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Billionaire Oleg Tinkov (pictured) has pleaded guilty to US tax fraud and will pay more than $500m in back taxes, interest and fines, says Bloomberg. Tinkov hid more than $1bn in assets and income when he renounced his US citizenship after the IPO of Tinkoff Credit Systems, Russia’s largest online bank, in 2013 – a year when he declared net income of $206,000 and net worth of $300,000. Employees of Goldman Sachs have lost their pandemic meal perks, says the Financial Times. The investment bank was giving free breakfasts, lunches and ice-creams to staff in London, but these were withdrawn last month “to encourage support of the local restaurants and businesses”, now that over 50% of staff have returned to the office.…

Eurozone inflation hit a 13-year high in September. Prices in the bloc rose by 3.4% in the year to September. Surging natural-gas prices and supply disruptions mean inflation looks poised to hit 4% before the end of the year. Like other central banks, the European Central Bank (ECB) argues that these price rises are transient, says Andrew Kenningham of Capital Economics. It expects falling energy prices to bring inflation back below the 2% target next year. The ECB has made clear that it will only raise interest rates if it thinks that inflation will stay “durably” above target for several years ahead. That gives it “wiggle room” to hold off on raising rates, even if this inflationary spike ends up lasting much longer than forecast. The ECB has long had…

African currencies are having a good year, says Adelaide Changole on Bloomberg. The Seychelles rupee has gained 53% against the US dollar since the start of January. The “palm-fringed archipelago”, which lies off Africa’s east coast, has been experiencing a tourism boom following a successful vaccination programme. Visitors from Asia have more than doubled, helping GDP rebound from a 13.5% fall last year. Of the top ten currency gainers so far this year, five are African. Several have been boosted by the commodity boom. Zambia is the continent’s second-biggest copper producer. The Ugandan shilling has also gained thanks to higher earnings from the country’s coffee exports.…

Hotel-booking platform Oyo is hoping to raise $1.1bn through an initial public offering (IPO). It is the latest in a series of loss-making Indian start-ups looking to cash in on the country’s “red-hot equity markets”, says Benjamin Parkin in the Financial Times. Technology investor SoftBank owns 47% of the company; it is one of the Japanese company’s largest bets on India’s tech market. Oyo, which signs up independent budget hotels to its platform, had 1.2 million rooms in 80 countries at its peak but began “retrenching” in late 2019, pulling back from international markets and cutting its workforce to stem mounting losses.…

On Monday, shares in Facebook fell by over 5% as the social-media site disappeared from the internet for six hours, says Josh Taylor in The Guardian. However, while the outage highlighted “just how siloed the internet has become into such a small number of companies”, a temporary problem with its servers isn’t the only thing causing “major headaches” for CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured). Facebook has had to pause plans to build “Instagram for kids” after “leaked internal research showed the company was aware the app could affect girls’ mental health”. Former civic-integrity product manager Frances Haugen has also accused Facebook “of prioritising growth and profit over the public good”. Haugen’s allegations threaten more than Facebook’s reputation, which has “taken repeated hits since the Cambridge Analytica scandal three years ago”, says…

The next big European election on the horizon is the French presidential contest, due to take place over two rounds, with the first round in April 2022 and the second in May. Recent history shows that the incumbent struggles to retain a grip on the Élysée Palace – Nicolas Sarkozy lost to François Hollande in 2012; by the time the next election took place five years later in 2017, Hollande was so unpopular he didn’t even bother to run for re-election. This time, however, punters evidently don’t expect recent history to repeat itself. With £379,587 matched on Betfair, Emmanuel Macron (pictured) is the clear favourite to retain the presidency at 1.71 (58.4%). In second place is the hard-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour at 6.4 (15.6%); the far-right Marine Le Pen…

Many of the highest-earning bosses at non-departmental public bodies, better known as quangos, are paid six-figure salaries for part-time work that leaves them free to pursue other lucrative roles at private companies, says The Sunday Times. Dr Ros Rivaz, chair of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), an agency responsible for cleaning up Britain’s earliest nuclear sites, earns £150,000 for two days’ work a week. Rivas also holds four other senior positions in the private sector, earning her at least another £165,000 last year. The NDA’s previous chairman, Tom Smith, was also paid £150,000 for a two-day week. Elsewhere, Sally Balcombe, CEO of VisitBritain, was paid £235,000 last year, while also serving as a director of luxury hotel firm Mr & Mrs Smith. Mark Russell, chairman of Defence Equipment & Support,…

“The whole Chinese property market is on stilts,” warns short-seller Jim Chanos in the Financial Times. Most attention is currently directed at Evergrande, one of China’s biggest property developers, which has recently missed a bond payment to overseas investors. But “there are lots of Evergrandes out there in China... all the developers look like this”, he says. Chanos agrees with the majority of investors that Evergrande will not represent a repeat of the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, in terms of disrupting the global financial system. However, for China itself “in many ways it’s far worse”. The trouble is that China has become overly reliant on residential property as a key source of GDP growth. “If you try to deflate this bubble, it is fraught with risks.” The country needs…

iea.org.uk Former Bank of England chief Mervyn King has said that the central bank has become “addicted” to creating more money. The fate of the Roman empire is a warning about the consequences, says George Maher. Ancient Rome created the world’s first fiat currency, initially asa way of paying soldiers. It spread across the empire and the currency proved as stable as the empire itself. You could travel from Britannia to Judaea and the prices of goods and the value of your coins would be the same. This price stability was irreparably damaged by the emperor Septimius Severus (193 to 211 AD). He doubled the wages of soldiers to recruit more, and paid for it by debasing the metal coins. Just as today, this inflation led to rising prices and…

“The artificial suppression of volatility will gradually lead to a society becoming less free” Supply shocks, rising prices and labour shortages are in the news. Analysts blame specific factors, ranging from the strength of the economic rebound to Brexit. The likely reality, however, is that the phenomena we see are connected and interconnected with social and political developments. The financial system’s interaction with the economy forms a complex, evolving system, which consists of a multifaceted web of relationships and forces with “emergent properties”, meaning that the result of these interactions can be greater than the sum of their parts. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to understand all these interactions and predict their consequences. This is particularly true when the system has been subject to massive interventions, such as…

A fortnight ago I received atext from an unknown number saying I had a parcel from Hermes with an outstanding delivery fee. If I didn’t pay through the Hermes link in the text, my parcel would be returned to the sender. That text was a scam. The trade association for the banking and financial services sector, UK Finance, notes in its half-year report for 2021 that criminals stole a total of £753.9m, a 30% increase compared to the same period in 2020. Authorised push payment (APP) fraud, where criminals trick customers into authorising a payment to them using tactics such as phone calls, text messages and emails, fake websites and social media posts, saw an increase of 71%. APP is a type of impersonation scam, where criminals pretend to be…

“An ageing population means more people need financial advice” The wealth-management industry tends to keep a low profile. So many investors may not have noticed that while several parts of the financial sector have been under pressure from competition and digitalisation, the subsector that helps people preserve and grow their fortune has managed to keep growing at a strong rate. A report by investment bank Morgan Stanley and management consultant Oliver Wyman predicts that the industry could manage $104trn of assets globally by 2024, up from $79trn in 2019. Soaring asset prices mean that there is more wealth to preserve, while an ageing population (as well as the gradual demise of final-salary pensions) produces more people in need of financial advice. One wealth-management company that looks particularly attractive is Rathbone…

The Gym Group (LSE: GYM) operates around 90 gyms across the UK. Its 2021 interim results revealed a 21.4% decline in revenue for the six months to 30 June, but the gyms were legally required to shut for over 50% of the trading days. And since reopening in April, there has been strong demand for memberships. It also reported a 31.4% rise in group adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), and losses fell by 5.4% to £20.9m. It completed an equity placing early July that yielded £30.3m, which will fund the 40 new sites in its pipeline. The shares have climbed by 124% over the last 12 months.…

Rowland Stephenson was born on a ship sailing between Britain and America in 1782. His father was a merchant fleeing Florida after an attack by Spanish troops during the War of Independence destroyed his business supplying British ships. After attending Eton, Stephenson worked for the family bank, Remington, Stephenson & Company, rising from gentleman clerk to partner. He became the MP for Leominster in 1827 when the candidate who had defeated him was controversially disqualified. Anoted philanthropist, he was also the treasurer of St Bartholomew’s hospital. What was the scam? Following his wife’s death in 1821, Stephenson began splashing out on entertainment and collecting art. He invested in the London Colosseum, a building in Regent’s Park, and got the bank to underwrite the project. With personal funds starting to run…

Ozy Media, an online media firm founded by Carlos Watson (pictured) and Samir Rao is in crisis after Rao apparently impersonated a YouTube executive as part of an attempt to raise $40m from Goldman Sachs, says The New York Times. Rao reportedly pretended to be YouTube’s Alex Piper on a conference call in February, in order to reassure Goldman that Ozy’s videos were performing well. Ozy has raised more than $80m from investors, including philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and media group Axel Springer, since it was set up in 2013. However, the NYT claims that the firm has exaggerated its audience and may only have a fraction of its purported 50 million monthly users. A number of investors, advertisers, journalists and board members have since cut ties with Ozy. Watson…

“With price increases slamming economies from all directions,” markets are getting increasingly jumpy, says Susannah Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown. Investors also fret that weakening macroeconomic data could herald a slowdown. No wonder that in recent weeks concerns about stagflation, the combination of economic stagnation and high inflation, “seem to have turned from niggling worries to an anxiety attack”. Markets have hit a wall America’s S&P 500 finished September down 4.8%, its worst month since the crash in March 2020. The selling continued into this week, with the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite tumbling by 2.1% on Monday. Highly-valued technology shares are particularly vulnerable to rising interest rates and bond yields (which make bonds more appealing relative to equities). The FTSE’s exposure to commodity stocks has spared it the worst of the sell-off:…

“The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has fired three central-bank governors for not complying with his eccentric view that high interest rates are the cause of inflation, rather than a cure. Sahap Kavcioglu, Turkey’s most recent central bank governor, [has yielded] to Erdogan’s demands by cutting interest rates [from 19% to 18%]... the Turkish economy [has] low international reserves... and a high amount of dollar-denominated corporate debt [but has so far] managed to avoid a full-fledged currency crisis [thanks to] international investors [being] desperate for yield... [there is a now] a shift to tightening world monetary policy conditions... Domestic and foreign investors will likely head for the door... [That] is likely to send the currency to yet lower levels, which will [fuel] inflation... Erdogan could pay a heavy price in…

Five to buy Mitchells & Butlers The Mail on Sunday M&B has had “a torrid time” in the last 18 months. But now that the economy is reopening, “punters are making up for lost time”. Results for the last eight weeks showed that sales reached 104% of their pre-pandemic levels for the same period. The firm also has £64m less debt than two months ago. Note that majority shareholder Odyzean intends to override the wishes of other investors and back the re-election of achairman that a quarter of total shareholders voted against. If you can get past that, “the shares are worth a sip”. 251p Serica Energy Investors’ Chronicle The sun is shining for Serica Energy. The oil and gas producer had enjoyed a major increase in prices compared with…

• The car manufacturer Volvo has given details of its “long-awaited” initial public offering (IPO), says Stephen Wilmot in The Wall Street Journal. While it hasn’t formally stated a valuation, all the indications are that it will press for around $25bn, hoping that investors will ascribe a “fair value to its... strategy to shift from gas-run cars to electric vehicles”. This implies a price/earnings(p/e) ratio of 12, while most car stocks trade at mid-single-digit p/es. However, Volvo’s part ownership of a dedicated electric-vehicle brand, Polestar, gives it a “$10bn asset” on its balance sheet, with the rest of the firm on a p/e of seven. All this suggests that other companies might benefit from the “strategic clarity” Volvo has gained from splitting petrol-powered cars from electric ones. • Since the…

When bidding finally closed last weekend, the auction of Morrisons turned out to have been less exciting than many of the speculators had been hoping. Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, the original bidder, walked away with the prize at 286p a share, less than the shares were trading at in the week before the auction closed (see page 7). At £7bn, whether the retailer will turn out to be a great investment remains to be seen. Terry Leahy, the former Tesco boss, will be advising the new owners, and he has a formidable record in retailing. If anyone can make Morrisons a success, Leahy can. Yet it is hard to see how it can be magically transformed. Morrisons has languished in fourth place in its sector for the last 20 years…

“To beat inflation in the long run, buy commodity stocks” The official narrative among the world’s central bankers is that inflation is “transitory”. Prices are rising now, but that’s just because we’re reopening the economy and supply chains are readjusting. In the longer run, we don’t need to worry. Perhaps. But before you take the official view at face value, it’s worth remembering that almost no one in the mainstream economic establishment or in a position of monetary authority saw any of this coming at all. Soaring energy costs and rising wages in key parts of the labour market might wash out over the coming months. But if you’d rather be safe than sorry, how can you position yourself in case the official line is wrong (again)? Investing to beat…

Localism will level-up Britain William Hague The Times Centre-right think tanks have been busy working out how best to level-up Britain, says William Hague. And their analyses “all point emphatically in the same direction”. It will only work with “radical decentralisation”. That’s not to say there is no role for the state; more cash for areas such as transport, digital infrastructure and technical education will be needed to help weaken the “cycle of deprivation, dependence and low productivity”, but top-down spending alone will not suffice. Levelling up means “people climbing up, having been given the opportunity and power to do so”. Specific ideas include giving councils more power, funding and responsibility; tweaking procurement rules to encourage councils to award contracts locally; helping locals take over empty buildings and shops; and…

voxeu.org History shows that the top-down imposition of democracy is “not desirable and rarely successful”, say Giacomo Magistretti and Marco Tabellini. But democracy can indeed be “exported” through trade. Our study of a large cross-country database from 1960 to 2015 shows that the economic integration that comes through trade benefits less democratic countries, not only by fostering GDP growth, but also indirectly by favouring the transition to democracy and the socioeconomic and political benefits associated with it. When a country becomes integrated with a democracy through trade, its democracy score, as measured by an index, rises significantly; integration with non-democratic partners produces no such change. The study showed that a doubling in economic integration with democratic partners in a five-year period raises that country’s democracy index by almost three points…

It’s been a rough six months for the videogames sector, and industry heavyweight Activision Blizzard (Nasdaq: ATVI) has had an especially gruelling time. But that makes it well worth a look. Videogame stocks were all the rage when Covid-19 lockdowns were at their peak. But Activision’s stock, after delivering annualised total returns of 21.4% for ten years, has slid by 21% since April. Sentiment has deteriorated for several reasons. While investors cheered the videogames sector when everyone was stuck at home, they’ve jumped ship as vaccinations have been rolled out and life has started returning to normal. In the meantime, there have been concerns over China restricting game-playing for its children to three hours a week. Analysts also highlight the threat of future competition from established entertainment giants, such as…

There has been a sharp increase in inheritance-tax (IHT) bills. Britons paid £2.1bn of IHT in the first quarter of the 2021-2022 tax year, £500m more than in the same period a year ago. The good news, however, is that your pension savings could help you cut your potential IHT bill. Pensions almost always fall outside your estate for IHT purposes; they are not included in the calculation of whether your estate is worth more than £325,000, the level at which IHT typically becomes payable. Even better, the pension system makes it very simple to pass on unused pension savings to your heirs, particularly with defined-contribution or money-purchase plans. If you die before the age of 75, your heirs are entitled to all of the money with no tax to…

The past fortnight has not been kind to my four long tips, with three of them depreciating. Homebuilder DR Horton fell from $87.17 to $83.20, construction firm Morgan Sindall declined from 2,507p to 2,335p and Plus500 dropped from 1,416p to 1,410p. The only exception was media group ITV, which remained steady at 108p. Broker TP ICAP, homebuilder PulteGroup, Royal Mail and Ensign Group all stayed below the level at which I suggested you start going long on them. My four active tips are making a total profit of £2,710, down from £3,253. My six short tips have had mixed fortunes. The good news is that four of them have gone down, with only two rising. Cloud-computing firm Snowflake fell from $310 to $294, electric -car company Plug Power declined from…

Online fashion retailer Boohoo (Aim: BOO) posted results for the six months to the end of August last week. The share price promptly slumped, despite record sales over the period. Adjusted Ebitda fell by 5% to £89.8m, below investors’ expectations. Capital expenditure for the full year will be around £275m, 10% higher than predicted. Full-year sales growth estimates have also slipped. Boohoo now expects a rise of between 20% and 25%, compared with a previous target of 25%. The stock has slid by 34.4% in the last 12 months.…

Going … The “Number One” guitar, the earliest approved production model of the famed Gibson Les Paul electric guitar, is heading fr auction with Christie’s in New York. Mde in1952, the solid-body instrument bearing its creator’s name is being sold by Les Paul’s son, Gene, who dubbed it a “perfect rock and roll machine”. Guitarists Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck all came to embrace the Gibson L sPaul. “I’d have to say, what’s the Wright brother’s first plane worth? What’s Thomas Edison’s first light bulb worth? The Paul guitar, the Les Paul Number One, was his crowning achievement,” says Gene Paul. Bidders will decide on 13 October. The guitar is valued at between $ 00,000 and $150,000. Gone… A cassette recording from January 1970 of a 33-minute interview…

• “Life must feel pretty bloody marvellous right now for actress Ana de Armas,” says Jane Fryer in the Daily Mail. De Armas (pictured) is the latest Bond girl in No Time To Die. “She’s also exquisitely beautiful, with a body to die for, has a refreshingly relaxed attitude to nudity, loves a drink and a late night party. To top it off, she’s an ambassador for all sorts of worthy brands including Natural Diamonds.” It’s all a far cry from her native communist Cuba. The family home was a breeze-block flat in a “tatty back street, awash with rubble and stray dogs”. There was no TV, no internet and no newspapers. So, the minute she turned 18, she fled Cuba, thanks to her Spanish joint nationality, with just $300,…

£32.3mThe combined value of all of the clothes, accessories, gadgets and vehicles used by Daniel Craig’s James Bond from the first film, Casino Royale, in 2006, to his last, No Time To Die, released last week, according to analysis by online gaming experts CasinoScores. £7.5m The asking price for Elmestree House Estate, a117-acre estate near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, located next door to Prince Charles’ Highgrove country retreat. The property, which dates back to the 12th century, will require “considerable restoration”. £100m The value of Cornwall’s daffodil-growing industry. This year, 274 million stems, a fifth of the entire crop, went unpicked owing to a lack of flower pickers, according to producers. Cornwall supplies nine out of ten of all daffodils grown commercially in Britain. €1m How much 239 pre-French Revolution gold coins,…

Hair model Aashna Roy has won nearly Rs20m (£200,000) compensation for a botched trim at one of Delhi’s top salons in 2018, says The Sun. A consumer tribunal awarded her the substantial sum after hearing that Roy suffered a severe mental breakdown and loss of work when staff at the salon at the Maurya Sheraton Hotel cut her hair too short and damaged it with excess ammonia in a treatment. University professor and former Pfizer executive Andrew Hopkins has amassed a $539m paper fortune after his drug-discovery company Exscientia floated on Nasdaq last week in a $2.9bn initial public offering (IPO), says The Guardian. The firm, which was founded in 2012 at the University of Dundee, uses artificial intelligence to speed up the process of designing drugs and has formed…

Shares in Teladoc Health, a virtual-healthcare company, have slumped by 60% this year. New competitors, notably Amazon, have entered the sector and the economy’s reopening means that in-person doctor visits are on the rise. Teladoc’s total visits for the year aren’t predicted to grow as much as they have in previous years. But the firm wasn’t just “a one-time pandemic winner”. It was an expanding business before Covid-19, and its shares have jumped by 600% over the last five years. The company is “way ahead” of the virtual-care curve, with 52 million paying members in the US alone. The digitalisation of healthcare “is only just getting started”, and this is a good way to cash in on it.…

Private-equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) has won a “months-long battle” for Wm Morrison, says Deirdre Hipwell on Bloomberg. It beat Fortress Investment Group in an auction with a £7bn offer for Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket. Not only does the deal, worth 287p a share, “represent a 61% premium to Morrisons’ share price before takeover interest was revealed”, but it is also Britain’s biggest deal to take a firm private “in more than a decade”. If shareholders approve it later this month, which seems a formality, it will end “more than half a century on the public market for the grocer”, which was founded in 1899 by William Morrison. Some shareholders may find the final price “underwhelming”, says Oliver Gill in The Sunday Telegraph. CD&R only had to raise its…

The Tories are ahead in the polls, Covid-19 restrictions are easing, and the prime minister’s position is secure –you might expect Conservative MPs and activists to be cock-a-hoop, says the Steerpike blogger at The Spectator. Yet despite the “thronging crowds and warm white wine being guzzled”, a “strange gloom” filled the air at this week’s Tory conference. It seemed to emanate from the PM himself – members have been quietly asking: “Is something wrong with Boris?” He’s just tired, one insider suggested, and Johnson did seem to have perked up for his speech, which was lively, full of jokes, and will likely have reassured his supporters. But it’s not his personality or energy, or lack of it, but his policies that will have dismayed some activists and backbenchers, says Simon…

• Investors in American parcel-delivery giant FedEx have approved a $54m pay plan for billionaire chief executive Fred Smith (pictured), says Reuters. Shareholders at the recent annual meeting also nodded through non-binding proposals requiring more disclosures on company lobbying and for shareholder voting on overly generous severance packages for senior management, known as “golden parachutes”, that often pay out three times salary and bonus. • The Bank of Ireland’s chief financial officer, Myles O’Grady, has handed in his notice to join Irish food retailer and wholesaler Musgraves, says The Irish Times. The bank’s chief executive, Francesca McDonagh, blamed pay restrictions in the domestic banking sector for his decision to leave. Executive pay is largely capped at €500,000, with some exceptions. O’Grady earned €531,000 in total last year, while McDonagh’s basic…

When a firm, government,or other organisation wants to borrow money by issuing bonds, their bonds will usually be assigned a credit rating. This gives the investor an idea of how likely they are to get their money back on time and in full. These ratings are issued by credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. When determining a rating, the agency will look at several factors that may influence the likelihood of the bond being repaid. These include the profitability of the issuer, its past credit record and any assets the debt might be secured against (if a debt is secured against property that can be seized and sold, then it’s likely to be safer than a debt with no collateral). For bonds issued by countries, factors…

“Do you know how hard it is for women to ask for money? To ask for a pay rise or ask for what they’re entitled to? I want [my daughters] to be desensitised to it, so that asking for money will be like asking for a cup of tea.” Broadcaster Myleene Klass (pictured) on why she makes her daughters log earnings – for everything from endorsing brands on YouTube to domestic chores – in a ledger “The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort.” Economist Joseph Schumpeter, quoted in The Sunday Telegraph “I could have phoned in a showbiz biog of 60,000 words, stuck a couple…

bbc.com/worklife When reflecting on meeting someone for the first time, do you find yourself “wincing at the faux pas, imagining all the ways you may have bored or offended”? If so, multiple studies show that you are not alone, says David Robson – it’s how most people feel. Yet that same research shows we are usually better company than we think. We dwell on our imagined shortcomings and the impression we’ve made, and hence miss all the cues of friendliness directed towards us. This is known as the “liking gap” and may stand in the way of mutually beneficial collaborations at work. Unfortunately, tips on the art of conversation probably won’t help – they will just draw attention to all the ways in which you might fail. Instead, just take…

One of the key market trends this year has been the dramatic rebound in energy prices. During the first few weeks of the pandemic, US oil futures collapsed from $50 a barrel and briefly turned negative for the first time in history. They soon rose above zero, but even by last autumn they had only reached $35. Since then they have doubled, reaching levels not seen since late 2018. While this may be bad news for those looking to fill up their petrol tank, does it provide any hints as to the future direction of the stockmarket? One view is that rising energy prices should be negative for the stockmarket. After all, rising energy prices push up production costs, which squeezes producers’ margins and reduces living standards. It might also…

Investors are understandably cautious about Asian equity markets. The regulatory crackdown in China, new Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia and supply-side bottlenecks have resulted in Asian equities trading at a 40% valuation discount to global equities. But beneath the surface, there is a wealth of attractive investment opportunities across Asia. The region is home to many companies with strong free cash flow generation and healthy balance sheets, which gives businesses flexibility, and investors afair degree of comfort. Negative headlines can be scary but they make the best conditions for contrarian stockpickers who care about longer-term outcomes. The most sustainable way to make money is to buy companies for less than they are worth. The following stocks are all held in the Invesco Asia Trust. They are at different stages in…

An alternative to Sandon Hall for anyone looking for an upmarket retreat for a larger gathering is Frampton Court. This Grade I-listed seven-bedroom property in the Cotswolds can accommodate up to 14 people, while its smaller neighbouring property, The Orangery, sleeps eight (framptoncourtestate.co.uk). If you’re looking for a weekend away with a dose of history you can find a wide range of experiences – from camping to luxury spa hotels – on offer through the National Trust. For those looking for a quick escape from the capital, Hartwell House and Spa is a Grade I-listed Jacobean and Georgian house near Aylesbury, which is just an hour’s drive or so from London. Alternatively, if something quirkier takes your fancy, the trust has more than 470 “unique cottages” to choose from. Garden…

I experienced a eureka moment in August. While dining at a smartypants fish restaurant in Portugal, a wine waiter asked me if Iwanted to taste a “special wine” they had just received but that hadn’t yet made it onto the wine list. Of course, my answer was yes. I am sure many readers will be familiar with Soalheiro – Portugal’s most famous, ubiquitous, bargain-priced and, it has to said, delicious Vinho Verde. Goodness knows how many cases are made of this stuff because it lines up on every supermarket shelf in the country. In fact, it is one of the most exciting things about summer hols! Iwas aware of a hierarchy of VVs from this terrific winery, but I rarely come across them, and so when Iwas presented with 2020…

Two top wine-makers from Saint-Émilion, in southwestern France, stand accused of rigging the region’s classification system in a landmark trial that has gripped the wider Bordeaux wine-making world, says Henry Samuel in The Daily Telegraph. According to prosecutors, Hubert de Boüard (pictured), a wine consultant and co-owner of the famed chateau Angélus, and Philippe Castéja, a wine merchant and owner of the chateau Trotte Vieille, unfairly used their influence as members of the INAO, France’s wine governing body, to ensure their own domains, along with others they were paid to advise, kept their ranking or joined the select club. Both men deny any wrongdoing. Unlike Bordeaux’s 1855 classification, St-Émilion’s is reassessed every ten years. Inclusion in the two main categories of Grand Cru Classé and the more prestigious Premier Grand…