Indholdsfortegnelse for 1042 i MoneyWeek

A major who illegally claimed taxpayers’ money to send his children to boarding school has been sacked from the army, says the Mail Online. Lloyd Hamilton,47, was only eligible for the school-fee allowance as long as his wife was living with him. After the breakdown of their marriage, Hamilton continued to claim around £13,000. He was convicted of fraud last month and blames his crime on “a mid-life crisis”. Commodities trader Mercuria Energy Group bought $36m of copper from a Turkish supplier only to find containers full of painted rocks when the metal started to arrive in China, says Bloomberg. The Swiss trading house says that around 6,000 tons of blister copper (an impure form of the metal) stored in more than 300 containers were swapped for “jagged paving stones…

It has been a turbulent week in oil markets. Prices spiked above $70 a barrel for the first time in over a year on Monday after an attack on a key Saudi export facility. Yemen’s Houthis claimed responsibility for the drone strike on the Ras Tanura oil terminal, which didn’t result in any loss of life or property. Prices soon retreated below $70 a barrel. The attacks are a reminder that “geopolitical uncertainty” can still pop up and wreak havoc in oil markets, says Pierre Briançon in Barron’s. Oil prices had already “firmed up” following a surprise decision last week by Opec, the oil exporters’ cartel, and its ally Russia to maintain existing supply curbs throughout next month. They had been expected to turn on the taps. Oil’s “brief but…

US pot stocks trade at a steep discount to their Canadian counterparts, says Carol Ryan in The Wall Street Journal. Why? The Canadian ones are much easier for US investors to buy. The “devil’s lettuce” is now legal in 14 US states, but is still prohibited at the federal level. That means that US-based growers cannot list their shares on the big New York markets, forcing them to seek capital on the “much less liquid exchanges in Toronto”. Yet a regulatory quirk means that growers from Canada, where cannabis is legal nationwide, can list in New York and are also available on trading apps such as Robinhood. “US cannabis stocks look like a better trip long term,” yet most investors simply can’t “get their hands on them.” (See also page…

Russia’s largest pound-shop chain Fix Price’s initial public offering (IPO) in London and Moscow raised $1.7bn, valuing the company at $8.3bn, says Jake Rudnitsky on Bloomberg. It marked the biggest listing from a Russian firm in over a decade and a record for a Russian retailer. The firm announced its IPO last month, hoping to cash in on its growing popularity among cash-strapped Russians, whose wages have remained stagnant since the 2014 collapse of the rubble. It operates over 4,200 stores across the country and posted sales of 190 billion roubles ($2.6bn) last year. Analysts think this could be the best year for Russian IPOs since sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014.…

Pearson’s CEO Andy Bird (pictured) has announced that the educational-publishing company will overhaul its business to draw a line under a “tumultuous decade”, says Bethan Staton in the Financial Times: it “issued seven profit warnings in as many years”. The plan is to shift from selling mainly to schools and colleges towards selling directly to consumers, including students. The company is also looking to take advantage of what it sees as the growing demand for “lifelong learning” as workers start to spend more time continuously upgrading their skills throughout their careers. These changes may cause Pearson some short-term pain, says Simon Duke in The Times. Bird says restructuring the company into five divisions, including a new consumer division, will cost “between £40m and £70m this year”. At the same time…

It will be the steepest rise in tax on businesses since the Labour chancellors Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey were in charge of the British economy in the 1960s and 1970s. It will move the UK into one of a dwindling group of countries where the state takes a quarter of any profits a business makes. And it will reverse a decade-long plan to make Britain one of the most tax-competitive countries in the world for multinationals. In 2023, as chancellor Rishi Sunak announced last week, the corporate tax rate will rise from 19% to 25%. True, there will be tiers for smaller businesses and a new “super-deduction” for capital spending. Even so, plenty of businesses will be nervous about that, and so will investors. Rising tax rates cut right…

Assuming all goes to plan, the US economy is about to get another huge cash injection. American president Joe Biden’s $1.9trn stimulus package, which looked set to become law this week (see page 4), includes an extension of nationwide unemployment benefits alongside $1,400 cheques being sent to most American adults (the payments are means-tested, but the thresholds are well above the average US income). As Bloomberg notes, the scale of the stimulus has seen various analysts upgrade expectations for US growth this year, from already high levels. Investment bank Morgan Stanley reckons growth will now hit 7.3%, a level unseen since 1951, while the OECD group of wealthy countries “doubled its own estimate” to 6.5%. The payouts are undoubtedly popular with the electorate, with strong support regardless of political persuasion…

“Being famous is like listening in to a dinner party where everyone is slagging you off. But they also give you free things.” Television presenter and model Alexa Chung (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “The investment banking profession will sell sh*t as long as sh*t can be sold.” Warren Buffett’s business partner Charlie Munger on the SPAC boom, quoted on Yahoo Finance “Never has a TV show explained its purpose more honestly than Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance.” A Twitter user on the celebrity chef’s widely derided new game show “The second we got some success there were certain people who wanted to play it safe. They’d say: ‘Oh we’ve got a big tour, man, and we’ve got mortgages to pay.’ Well I’m not here to pay your f*cking mortgage,…

frontpagemag.com “Get woke, go broke” is a saying in conservative circles warning of the consequences of adopting fashionable opinions, says Daniel Greenfield. But it has it the wrong way round. Brands don’t go broke because they get woke; they go woke because they’re broke. “Virtue signalling is their way of adapting to a changing market without really innovating.” Take Coke, for example Its sales fell 28% in the second quarter of 2020, and were struggling long before the pandemic shut cinemas and bars. It “chased young white urban lefties” by offering them bottled water and vitamin drinks. But the economic consequences of “wokeism” go deeper. Wokes are a “politically narcissistic demographic that legislates its tastes into law” – lgalisingg drugs, for example, but banning sugary drinks. Cok, faring e a…

In last week’s Budget it was announced that the inheritance tax (IHT) threshold is being frozen for another five years. This is set to drag thousands more people into paying the so-called death tax. The good news is there are plenty of things you can do to reduce any future IHT bills. IHT is levied on your estate – all your assets from property to art to shares – after you have died. Estates worth less than £325,000 don’t pay IHT but 40% of the value above that amount is taken by the taxman. In addition to the £325,000 allowance you can also hand over up to £175,000 of a family home to direct descendants without paying IHT. The decision to freeze the allowances until 2026 will secure HM Revenue…

Members of public-sector pension schemes affected by a landmark court ruling on age discrimination will be given an improved deal to ensure they can maximise their pension benefits, the government has announced. This issue dates from reforms to public-sector pension schemes implemented by the government in 2015. As part of the changes, scheme members within a decade of retirement were allowed to remain in the existing, unreformed schemes, but younger members were moved into new schemes offering less generous benefits. In 2018 the courts ruled that the reforms were illegal because they discriminated against younger scheme members. In response, the government has announced a new deal, which will use a device known as a “deferred choice underpin”. Members affected by the ruling will now have a choice when they reach…

Budget Day is a major event with the chancellor of the exchequer outlining plans for spending and taxation. The markett reaction to Rishi Sunak’s latest budget has been muted, with the FTSE All-Share effectively unchanged over the past week. But this is not always the case. The index fell by 4.7% in the week following the 2001 budget and by 4.1% a week after George Osborne delivered his first budget in June 2010. Conversely, the FTSE gained 4.5% in the seven days after the 2015 budget, while it increased by 2.8% in 2011. Overall, in the 22 budgets since 2000, the market has fallen by an average of 0.6% in the week following the speech. While this would suggest that Budgets are generally bad for share prices, the problem is…

Stock Spirits (LSE: STCK) is a British spirit and liqueur producer that makes most of its sales in central Europe. The impact of the closure of pubs and restaurants during lockdown has been largely offset by strong retail sales, says Oliver Haill on Proactive Investors. The company’s performance for the year to the end of September 2021 remains in line with expectations. Sales jumped by 9% to €341m for the year to September 2020 as consumers took to recreating cocktails at home. The dividend almost tripled. The stock has gained 49% in a year.…

What was the scam? Torex Retail’s shares initially did well, surging by 50% on the first day of trading alone, and by 2005 they had more than doubled. But by 2006 markets had started to sour on the company’s prospects and the value of its shares began to decline. Since Torex needed a high share price to fund the acquisitions, as well as retain the confidence of creditors, key directors, including chief executive Christopher Moore and accountant Mark Woodbridge, used fake distribution agreements and bogus software sales to boost revenue by £8.5m. Torex Retail began as part of the healthcare software and cash-register group Torex. When it merged with rival iSoft, the new firm decided to spin out Torex Retail, which dealt with shop-till software, as a separate firm, leaving…

• We saw two different sides of the Royal Family on our television screens this week, says The Sun on Sunday. First viewers got to see the Queen, Prince Charles, William and Kate marking Commonwealth Day. Then, just hours later, the “Oprah Winfrey circus” aired in the US, with Meghan (pictured) and Harry sitting down for “a chat with their billionaire pal… The contrast could not be clearer – stoic royal duty embodied by the monarch… [and] an increasingly self-obsessed Californian couple unable to control their emotions”. Winfrey is said to have been paid around £6.5m by American TV channel CBS for the screening rights, while ITV charged about £150,000 per advertisement during its British broadcast of the “tell-all” interview. “But Harry and Meghan should remember one thing – money…

Two MPs from Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party resigned following revelations that they had personally profited from government deals to procure personal protection equipment during the first wave of the coronavirus crisis, says Guy Chazan in the Financial Times. The scandal came just days before two important regional elections. Opposition parties were already leading the polls and the latest news has seriously undermined the CDU’s chances of “turning the tide”. Acompany owned by CDU MP Nikolas Löbel had earned a €250,000 commission by acting as a middleman between a mask supplier and two private companies in the state. His resignation followed CSU MP Georg Nüßlein’s (pictured), who was forced to resign as deputy leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group after it was revealed he also earned a large commission after…

“The recession is effectively over” in America, says Michael Wilson of Morgan Stanley. Progress on vaccinations combined with another huge round of fiscal stimulus means “it’s hard not to imagine an economy... on fire later this year”. Get ready for the Biden boom By the middle of the week the US Congress was in the final stages of approving a $1.9trn (£1.4trn) Covid-19 relief bill. The package includes another round of $1,400 stimulus cheques to be distributed to US households and extends unemployment support measures. The bill also includes $350bn for state and local governments and targeted support for small businesses, hospitality and airlines. There isn’t much economic pain left for the relief bill to relieve, says Irwin Stelzer in The Sunday Times. The economy created 379,000 jobs last month.…

“Lord Hill’s review of the London stockmarket’s listing regime… [has generated discussion] about how to encourage more technology companies to float in the UK… [Meanwhile, a] quieter lobby... has called for ordinary retail investors… to be put back into the flotation, or initial public offering (IPO), business. Some 20 years ago, it was common for consumer-facing brands, when coming to the stockmarket, to include a retail offer to ordinary investors alongside the pitch to City institutions. These days retail offers in IPOs are rare… Dr Martens… and Moonpig… devoted acres of their recent prospectuses to boasts about the loyalty of their customers. [Yet] neither [gave] customers a chance to buy shares at public launch... regular punters only had a chance to buy after the “pop” in prices on the first…

Six to buy Halfords The Daily Telegraph Demand for electric cars has “soared” in the pandemic and is expected to grow further as the UK’s 2030 ban on petrol cars moves closer. So consider Halfords, which has invested heavily in an “electrified future” for the automotive industry, purchasing technology to service electric cars and training staff, which could give it a “competitive advantage” over smaller garages. It’s also counting on rising demand for electric bikes and scooters. It has invested in its online presence and digital sales rose by 76% in the latest quarter. 315p CentralNic The Mail on Sunday CentralNic provides companies with software that allows them to create an online presence via websites and email marketing. The group operates worldwide and shares recently jumped after boss Ben Crawford…

• Investors should consider US motels rather than hotels, says Lex in the Financial Times. With international travel restricted, roadside motels “have surged in popularity”, as their lack of indoor lobbies and lifts “make social distancing easier”. One company that should do well is Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which owns Super 8 and Days Inn. Even though the stock has risen by 147% from 2020 lows, it still only trades on a price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 22, compared with 29 and 32 for hotel chains Marriott and IHG respectively. • More drama at BT, says Jim Armitage in the Evening Standard. Not only has chairman Jan Du Plessis quit, but he reportedly only did so because CEO Philip Jansen threatened to quit unless Du Plessis was replaced by a chairman…

Last week, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, was fighting “for her political life” before a Scottish Parliament committee investigating allegations made by her former mentor, Alex Salmond, says Mure Dickie in the Financial Times. Salmond claims Sturgeon breached the ministerial code by “misleading Parliament” about when she learned of the complaints against Salmond and for being involved in “malicious and concerted” efforts to damage his reputation. Sturgeon says she was involved only in “an honest effort” to ensure the reporting of misconduct. Sturgeon’s performance was unconvincing, says Murdo Fraser in The Scotsman. Despite having had many months to prepare her defence, there were “more than 50 occasions” when she claimed to have forgotten details of meetings, discussions and documents. Crucially, Sturgeon was “unable to produce any names to corroborate her…

Private-equity executives, who rank among the richest people on Wall Street, received fat payouts even as the US economy faltered last year, say Sujeet Indap and Mark Vandevelde in the Financial Times. The bulk of their pay tends to comprise a share of the profits on successful investments, which had soured early on in the pandemic last year, only to then be rescued by central-bank stimulus. Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone, received at least $615m, mostly in dividends and a fifth more than he earned the previous year. Apollo Global Management’s Leon Black took home $225m –“slightly more than the amount he has pledged to donate to causes that ‘protect and empower women’ following revelations of his professional ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein”. Henry Kravis and George…

John Rogers, founder, chairman and co-CEO, Ariel Investments “We’ve been looking like dinosaurs for so long. We’ve been waiting for that booming economic recovery since 2009.” Value investor John Rogers admits freely that his style of investing – that is, buying stocks that are cheap based on their fundamentals – has had a very tough time for the past decade or more. But now, reckons Rogers, rising interest rates will push tech and growth stocks out of fashion and return cyclical stocks to the spotlight. A similar shift was seen in the wake of the tech bubble bursting in 2000 and Rogers notes that there are similar signs of froth this time around. For example, the popularity of cash shells – or Spacs (special purpose acquisition vehicles) as they’re known…

theirrelevantinvestor.com You might doubt whether the stockmarket gets things right, says Michael Batnick. After all, how could Gamestop be worth $483 per share in the morning, $112 a few hours later and $193 by the close of the day? To state the obvious, prices don’t always reflect the underlying fundamentals of a business. Stockmarkets do usually, however, “get the big things right”. When the pandemic struck in 2020, for example, they quickly sorted the winners from the losers. More time in the home meant more groceries (Walmart), more DIY (Home Depot). The makers of Clorox and sellers of toilet rolls soared. At the same time, stocks in casinos, airlines, shopping malls and cruises tanked. Yet they hit bottom and started rising again, even as cases and deaths were still rising.…

During the last Vietnam boom, there was a flood of specialist funds listing on the London Stock Exchange. This has now shrunk to three remaining trusts: Dragon Capital’s Vietnam Enterprise Investments (LSE: VEIL), VinaCapital’s Vietnam Opportunity Fund (LSE: VOF) and Dynam Capital’s Vietnam Holding (LSE: VNH). You’ll notice these funds tend to hold many of the same key investments, albeit the amount they have in each varies quite significantly. For example, steelmaker Hoa Phat (a play on construction, real estate and infrastructure) is 17.5% of VOF’s listed portfolio, 12% of VEIL and 8.7% of VNH. This shows the limits of the Vietnamese market: while it is relatively large and diverse for its size with around 1,500 listed companies, the number that are investable remains much lower. There are maybe 100-150…

■ Changes in the Budget mean that “some families who pay basic rate tax will start losing some of their child benefit”, says David Byers in The Times. From April the higher-rate income tax threshold will rise from £50,000 to £50,270. “The government has not changed the rules on child benefit, however, so any family where one earner makes more than £50,000 could lose out on the benefit.” If you earn more than £50,000 and receive child benefit you need to fill in a self-assessment form in order to pay back 1% of child benefit for every £100 you earn over the threshold. ■ If you have built up some credit-card debt this is a good time to eliminate any interest you are paying on it. Several credit-card firms have…

What began with the government insisting that cases of women being underpaid state pensions were isolated and uncommon has turned into an official inquiry that could see the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) pay out £2.7bn in compensation. The DWP said last week that 200,000 women may not be receiving as much state pension as they are entitled to. It estimates that the average woman is owed a top-up of £13,500. The shortfall, initially uncovered by researchers at the insurer Royal London, stems from poor record keeping at the DWP over several decades. It failed to keep track of women who should have received enhanced pensions under the old state-pension system, which topped up the income paid to married women on smaller pensions through complicated links to their husbands’…

The past fortnight has been kind to my four long tips, with three of them appreciating. Media group ITV went up from 114p to 119p, while cruise-ship company Norwegian Cruise Lines climbed from $28.56 to $29.31. Housebuilder DR Horton advanced from $78 to $80.51. The only fly in the ointment was transport group National Express, which declined from 316p to 301p. Overall, my long tips are making a total net profit of £4,368 (although this is down from £5,800 as a result of the closure of the position in Mitchells & Butlers in the previous column). Four out of five of my short tips also moved in the right direction. Online insurance-broker eHealth fell from $58.95 to $51.03. Electric-lorry maker Nikola fell from $20.92 to $14.62 and online grocer Ocado…

British Gas owner Centrica (LSE: CNA) has launched its second turnaround programme in five years after its operating profits dropped by 31% to £447m in 2020. The pandemic caused many of its business customers to close their offices. The number of customers at British Gas has been falling steadily over the past ten years and declined by another 2% last year to 6.9 million households. The company also fell out of the FTSE 100 in 2020 and has reduced the dividend twice since 2015. The shares have fallen by 31% over the past 12 months.…

There are only six mother trees of Da Hng Pao tea remaining, which is why in 2002 a wealthy man paid nearly $28,000 for just 20g ofits leaves. Da Hong Pao from those trees, then, is expensive and hard to come by, but this variation from the Wuyi Qidan cultivar is a good alternative. It has a rich flavour with hints of cocoa, and a sweet, floral aftertaste. £25 for 50g, boheateas.co. uk.  Pour the perfect brew from this beautiful handmade teapot by Silver Lining. It’s made from heat-resistant glass with a beech handle and has a built-in strainer at the bottom of the spout to filter the leaves. £49.50, theteamakers.co.uk. You might once have seen matcha tea pop up on menus at your local cafe (remember those?), but it’s…

The Great British Bake Off presenter Noel Fielding (pictured) is the latest celebrity to have accepted “substantial damages” in compensation for phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World, says the BBC. He is among several members of the public to have won compensation from the paper, which closed down in 2011 after it was revealed reporters at the paper had been illegally intercepting personal voicemails to obtain stories. “Tax exiles” and wealthy expatriates will be able to vote in British elections for the first time in 20 years, thanks to a plan to scrap a 2002 rule that prevents citizens from voting if they have lived abroad for more than 15 years, says Jamie Nimmo in The Sunday Times. Sir Mick Jagger, who owns homes in France,…

Profits at Munich Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurers, slid by more than 50% last year to €1.2bn, says WirtschaftsWoche. But the pandemic is easing and this year should see a strong recovery, with profits of €2.8bn being pencilled in. The group managed to push through a 2.4% rise in premiums when it was negotiating with clients at the beginning of the year, while the structural growth in demand for insurance, especially against natural disasters, also bodes well. The stock’s valuation looks modest on a price/earnings ratio of 14 and a price-to-book value ratio of 1.2. Munich Re has also either raised or maintained its dividend for 50 years. It currently yields 3.7%.…

Boris Johnson faces a “growing backlash” over his proposed 1% pay increase for NHS staff, including a threat of strike by nurses, whose union, the Royal College of Nursing, has put in a punchy counterbid of 12.5%, say Jim Pickard and Sarah Neville in the Financial Times. The row followed hot on the heels of a Budget in which Rishi Sunak raised taxes and promised to “restore discipline to the public finances” after a £407bn pandemic “spending spree”. Health Secretary Matt Hancock (pictured) backed Johnson, pointing out that NHS workers had not been included in the wider public-sector pay freeze announced last November. It’s possible to have “enormous appreciation” for NHS staff, but also to think the government “has a strong argument”, says Robert Covile in The Times. Public-sector workers…

The latest spat between former SNP leader Alex Salmond and current first minister Nicola Sturgeon (see bottom left) may not have resulted in the latter’s resignation, for now, but it seems to have prompted punters and bookmakers to back away from the Scottish National Party, although they still expect it to do well. Ladbrokes has reduced its over/under on the SNP to 68.5 seats, down one seat from a week ago. With £2,283 matched on Smarkets, the odds on the SNP getting a majority have lengthened from 1.27 (78.7%) to 1.38 (72.4%). Perhaps the most interesting market is on what share of the constituency vote the nationalists will get. Despite the latest turmoil within the party, Ladbrokes still thinks the most likely outcome is that the SNP gets between 50%…

• Swiss bank UBS’s new boss Ralph Hamers (pictured) has been paid CHF4.2m (£3.3m) for his first four • David McMurtry and John Deer, chairman and deputy chairman of engineering firm Renishaw, are planning to sell their 36.2% and 16.6% stakes in the FTSE 250 maker of precision machines for a combined £2.6bn, says The Daily Telegraph. The share price soared by almost a fifth after Renishaw put itself up for sale last week, valuing the business at around £5bn. The business was founded in 1972 after McMurtry, then employed by Rolls-Royce to work on Concorde, invented a measuring device in his garden shed. months in the role. That sum, stated in the annual report last week, includes a CHF3m bonus, worth more than the $2.2m he earned for a…

“Sovietism by proxy” rules the UK Matthew Syed The Times Chancellor Rishi Sunak admitted last week that the UK has long-term problems that are unrelated to Covid-19, says Matthew Syed. But he was wrong to call it a “crisis in productivity”. It is a crisis of unconscious cronyism. Studies show that scientists tend to write supportive papers when they have received funding from drug manufacturers, even if they believe they are being objective. It’s the same with big business. Personal protective equipment (PPE) suppliers with political connections were ten times more likely to secure contracts. That former chancellor Philip Hammond now has 14 jobs, and George Osborne had nine, shows how “the revolving door is lubricated”. Incumbent businesses have “every incentive” to collude with politicians and regulators to raise barriers…

novelinvestor.com Warren Buffett’s annual letter to shareholders this year was, as usual, filled with useful lessons for investors, says the Novel Investor. First, ponder your losses. Berkshire Hathaway reported an “ugly $11bn write-down” in its results, the result of overpaying for Precision Castparts, an industrial goods company. Buffett was right, he says, in predicting good returns from its operations, but overestimated the average amount of future earnings and hence miscalculated the proper price to pay for the business. Everybody likes to tout their winners. The best investors talk about their losers. Second, don’t fall for the story. Wall Street and the press love a colourful tale, and words alone can send stocks soaring for a surprisingly long time. When the party ends, all you’re left with is a “business junkyard”.…

The problem with many traditional funds, be they actively-managed unit trusts or investment trusts, is that they tend to be rather staid and mainstream. That does not mean that they ignore unusual ideas – quite the opposite, in fact. Niches such as infrastructure or music royalties have become respectable over the past few years. But once we move out of these relatively safe areas, active managers tend to run a mile, especially if they think they might be investing in something remotely legally dubious. That brings us to cannabis, the great investment taboo. It’s a growing sector rapidly becoming legitimate in some major jurisdictions, such as Canada and a number of US states. But most fund managers in the UK are acutely aware that under our law they might be…

For many people, the chancellor’s announcement last week of a freeze on the lifetime allowance (LTA) for pension savings will prompt some wishful thinking. But while most pension savers do not get near the £1.073m cap – now in place until the 2025-2026 tax year – the change will affect significant numbers. The Treasury’s own figures show that it expects to be £990m better off by 2025-2026 thanks to the decision to suspend annual LTA increases. Clearly, ministers expect many people to pay more tax, and a lot more in some cases: savings above the LTA threshold when you cash in a pension are subject to extra tax charges ranging from 25% to 55%, depending on whether you take the money as income or a lump sum. How, then, to…

One of the biggest investment themes at present is renewable energy. With governments around the world, including America’s, committed to lowering carbon emissions drastically, they are spending billions of dollars creating incentives to use “clean energy”. Meanwhile, investors from pension funds to banks are also coming under pressure to invest “ethically” by avoiding shares in fossil-fuel companies. However, just because a type of energy is “green”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is efficient or economical, or that firms involved in producing it are always a good investment. Consider hydrogen power, for example. For the last decade there has been great interest in vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. These combine hydrogen stored in a tank with oxygen from the air to produce electricity. However, the results have been disappointing.…

While Covid-19 caused a short-term shock to the Chinese economy, the government’s quick and comprehensive mobilisation at the start of the pandemic has meant that the cyclical impact on markets has been short-lived. Meanwhile, as with many economies, the pandemic has accelerated certain structural trends in China that were already under way. We continue to find the most attractive opportunities in consumption, technology and healthcare, which are capitalising on China’s transition to a more consumer-driven economy. Driving this shift is the country’s growing millennial population, which stands at around 400 million – more than the working population of Europe. This has had a huge impact on the technology and e-commerce sectors, cementing China’s position as the world’s number-one retail market. Fresh food in 30 minutes “The millenial population of 400…

“I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man” “Put me anywhere on God’s green Earth, I’ll triple my worth.” Hip-hop’s first billionaire has such a talent for rhymes that he was once described as “America’s urban Shakespeare”. Jay-Z clearly hasn’t lost his touch for insouciant moneymaking either, as a busy month of disposals demonstrates. The musician and entrepreneur sold 50% of his $640m champagne brand, Armand de Brignac, to the world’s leading luxury group LVMH, which has undertaken to expand the brand globally. Oatly, the Swedish vegan-milk group in which he is invested, took its first step towards a $10bn initial public offering (IPO). And now, notes Forbes, Jay-Z has bagged $297m from a deal to sell his majority share in the music-streaming company Tidal to Jack Dorsey’s mobile-payment company…

2011 Squerryes, Brut (Late Disgorged 2020), Exclusive Vintage Reserve, Sevenoaks, Kent, England £65, reduced to £52 for “members” (there is no joining fee), squerryes.co.uk I am a fan of Squerryes wines, although I don’t taste them as often as I would like because they tend to keep a low profile. I have previously written up both the 2010 and 2013 vintages, five and four years ago respectively, in my column in the Daily Mail, and more recently I have tasted the 2014, 2015 and 2016 vintages. All are very nice wines, and they seem cut from the same, fine cloth, but there has been a gradual evolution in their sophistication as the years roll by and this is evidenced in their depth and length of flavour. I put this down…

£3,144 The price of an average full-time annual rail season ticket – an increase of £80 on last year – following the 2.6% rise in rail fares introduced last week. It is the first above-inflation fare rise in eight years. £10.4m The total value of refunds to be paid by 18 energy firms to around a million customers who were overcharged a combined £7.2m while switching supplier between 2013 and last year. Customers should be protected from price rises while in the process of switching. HK1.35m The monthly rent (£125,000) being paid for a luxury house in Hong Kong, a record for the city, which was recently ranked the least affordable in the world for the 11th year running. The 10,804-square-foot property overlooks Victoria Harbour. £7m How much The Tower…