Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1030 i MoneyWeek

Google was fined €100m in France for breaking rules on online advertising trackers (“cookies”), says the BBC. The fine is the largest ever issued by French data privacy watchdog CNIL, which said Google’s French website had not sought users’ consent before saving cookies to their computers. The tech giant has three months to change the cookie information on its sites, or face being fined a further €100,000 a day. A Spanish judge has ordered Warner Bros to pay €25,000 in damages to a Moroccan businessman after they used his photograph alongside images of the Gambino crime family inThe Accountant, a2016 thriller starring Ben Affleck, reports Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. The man claimed his reputation had suffered as a result.…

This year has been a miserable one for income seekers, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. FTSE 100 firms have collectively “cut, deferred or cancelled” more than £37bn in dividends this year. Yet recent months have brought signs of a return to normal. Sixteen firms have reinstated payouts amounting to £2.7bn for this year or next. Expect total FTSE 100 payouts to rise from £59.9bn this year to £70.8bn in 2021. The UK market remains reliant on a few dividend stalwarts: 54% of 2020 dividends will come from just ten firms, including BP, Rio Tinto and GlaxoSmithKline. Overall, the FTSE 100 yields 3.2% for 2020 and 3.8% for 2021. US companies prefer stock buybacks –when a company purchases its own stocks, driving up the price – to dividends, notes Spencer…

A growing number of firms worldwide are neither dead nor alive, as Neil Jensen points out in Absolute Return Partners: they just about tick over, but they owe so much that any cash they generate goes towards the interest on their debt pile, so they can’t invest to grow. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that by 2016 12% of the developed world’s listed non-financial firms were zombies. Rock-bottom interest rates in the past two decades, which encouraged borrowing, and unusually lenient banks following the financial crisis, are the main explanations. Zombies dent growth by hampering productivity and investment. Even looser monetary policy due to Covid-19 implies yet more zombies now.…

Milan finished 2019 as Europe’s top spot for new initial public offerings (IPOs). But the motoring IPO market came to a screeching halt in 2020 as investors fled from Italy’s “wide array of family-owned micro businesses” during the pandemic, says Chiara Remondini on BNN Bloomberg. Last year saw 35 flotations worth a collective $2.9bn, but 2020 saw less than half that number. Only 15 companies have gone public in Milan in 2020, raising a mere $745m. Business conditions in 2020 played against the country’s “traditional strengths: small and medium-sized companies in sectors including manufacturing, consumer and retail”. These categories suffered the most from Covid-19.…

Shares in home rental platform Airbnb “more than doubled” when the company started trading on the Nasdaq last week, says Dominic Rushe in The Guardian. Initially priced at $68 a share, the stock surged to more than $150 at one point, ending the first day of trading at $144.70. This means that the company, founded in 2008 when the cofounders rented out air mattresses in their San Francisco apartments, is worth around $100bn, twice the value of Marriott, the largest hotel operator. It’s no surprise that investors are bullish, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. Airbnb may not “have the first clue about how to fold a doily”, but it does offer the “biggest, cheapest, perhaps quirkiest selection of rooms to sleep in across the world” and has used…

If you just looked at afew stockmarket charts and blocked out everything else, you might come away thinking it had been a great year for the global economy. We have just seen the best few months for initial public offerings (IPOs) in two decades. Airbnb floated its shares with a value of just below $40bn. They almost immediately increased in value and the room-letting service ended up worth more than $100bn. C3.ai, the artificial-intelligence company, saw its shares rise 174% on its first day of trading. By comparison, the 70% rise in the first day of trading for the food-delivery company Doordash was relatively modest, but it still ended up with avalue of more than $70bn. More IPOs are expected. Add in a rush of “special purpose acquisition companies” –…

We tend to think there are two main ways to invest in gold. Via the metal – coins, bars, futures and so on – or via a company that mines it. The metal is the safer option, but (assuming it all goes right, which often isn’t the case) you can make greater returns with the mining company. But there is a third way that in terms of risk stands somewhere between metal and miner: the royalty company. “If one project goes wrong, the royalty company has others” Building a mine is extremely expensive. It takes huge amounts of capital and time. From exploration, through development and construction, to actual production can take many years and hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars. This process is traditionally financed through borrowing money…

The Church of England has joined a growing campaign demanding change at oil giant ExxonMobil, says the Financial Times. It is backing calls for the appointment of new directors, and for the firm to develop a feasible transition plan to cleaner fuels. The Church Commissioners for England, who manage the Church’s investment fund, announced their support the day after US hedge fund DE Shaw revealed a large stake in ExxonMobil; the hedge fund is urging the company to cut costs. Activists’ pressure has been building at Exxon amid perceptions that the company remains committed to a fossil-fuel reliant business model despite increasing doubts about the long-term demand for oil and concerns over climate change.…

“When… I feel anxiety, I know it’s provoked by childhood and I have to say: ‘Viola, you have a big refrigerator now, you have working toilets, you are a different woman,’ and then it relaxes me —for a while.” Oscar winner Viola Davis (pictured) on her poor background, quoted in the Financial Times “I was struggling to get a movie made. She said: ‘Honey, what you need in your life is a rich man.’ And I went: ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’ It still has a meaning to me. I don’t need that; I am that.” Singer and actress Cher on men being a luxury, not a necessity, quoted in The Guardian “He would have said no, of course. If my brother just gave me the money, there’s nothing…

realclearpolitics.com In the US, some 70% of the millennial generation say they would vote for socialism, says Luka Ladan. More than a third support replacing capitalism with a “more collectivist system”. The explanation is that Americans of that age have become “desensitised to the dangers of big government in practice”. The fall of the Berlin wall, not to mention the Russian revolution, have been forgotten. Horror stories from China or Venezuela seem “inapplicable to the American experience”. Covid-19 may change all that. In Florida, the state is forcing people to wear masks outside. In LA, indoor and outdoor dining have been banned and New York may follow suit. In Oregon, residents who held Thanksgiving gatherings with seven or more people faced a $1,250 fine and 30 days imprisonment. All this…

Regularly switching energy supplier can shave hundreds of pounds off your energy bills. Many of us are still sitting on expensive standard rates because we’ve forgotten, don’t know how, or can’t be bothered to switch provider when our introductory deal has ended. If you don’t switch energy supplier regularly you end up on your provider’s standard tariff. These can leave you paying “over the odds by as much as £324 for gas and electricity”, Hollie Borland reported in The Sun last year. Known as the “loyalty penalty”, that’s the difference between the price of a provider’s standard rate and their cheapest deal. “Ofgem, the energy watchdog, has secured £38m of refunds this year” The government has tried to tackle the loyalty penalty problem in the past by bringing in a…

■ Almost two-thirds of cases in which members of a defined-benefit pension scheme apply to transfer their benefits to another pension provider show evidence that the member may have been a victim of a scam, a leading pension consultant has warned. Large volumes of defined-benefit scheme members continue to apply for transfers, despite guidance from regulators that such switches rarely make good financial sense. XPS Pension Group says 64% of the cases it monitors now carry at least one red flag. These are warning signs of a potential scam, such as the adviser working with the member not having proper regulatory clearance. When XPS first launched its Red Flag index two years ago, fewer than a third of transfer requests raised alerts. After slipping to 25% in the autumn of…

Virgin Money UK (LSE: VMUK) is a holding company with banking subsidiaries. Shares in the company were downgraded by two analysts at the end of November following the bank’s full-year results earlier in the week. The firm’s pre-tax profit fell by three quarters in the year to October after it had to set aside £501m to cover bad loans caused by the pandemic, says Owen Walker in the Financial Times. The bank also warned that as it was retail-focused it was unusually vulnerable to the effects of multiple lockdowns. The stock has slipped by 31% over the past 12 months.…

The Fitbit Versa 3 smartwatch helps you stick to your New Year’s resolutions and beat personal bests, and features built-in GPS and a heart-rate monitor. From £192.67, amazon.co.uk. Handpick luxury sweets for a loved one through Hotel Chocolat’s gift creator. Pick a small box or a large gift bag and choose from gift cards, hot chocolate and seasonal treats. From £2.50, hotelchocolat.com/uk. The Books + Beer subscription delivers a book —always in paperback for convenience and newly published to avoid repetition — alongside two excellent craft beers straight to your loved ones’ doorstep. Available on a rolling basis, or as a one-, three-, six-or 12-month subscription. From £13.50 a month, booksplusbeer.com. Who wouldn’t want cheese and wine, in a box, delivered to their doorstep? This selection from Cheese Geek features…

Tony Le-Britton (pictured), one of Europe’s most prolific plant collectors, might just own the real life money tree, say Shanti Das and Jonathan Coles in The Times. His Rhaphidophora Tetrasperma Variegata, with a unique two-toned white and green pattern, is worth £12,000 per leaf, and he has already secured four advance orders from collectors. Le-Britton, now 30, used to skive off school to go to his allotment to tend his plants. His reckons he owns between 200 and 300 plants and has spent around £20,000 on his collection over the past 15 years. Thanks to huge demand – with people looking to take up new hobbies to occupy themselves during lockdowns – and a limited supply of rare species, Le-Britton’s lucrative hobby is like “growing money on trees”. But it’s…

Is inflation “dead”? This year’s “epic spending and borrowing binge” by governments, near-zero interest rates and record-high stock prices all suggest that everyone thinks big price rises are a thing of the past, says The Economist. But the coming year could bring a few inflationary surprises, say Reade Pickert and Vince Golle on Bloomberg. Prices of industrial metals such as copper and iron ore are already soaring. A vaccine will induce a rush for travel and leisure activities next year, which could trigger price rises in unexpected places. Yet any inflation spike will be a temporary “mirage”. US unemployment was 6.7% in November, almost twice last year’s level. With so much slack in the labour market, workers have little scope to demand higher pay. If wages don’t rise then inflation…

“The concept of a creature dining on its own tail – suggesting a self-generated growth cycle – is a macabre one. So how about blowing it up to its logical limit: a whale eating its own tail? In fact, this ‘whale of a tale’... is exactly what is happening in Japanese financial circles. The Bank of Japan recently became the nation’s top holder of stocks, owning more than $430bn’s worth. That means Japan’s monetary authority is now the nation’s investment ‘whale’ – pulling the title away from [the] Government Pension Investment Fund, or GPIF. It’s an awkward milestone with timely lessons for the wider world as it flirts with similar issues as the ‘Japanification’ of the globe’s third-biggest economy. Two years ago the Bank of Japan’s balance sheet surpassed the…

Six to buy Accrol Group  The Mail on Sunday Toilet paper (or the lack of it) has been one of the unlikely symbols of 2020. This Lancashire-based maker of supermarket own-brand kitchen roll and loo paper hikedou put by 40% early in 2020 to cope with the spike in demand. Profits look set to leap this year as a result, while in the longer term steady growth in demand could come from budget-conscious consumers switching to its products. There has been no dividend following a bumpy period after 2016, but management hopes to reinstate payouts “as soon as practically possible”. 52p discoverIE Shares Once a “simple distributor” of electrical widgets, this engineer is evolving into a producer of higher-margin custom-made products. That means things like “blade controls” for wind…

• Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct may be facing competition in the battle for Debenhams. US “retail powerhouse” Authentic Brands is plotting a “double takeover” of Debenhams and Arcadia Group, says The Sunday Telegraph. The future owners of the two chains will be determined by an auction. If Authentic Brands prevails it could not only herald a “new force on the high street”, but also bolster an empire that had reached a turnover of $15bn before lockdowns “laid waste to shopping centres”globally. Since the pandemic, Authentic Brands has snapped up bankrupt US retailers, including Barneys and Forever 21. • Thanks to “waning profitability”, funeral provider Dignity has suffered a share-price crash of 75% since 2017, says Lex in the Financial Times. There has also been a “revolving door” in the boardroom.…

In a “decisive break” with Donald Trump, several senior Republicans, including Senate leader Mitch McConnell, have finally acknowledged that Donald Trump lost the November US presidential election after Joe Biden secured the majority of Electoral College votes required to win the White House, says Lauren Fedor in the Financial Times. The meeting of the Electoral College is usually a rubber-stamp exercise, but it was “hotly politicised” this year by Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, alleging voter fraud. Biden received 306 Electoral College votes to Trump’s 232 as well as seven million more than Trump in the popular vote. Trump’s refusal to concede was outrageous, but in the end the system worked, says William Galston in The Wall Street Journal. Indeed, despite a “tidal wave” of around 159 million votes, the…

Japan is planning to boost its flagging birthrate by using artificial intelligence (AI) to “help match lonely hearts”, says Rachael Bunyan on MailOnline. This sounds far from romantic, but the idea is that AI can help match a wider and smarter range of potential suitors: it will ignore users’ stated age, income and looks preferences, and instead use an “emotional quotient” to match people with similar values, personalities and emotional intelligence. Local authorities will receive ¥2bn (£14.2m) from Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s government to help them run schemes that help their residents find love. Half of the nation’s 47 districts already offer match-making services. One of them, Saitama, north of Tokyo, poured ¥15m (£107,000) into its matchmaking service in the fiscal year to March 2019, but saw only 21 couples…

Britain’s top lawyers are eyeing up a payday bonanza as London law firms ditch old pay structures to keep up with their US rivals, says Kate Beioley in the Financial Times. Two such firms, Allen & Overy and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, have signalled a move away from the “lock-step” system of linking pay to length of service, which has been traditional since the 19th century. Under the lock-step system, “designed to breed a close-knit and egalitarian partnership”, long-standing partners were guaranteed to earn more than their juniors, irrespective of performance. Now, competition from US firms with flexible models, willing to pay multimillion-dollar sums for star partners, “is forcing rivals to rethink and modernise their policies”. That, in turn, is “set to drive even higher a frenzied bidding war for the…

“We are in a flood of money and credit that is lifting most asset prices,” says Ray Dalio, founder and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund. Indeed, with interest rates at rock bottom as they are today, “there’s no good reason that stocks couldn’t trade at 50 times earnings”. But there’s a downside. Speaking to viewers of an “Ask Me Anything” session on social-media website Reddit last week, Dalio warns that the scale of the flood is also “threatening to the value of our money and credit”. As a result, it’s more crucial than ever to diversify. “Put your savings into a well-diversified mix of currencies, countries and asset classes so that your savings will not depreciate in value.“ Dalio, who has been writing about…

■ The “cut-throat” price competition among tracker fund providers is driving a “war on fees” across the European investment industry as active managers seek to attract new investors and keep existing ones, says Chris Flood in the Financial Times. Fees for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have fallen by 30% over the past three years, while index-tracking fund fees have dropped around 35%. Traditional active fund managers, who bet on stocks rather than track market indices, have now begun offering “early bird” discounts to attract investors to new fund launches in order to compete with their passive counterparts. Sliding-scale arrangements, whereby fees are reduced once an investor’s assets exceed a certain threshold, are also becoming more popular. Over the past three years there has been a 60% increase in the number of…

bloomberg.com/opinion I was pro-Remain and I still believe that the arguments I made for the UK staying in the EU are true, says Tyler Cowen. But I no longer think that leaving is such a bad idea. “Covid-19 helped clarify my thinking.” The UK approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution before the EU, for example. When “rapid, emergency responses become more salient”, the case for staying in the EU, which is seeking ever-greater regulatory powers, weakens. At the same time, southeast England is emerging as a global technology centre, especially in artificial intelligence (AI) and biomedical research. That’s “great for the UK”, but how would it square with the EU’s long-term pursuit of tougher regulations on tech companies and AI? Furthermore, the EU will be obsessed with matters “relatively distant…

Two years after a key ruling, thousands of pension-scheme members may be in line for a windfall – and the number of people due compensation keeps growing. Defined-benefit pension schemes have been working on compensation arrangements for gender discrimination since 2018, when the High Court ordered Lloyds Banking Group to pay redress to scheme members offered different amounts of guaranteed minimum pensions (GMPs) on the basis of their gender. GMPs are a minimum level of pension that schemes agreed to pay members who opted out of the state earnings-related pension scheme (SERPS) between 1978 and 1997, but benefit calculations were routinely linked to gender for many years on the basis that the male and female state-pension age was different. A bigger pool of claimants Pension experts think the total bill…

When it comes to investing, sticking with what we know makes sense, especially in uncertain times (which seem to be all the time). As I am British, UK stocks seem familiar to me. The largest is AstraZeneca – everyone knows AstraZeneca. The second-biggest is HSBC, followed by GlaxoSmithKline. These are companies we can feel comfortable with, you might think; no need to look further. In its 2018 European Asset Allocation Survey of institutional investors, Mercer, the investment consultant, found that UK investors keep 28% of their equity allocation in British markets (compared with the UK’s 4% weighting in global equity indices) and it’s the same for Europeans generally, with a 38% allocation to home equity markets. A global footprint AstraZeneca’s US revenue is 80% higher than its European revenue. Almost…

2016 Marchesi Alfieri, Costa Quaglia Nebbiolo, Piemonte, Italy £28, Decorum Vintners, 020-8969 6581, decvin.com I have long been a fan of Barbera d’Asti La Tota from the exceptional Marchesi Alfieri estate and the new 2018 vintage is a stunner (£18.95, decvin.com). In fact, this wine has kept me so satiated over the years that I have never ventured further into this starry portfolio. That was until a few weeks ago when I opened a bottle of 2016 Costa Quaglia and it was a eureka moment like no other in this lockdown year. I will remember this revelation as the strongest thread of nebbiolo connecting me to the region that I was prevented from visiting in 2020 thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. With one of the most regal and plush palates…

• The fashion company started by television presenter and model Alexa Chung (pictured) looks to be on the way out, says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. After losing almost £2.3m last year, investors are getting rather fed up of injecting more funds to no avail. The prospects for 2021 look bleak, too, but it would be wrong to blame the pandemic. “For when are fashion investors going to wake up to the fact that Alexa’s highly individual sense of kook style never translates into big sales?” Her 2016 collections for Marks & Spencer were a flop, “as the kind of gamine, twiglet, Alexa-alikes who love her clothes would rather die than be seen shopping there”. Not many can afford her upmarket collections, either. “A £275 denim boiler suit, a…

Sam Jacobs, a 25-year old graduate, has been in talks with his family’s lawyers, reports The New York Times. He’s trying to gain access to more of his $30m trust fund – not to blow the money on a stable of sports cars, but to give it all away. “I want to build a world where someone like me, ayoung person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible,” he says. Jacobs, asocialist, wants to put the cash toward ending capitalism. “Under capitalism, even morons occasionally end up with a lot of money” For what it is worth, we agree with Mr Jacobs. Itwould be a better world if lamebrains like him never had control over large amounts of money. A warning to parents! But all parents die. And…

With more and more people braving the cold for socially distanced and outdoor meet-ups in the winter, sales of thermal trousers are going “through the roof”, says Caroline Davies in The Guardian. ACAI Outdoorwear has seen a 2,400% leap in demand for its trendy skinny jeans-style thermal range, and outdoor specialist Mountain Warehouse has also enjoyed strong sales. Sales of Christmas trees have shot up by 31% this year, according to the British Christmas Tree Growers Association, as people try to compensate for a “Covid-19 Christmas”, says Louise Eccles in The Sunday Times. The number of people buying more than one tree has gone up sharply, while demand for fairy lights has spiked too.…

A recent sell-off in the gold-mining sector has left some stocks in the bargain bin, says Der Aktionär. One to consider is Australia’s Silver Lake Resources. The gold boom of recent years has turned this company, which produces 250,000 ounces of gold every year, into a “cash machine”. The group has no debt and A$303m of cash on its balance sheet; the gold price in Australian dollars is A$2,400 an ounce and Silver Lake’s production costs are around A$1,400. The group’s mines should continue to produce plenty of gold for at least five years and the cash pile means there is plenty of scope for further exploration or snapping up competitors. The 2021 price/earnings (p/e) ratio of five looks far too low.…

Drug giant AstraZeneca’s shares “fell sharply” this week after it agreed to “the biggest deal in its history”, says Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. Investors are worried that the $39bn it is paying for US rare-diseases specialist Alexion is excessive, especially since it represents a45% premium to Alexion’s pre-deal price. The deal, which involves both cash and shares, will force AstraZeneca to secure a $17.5bn bridging loan. AstraZeneca’s stock has had a tumultuous year. It surged to £96.39 in July when the group published promising interim results related to its coronavirus vaccine. However, it has since been hit by recent vaccine trial results suggesting its treatment could be less effective than its rivals’ drugs and doubts over whether the vaccine will be licensed in the US. US biotech Alexion is…

Almost 140,000 Britons have received the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine so far, with 90-year-old Margaret Keenan receiving the first dose on 8 December, reports Luke Andrews in the Daily Mail. As the vaccine has to be kept at –70˚C, which is not possible at care facilities, care staff and the over-80s are being prioritised, with vaccines deployed at hospitals and GP surgeries. There have already been hiccups: many GP surgeries have reported failures in the IT recording system; some are still awaiting training; others haven’t received the necessary fridges. The Oxford vaccine, which can be stored at 2˚C to 8˚C, is expected to get the “green light from regulators” imminently, making a faster roll-out possible. Experts say at least 60% of the population need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.…

Six weeks after the US election, Betfair has finally settled the markets relating to the contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. This has produced anger from Biden backers who think that the market should have been settled the moment the results were confirmed by the Associated Press on 7 November, as well as from Trump supporters who still believe that Trump really won. Incredibly, some of the latter group have said they will take legal action against Betfair. Keeping the market open allowed Betfair to profit from commissions on the more than £1bn matched on the outcome after polls closed. Still, this reflects the fact that Betfair functions as a betting exchange, matching punters on both sides, rather than taking money on the outcome like a bookmaker. Since the…

• Four executives at Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), including chairman Jonathan Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere, pictured) and CEO Paul Zwillenberg, took home £24m this year, almost double the £13m in pay, bonuses and long-term incentive plan awards they received in 2019, says The Guardian. They will also share in a £60m pot under a new scheme if they grow the business over the next 12 years. They could have their work cut out as group pre-tax profits at the Daily Mail owner fell 36% to £72m in the financial year to October. • The chief executive of magazine publisher Future, Zillah Byng-Thorne, will receive a 21% salary rise this year to £575,000, despite having been paid nearly £26m in the past four years, says the Evening Standard. Last year,…

When the coalition government set a target of 30% of the UK’s electricity supply to be met from renewable resources by 2020, it was ridiculed. In 2010, renewables had accounted for just 7% of supply. The target seemed absurdly ambitious and ruinously expensive given that renewable energy required heavy subsidies. Yet renewable generation reached 45% of supply this year and our carbon emissions have fallen by 29% in ten years. Such has been the fall in equipment and installation costs that a rising number of new onshore wind and solar farms are subsidy-free. Power at apremium Investors have benefited from the creation of a 13-strong renewable-energy sector within investment funds. Share prices, however, trade at a 20% premium to net asset value. Though electricity prices are now rising as demand…

Productivity will boom post-Covid Editorial The Economist Studies of past pandemics suggest that Covid-19 may exacerbate the slowdown in productivity growth that has afflicted around 70% of the world’s economies since 2007, says The Economist. Yet there are signs that the reverse may be true. Recent work by economists Daniel Rock, Erik Brynjolfsson and Chad Syverson argues that it takes “time and experimentation” to establish the best use for technologies, with firms investing in developing new business processes, thereby causing output to suffer in a way that is often “interpreted as adecline in productivity growth”. Later, as these intangible investments “bear fruit”, productivity surges as output rockets. This happened in the late 1990s as productivity caught up with improvements resulting from widespread computer use. Early evidence suggests that some…

conservativehome.com Whatever you think about the use of lockdowns, it’s clear that “suspending economic and social liberties today brings with it the temptation for politicians to use such powers again”, and for businesses and individuals to fear that they will, says Ryan Bourne. That could act as an “incalculable economic drag” for a generation. Economist Mariana Mazzucato has already pitched the idea of “climate lockdowns”, where the state locks us up and closes down businesses until we are willing to meet their green demands. Health surveillance and screening for colds and flu might also be normalised. If this seems far-fetched, imagine what state curbs on Christmas meet-ups and not having aScotch egg with your pint would have seemed like this time last year. There is a case for government action…

Sea (NYSE: SE) is a Singapore-based internet giant offering a digital-entertainment platform, e-commerce and digital financial services. The shares hit a new record after Sea announced that it had secured one of the two highly coveted digital full-bank licences in Singapore, says Kelvin Ong on IG. They reached almost $200 on the New York Stock Exchange, the highest close since going public in 2017. The firm became Singapore’s most valuable homegrown listed company this year as Covid-19 prompted a rush into tech stocks. The shares are up by 441% in a year.…

Kweku Adoboli was born in Tema, Ghana, in 1980, the son of a United Nations diplomat. After spending time in various countries, he moved to the UK with his family in 1991. He studied at Ackworth School in Yorkshire, then did a degree in e-commerce and digital business studies at the University of Nottingham, graduating in 2003. He then got a job at investment bank UBS, starting in an administrative back-office job before moving to a senior role on the bank’s trading team on the desk dealing with exchange-traded funds. What was the scam? As well as executing client orders, Adoboli’s team was also allowed to risk the bank’s own money on positions. However, Adoboli began making bets that far exceeded his risk limits, exploiting holes in the system to…

The Interest How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery Michael Taylor Bodley Head, £20 Britons have started to come to terms with the “heinous realities” of their country’s role in the slave trade, which “remained central” to its trading activities in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, says Kofi Adjepong-Boateng in the Financial Times. Even after the slave trade was banned in 1807, slavery itself would continue in the British Empire until it was fully abolished in 1838. This book, by historian Michael Taylor, challenges the “self-congratulatory” narrative of abolition by looking at how the British establishment resisted reform for more than two decades. It is a “compulsively readable” book thanks to the author’s skill in cross-cutting between the abolitionist campaigners, the white British West Indians, and…

£549 The price of a pair of AirPods Max, Apple’s first over-ear, noise-cancelling wireless headphones, which went on sale this week. The cost is nearly double that of the majority of competitors’ offerings and more than Sony’s new PlayStation 5, says The Guardian. 1,000 The face value in Argentinian pesos (£9) of Argentina’s highest-denomination bank note. Norma Durango, an Argentinian senator, has called for the note to feature Diego Maradona, who died last month, on one side, and a depiction of the “Goal of the Century” the footballer scored against England at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico on the other. £92,000 The minimum income, after tax, of the richest 1% of people in Britain, who produce 11 times the amount of carbon emissions as those in the poorest half…