Indholdsfortegnelse for 1067 i MoneyWeek

“At some point, absolute rather than relative valuations will matter. That will be a shock” Levels of public debt not seen since World War II (see page 4). A labour shortage. Fast-rising inflation. More new Covid-19 variants. Small businesses suffering from supply crunches. Chaos in Afghanistan (see page 8). Rising mutterings about inequality (even in the Hamptons –see page 36). Anti-wealth and anti-market policies in China (see pages 5 and 10). Ridiculously high equity valuations in the US. It’s a lot for markets to cope with. You’d think they’d wobble some. But no. Instead, the melt-up just keeps going – and the S&P 500 just keeps hitting record highs. Should you worry? There are stories you can tell to make yourself feel a bit better (stockmarkets are nothing more than…

Zhao Wei (pictured) –also known as Vicky Zhao – one of China’s most popular and wealthiest actresses, is apparently being erased from history. Bloomberg reports that Zhao’s films are being removed from streaming sites and her name scrubbed from credits, while her online fan club has been shut down – a move that hit shares in Weibo, the social-media company that hosted the fan site. Beijing has been cracking down on “celebrity culture”, but it’s not clear why Zhao has been targeted specifically. A £15m Gauguin painting owned by the Tate has been declared a fake, an embarrassing blow for the gallery, which featured it in its blockbuster 2010 exhibition, Gauguin: Maker of Myth. Tahitians, an unfinished piece, was bought by the Tate in 1917. It was downgraded by the…

Gold prices perked up this week after US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech (see page 4). The yellow metal hit $1,820 /oz, a four-week high, on Monday. Powell hinted that US interest-rate hikes were still some way away. Low interest rates and the threat of inflation are good for gold. In sterling terms, gold cost £1,315/ oz this week, down by 5% since 1 January. The US dollar weakened following Powell’s comments. A weaker dollar is good for gold because the yellow metal is usually priced in dollars. “Gold has gained 4,160% across the last five decades against the dollar”, says Russ Mould in Shares. Gold bugs spy parallels with the inflationary surge of the 1970s, not least because the US government is again “running welfare programmes……

Luxury brands have long looked to China as their “growth engine”, says Laure Guilbault for Vogue Business. So, when the country’s government recently announced plans to “regulate excessively high incomes”, the sector’s shares tumbled by 12.85% in a single week. Measures might include higher taxes on luxury products or crackdowns on online sales channels and influencers. It is becoming less socially acceptable for China’s super-rich to flaunt their wealth. Luxury brands say the country’s growing middle class bodes well. But while wealth redistribution “may boost sales of affordable luxury [and] cosmetics”, it isn’t necessarily going to help a Louis Vuitton or a Gucci, says Erwan Rambourg of HSBC.…

Brazil’s Nubank is planning a US initial public offering (IPO) valued at more than $55.4bn following a recent funding round led by Berkshire Hathaway, says Reuters. Warren Buffett’s conglomerate valued the bank at $30bn. Nubank is one of Latin America’s fastest-developing financial-services firms and the world’s seventh-most valuable unicorn. Last year the loan book rose to $3.45bn and losses reached $44m; in the first quarter of 2021, however, the bank turned a profit of $1.3m. Nubank issues more debit cards than its top competitor and plans to expand in Mexico and Columbia. It has also hired Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to help with its US strategy.…

“Communications Inc. has just had its first billion-dollar quarter,” says Jon Swartz on MarketWatch. Yet Zoom’s shares reacted by plunging 16%. The video platform, which became a household name during the pandemic, reported $1.02bn in revenue during the three months to July 31 and profits of $316.9m. But sales growth is slowing. “Most companies would be ecstatic” with a year-on-year sales rise of 54%, but that was down from 191% in the previous quarter. “Zoom is still doing extremely well,” says Paul La Monica for CNN. But expectations were sky-high after its shares soared 400% last year. This time last year Zoom was reporting year-on-year revenue growth of 355%. Fierce competition in the business video-conferencing market from Cisco, Microsoft and Google has forced Zoom to spend more on securing that…

“Cryptocurrencies are a bubble. I’d describe them as a limited supply of nothing... once the exuberance wears off... they will go to zero.” Billionaire investor John Paulson – who gained fame in 2007 by making $20bn for himself and his investors by shorting bonds backed by US subprime mortgages ahead of the financial crisis – isn’t keen on bitcoin, he tells Carlyle Group’s founder David Rubenstein on Bloomberg. Paulson, 65, prefers a more traditional form of money – gold. “We believe that gold does very well in times of inflation. The last time gold went parabolic was in the 1970s, when we had two years of double-digit inflation.” Paulson argues that this is mainly down to the fact that the supply of gold is very limited compared with the total…

What’s the most successful new British company of the last 20 years? You could make a good case for Ocado, or one of the rising fintech giants such as Wise, or for an artificial-intelligence start-up such as the recently listed Darktrace. You could also make a compelling case for a company that we have only recently come to think of as a global business at all: Soho House. With its listing in New York now successfully completed, the company is embarking on a round of expansion that could make it one of the biggest brands in the world. Building a new global brand When it reported its results last week, Membership Collective Group, as the chain is formally known, certainly showed why investors were right to back its recent initial…

Warming is opportunity for farmers Editorial The Economist Climate change is likely to do “great harm to regions that feed millions” and “make a cornucopia” out of once unproductive land, says The Economist. One study predicts that for every degree temperatures rise, the yields of the three crops that supply around two-thirds of humans’ calorie intake – maize, wheat and rice – will fall 7.4%, 6% and 3.2% respectively. This will happen as the global population – which will include a growing and more demanding middle class – rises to a predicted 9.7 billion by 2064. Crops are already moving towards the faster-warming poles. Wheat’s migration north has even outstripped the warming trend. The “bravest investors spy opportunity in lands that currently support no farming at all”, such as the…

buzzfeednews.com Dan Ariely “literally wrote the book on dishonesty”, says Stephanie Lee. Ariely’s The Honest Truth About Dishonesty was abestseller in 2012. Now, his own honesty is in question. Ariely was the author of a landmark study that claimed to show that people who signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than at the end, were less likely to lie. Its findings were adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by governments around the world, taught to corporate executives and cited by academics. It is now being retracted following an investigation by a group of scientists, which found that it relied on faked data. (The study’s authors all agree that the data appear to be fraudulent, but it’s still unclear who made up the data…

If I had to find an adjective to describe the global shipping industry, I would go for “volatile”. Measures of shipping rates such as the Baltic Dry Index show that revenues from owning ships can fluctuate wildly. In the past, investors worldwide have lost a lot of money in this sector. In 2009, a survey by data firm Scope found 17 funds in the German shipping fund sector were close to bankruptcy. Another 70 were struggling to survive. The sector has improved since then, but it hasn’t fully recovered. London’s first shipping funds So it’s probably not surprising that we had to wait until 2018 for the first shipping fund, Tufton Oceanic (LSE: SHIP), to list on the London stockmarket. This fund now has a competitor, Taylor Maritime Investments (LSE:…

“Industry has become more monopolistic and concentrated than ever before” “Today, it is clear to me that this is the most dangerous package of overpriced assets we have ever seen in the US. [Bond guru] Jim Grant would say that we have the most overpriced fixed-income market in the history of man. “That, combined with an equity market that can easily lose $5trn or $10trn, depending on the magnitude of the break, is a contender for the highest-priced market in American history.” The result could be “a writedown in perceived wealth that would have no precedent”. So wrote Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist of Boston-based asset management group Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo (GMO), a few months ago. It’s a dramatic prediction from a man with a history of…

Free cash! Student discounts! Vouchers! Interest-free overdrafts! Banks have been rolling out the usual perks in a bid to attract new university students. By doing so, they hope to catch today’s freshers before they become tomorrow’s graduate earners – and, hopefully, long-term loyal customers. “The Santander 123 Student Account offers a free four-year railcard” This year’s deals have something to suit all tastes. For the studious, Barclays gives a 12-month subscription to Perlego, an online library of academic and non-fiction books. The budding bon vivant may be tempted by a NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland’s offer of a Tastecard, which gives restaurant discounts. Then there is hard cash: HSBC pays £80 plus a £20 Uber Eats voucher. However, while incentives like these are eye-catching, it is the interest-free overdrafts…

Take-up of the state-backed Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS) remains modest compared with the schemes it replaced, including the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. But if your business has a CBILS debt, the RLS could be a better way to support your cashflow and business investment. For one thing, CBILS loans were offered with repayment periods of up to six years, but many firms agreed much shorter terms. The RLS also offers terms of up to six years, so if you’re struggling with the monthly repayments on CBILS, refinancing through the RLS could be a way to extend your loan term and reduce what is payable each month. The RLS also offers larger advances: loans of up to £10m compared with a £5m maximum…

Shares in real estate agent Purplebricks (Aim: PURP) fell after it announced an overhaul to its business model, says iNews. Instead of using self-employed sales agents, the firm will move to a fully employed workforce, which it says will help it meet increased demand. This change will bring non-recurring costs of between £3m and £4m for the 2022 financial year, while annual ongoing administration costs are expected to be £1m higher. The company reported a pre-tax profit of £3.6m for the year to April 2021 after a £90.9m increase in revenues, but its share price is down 30% over the last 12 months.…

It’s funny how my drinking habits have remained relatively constant over the years, even though my palate veers all over the place on account of the tens of thousands of wines that I taste. I don’t think I have dipped into asingle claret since writing my Bordeaux En Primeur Report back in May, but I have been quietly willing September to arrive. Each year this glorious month signals to me, at least, that the Bordeaux season is back on, and it will stay with me for the next eight months. While it is always amusing to pluck bottles from the cellar, it is very rare to find top-flight, reasonably priced bottles of claret on the high street, and it is rarer still when they happen to be drinking rather well.…

• Actress Nicole Kidman is starring in a new adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s 2018 novel Nine Perfect Strangers, in whichshe plays a sinister new-age guru. This is despite the fact that the 54-year-old (pictured), who graces the cover of Marie Claire Australia’s 25th anniversary issue this month, says that when she hit 40, film bosses told her she was “too old” to carry on working in the industry. “I was frustrated, as so many women are, at... being told... ‘Now you’re in your 40s, we’re not interested as much in your storytelling or your ideas’,” she says. “Thankfully,” says Jane Moore in The Sun, “she ignored them and ploughed on… But given there are over two billion women aged 40 and over in the world, it’s pretty pitiful – not…

American troops are currently launching a major “reverse assault”, surging out of Afghanistan like water down a toilet drain. The lesson is that there are some things we can change for the better. And some things that are better left alone. “Money doesn’t make you rich. Supplying goods and services to others does” House Democrats recently approved a roughly $3.5trn budget that “could enable sweeping changes” to the nation’s economy, reports The Washington Post. That’s right, the same geniuses who gave us the 20-year debacle in Afghanistan are now working on the US finances. Soon, it will be the US economy surging down the drain. Just as they tried to make sweeping changes south of the Hindu Kush, now they’re aiming to make improvements south of the 49th parallel. Will…

The trial of Elizabeth Holmes (pictured), the founder of blood-testing start-up Theranos, began this week in “one of the biggest trials involving alleged fraud in Silicon Valley”, reports the Financial Times. Holmes has been accused of defrauding investors and patients by making false claims about Theranos’s blood tests and its finances. Theranos was valued by investors at as much as $9bn and hailed as revolutionary before collapsing after evidenced mounted against the accuracy of its blood-testing technology, which it claimed could conduct a range of tests using just a few drops of blood. The group had struck a deal with pharmacy chain Walgreens, before The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2015 that it had used generic diagnostic equipment instead of its own technology to perform many tests. Ramesh Balwani, Holmes’s…

The dreaded “taper tantrum” has turned out to be a “taper whimper”, says Will Denyer of Gavekal Research. US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole conference confirmed plans to cut monetary stimulus later this year. You would expect liquidity-addicted investors to be upset by that prospect, but they took the speech “in their stride”. Taper yes, rate hikes no The Jackson Hole “jamboree” had been “looming over the market for months”, says Katie Martin in the Financial Times. The event often sees a central banker “say something silly” that upsets traders. Powell chose to play it safe, allaying concerns about overly hasty monetary tightening. The Fed is currently buying $120bnworth of US government bonds and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) with printed money every month as part of…

“Trading desks in Tokyo have fallen silent... Nobody bought Japan’s ten-year government bond in over-the-counter trading on 3 August... in the world’s second-largest market for sovereign bonds... the Bank of Japan [has been] hoovering up securities... its assets run to around 130% of GDP [and it] holds almost half of Japan’s sovereign bonds... huge asset purchases [do not seem to have led to the] negative market consequences that critics feared. Bond dealers bleat about liquidity in surveys, but bid-ask spreads – a measure of the gap between the price at which buyers are willing to buy and sellers are willing to sell – in the trading that does occur have been contained... Large-scale quantitative easing may have made certain maturities scarcer, but that effect has been muted by the [Bank’s]…

Six to buy Poly Barron’s Poly, which makes conference-room paraphernalia and office headsets, reckons there are about 50 million conference rooms around the world, but only 10% are equipped for videoconferencing. Some commuters are gradually returning to the office, but there is expected to be an increase in hybrid meetings, mixing in person and virtual participants. This presents a huge opportunity. The shares are “down to bargain-basement levels” after the fallout from an “ill-fated” merger three years ago. But the firm is recovering. It reported sales of $431m, up 21% from a year ago, for the first quarter ending in July. Video-product sales surged by 94% year-on-year and voice equipment was up by 34%. $32 Pepsi The Daily Telegraph Warren Buffett has said he will never sell a single share…

• “Who’d buy a $7bn company from a used-car salesman? More than you may think,” says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Used-car website Cazoo has just achieved the most valuable listing ever for a UK company on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s a big success for founder and CEO Alex Chesterman (pictured), who previously set up movie-rental outfit LoveFilm and property website Zoopla, “but he still has plenty to prove” given the “stretch-limo valuation”. After all, “can Cazoo really be worth more than all the UK’s quoted car dealers combined?”. • If you want your future son-in-law to succeed you as CEO, “offering him a potential £100m bonus is probably not the best way to get other shareholders on board”, says Andrea Felsted on Bloomberg. Yet that’s what Mike…

“Global money managers shunned the UK after Brexit” We’ve been saying for some time that UK shares are among the cheapest in the world right now, particularly compared with other developed markets. It’s sometimes argued that this is mostly down to the mix of stocks listed in the UK rather than the presence of genuine bargains – the FTSE 100 specifically has too few tech stocks and too many resources stocks and is thus a dinosaur “value” index in a fast-moving “growth” world. Yet new research from Bill Casey and Nick Kissack at Schroders suggests this is not the case. Their analysis shows that in virtually every sector bar a handful of exceptions (real estate is one), UK stocks trade at a steep discount to both US and continental European…

• Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook (pictured) has sold $752m worth of shares in the technology giant after receiving the final tranche of a stock award that he was granted a decade ago, in 2011, when he took over as chief executive from the firm’s founder, Steve Jobs, says the Financial Times. Since then, the company’s share price has risen by around ten times, qualifying Cook for the maximum possible payout under the terms of the award. Apple’s market value is now approaching $2.5trn. • Sports Direct’s founder Mike Ashley’s future son-in-law, Michael Murray, has been offered a £100m bonus if, aschief executive of Frasers Group, he can raise the share price from its current level of £6.50 to £15 for 30 trading days before October 2025, says BBC News.…

“If you visit a British university, you see 400 students passing out in media studies and only 30 engineers… When I started we were a group of mechanical engineers, but now more than 50% of our engineers are software or electronics specialists, plus fluid dynamics and battery experts and other scientists. If we’re not producing those people, we’re going to get poorer and poorer.” Inventor and entrepreneur James Dyson (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “A prince as rich as Croesus whining about money.” Writer A.N. Wilson on Prince Harry, quoted in The Mail on Sunday “Almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than of stealing from apoor box.” George Orwell, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “My son… could not…

spectator.co.uk Of all the things sacrificed in lockdown, the one least to be regretted is the poolside summer holiday, says Simon Evans. Every year we take time out to “recharge the batteries” – but inactivity “does no such thing”. The misery of it dawned on just such a holiday off the coast of Mexico. Lazing around the pool with “overweight, bovine, pampered” Americans, it was obvious that the people having the most fun were the staff. The pool lizards were bored stiff. The bar stewards, waiters and pool boys alike were having the “time of their lives”, even while engaged in disagreeable duties. “What I was seeing was something fundamental to human nature. It was the expression of the effect on one’s mood of having nothing to do.” “Be not…

US activist investor Starboard has branched out into the booming special purpose acquisition company (Spac) market, with a deal that takes data-centre operator Cyxtera Technologies public and values it at $1.5bn, says CNBC. Spacs are shell companies with no operating business of their own that are set up and listed with the aim of merging with a private firm that wants to join the stockmarket: in this case, Cyxtera merged with Starboard Value Acquisition, a Spac that listed in New York via an initial public offering in September 2020. Cyxtera will receive $493m in funding, which will be used to fund growth and pay down debt. The deal, which closed at the end of July, leaves funds run by Starboard holding 21.8% of Cyxtera.…

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are underprotected from cybersecurity risk, while the pandemic has increased their vulnerability to attacks. The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) says a third of SMEs have experienced a cyber incident over the past five years. Half believe that a serious incident could completely sink their company. Despite this level of risk, most SMEs have only basic protections in place. The majority of smaller firms have taken steps such as installing firewalls and anti-virus software, but only a minority routinely train staff on cybersecurity issues or use more sophisticated protection tools. ENISA’s data suggests that the five most common threats to SMEs are: phishing attacks; web-based raids; general malware; malicious insiders; and denial-of-service strikes. What’s more, measures introduced by many SMEs during the pandemic, including…

We believe that steering companies with more questionable track records, or in more polluting industries, towards sustainable practices should help to manage investment risks over the long term, improve returns and benefit the planet. Here are three stocks that are proving themselves and working towards reducing their carbon footprint. An eco-conscious cement maker HeidelbergCement (Frankfurt: HEI) is a global leader in aggregates, cement and ready-mixed concrete production. The main component of cement is clinker, a by-product of sintering limestone (heating it so that the minerals fuse together). Its production is carbon-emission intensive. HeidelbergCement has been increasingly focused on growing its share of the market’s sustainable low-carbon products, designing factories that operate with alternative raw materials and fuels. Currently, the company allocates about 80% of its research and development (R&D) spend…

£3.1m The cost of repairs to the 175-foot-high Duke of Wellington monument, near Wellington in Somerset. It has form. Money started running out shortly after construction began in 1817 and it only attained its full height in the 1890s, by which time it was already “dilapidated”. It is now safe to climb to the top. $10m How much reinsurance giant Swiss Re has agreed to pay a Swiss carbon-capture start-up to reduce its carbon footprint over ten years by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, in the first deal of its kind. The nascent technology pumps the captured gas below the seabed where it slowly turns to rock. 49.5 How much in cryptocurrency ether (around $150,000) credit-card giant Visa has spent buying CryptoPunk #7610, one of 10,000 similar pixellated…

Manchester United’s share price jumped 8% after the football club re-signed Cristiano Ronaldo (who originally left the club in 2009) from Italy’s Juventus. The jump is good news for investors with fund manager Nick Train, says The Daily Telegraph – his Lindsell Train UK Equity fund owns 4.8% of the shares. A 12-year-old schoolboy has made the equivalent of £290,000 in sales of his digital artwork of whales. Benyamin Ahmed cashed in on the boom in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and is keeping his earnings in the form of cryptocurrency ether (which means their value could go up or down significantly from here), reports the BBC. He is currently working on his third series, a superhero-themed collection.…

Despite having to pay out around €400m in the second half of 2021 to cover flood damage in central Europe, France’s insurance giant Axa is on track for a record annual profit of €6.5bn, reckons WirtschaftsWoche. The core property-casualty division’s profitability is improving, with the cost-income ratio declining to 95.8% in the first half of the year. In the investment management business, the assets under management climbed by 8% to €760m, while Axa’s overall solvency ratio, agauge of its financial stability, is a highly impressive 212%: its assets are worth more than double potential liabilities in a major crisis. What’s more, the group offers a 6% dividend yield. It’s a “core holding”.…

South Korea is to become the first country in the world to force technology giants to allow alternative payment systems in their app stores. A so-called “Anti-Google law” passed the country’s National Assembly this week, says Kate Park for TechCrunch. It will stop Google and Apple from “forcing developers to use their in-app billing systems”. The smartphone-app market is dominated by Google (via Google Play) and Apple (via its App Store). The pair require that apps listed on their marketplaces comply with rules that critics say are unfair. Notably, in-app purchases must be transacted via their own billing systems, rather than alternative methods such as PayPal or Stripe. That allows the tech giants to bank commissions as high as 30%. App developers have long complained about this “tax”, but they…

The return of schools could have a marked effect on Covid-19 infection numbers, testing the government’s faith in vaccines and travel restrictions, and inevitably leading to calls for the “return of tighter restrictions, perhaps even lockdowns”, says Ross Clark in The Spectator. In Scotland, where term started on 16 August, infections leapt from 10,039 to 21,164 in the week to 23 August and 37,917 in the week to 30 August (though this may be due to the return of holiday-makers). The government is going to have to decide whether, with 80% of adults double-jabbed and deaths still at low levels, it is prepared to “tolerate a wave of infections in schools”. A recent Israeli study suggests that naturally acquired immunity might be “stronger and longer-lasting than vaccine immunity” and it…

”Quality” is sometimes cited as an investment “factor” – that is, a trait shared by some stocks that has tended to result in outperformance of the wider market in the long run. Other “factors” include size (small caps tend to beat large caps) and value (cheap stocks tend to beat expensive stocks). Precise definitions vary (Ben Johnson at funds researcher Morningstar has described quality as the “fuzziest factor”). But broadly speaking, “quality” stocks are companies that boast healthy balance sheets (low debt); earnings consistency (low earnings volatility and relatively low sensitivity to the wider economic cycle); and high-yet-sustainable profit margins (in other words, they have what Warren Buffett might call strong “moats”, or barriers to competition). In short, quality companies are well-run, reliable earners, which grow consistently and are resilient…

London-based tech workers are in demand as Silicon Valley behemoths scale up their operations in Britain, says Sam Shead for CNBC. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Palantir and Twitter already employ tens of thousands of tech workers in “swanky” offices across the capital, and some have major expansions under way. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is building a “vast complex” in King’s Cross for around 8,000 workers; a few miles away, Apple is planning to move 1,400 staff to anew campus at Battersea Power Station. Facebook and Amazon have also opened new offices, with spaces to fill. Facebook has 266 positions open, Google 172 and Apple 103. That is driving up salary expectations among tech workers, says Oscar White, founder of travel start-up Beyonk. London start-ups will struggle to attract software…

bournbrookmag.com The idea of universal basic income (UBI) – that everyone should get money sufficient to live on from the state without condition – has been doing the rounds again, says Alexander Adams. The Design and Artists Copyright Society has a report promoting UBI for artists, for example. The logic is that since art is a social good and artists are often lowly paid, the state should help them out and top up their incomes. The flaw in this idea is that the vast majority of art produced is rot. The state would not be subsidising the next Constable or Hogarth, but “substandard Tracey Emins”. The reason most artists remain poor is that paying customers shrewdly discern there is “nothing worth supporting”. The danger of a UBI is that aspiring…

■ Scottish Mortgage investment trust has seen a tenfold return on its investment in Boston-based biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, which is going public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), says Citywire. The trust has invested £44m since 2016 in Ginkgo Bioworks, which engineers microorganisms for industrial use, in 2016. Now the upcoming merger with New York-listed Soaring Eagle Acquisition values the biotech firm at $17.5bn ($12.7bn), with Scottish Mortgage’s stake worth £450m. The deal will provide $2.5bn in funding for Ginkgo Bioworks, with $1.7bn coming from cash held by Soaring Eagle and $775m from a pre-merger funding round that was led by Scottish Mortgage’s management company Baillie Gifford and also included Cathy Wood’s ARK Investment Management among other investors. Ginkgo Bioworks recorded a net loss of…

• Has your business thought about how to reduce its carbon emissions? If the answer is no, you’re not alone. Just 11% of small businesses measure the current size of their carbon footprint, according to new research from the British Chambers of Commerce. The business group warns that while the majority of smaller businesses recognise their customers are increasingly focused on environmental issues, many think it will be too costly and complicated to develop a plan for reducing emissions. The BCC says its newly-launched Net Zero Hub can help. It is a free resource aimed at smaller firms determined to work towards net zero. • More than 500,000 sole traders, partners and self-employed people will be affected by the government’s reforms to accounting periods, say the Chartered Institute of Taxation…

Brickability (Aim: BRCK) is a brick- and building-materials supplier. Despite a 13.2% drop in like-for-like revenues from the year before, due to the effect of coronavirus restrictions, it highlighted a strong recovery in its annual report for the year ending 31 March. Profits before tax sat at £11.2m, down from £12.2m in 2020. It made two strategic acquisitions last year, and says the pipeline for this year looks strong. The outlook for the construction sector is promising, with activity forecast to rise by 14% in 2021 and by 4.9% in 2022, thanks to investment in housing. The company’s shares are up 125% over the last year.…

Charles Deville Wells was born in Broxborne in Hertfordshire in 1841 and spent most of his childhood in France, becoming an engineer working in the Marseille shipyards. In about 1879 he ran a scheme to raise money to build a railway, then absconded with the money. He moved to London and tried to sell a percentage of the rights to a range of devices he claimed to have invented. In 1891 he made headlines when he won large sums at the Casino de Monte-Carlo (inspiring the famous music hall song The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo). Attempts to repeat the feat failed and he was jailed in 1892 for fraud. And then he reformed? No. He was later jailed again for his involvement in a bogus fishing…

Tata The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism Mircea Raianu Harvard University Press, £31.95 India is not only one of the world’s largest economies, but also one of the fastest-growing – and its most well-known firm, the conglomerate Tata, has been at the heart of that process, says Tunku Varadarajan in The Wall Street Journal. Indeed, it is fair to say that “no other company has dominated the history of its national commerce and industry quite as much as the house of Tata in India”. It is a “behemoth” – its consultancy arm alone is worth $160bn – and it remains one of the few major businesses regarded as “unstained by overt corruption”. In Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism, academic Mircea Raianu takes a deeper look at…