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“Inflation is going to catapult a whole lot of us into higher tax bands in the coming years” Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for. As chancellor, he created the template for the “showbiz budget” – leak the big stories upfront to generate “buzz”; scatter the speech with small-scale bureaucratic interventions that sound good but don’t amount to much and talk abig game on fiscal responsibility while quietly hiking taxes and spending as much as you can get away with. Rishi Sunak, the Conservative chancellor, belongs to a nominally different party, but his latest budget was very much a Gordon Brown special. Fiscal rules that sound strict but depend entirely on how a government defines “investment”, and thus come with their own portable goal posts? Check. Fiddly little schemes…

Art-making robot Ai-Da (pictured) was detained by Egyptian customs for ten days on the way to an exhibition at the Great Pyramid of Giza, over fears that it could be part of an espionage plot, says Artnet. Images generated by the machine – which was created by Oxford art dealer Aiden Meller in February 2019 – have sold for a total of $1m. However, officials initially wanted to remove its modem and the cameras installed as its eyes. Ai-Da has now been released to take part in the show, which opens this week. Devon & Cornwall Police will pay £5,000 in compensation to a man who was wrongly arrested in July last year when trying to pay for petrol with a £100 commemorative coin, says the Daily Mail. Brett Chamberlain’s…

Turkey’s lira has hit a new all-time low against the US dollar. The currency has lost 25% of its value since the start of the year. Last week Turkey’s central bank cut interest rates by 2% even though inflation has hit 19%. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an opponent of high interest rates (he thinks they cause, rather than cure, inflation), has put significant pressure on the bank to keep money easy. The pressure on the lira worsened after Erdogan threatened to expel the ambassadors of ten countries, including the US, France and Germany, following a diplomatic row at the weekend. It is not the first time that Turkey has cut interest rates even as inflation soars, says Jonathan Wheatley in the Financial Times. Yet there are growing signs of…

Indian beauty retailer Nykaa’s impending initial public offering (IPO) “will catapult founder Falguni Nayar into India’s rarefied league of billionaire women”, says Saritha Rai on Bloomberg. It will value the company at up to $7.1bn, giving Nayar and her family a net worth of around $3.5bn. Nayar, a former investment banker who oversaw the flotation of a series of Indian firms, founded Nykaa (formally operated by FSN E-Commerce ventures) in 2012. It sells over 2,500 brands of makeup, “from foundation to sheet masks, the silken kohl Indian eyeliner and the traditional body art called mehendi”. Its website, app and 70-odd shops produced sales of $330m in the year to March.…

Ladbrokes’ owner Entain “has been abandoned at the altar for the second time this year”, says Oliver Gill in The Daily Telegraph. In January Entain’s board rejected an £8bn bid from US casino operator MGM, causing MGM to withdraw its interest. Entain’s latest suitor, US gambling group DraftKings, made an £16.2bn takeover approach last month but has now opted not to proceed. US gambling firms see rich pickings in the British market. The trend dates back to 2018 when the US supreme court legalised sports betting. British firms already had experience in the sector and moved into America fast. Entain operates a joint gambling venture with MGM, its spurned suitor, in the US. “Increasingly, US firms have been looking to buy out their British partners.” It appears to be the…

Wall Street bankers have short memories. Earlier this year, Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon had his pay docked by 36% to $17.5m for 2020 (down from $27.5m a year earlier), in addition to being made to hand back $10m for the bank’s role in the 1MDB bribery scandal, involving the Malaysian investment fund, says Sridhar Natarajan for Bloomberg. Now, just months later, Goldman Sachs is awarding Solomon and his top deputy, John Waldron, a special bonus of around $50m, based on the current share price. Solomon and Waldron, the bank’s chief operating officer, will receive 73,264 and 48,843 respectively in performance-based restricted stock units that will vest over five years, equating to roughly $30m and $20m. The bank shattered its revenue and earnings records this year thanks to a…

Indian stocks will grow at double-digit rates in the coming years, reckons billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. The man known as “Big Bull” and – inevitably – “India’s Warren Buffett” thinks that annual returns are likely to be around five percentage points higher than GDP growth, which he expects to be around 7%-10% per year. Steps the government has taken over the last few years to increase the country’s growth potential combined with greater participation in stocks by domestic savers are extremely positive for the Indian market. “We are in the middle of a bull phase which will last for a very, very long time,” he told Bloomberg earlier this year. Jhunjhunwala began trading in 1985, with Rs5,000 (£49), then borrowed more from a client of his brother to invest. Today,…

conversableeconomist. blogspot.com In the first half century of US history, most business legislation took place at the state level and was mainly about rewarding political insiders and granting “goodies” to favoured interests, says Timothy Taylor. From around 1850 this began to change and state constitutions were rewritten to require laws to “be general and of uniform operation throughout the state”. The proximate cause for the change may have been the rising debt burden – costs to the state could be lowered if companies were forced to stand on their own two feet. There were also some unexpected and positive results. When the law allows anyone to start a bank, not just the politically connected, then a separate regulatory apparatus becomes necessary, requiring financial prudence and so on. States that “slaughtered…

■ New releases, from iPhones to James Bond, are met with “huge enthusiasm”, says David Brenchley in The Times. “But new does not always mean better.” There are several things to consider when backing a new fund. The fund manager will have little to no record, and they may not be very good. Even if they are, past success is no guarantee: witness Neil Woodford and Anthony Bolton. “If you get it right, though, the rewards of investing in a newish fund can be huge.” Had you invested £10,000 in Terry Smith’s Fundsmith Equity fund in November 2013, three years after it launched, you’d have £38,498 today; if you had invested from the start, you would have £61,948. Smith’s fund “had a clear”, comprehensible proposition “that savers could grasp”. A…

Tether (USDT): a de-facto money market fund wrapped in a digital token that is pegged to the US dollar. It is closely linked to the crypto-exchange Bitfinex, which has helped Tether’s issuance of tokens grow to over $70bn.The integrity of the management and its asset backing have come under scrutiny. Circle (USDC): USDC is regulated in the US and fully backed by US dollars, cash equivalents and US short-durationTreasuries with $32bn in circulation. As a result of regulatory scrutiny of Tether, USDC has ballooned, taking its market share from 14.3% of the stablecoin market to 24.1%.The firm behind Circle plans to list in NewYork via a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) called Concord Acquisition (NYSE: CND), with backing from asset managers Marshall Wace, Fidelity andThird Point, who have financed the…

• Research suggests that more than half of small companies are so dependent on a key individual – an owner or manager, say – that they would go out of business within a year if that person were to die. But despite this risk, insurance brokers say only a small number of businesses have taken out key-person insurance. This cover pays out on the death or incapacitation of named individuals at your business, providing cash to help pay for recruitment, cover loss of profits or repay loans. • Business owners and managers may have to offer new staff flexible-working arrangements (which range from job-sharing to working from home) from day one in the job under new proposals. Ministers are consulting businesses on whether employees should be allowed to request flexible…

Shares in online retailer ASOS (LSE: ASC) dropped by 13% after the release of its full-year results to the end of August. It warned that profits for 2022 will fall to between £110m and £140m from £194m for this year – below several city forecasts. Revenue grew by 20% to £3.91bn, a new record high for the business. However, it remains unclear whether the company will be able to keep up this sort of performance after the pandemic, says The Motley Fool. Supply-chain disruptions have hit margins. Before the fall, the shares looked expensive, but they have declined by 45% over the last year.…

The mascot for the Cop26 summit in Glasgow should be “a symbol of the international effort to tackle climate change and leave the world in a better state for the next generation”, says The Daily Telegraph. So it’s hard to understand why Boris Johnson’s administration signed off on a “seal dressed in a blue cheerleading uniform and a Glasgow-themed bobble hat” at a cost to taxpayers of £1,645. To make matters worse, many in Whitehall think the figure, known as Bonnie, looks “more like a rat than a seal”, to the point where insiders have dubbed it “King of the Glasgow Rats” in a nod to recent outbreaks of vermin on local streets. Perhaps strangest of all is that Bonnie isn’t even new. She was created for the 2018 European…

Will Andrew Bailey prove a more “reliable boyfriend” than Mark Carney? asks Jill Treanor in The Sunday Times. During his time as Bank of England governor Carney gained a reputation for sending mixed signals about future interest-rate changes, causing one MP to liken him to an “unreliable boyfriend”. Now Bailey, his successor, is the one making promises. This month he said that the Bank “will have to act” on rising inflation. Investors have taken him at his word. Markets are pricing in an interest rate hike from 0.1% now to 0.25% before the end of the year. They then expect rates to rise to 1% by next summer. Bond markets wobble Short-term government bond yields, which are “highly sensitive to expectations for interest rates”, have leapt as prices have fallen,…

“The latest Link Group UK Dividend Monitor... found that UK dividends soared in [the third quarter of 2021], recovering 89.2% to £34.9bn thanks to significant growth in mining dividends... and the lifting of all dividend restrictions on the banking sector... the sharp increase in the oil price has [also] led Royal Dutch Shell and BP to start to grow their dividends again [although] dividend levels are still materially below 2019 levels... caution is needed for 2022, where dividend growth is likely to slow. Recent falls in the iron ore price [are] likely to lead to lower dividend payments from the mining sector next year... supply chain disruptions and... cost inflation may put pressure on corporate margins... [But] aforward dividend yield of 3.5% on the UK equity market isstill attractive, especially…

Three to buy Indivior The Sunday Times In 2019 Indivior was charged in the US with running an “illicit nationwide scheme to increase prescriptions” of a version of its opioid-addiction treatment. But the drugmaker seems to have redeemed itself. It has invested in a new treatment for cannabis-related disorders, branched out into alcohol-misuse drugs and grown sales of its injection for opioid addiction. But the stock is still selling for half its 2018 price. Sales are rising fast. Once Indivior regains investors’ trust, it will consider mergers. Buy now. 240p Light Science Technologies Holdings The Mail on Sunday Just 23% of fruit and vegetables sold in the UK are grown locally. Our reliance on imports raises our greenhouse-gas emissions. Light Science Technologies Holdings aims to bolster the proportion of fruit…

• Tesla has become the first carmaker valued at more that $1trn. Shares in Elon Musk’s (pictured) electric-car firm jumped by 12% on the news that it will sell 100,000 of its vehicles to rental business Hertz. The rally takes Tesla into a select group of firms, including Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, valued at more than $1trn. Tesla is now worth more than the next nine biggest listed carmakers combined, says Chris Bryant on Bloomberg, even though it makes fewer vehicles than many of its more lowly-valued rivals. Tesla’s valuation climbed by $118bn in a single day, “almost double that of Ford Motor’s entire market capitalisation”. Spare a thought for Volvo, which sells roughly as many cars as Tesla. It was obliged to cut the size of its imminent flotation…

Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured) unveiled his second Budget of the year on Wednesday. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) now expects economic output to expand by 6.5% this year, up from the 4% growth predicted in March, and for the economy to return to its pre-Covid-19 level in the new year. It thinks growth will slow to 6% in 2022. The OBR’s expectations for this year mean that the “recovery from the depths of the pandemic is faster than expected”, says BBC News. Unemployment is now also expected to peak at just 5.2%, a vast improvement on the 12% that had been feared in July of last year. That equates to two million fewer people unemployed, the chancellor said. Underlying debt will reach 85.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) this…

The IPO of Pets.com, a business with a plan so flimsy it fell apart on its first contact with reality... The moment in the late 1980s when the price of Japanese assets soared to such extravagant levels that the land beneath the Imperial Palace was worth more than the whole of California... Every bull market has a moment that crystallises just how over-hyped, and over-exuberant, prices have become. We may have just seen this bull market’s final moment of madness: last week’s deal to take Donald Trump’s new social-media network public. A way to hear more from Trump You might have thought you’d heard the last from the 45th president of the United States. Already 75 years old, after a bruising four years in power, and with a, er, how…

Last week I read an article in which a group of professional investors gave their views on whether investing in China is still worth the risks. This is an important question – and one that we’ll be looking at in MoneyWeek next month. Yet when I saw how little many of these investors had committed to China in the first place – maybe 3% or 4% – it didn’t seem worth any of them taking time to worry about the situation. An investment of this size in China or any other country is too small (given the likely returns) for it to make much difference to long-term performance. “Active positions need to be big enough to have a real impact” Assume you invest 95% of your portfolio in investments that…

A better way to soak the landlords Tom Spencer CapX Public investment in infrastructure is “all the rage” given the commitment to “levelling up”, says Tom Spencer. But who reaps the rewards of such investment? Society in general in the form of better transport and amore productive economy. But, on an individual level, those gains are “trifling” compared with what ends up in the pockets of landlords. The Jubilee Line extension in London, for example, cost taxpayers £3.5bn, but property owners along the route saw a £13.5bn uplift in values. There are two ways to claw this loot back. “Tax increment financing”, for example, has proven successful in the US – the government offsets the cost of construction against future revenues from business rates paid by firms operating in the…

conservativehome.com Boris Johnson says shortages of workers as a result of Brexit and the pandemic will boost wages and productivity. “It’s difficult to overstate the shift in thinking necessary for Tories who grew up under Thatcher to believe that supply-side restrictions are good for the economy,” says Ryan Bourne. There is scant evidence that restricting the flow of migrants will result in rising pay overall, even if it does put money in the pockets of a few lucky lorry drivers. “Keyboard economists” say firms should simply raise pay and invest in workers to solve the shortages. But they’re saying that to industries struggling to hire at all. Ashortage of labour will raise wages, all else being equal, in the industries affected. But wages are a business cost, “not just something…

The last few years have seen a surge of interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG)-focused funds. These assess potential investments’ success in cutting carbon emissions and improving racial or social diversity and governance. Two subcategories of the ESG strategy are socially responsible investing (SRI) and impact investing. When it comes to SRI, investors actively favour sectors such as healthcare or renewable energy and avoid businesses such as tobacco firms. By contrast, a broader ESG strategy might hold Royal Dutch Shell in its portfolio because on some screens it scores well for reducing its emissions (not least by being focused on natural gas). Impact investing, meanwhile, focuses on a particular area to achieve positive, measurable outcomes. Running the numbers ESG investing relies heavily on numbers-led screening based on data sets…

Everybody loves a bargain. The investment-trust sector appears to offer one of the best bargains available to investors: trusts whose shares trade at a significant discount to net asset value (NAV), the value of the underlying portfolio. These offer investors the prospect of enhanced returns as discounts to NAV narrow. If you buy a trust on a 15% discount to NAV, and the discount disappears as the price rises to par, you have made 15% before capital gains or dividends on the underlying portfolio of assets. A discount to NAV offers downside protection too, as there is limited scope for the discount to widen further. Looking for trusts trading at an anomalously high discount is eternally popular. But does the strategy actually work? Not as well as people think. Discounts…

One in three small businesses are worried that they will not be able to repay emergency Covid-19 loans. A survey by the consultancy EY of hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises warns that with pandemic support for businesses now largely over, many firms have not recovered sufficiently to begin making repayments. Default rates on Bounce Back loans and the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), under which banks offered billions of pounds in government-guaranteed loans to stricken businesses, have so far been lower than expected. However, business advisers point out that until recently support from government, such as the furloughing scheme, has continued to alleviate firms’ financial worries. Now, however, these programmes have been withdrawn, with many banks also beginning to wind down emergency-assistance schemes. Consider an extension For firms…

Some parents may be able to gift or lend their children a deposit to make sure they can secure a mortgage, but this is not an option for everyone. There are other ways to help family members get on the property ladder, but keep the risks in mind. Equity release Those over 55 are increasingly exploiting the value of their property to help fund children’s own home purchases, say Rupert Jones and Shane Hickey in The Guardian. Between April 2020 and June 2021, those eligible withdrew £830m of equity from their homes, of which £425m of that went into helping family members get on the property ladder, according to equity-release advisory firm Key. There are twice as many equity-release products on the market as there were two years ago, and…

At Charles Stanley we seek out top-quality British growth stocks: highly profitable companies with consistent earnings growth. Over the long term, these businesses should be able to reinvest their earnings and cement dominant market positions. Such companies do come with a valuation premium, but time has shown that these premiums are justified, maintained and often grow in line with the businesses themselves. We do allow ourselves scope to invest in shares that we consider to be misunderstood and therefore mispriced, or in assets that we deem highly specialist or unique. This ensures our portfolio isn’t entirely dominated by one factor. We have not reaped the full benefit of the “reflation/cyclical rally” triggered by the vaccine announcements last November, but take comfort in our performance through the pandemic correction and over…

2007 Quinta do Noval, Colheita, Tawny Port, Portugal £49.99, ocado.com I have been struggling to find retailers for this wine, and it is a source of complete bafflement and exasperation for me because this is, without doubt, the most sensational tawny port I have ever tasted. I first sampled it on 8 April, and I still remember every single facet of its excellence. It ought to feature on every serious wine list in the country, but, as I file this copy, Ocado, while listing the 2005 vintage, has taken delivery of the 2007 vintage, and its wine buyer assures me that it will be updated on its website imminently. The first word I wrote about this vintage tawny in my notes was “paradise”. There have only been seven…

• Musician Travis Barker’s extravagant proposal to reality star Kourtney Kardashian (pictured) looked “gobsmackingly stunning”, says Ulrika Jonsson in The Sun, but “also so utterly manipulated, staged and bordering on phoney”. There was agiant circle of red roses and carefully curated lanterns hosting giant candles (each of which must have cost more than Kris Jenner’s monthly manicure bill), on a sunset beach in Montecito, California. Family were waiting in the wings, phones at the ready, like a rent-a-crowd. Professional photographers and videographers were primed and ready to go, while the bride-to-be was dressed up to the nines. Whatever happened to surprise and humility? In the words of British singer Jessie J, it’s all about the money, money, money. “And to me, it’s nothing short of vulgar.” • The Premier League’s…

What a marvellous time to be alive – with afront-row seat to watch agreat empire stumble and fall! It only happens once every 100 years or so, so pull up achair and enjoy the show! Production at US factories fell by the most in seven months in September, reports Bloomberg, partly as a result of “backlogged supply chains and materials shortages”. Supply chains? What’s happening is much more than just a weak link. Adjusted for inflation, industrial production has been going down for half a century and is only a third of 1968 levels. “Real industrial production has been in decline for half a century” The US enjoyed a fake prosperity for the last 30 years – but only because China picked up the burden of manufacturing and sold goods…

The founder of Babylon Health – which provides the virtual GP service for the National Health Service – is worth $1bn after the firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange this week, says the Times. Ali Parsa, who set up Babylon Health eight years ago, has a stake of around 30% in the company, and stands to receive a further 38.8 million bonus shares if the share price doubles. The town of Fleetwood in Lancashire has received a £41.4m bequest from Doreen Lofthouse, the businesswoman who turned Fisherman’s Friend cough sweets into a global brand, says the BBC. Lofthouse, who died in March, was known as “the mother of Fleetwood” and she and her family – who still control the business – had given millions of pounds to community…

Welltower, a US real-estate investment trust (Reit) specialising in healthcare infrastructure, provides operators of “seniors housing” (independent and assisted-living communities) and rehabilitation centres with capital to expand and run their facilities, says Focus Money. Welltower profits by taking a stake. It has dabbled in more than 100,000 properties in the US, Canada and Britain. The group has ample liquidity on its balance sheet – almost $7bn in late June – to make further investments that will allow it to profit from an ageing population. Fund giants Vanguard and BlackRock each hold a 10% stake, while the stock is also a reliable provider of income. It currently yields 2.8%.…

HSBC’s “pivot to Asia” seems to be going smoothly, says Rochelle Toplensky in The Wall Street Journal. The bank is headquartered in London, but today draws more than half of its profit from Asia. That figure should grow over the next five years as it invests $6bn in expanding its Asian wealth-management arm and other operations in the region. The latest results are encouraging too. Third quarter pre-tax profit rose by 74% year-on-year to $5.4bn. HSBC set aside $7.6bn during the first three quarters of 2020 as it prepared for a wave of loan defaults. In the event, the economy has surprised on the upside, allowing the bank to cut the bad-debt provisions by $659m. Management has used the extra cash to help fund a $2bn share buyback scheme. The…

The government insisted last week that “plan-B” measures – mask mandates and work-from-home orders and the like–did not seem likely even as it nervously eyed rising Covid-19 cases. This week a civil servant revealed that “plan C” – bans on household mixing, for example – was also under discussion, even as health minister Edward Argar denied it, reports The Guardian. The government has come under pressure from scientific advisers to act ahead of winter, but the “mood music” in the halls of power is now very different from what it was this time last year, says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. Then, the Cabinet Office was run by Michael Gove, one of the most pro-lockdown ministers, who, with Matt Hancock as health secretary, sought to “amplify Sage worst-case scenarios” to…

Cryptocurrency start-up Worldcoin wants your eyes. It has offered more than 100,000 people iris-scanning in exchange for the firm’s digital token, says Miles Kruppa for the Financial Times. Investors are encouraged to scan their eyes using hardware devices called “orbs”, which then produce a unique code allowing free access to the Worldcoin cryptocurrency. The iris-scanning is designed to stop people claiming multiple rounds of free coins, co-founder Alex Blania has said. The firm also offers bonus coins to those who can convince other people individuals to join. Around 30 orbs are currently being used on four continents, and the firm’s longer-term aim is to distribute 4,000 orbs worldwide. The group has already scanned 130,000 people. Worldcoin has raised $25m in capital and plans to reach one billion users by 2023.…

• A little over three-quarters of shareholders in the London Stock Exchange Group have agreed to hike the annual salary of chief executive David Schwimmer (pictured) by a quarter to £1m in light of the exchange’s $27bn takeover of data firm Refinitv in January, says Reuters. But given that 23% of investors dissented, the board said it would consult with shareholders further. Schwimmer earned £6.9m in total last year, up from £2.5m in 2019. • Fashion house Burberry has appointed Jonathan Akeroyd as its next CEO from April next year in a deal that includes a £6m “golden hello” spread over four years to cover the loss of bonus and share awards for leaving his position as the boss of rival firm Versace, says The Guardian. His pay package is…

Index funds (also known as passive or tracker funds) aim to track the performance of a particular index, such as the FTSE 100 or S&P 500. The funds may hold all, or a representative sample, of the stocks in the underlying index (physical replication), or replicate the performance of the index by buying derivatives (synthetic replication). The aim is to minimise tracking difference (the gap between the performance of the index and the fund). Since the goal of an index fund is to match the index, significant outperformance is as concerning as significant underperformance (even if it whether it would ever succeed, arguing that people wouldn’t be satisfied with merely matching the market, but the concept caught on. The big advantage of passive investing is cost: a FTSE 100 index…

“As I think George Harrison once said: ‘Keep the fame, I’ll take the money!’” Singer Don McLean (pictured), quoted in The Daily Telegraph “I try to earn as much money as I can. If I could work overnight in a petrol station and get another couple of hundred quid and do without sleep, I would. That’s just the work ethic I have.” BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Stephen Nolan, who earns more than £405,000 a year, quoted in The Sunday Times “It’s not a wealth tax, but a tax on unrealised capital gains of exceptionally wealthy individuals.” Janet Yellen, US treasury secretary, clarifies her plans for a new wealth tax, quoted in The Hill “Because it was the only book out there about me, people would bring it for me…

thecritic.co.uk “Say what you like about King Louis XVI of France, but when they led him to the guillotine, he probably wasn’t spluttering that he’d paid into the Ancien Régime all his life,” says Henry Hill. Today’s electorally dominant classes are not likely to be led to justice by an uprising of the oppressed, but we are always hearing their spluttering whenever politicians dare suggest more houses need to be built. Even Prince Charles, whose new developments might be expected to please those who insist they have nothing against housing developments if only they were tastefully designed, is faced with a mob of comfortable home-owners complaining about the “monstrosity” being built on their doorsteps. Meanwhile, the government is beating a retreat on its proposed reforms to the planning system. You…

Shares in Macy’s, the New York-based department store chain, jumped by nearly 18% this week after activist investor Jana Partners took a stake in the company and advocated hiving off the “booming” online business, which has about $8bn in annual revenue, says Sergei Klebnikov on Forbes. The move comes after one of Macy’s biggest competitors, Saks Fifth Avenue, announced in March that it would be spinning off saks.com, which has around $1bn in annual sales, into a separate entity. Macy’s, which also owns the luxury Bloomingdale’s brand, was affected by closures during the pandemic, but has seen “impressive” growth in its online business over the last few years. Digital sales jumped by 23.7% last year.…

Most business owners did not have to give personal guarantees when applying for Covid-19 financial support through the government-backed Bounce Back and CBILS programme. Lenders were barred from demanding such guarantees, which give them the right, in the event of a default, to go after borrowers’ personal wealth rather than simply their business’s assets – other than for the largest loans. However, as businesses begin to refinance, personal guarantees are once again becoming more common, prompting calls for more business owners to consider taking out personal-guarantee insurance. This cover pays out in the event that the business gets into trouble on a loan where the directors have offered a personal guarantee; rather than the bank receiving redress from the directors, the insurer steps in to pay some, or all, of…

With interest rates well below inflation, it is difficult to find deposit accounts offering over 0.4%. I have therefore previously highlighted several large, stable companies with modest dividend yields just above deposit-account returns, but with reasonable growth prospects. This month I am recommending a smaller company with a unique business model that enables it to offer a much higher yield with moderate risk. The company is Duke Royalty (Aim: DUKE), which lends companies money in return for a royalty on future sales. It provides finance at a lower cost than private equity and does not take control away from the owners, as private-equity lenders do. “Typical clients are well-established, profitable, medium-sized firms” Duke typically offers between £5m and £20m and can give a decision on making the money available in…

Loungers (Aim: LGRS) operates 150 cafes and restaurants across the UK, including the Cosy Club and Lounge brands. The share price jumped after a trading update for the half-year to 3 October. The firm has performed strongly since people began eating out again in late May. Like-for-like sale growth from May to October was 27% higher than in the same period in 2019. Since the start of its financial year in May the company has opened 13 new sites, and another ten are planned in the next six months. The shares have jumped by 104% over the last 12 months.…

Thérèse Humbert was born Thérèse Daurignac in Aussonne, France, in 1856. After her mother, a shopkeeper, died in 1871, she was brought up by her father, who falsely claimed that he was the heir to a great fortune. During her teens she invented a similar tale to persuade local tradesman to let her buy goods on credit, until she and the rest of her family were forced to flee to Toulouse. In Toulouse she used claims of another inheritance (from a “Mademoiselle de Marcotte”) to persuade Frédéric Humbert, the son of the mayor of Toulouse, to marry her. What was the scam? Frédéric’s earnings and support from Thérèse’s father-in-law proved insufficient to cover her spending. Facing mounting debts and increasing scepticism about “Mademoiselle de Marcotte”, she started claiming that she…

£78.54 The average size of withdrawals from cash machines, up from £66.99 before the pandemic, according to cash machine network Link. However, Britons are using the outlets 40% less often and, over an average month, are taking out £44 less than in 2019. $57bn The value of the gold, silver, copper and palladium that is discarded inside old mobile phones and laptops every year, according to a conservative estimate from the Royal Mint. The Mint has teamed up with Canadian company Excir to recover these metals. £1,090 The amount that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declined to pay to keep a bike, designed in Union Jack colours by the US State Department, and given to him at the G7 meeting in Cornwall this year, says The Times. Ministers have to…