine gets used to acting like a police force – fighting inferior, unorganised, or lightly armed opponents – it is little use in a real war. America has done more than its share of fighting since World War II,…

China and America have agreed to a “pretend trade deal”, says Christopher Balding in Foreign Policy. Donald Trump has lauded a “phase one” trade agreement, but the details are so thin that the Chinese side preferred not to use the term “deal” at all. That didn’t stop the markets cheering. Both US and Chinese stocks rose on the announcement, with both America’s Nasdaq and S&P 500 up more than 1% last Friday. US stocks recorded their first weekly gain in four weeks. The agreement is “very preliminary”, Warren Maruyama of Hogan Lovells told Barron’s. “Markets have been extraordinarily gullible.” Both sides have cracked The latest developments amount to a “ceasefire” rather than a peace treaty, says Arthur Kroeber for Gavekal Research. Washington has agreed to cancel upcoming tariff hikes, with…

”Hats off to Hargreaves Lansdown. In a year that has seen serious financial losses for 290,000 of its clients [thanks to the Woodford debacle], you might think there’d be some backlash. [Yet the latest] trading statement reveals that instead new clients keep rocking up... and that assets under administration passed £100bn. That’s an astonishing amount for a firm that [simply] provides a platform from which clients can pick savings schemes... nothing particularly complicated is being achieved here. The evidence for that comes in extraordinary profit margins of nearly 64%... In other sectors... a profit margin of [even] 6.4% would be a cause of... [worry] that government authorities were poised to intervene on competition grounds... perhaps it is time [brokers] faced a probe... clients are plainly happy with the service... it…

Three to buy Kellogg’s Barron’s “Even Tony the Tiger couldn’t have roared ‘They’re gr-r-reat’” about the recent performance of the shares at this food giant. The New York-listed maker of Rice Krispies and Frosties breakfast cereals has lagged sector peers, but a combination of cost-cutting, growth in snacks and a bet on emerging markets leaves it poised for better things to come. On 16.2 times this year’s earnings the shares look reasonable. A 3.7% dividend yield is a nice bonus to enjoy while you wait for the stock to pick up. $62 Legal & General Investors Chronicle On a forward price/earnings ratio of just eight, this “insurer-come-asset manager” looks “suspiciously cheap”. The uncertain economic outlook may have hit sentiment, but this is a well-diversified business enjoying momentum in its pension…

• No wonder companies including PayPal, eBay, Mastercard and Visa have quit Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project, says Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky. US politicians had made it clear that those taking part could “expect a high level of scrutiny” from regulators – and not merely on Libra-related payment activities. Meanwhile, regulators recently thwarted an attempt to create a new cryptocurrency backed by major venture capital firms. Instead of trying to launch its currency globally, it would have made more sense for Facebook to emulate Vodafone’s “mobile money” and focus initially on emerging markets “with large populations of the unbanked”. • Boeing has relieved CEO Dennis Muilenburg (pictured) of the chairmanship so he can get on with the “full-time job” of getting the grounded 737 MAX flying again and addressing cultural problems at…

“How long can markets (and economies) breathe in an oxygen-less interest rate environment?” Bill Gross – the billionaire co-founder of giant asset manager Pimco, who was once known as the “bond king” – retired from his final berth at Janus Henderson group earlier this year. But he’s still keeping a close eye on markets. In his first investment outlook letter since his retirement, he worries about the ill-effects of ever-lower interest rates. “It is obvious to me,” argues Gross, “that asset markets have benefited tremendously” from the current monetary environment. He reckons that “since 2009, perhaps one quarter of the 200% rise in the US market” is down to the collapse in interest rates over the same period. The problem is, this can’t continue forever, says Gross. Central bankers –…

• The renewable energy boom is proving lucrative for HM the Queen. A deal with the government in 2012 gave her 25% of the profits of the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed in the UK’s territorial waters. It charges rent of 2% of revenues for its use by offshore wind turbines. In 2018 it collected £41m, says Ian Gallagher in The Mail on Sunday. This year its earnings are set to rise thanks to the first auction of seabed licences in ten years. The Crown Estate will receive annual “option fees” from the successful bidders. Britain is the world’s biggest offshore wind market. • Former partners of Pricewaterhouse-Coopers (PwC) shared a £100m payout this year after the accountancy giant reported record profits. Around 1,100 retired partners, who are eligible…

“John [Lennon] and Yoko [Ono] were as bad as me when it came to shopping. The flats they owned in the Dakota [building] were so full of artworks, antiques and clothes that I once sent them a card rewriting the lyrics to [Lennon’s] Imagine: ‘Imagine six apartments, it isn’t hard to do, one is full of fur coats, another’s full of shoes’.” Pop star Elton John (pictured), in his memoir, Me “Dublin was an hour away, but it feels years away when you’ve got no money and you’re just walking to school in the rain, playing guitar, doing homework, going to bed to get up and do the same thing again.” Niall Horan, who found fame as a member of the boyband One Direction, quoted in The Daily Telegraph “If…

bbc.com/worklife In many countries a high income is “a badge of success”, says Maddy Savage. Not in Sweden. A Nordic cultural code called Jantelagen, which discourages people from thinking that they are better than others, means that even moderate wealth is not discussed in public. While the country’s wealthy were willing to tell me about their “large second homes [or] family yachts”, few wanted to put their names to such statements. Money is such ataboo that many Swedes would rather discuss sex, says author Akinmade Åkerström. Jantelagen, which literally translates as “law of Jante”, is about “not being too flashy” and promoting equality, she says. Yet opponents say it aims to cut the successful down to size. Of course, other cultures have similar concepts. Australians speak of “tall poppy syndrome”…

The battle between activist hedge fund Amber Capital and media conglomerate Lagardère has taken a nasty turn. The French group launched a €84m lawsuit last week, seeking compensation for Amber’s supposed “destabilisation campaign”of the last three years. Amber dismissed the suit as an effort to “discourage” activist funds from criticising the company. The pair’s relationship has soured since Amber criticised Lagardère’s corporate governance and took legal action to force the company to publish its financial accounts after years of underperformance. Amber notes that between 2003 and 2018 Lagardère’s profits fell by 40% while the executive committee’s pay and expenses soared by 79%.…

Össur (Copenhagen: OSSR) is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of prosthetics. Alongside conventional ones, it produces a range of “bionic limbs”. It is also developing techniques for embedding so-called myoelectric sensors into the residual tissue of amputated limbs, which are then connected to the leg, allowing them to be controlled by the user. The prosthesis is controlled with electrical signals generated by the patient’s own muscles. While this isn’t quite the instinctive control promised by brain-computer interfaces, it represents the current cutting-edge of technology. Although Össur trades at 31 times 2020 earnings, this is more than justified by the fact that earnings per share have grown at arate of 15% a year over the past five years. Parker Hannifin (NYSE: PH), a company that specialises in motion and control…

If you can’t be bothered to switch your energy provider regularly there are firms out there that will do it for you. The likes of Weflip or Switchd will monitor the market for you and transfer your account whenever moving could save you money. All you have to do is give them details about your energy provider, your usage and your current tariff. Their computers constantly check for better deals from the suppliers they represent. If they find a deal that will still save you money even after exit fees from your current provider, they will start a switch on your behalf. You’ll be notified of the potential switch by email so you can stop it if you don’t want to move. Auto-switching service Switchcraft claims customers can save an…

In theory an increase in interest rates should have a negative impact on share prices. Not only does a hike raise the cost of capital and push up the interest payments on any debt that firms owe, but it also tends to cause the economy to slow down. The opposite should apply in the case of rate cuts. In reality, the relationship, especially in the short run, isn’t as clear as you’d expect. For one thing, a cut or a hike might already have been anticipated by the market and therefore priced in. Also, a cut in rates might indicate that the central bank is worried that the economy is starting to weaken, while a hike might be seen as a vote of confidence. Research by Mark DeCambre of Marketwatch…

Aston Martin Lagonda (LSE: AML) makes luxury sports cars. It listed on Aim a year ago, but since then it has been downhill all the way. In July it posted a loss of almost £80m, bemoaning a sharp fall in demand in the UK and Europe, and warned shareholders not to expect much improvement for the rest of the year. A recent bond sale to finance development of its first ever SUV, on which the company is pinning high hopes, came with a hefty rate of interest, further unsettling investors. The stock has slid by 70% in 12 months.…

2018 G de Château Guiraud, Bordeaux Blanc Sec, France £16, Booths Supermarkets; booths.co.uk I have hosted afew top-notch Bordeaux dinners recently and rather than serve the eponymous glass of Champagne before proceedings I decided to welcome guests with a cunning, dry white Bordeaux. I chose G de Guiraud, as I had the Sauternes from the same property lined up for the pudding course. It was a pair of neat Guiraud bookends for a serious flight of reds, which, as you would expect, formed the meat of the dinner. But it must be noted that this wondrous dry wine triggered widespread adulation. I have been a fan of G for years. A50/50 blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon, which is run around old Sauternes barrels to give it a sheen and…

Going… A letter written by Jane Austen, dated 16 September 1813, is to go up for auction at Bonhams in New York next Wednesday. In the letter to her sister, Cassandra, Austen reports on the latest fashion: “Large full bows of very narrow ribbon… one over the right temple, perhaps, and another at the left ear”. She also recounts a visit to the dentist with her nieces, remarking that the dentist “must be a Lover of Teeth & Money & Mischief... I would not have had him look at mine for a shilling a tooth & double it.” Austen is thought to have written around 3,000 letters, of which most were destroyed in the 1840s. This surviving example is expected to fetch up to $120,000. Gone… A cache of 65…

£905,600 The cost of sending two children to a private day school from the age of four to 13, and then to boarding school until 18, according to a report compiled by the Centre for Economic and Business Research for investment manager Killik & Co. The sum has risen by 55% since 2004. €1bn The saving over ten years to Italy’s taxpayers from shrinking the parliament to 400 MPs from 630, and 200 senators from 315. The reduction was a manifesto promise of the populist left-wing Five Star Movement party. $25bn The annual value of the global market in citizenships. Christian Kälin, a Swiss lawyer, told the BBC that an Antiguan passport costs from around $100,000 while a Portuguese one sells for $384,000. British citizenship will set you back around…