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“ESG’s apparent outperformance has only happened since around 2013” Ask someone if they approve of something nice-sounding and they will almost always say “yes”. So it is with environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Survey after survey tells us that most people are mad for it. They want to invest in line with their values. They want to know the companies they invest in care about their staff, communities, suppliers, customers and the climate. They consider (they say) ESG whenever they choose an investment. But here’s the problem (or the problem for ESGlabelled funds anyway): investors consider ESG, but lots of other things matter too. A survey from the Association of Investment Companies shows that, given five criteria by which to judge an investment (performance, cost, ESG factors, the fund…

PC Matthew Littlefair has been jailed for 27 months and must repay £149,764 after fraudulently claiming injury expenses and sick pay, says The Guardian. The police officer was involved in a minor car crash and pretended to suffer chronic pain afterwards, only to be found exercising and playing with his children while off work by a covert surveillance team. Executive Sharon Blades has been ordered to pay £120,000 in compensation to ex-financier and partner Chris Rowland for keeping him out of their holiday home, says The Times. Blades had banned Rowland from visiting their shared £1.6m mansion in Banbury for six years after discovering he was having an affair.…

Gold prices have climbed to a two-month high of $1,825/oz. Despite the recent uptick gold is still 10% below its all-time high of summer 2020. As Myra Saefong notes in Barron’s, 2021 is set to be the metal’s first losing year since 2018. Its recent “drubbing” is perplexing, says John Authers on Bloomberg. Conditions over the last year should have boosted gold, which does best at times of high inflation (check) and monetary debasement (check). Instead, gold-mining stocks have been the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500 over the last year. Still, something might be about to shift. The ratio of US stocks to gold is running at a 16-year high, more proof, if any were needed, that American stocks are historically overpriced. Gold bulls had been betting on widespread…

British households ran up a collective £180bn (£6,474 per household) in “excess savings” – the amount saved above normal levels – during the pandemic, says Jill Treanor in The Sunday Times. That cash pile was supposed to “power” a consumer boom. Yet consumers’ confidence is wavering. Households saved £9.4bn in September, almost twice the pre-pandemic monthly average. Some point to uncertainty asinflation bites and furlough winds down. Lower-income households are focusing on paying down debt. The virus may also have permanently made people less likely to splurge: perhaps, “having started saving at afaster rate, households have... got into the habit of it”, says Simon French of Panmure Gordon.…

Swiss skincare specialist Galderma is mulling a $22bn initial public offering (IPO) in the first half of 2022, says Sam Jones in the Financial Times. CEO Flemming Ornskov says the company has brought forward its plan to list following two years of strong growth thanks to the combined effects of social media and the pandemic, which have “turbocharged” the market for specialist skincare and non-invasive procedures. Galderma was “spun out” of Nestlé in 2019 and subsequently bought for $10bn by a consortium led by equity house EQT. Last year the company reported $3bn in sales and it is pencilling in $3.5bn this year.…

Tesla’s shares have “slipped into reverse” after Elon Musk (pictured) said he would heed a Twitter poll in favour of his selling 10% of his stake in the electric carmaker, says Dominic Walsh in The Times. The stake is worth $20bn. Musk, the “world’s richest man”, set up the poll amid “heightened debate” around US tax policy, arguing that selling stock is the “only way” he can pay taxes because “he does not receive a cash salary or bonus”. This isn’t the first time that Musk’s tweets have hit Tesla’s share price, says Antony Currie on Breakingviews. Three years ago he caused a “fiasco” by claiming on Twitter that “he was considering taking Tesla private and had funding secured”. In the end no deal materialised and the Securities and Exchange…

• Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (pictured) sold stock in the online retail and web services giant worth $1.3bn last Friday, says Bloomberg. The trade came on top of sales worth around $2bn from earlier in the week, under aprearranged plan to sell a total of 391,550 shares, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Bezos, the world’s second-richest person, worth $202.4bn, has sold a combined $9.9bn worth of Amazon shares so far this year to fund his philanthropy and rocket company Blue Origin. • Mining giant Anglo American has promoted Duncan Wanblad to the role of CEO, taking over from Mark Cutifani, who is set to retire next April after leading the business for nearly a decade, says Reuters. Wanblad, a 54-year-old South African, emerged as one…

Indices such as the FTSE 100 play a huge role in investment. They are used for monitoring the performance of amarket, for providing a benchmark for a tracker fund to replicate and as a reference when analysing a fund manager’s returns. The rapid growth of tracker funds, combined with a greater focus on portfolio analytics, means that compiling indices is now big business. Providers charge licensing fees to fund firms to use their benchmarks, so owning famous indices that are in high demand for index funds can be very profitable. MSCI, FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones are the three leading providers, accounting for about 70% of the industry in 2020. All three publish a huge number of global, regional and country indices, many of which are further broken down…

“[Without money] you’ve got no self-respect. You’re always on the back foot, so you can’t even have normal relationships. Even friendships, because you can’t afford to meet for a coffee.” Comedian Daisy May Cooper (pictured), quoted in The Guardian “I always thought they were in favour of self-made people – I’m a good example of a small businessman! You think they’d be supportive… [it’s] clearly about my politics. But if I lived in a cave, they’d still complain about me. ‘That cave-dweller, who does he think he is, he never has a good time, look at him.’” Leftist singer Billy Bragg on the Daily Mail’s criticism of his making money from the sale of his house, quoted in The Guardian “I’m not that rich, but Ido have enough. I have…

theguardian.com Millions of people around the world have quit their jobs or are planing to, says Emma Beddington. That has made staff “retention” a buzzword among bosses and managers. That’s no bad thing. It’s giving some deserving folk a pay rise, or making their lives easier or more enjoyable, and reminding the powers-that-be that they need their workers as much as they need them. What can bosses offer to keep staff sweet? Good pay and conditions are the place to start – there’s no point providing coffee machines and meditation classes until the staff have money and free time. Flexibility is important too –especially for working mothers. “If you don’t let people look after their loved ones, they will not want – indeed, will not be able – to work…

Activist investor Third Point has bought a stake in Richemont, the Swiss luxury group that owns watch and jewellery brands Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, says Leila Abboud in the Financial Times. It has yet to say what it hopes to achieve. Any activist campaign “would have to contend with powerful chair Johann Rupert”, who controls 50% of the voting rights thanks to a dual-class share structure despite only owning 9.1% of the capital. Critics note that Richemont has lagged behind competitors during the decade-long boom for the luxury industry, which has been powered by Chinese consumers. Its market value has risen by 79% over the last five years, but rivals LVMH and Hermès have seen theirs quadruple.…

Accountants have nicknamed the annual investment allowance (AIA) the “yo-yo tax” because it has moved up and down so often. Last month’s budget was no exception. Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that rather than falling to £200,000 a year from January as previously expected, the AIA will now be maintained at £1m until 31 March 2023. The higher AIA now comes to an end on the same day as the “super-deduction”, which the chancellor introduced earlier this year. The two schemes, both designed to encourage businesses to invest more, will now operate in tandem for the next 15 months or so. The schemes work in a similar way, but with subtle differences, so it is important for businesses to work out how to make the best of them. The basic idea…

In recent years we have become very familiar with climate change and how it affects our lives and investments. Given the existential threat it poses, we tend to focus on the risks and costs: the risk of rising temperatures, the cost of avoiding disaster. These risks and costs are an important part of assessing which companies make promising long-term investments. Firms with strong emissions-reduction policies stay ahead of regulators, for instance; those with close supply-chain relationships are better equipped to manage the impact of more volatile weather. The other global emergency “More than 70% of cancer drugs are sourced from natural compounds” However, this approach could result in investors missing a wealth of opportunities. Climate change is one of two closely connected global emergencies. The other is the loss of…

The Dealmaker Lessons from a Life in Private Equity Guy Hands Random House Business, £20 Business books tend to follow a tried-and-tested formula. The first chapters contain anecdotes from childhood and early life. This is then followed by a long list of business deals. The book then concludes with a few pages about the tycoon’s philanthropic work and perhaps their views on the big issues of the day. Guy Hands’s memoir follows suit, but in all other ways is very far from being the typical business book destined to end up forgotten shortly after publication. It grips the reader from the first page. One for the reading list In part this is because Hands is no conventional financier. Although dyslexic, he talked himself into a place at Oxford University while…

• I’m surprised Hollyoaks actress Sarah Jayne Dunn (pictured) has been dropped after refusing to remove photos from adult subscription site OnlyFans, says Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. Dunn said posting her “sexier, racier” photos was “about empowerment and confidence”, but the teenage TV soap said the photos were not in line with its target audience. While it’s true OnlyFans isn’t exactly wholesome, neither are some of the soap’s storylines. And the producers didn’t mind when Dunn was appearing in lads’ mags and the Hollyoaks calendars. “I guess it’s OK if they are making the money, but not if she is. Although I am amazed she can earn more from OnlyFans, at up to £7,000 a week, than from Hollyoaks. In my day, to earn that you would…

£6.6bn The combined amount that Britons spent on items such as gym gear and musical instruments to see them through the pandemic and no longer use, according to insurer Aviva. Almost half of respondents regretted buying video-gaming kit. $4m How much 800 items that had belonged to the late British singer Amy Winehouse raised in total with California-based Julien’s Auctions last weekend. Proceeds are going to a foundation set up by her parents to help young people struggling with addiction. £5m The asking price for Brimpts Mead Estate, comprising a house, two cottages and a bank of the river Dart within nine acres of Dartmoor National Park, in Devon. Prince Charles, who until 1993 owned the land, has retained the right to fish there with 24 hours’ notice. $10m The…

The popularity of Shiba Inu coin, a cryptocurrency which was launched as a joke version of Dogecoin – itself a joke cryptocurrency, or “memecoin” – is now encouraging crypto owners to buy the Japanese hunting dog breed (pictured) the coin is named after, says Insider. The coins have been endorsed by tech-billionaire Elon Musk, whose tweets regarding both the breed and the currency set off a significant run for the coin, with purchases by so-called “crypto whales” – investors who own large amounts of cryptocurrency – driving the price up by around 800% in October alone. Pennsylvanian pet business Rodel Shibas is seeing 150 to 200 inquiries a month about buying a Shiba Inu (which are apparently stubborn and not ideal family pets), says Bloomberg. One owner said he’d spent…

“The Bank of England has blinked,” says Patrick Hosking in The Times. Despite its own forecasts that inflation will hit 5% next April, the Bank last week again opted to hold British interest rates at a “three-centuries low of 0.1%”. Quantitative easing (QE) will also continue. Bad communication The decision came as a shock to financial markets, which had been almost certain that a small interest-rate increase to 0.25% was coming. The pound had its worst week since August, while UK government bonds rallied as yields fell. Bank governor Andrew Bailey rejected accusations that the Bank had “bottled it”, saying that monetary policymakers are waiting for data on the impact of the end of the furlough scheme before acting. Investors should instead get used to the idea that rates are…

“The oil majors’ capital investment as a percentage of sales... looks set to come in at its lowest level since 2005... spending at BP, Chevron... ENI, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and TotalEnergies is expected... to represent just 6.3% of sales this year [compared with] the 13.1% peak of 2015... Big Oil is not drilling... with anything like its old vigour... Oil executives will think back to the price collapses of 2008-2009, 2014-2015 and 2020 and... be wary of taking for granted the current resurgence in oil (and gas) prices... US shale drillers are still burdened by substantial debts and may be preferring to reduce their liabilities... Political opposition to new drilling is becoming ever fiercer... banks... become ever more reluctant to provide funds to [develop] new fields... [oil] supply may…

Five to buy Foresight Sustainable Forestry The Mail on Sunday Foresight Sustainable Forestry Company will be key to the government’s plan to plant trees across 75,000 acres a year to help absorb carbon dioxide, while providing investors with annual returns of at least 5% above inflation. The group will float on the London Stock Exchange later this month and aims to raise up to £200m at £1 a share. Just 13% of the UK is forested, so there is ample scope for growth; timber prices have grown at a rate of 6% a year, a trend expected to continue. The company will initially generate revenue from timber sales. IWG The Sunday Times The shared-officer provider has “breathed asigh of relief” at the return to work. IWG owns shared-office space provider…

• Last year the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ordered JD Sports to sell off Footasylum on competition grounds, says Lex in the FT. No wonder, then, that reports of a covert “car-park chat” between the bosses of the two firms has“[raised] eyebrows”. But this is an “outsized to-do” over a firm “with a 5% market share”. If the CMA is worried about shoes and pricing power it should scrutinise suppliers such as Adidas. Still, JD Sports had better comply. After all, with Footasylum’s sales falling by 7% last year, it isn’t much of a prize. • GSK’s CEO Emma Walmsley has hardly covered herself in glory, says Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. The stock has slid during her four-year tenure. But she has made a plan to split…

The Polish government and Brussels are both accusing Belarus of “intentionally trying to create a new migrant crisis in Europe”, says The New York Times. Western officials claim that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is luring asylum seekers from the Middle East into his country then sending them to the EU’s borders in retaliation for sanctions imposed after last year’s rigged election. The Polish government has reacted by massing troops on its border. Belarus insists it is only trying to help the refugees, but the reality is that “Europe’s rogue state” is using desperate people as a weapon, says The Times. It’s not the first sign of “gangster” behaviour. Earlier this year the regime forced a Ryanair flight passing through its airspace to land, enabling it to arrest a journalist on…

Jes Staley, who has resigned as CEO of Barclays in the wake of an investigation into his links with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, is in line for bonus payouts worth up to £22.5m from the bank, says Matt Oliver in The Daily Telegraph. The banker is being treated as a “good leaver” by the board, and as such stands to receive 11.4 million shares in Barclays, provided the bank hits its targets in the coming years, according to the annual report. He is also guaranteed a £2.5m payoff from Barclays. His former lieutenant, CS Venkatakrishnan, widely known as Venkat, has been promoted from head of global markets to replace him as CEO. Venkat will receive £2.7m in fixed pay (more than his predecessor), a maximum bonus of 93% of that…

The rebound in growth stocks that began in June “was certainly a disappointment to those of us positioned to benefit from a resurgence in cheaper stocks”, says Ben Inker (pictured) of value-focused asset manager GMO. But it wasn’t much of a surprise. “There were similar moves in the two greatest periods of outperformance of value in my lifetime.” From 1973 to 1977, US large-cap value beat growth by 94% and from 2000-2002 value beat growth by 114% – yet those periods also included six of the ten best months for growth (relative to value) in the past 50 years. Investors must expect these reversals in favour of growth, even if we head into a phase where value finally outperforms. The main reason to back value now isn’t tailwinds from economic…

aier.org The shift to cleaner energy will create lots of new jobs, it is said. But that is a cost, not a benefit, says James Hanley. This is an easy concept to understand. If you want repairs done on your house, paying for the labour is a cost to you, not a benefit. If you decide to do the job yourself, then the cost is what you have given up in order to do it, whether that was other work or just enjoying leisure time. The same principle obviously applies to businesses, too. But aren’t jobs a benefit to those who have them? No. The income you derive from your job isthe benefit. The work is a cost. That’s why our idea of heaven is an existence where our needs…

■ The Vision Fund belonging to Softbank, the Japanese conglomerate, is the world’s biggest investor in technology. It has reported a record loss owing to the plunging value of holdings including ride-sharing platform firm Didi: Beijing’s recent crackdown on the tech sector dragged stocks down, says Pavel Alpeyev on Bloomberg. The Vision Fund’s loss for the three months to the end of September was ¥825.1bn (£5.4bn). Softbank made an overall loss of ¥397.9 bn (£2.6bn). The fund “has been a volatile contributor of profit and loss” since it was founded in 2017. Its first slump came in 2019 after it invested in Uber, which suffered a lacklustre initial public offering (IPO); it also backed office-space provider WeWork, which collapsed before it could float. The damage has been compounded by the…

• Good news for entrepreneurs and would-be small business owners. The Start Up Loans Scheme has won sufficient additional government backing to run until March 2022 – with funding in place for 10,000 loans – and a pledge of further support in next year’s spending review. Administered by the British Business Bank, the scheme offers low-cost loans of up to £25,000 costing 6% ayear, well below what a bank would charge, for those setting up abusiness. Borrowers also get a year’s free mentoring, with the loans repayable over terms of one to five years. • Thousands of small companies that feel they have been badly treated by their bank over the past two decades could have their cases investigated by an independent complaints service – but only if they meet…

Online-gambling software group Playtech (LSE: PTEC) saw its shares surge by over 50% two weeks ago – they have gained 105% in a year – after it agreed to a £2.7bn takeover by Australian slot-machine maker Aristocrat Leisure, says Jyoti Mann in the Financial Times. The deal will raise Aristocrat’s share of the US online sports-betting market; US rules governing online gambling have been relaxed. The purchase price represented a 58% premium to the mid-October share price. The deal allows Playtech to form alliances with new partners and boost its technological capabilities.…

Joseph Hunton was born around 1770 in Norfolk. He worked as a clothes-seller in Great Yarmouth, marrying Fulliretta Sewell in 1806, who had a fortune of around £30,000. In 1821 he moved to Lea Hall in Leyton, then a village near London, popular with merchants and bankers who worked in the City of London. He set up a shop in Bishopsgate, working as a drysalter (someone who dealt in salts and chemicals). He also went into partnership with Dickson & Co., which ran a warehouse in Ironmonger Lane, and started speculating in the stock and bond markets. What was the scam? Hunton was not a successful speculator and lost alot of money, especially in Spanish bonds. This wiped out his fortune and caused him to run up debts. To keep…

The Cult of We Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell Mudlark, £20 Few companies have risen – and then fallen – as quickly as WeWork, says Tom Knowles in The Times. Thanks to the “evident charm” of its CEO, Adam Neumann, the property company took advantage of investors’ enthusiasm for finding the next Facebook or Twitter to become “one of the most highly valued US start-ups of all time”, before seeing its fortunes “unravel so rapidly that bosses struggled to lay off staff because they couldn’t afford the severance packages”. In The Cult of We, Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell attempt to find a new angle on a company that has already been well covered in TV documentaries, podcasts and other books. In order to bring “fresh insight” to one of…

As if rising sea levels and falling vaccine protection weren’t enough to worry about, along comes the fear du jour: “supply-chain disruptions”. As the shelves empty, the question is being asked – will Christmas be cancelled again? “As complexity grows, so does the need for sound money” Until this year, we had never heard of supply-chain disruptions. For more than 2,000 years, supply-chain disruptions were scarcely mentioned. Now they are being blamed for everything from empty shelves to the price of milk. Why? Adam Smith illustrated the complexity of the division of labour in 18th-century England by describing a pin factory. More than 200 years later, the world economy is far more complicated than Smith could have imagined. One group mines and refines the silicon. Another – chemists, engineers, metallurgists,…

A Californian resident has paid off his student loan with the money saved from eating exclusively at a local amusement park for seven years, says The Times. The man paid $150 a year for an annual entrance pass to Six Flags Magic Mountain (pictured), then ate two meals a day for free. In all, he has had more than 2,000 meals there since 2014. The money he saved on food came to more than the average US student loan of $29,927. A Taiwanese maths teacher has been uploading video tutorials to adult streaming site Pornhub to reach more students, says The New York Post. Chang Hsu saw the move as a way to sidestep competition on education platforms, and has racked up over 1.9 million views. He reportedly makes almost…

Moscow’s latest lockdown will be more good news for Russian e-commerce group Ozon Holdings, says Der Aktionär. It is growing rapidly thanks to investment in its network of distribution centres and its platform, where it is encouraging third-party sellers to sign up for afee. New shoppers keep coming: last spring 18 million people were using Ozon; now the figure is 20 million. Sales are expected to have grown by 147% quarter-on-quarter between July and September. Only 8% of retail sales take place online in Russia, compared with 25% in Germany, so there is ample scope for further growth. Ozon has yet to make a profit, but looks good value on just four times sales.…

The reported comments from the head of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, that Covid-19 hospital admissions were 14 times higher than this time in 2020, are so “patently absurd” that they should “never have been allowed to stand”, says Christopher Snowdon on CapX. As it turned out, she appears to have picked up on earlier comments by NHS national medical director Stephen Powis, omitting the crucial words, “in September”. We may never find out whether Pritchard was incompetent or mendacious, but “neither trait is ideal for someone who runs a health service”. As for the headlines, “NHS England chief innumeracy shocker” would have been more appropriate. Case rates have actually been falling for more than a fortnight, says Patrick O’Flynn in The Daily Telegraph. As Medical News Today reports, nearly 46…

With the 2022 mid-term elections in the United States now less than a year away, an increasing number of markets are on offer. Traditional bookmakers such as Ladbrokes have markets on who will win control of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, the number of Republican seats in the Senate, as well as on next year’s gubernatorial elections in New York and Texas. Betting exchange Betfair has markets on control of the House and the Senate. The company with the biggest range of markets is rival betting exchange Smarkets. It has markets on control of the Senate and House, as well as on the identity of the next speaker of the House of Representatives, and the gubernatorial contests in Texas and Florida. You can also bet on the individual…

Anyone walking down the high street over the last few years can hardly fail to have noticed Metro. The upstart brought some much needed pizzazz to the dull world of banks, redesigning its branches to look fresh, modern and vibrant instead of something that might have looked a little dowdy in 1955. That was nice in its own way, but it hasn’t proved a great business model. Metro only has 1.7 million account holders. Hardly anyone ever goes into a branch any more, so it doesn’t make much difference whether the layout is nice or not. And it is very, very hard to persuade people to switch their accounts. Metro’s shares remain a long way below the 400p they were priced at when the firm listed in 2016. Enter private-equity…

On 9 November 2020, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine for Covid-19 was more effective than almost anybody had hoped, with more than 90% protection against the virus. The news sparked a strong rally in global stockmarkets. Many sectors such as airlines and retail that had been crushed by the closure of the global economy surged on hopes that the world would return to normal, as did broader groupings such as emerging markets and value stocks. One year on, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and others have met all reasonable expectations. The world has partially reopened, even if a lot of government policies remain clearly irrational and panicky. Yet the outcome for markets hasn’t been as expected. Some much-touted bets have turned out poorly, while some huge returns have come from…

The ugly reality of high taxes Lionel Shriver The Times The proposed US “billionaires’ tax” is dead, yet the principle behind it may “rear its ugly head again”, perhaps even in Britain, says Lionel Shriver. The idea was to tax “unrealised gains” – shares, in this instance, but it could easily have been extended to other assets such as art. Since there are only 724 billionaires in the US, the Democrats figured the trade-off was worth it. However, taxation of unrealised gains (effectively a wealth tax) would “upend akeystone of the tax code”, and much as we may resent billionaires, it’s in everyone’s interest to preserve certain principles since, in time, they could be applied “willy-nilly”, as happened with the 1969 Alternative Minimum Tax. In Britain, “desperate” chancellors are likely…

capx.co Half the money spent on advertising is wasted – we just don’t know which half. That adage has long defined the world of marketing, says Richard Walker. But the arrival of Big Tech changed all that – now, all-powerful companies such as Google and Facebook track our every movement and then place advertisements we’ll find irresistible. Big Tech knows us better than we know ourselves. Right? Wrong. It suits Big Tech if that is what is believed, since it makes much of its cash from selling advertising space. Facebook’s advertising revenue in the second quarter of this year was $28.5bn. Google, the biggest advertising channel in the world, made revenues in 2020 of $182.5bn, more than 80% of which came from advertisements. Yet the promise of advertising “attribution” –that…

The NHS is creaking. A record 5.6 million people are on waiting lists for treatment in England, anumber that could hit 14 million in a year, says Kate Hughes in The Independent. Faced with long waiting times, more people are going private. Only 13% of Britons had private medical insurance (PMI) before the pandemic, but a “stampede” among younger buyers has taken the average age of those taking out policies down from 40 to just 33 over the past year. Medical insurance works like any other insurance policy, says Nick Green of unbiased.co.uk. “You pay a monthly premium… and claim on your insurance if you need treatment.” Those with PMI can enjoy speedier referrals, may get access to specialist drugs not available on the NHS and can enjoy other perks…

Vast Resources (Aim: VAST), which mines commodities ranging from gold and copper to diamonds and lead, saw its share price drop late last month after the company said it hoped to raise £1.4m through a share placing. It sold 54 million shares at 2.5p, a 35% discount to its price that week. The company also said plans for increased production at its Baita Plai mine in Romania had been delayed owing to labour shortages, supply-chain difficulties and virus-prevention measures, says Proactive Investors. The firm hopes the mine will be profitable by the end of 2021. The stock has lost 85% in 12 months.…

£18.99, available nationwide in Aldi It is probably bad form to quote one’s own previously published work in this column, but here we go. To set the scene, back in April 2016 I tasted this wine out of barrel in preparation for my annual Bordeaux En Primeur Report. This is what I wrote: “There are a few more members of the Laforge orchestra, in terms of flavour complexity, this year, and there is also more tannin here than I have seen before. This means it is a slightly bigger wine than expected and one that needs a few years before one can drink it. With a dark tone and a lovely luxurious nose, this is a black fruit compote of a wine, and there are even touches of mint here…

“Lady Manners was thrown a circus-themed 18th birthday party that featured live camels and was covered by Tatler magazine” Even strong supporters of law and order such as myself should accept the value in acknowledging that, as Shakespeare put it, “the quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”. Whether Lady Eliza Manners is deserving of such a heavenly downpour, however, seems doubtful. Lady Manners managed to persuade a court to halve her fine for speeding from £100 to £50 after she pleaded for special treatment due to “financial hardship”, says Tristan Kirk in the Evening Standard. Lady Manners’ problems began when a speed camera snapped her driving at 47mph in a 40mph zone in Brentford in March, says Kirk. As a result, she…