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Car-repair firm owner Miles Walker is facing a $36,971 lawsuit from the US Department of Labour (DoL) after dumping 91,500 oil-covered pennies on a former employee’s driveway, says The New York Times. After Andreas Flaten complained that he hadn’t received his final paycheque of $915, Walker left the sticky mess outside his house. The stunt came to the attention of the DoL, which is now suing Walker over back wages and damages for Flaten and eight other employees. Meghan Markle (pictured), the Duchess of Sussex, has been awarded just £1 in damages after winning her case against The Mail on Sunday for invasion of privacy, says The Guardian. A typical award would be £75,000-£125,000. The paper will also pay an unspecified sum for infringing copyright by publishing parts of a…

Bitcoin prices dipped below $40,000 on Monday, the cryptocurrency’s lowest level since September last year and down from over $67,000 two months ago. The latest wobble began after the release of December’s Federal Reserve minutes, says Daren Fonda in Barron’s. US policymakers suggested that they might raise interest rates “sooner, or at a faster pace, than participants had earlier anticipated”. Bitcoin has also been caught up in the turmoil in Kazakhstan. The country is the second-biggest centre for bitcoin “mining”, which essentially involves computers completing mathematical puzzles in order to create new bitcoin. Kazakh authorities have cut internet access in order to regain control, says Aurore Gayte for Numerama. This sent the hashrate – a measure of the computing power used by the bitcoin network – down by around 13%.…

The world’s best-performing stockmarket in 2021 was Mongolia, says Nikkei Asia. The MSE Top 20 benchmark gained 132.7% last year, the best in the world and easily beating other Asian markets. Commodity investors know Mongolia for its “ample deposits of coal, copper and gold”, but the local market is more unfamiliar; major index providers don’t even classify Mongolia as a “frontier market”. Foreign investors accounted for just 1.3% of trades during the third quarter. The rally has instead been driven by local money. Last year brought lockdowns and an election campaign, prompting the government “to dole out aid to citizens, including utility bill waivers and cash handouts”. Many have opted to put the extra income into stocks.…

More companies went public in 2021 than in the whole of 2020 and 2019 combined, says the Evening Standard, and the 2022 pipeline is strong. Digital banks Monzo and Starling have “been the focus of much IPO [initial public offering] chatter”, though neither listing is currently confirmed. Burger King’s UK arm is also said to be floating as soon as this spring, seeking a valuation of £600m. Brewdog, the UK’s biggest craft beer maker, originally planned to list in 2020 and though it could wait until 2023, “its army of small investors” is patiently waiting. Online fashion-to-sofa retailer Very Group is also said to be making plans, as well as e-scooter startup Voi Technology, airline Virgin Atlantic, and roof-tiling firm Marley.…

Take-Two Interactive, the video-games group behind the Grand Theft Auto series, has agreed to spend the equivalent of $12.7bn (£9.3bn) to buy Zynga, the specialist mobile developer that made FarmVille and Words with Friends, says Callum Jones in The Times. Shareholders will get $9.86 per share — $3.50 in cash and $6.36 of stock, which amounts to a 64% premium on Zynga’s previous closing price. The deal isn’t simply about Zynga’s existing titles: Take-Two will acquire expertise in building hugely popular free-to-play mobile titles that it can use to “make new hit games based on its own properties”, says Jay Peters on The Verge. Developers from across the industry have already “been bringing big franchises to mobile and earning a lot of money doing so”. Call of Duty: Mobile “reportedly…

Michael Gove’s promise on Monday, four and a half years after the Grenfell Tower fire, that no person living in a building higher than 11 metres will be “forced to pay” for dangerous cladding to be removed, was “long overdue”, says Lucie Heath in The Guardian. Instead, the £4bn bill will fall to developers who have until March to sign up to a deal to make annual contributions to cover the costs. Those who fail to do so are being “threatened with public contract bans, planning restrictions and legal action”. While this is a“huge victory” for leaseholders, the “fight is not over”. The plan only appears to cover the cost of cladding replacement, but this is just a“small fraction of the building safety work required”. Additionally, it focuses on developers,…

Taiwan stepped up its financial pledges to Lithuania with a $1bn credit fund to “bolster the Baltic nation” in its showdown with Beijing, says Stuart Lau for Politico. The move came just days after Taipei announced a $200m fund to invest in strategic sectors in Lithuania, which is facing a full trade embargo from Beijing in retaliation for Lithuania’s allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in the capital, under its own name rather than that of Taipei, which China sees asundermining its “one China policy”. This isn’t the first time China has tried to bully countries through trade restrictions, says Elisabeth Braw in The Wall Street Journal. Previous trade sanctions, however, such as its suspending salmon imports from Norway after a Chinese dissident was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,…

Last Friday at 9am, the average FTSE 100 chief executive had earned as much in 2022 as the average worker in Britain will make in the whole of the year, according to the High Pay Centre (HPC) think tank. Bosses had to work a few more hours this year – “High Pay Day” arrived in the fourth working day of 2022 (the HPC calculates this using backwards-looking data) and, crucially, average CEO pay fell by 17% to £2.7m in 2020, due to the pandemic (still 86 times the £31,285 average salary for full-time workers). “Do not, though, imagine a trend has been established,” says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The FTSE 100 rose 14% in 2021, and share-based incentive plans will rise accordingly; remuneration committees will now feel themselves “off…

“I can summarise my 2022 outlook in a few lines,” says Albert Edwards, the famously bearish global strategist at French bank Société Générale. Firstly, Edwards reckons that “equity markets will surprise and fall sharply as US tech unravels in the first half”. The current tech bubble is based around a handful of super-stocks, particularly the FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet / Google), whose valuations have grown dependent on “multiple expansion” (ie, investors being willing to pay ever-higher prices for a given level of earnings). “If they go belly up... so too does the whole market”. Investors might expect central banks to step in to print more money if the bubble pops, but Edwards believes US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell may not be quite as quick to…

fee.org How did Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos manage to con so many people? (See page 40.) Her self-confidence and shtick surely helped, says Jon Miltimore. But she may have had an edge – she “may not have been aware that she was lying”. An experiment conducted by behavioural economist Dan Ariely involved participants rolling a die and getting cash based on the result ($4 for a four and so on). Before rolling, they could decide, without telling the researchers, which side of the die – top or bottom – would count. This meant the participants could make money by lying – and many did. The experiment was repeated with participants connected to a lie detector, and they still cheated. The interesting twist was, when the participants were told the money…

■ India and energy funds stood out alongside US large caps as the biggest winners of 2021, while China and emerging markets suffered heavy losses, says Sunniva Kolostyak on Morningstar. BGF World Energy was the best performing open-ended fund rated by Morningstar analysts, capitalising on soaring energy prices to deliver a 43% return. India equity funds accounted for four of the top ten funds, led by Stewart Investors Indian Subcontinent Sustainability at 35%. Chinese equities, which excelled in 2020, had a poor year: there were five China funds in the bottom ten. UBS EF China Opportunities took the wooden spoon, down 25%, followed closely by a pair of Baillie Gifford’s emerging-market funds. The Baillie Gifford funds saw a particularly dramatic reversal of fortune, having both achieved returns of 70% the…

Small businesses see rising energy costs as the biggest problem they face over the year to come, ahead of Brexit red tape, supply-chain disruption and even the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than half of them now regard soaring gas and electricity bills as their most pressing challenge, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which is warning that this could pose an existential threat to many firms. “It’s possible to waste less energy with some simple steps” The issue for small businesses is the same one that families face across the UK. With wholesale energy costs spiking sharply, suppliers are expected to increase their charges by 50% or more during 2022. The problem for business customers, however, is that none of the protections available to households,…

The past two years has been great for American technology stocks. They have benefitted from a huge amount of investor optimism as the Covid-19 pandemic pushes a lot of activity online. Money printing by the US Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at near-zero levels, allowing them to raise plenty of capital on the basis of future profitability, even if they are currently losing large sums of money. However, with the pandemic starting to wane, and the Fed preparing to tighten policy, this party seems to be coming to an end. Some of the more bubbly stocks are starting to experience large falls, including HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS). This firm sells a range of online-marketing and customer-management services over the internet. Its share price soared more than fivefold from $162 at…

The 60/40 portfolio, where 60% of an investor’s money goes into riskier assets such as shares and the other 40% into less risky assets, such as government bonds, is a traditional way to balance your investments. We believe alternative investments, such as tangible assets, are a good way to diversify the 40% while meeting the challenge of the low interest-rate environment. Here we highlight three separate investment opportunities held within the Waverton Real Assets Fund. Optimising energy provision SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust (LSE: SEIT) listed in December 2018 with £100m, but its market capitalisation has now grown to £1bn. It seeks to offer a greener and cheaper solution to energy provision and helps provide the infrastructure required for smaller-scale (and thus more energy-efficient) power production. It also aims to…

“As the state’s cheeks got rosier, the people it is meant to serve turned pale” One of the curiosities of life in America in the 21st century is that, no matter how many wars are lost, no matter how much money is wasted on them, or how many lives are ruined by them, people still want more. Or, at least, the deciders do. One “expert” warns that we must defend the Ukraine, or pretty soon the Russians will be marching down the Champs-Élysées. Another tells us our “credibility” will be lost unless we confront China… or Iran. And, of course, we have to fight global warming, racism, Covid-19, poverty, drugs – you name it. “War,” as Randolph Bourne said, “is the health of the state.” So far this century, the…

One of the UK’s largest energy suppliers has apologised for suggesting that customers should “cuddle with your pets” or try “doing a few star jumps” to stay warm in this winter’s energy crisis, says BBC News. SSE Energy Services, which is owned by Ovo Energy, posted the tips on how to cut bills on its blog and sent them to customers. Other suggestions included “challenging the kids to a hula-hoop contest”, “open your curtains when it’s sunny” and “keep your oven open after you’ve finished cooking – just be careful if there are pets or small children around”. Energy prices have risen sharply in recent months and bills could surge by up to 50% (more than £700 extra per year for the average household ) when the current level of…

Expect 2022 to be “a year of policy tightening”, says Andrew Sheets of Morgan Stanley. This time last year, investors thought America’s Federal Reserve wouldn’t raise interest rates until April 2024. As recently as last August, market pricing still implied that “liftoff” wouldn’t come until April 2023. Yet with inflation soaring, the Fed has been forced to take a more hawkish stance. Traders are now expecting the first hike as soon as this March. Bond yields spike The dawning realisation that money is about to get tighter caused the biggest weekly sell-off (and resulting rise in yields) in the US ten-year Treasury bond since 2019. The yield on the ten-year Treasury topped 1.8% on Monday, a level not seen since before the pandemic began, and up from less than 1.25%…

“I left Hong Kong in 2018, before its protests and the ensuing political crackdown… I already felt the keen disappointment of living in a city in structural decline… Hong Kong is an urban paradise: a tropical island with a splendid geographic setting… But Hong Kong was also the most bureaucratic city I’ve ever lived in. Its business landscape has remained static for decades: the preserve of property developers that has created no noteworthy companies in the last three decades. That is a heritage of British colonial rule, in which administrators controlled economic elites by allocating land… to the more docile. Hong Kong bureaucrats enforce the pettiest rules… a stagnant spirit hangs over the city… there is little excuse for young people to live in Hong Kong. They should hop over…

Three to buy 4Global The Mail on Sunday 4Global helps cities and organisations arrange and profit from sporting events. The firm has worked on “virtually every summer and winter Olympic Games”, from London to Tokyo, as well as World Cups and other football championships. Over the last few months alone it secured a £4m contract with Sport England, a £370,000 contract with the Peruvian government, and a deal with the city of Los Angeles to “maximise the legacy of the 2028 Olympic Games”. It has a pipeline of contracts worth over £100m over the next four years, and profits are expected to more than triple to £1.1m for the year to March 2023 from £325,000 this year. Buy in now. 84p. Medtronic The Daily Telegraph US-listed Medtronic isn’t a household…

Evening Standard The world’s wealthy are unlikely to suffer from inflation – indeed they find Burberry’s clothes and handbags “reassuringly expensive”. Strong free cash flow, lower net debt and the prospect of a share buyback are all auspicious signs for the shares, which still trade 21% below their pre-pandemic level (1,820p). American pet food seller Chewy is “in the doghouse” after the shares nearly halved in the past year. That presents a “buying opportunity” – pet ownership is rising and it won’t be long before the vegan food trend moves into pet food, bringing better margins ($51.11). Clipper Logistics helps retailers of everything from bikes to blouses to manage sales across shops and online. Revenue rose 40% last year. Whatever happens to the economy, e-commerce will go from strength to…

• THG, the “embattled e-commerce business” formerly known as The Hut Group, must have hoped “a new week would mean a new start” after shares tumbled 15% at the start of the year, says Jessica Newman in The Times. “No such luck.” The firm, which has been sliding since September amid concerns over corporate governance and its technology platform, dropped another 7.7% on Monday – even after Matt Moulding (pictured with the prime minister), co-founder and CEO, handed regulators a dossier claiming stockbrokers and hedge funds had “co-ordinated an attack” on its share price. “The saga looks far from over.” • US retailer GameStop saw its shares soar last year after it achieved “meme-stock fame”, says the FT’s Lex. So it’s no surprise it now wants to jump onto the…

To say that this has been a bad week for UK prime minister Boris Johnson is perhaps something of an understatement (see story, left). At the time of writing, the betting markets were assuming that his departure is likely to be before the end of the year. With £357,005 matched on Betfair on his year of departure, Johnson (pictured) is now favourite to depart this year at 1.62 (61.2%), with 2023 at 7.4 (13.4%) and 2024 or later at 3.55 (28.1%). Punters don’t even think he is likely to make it to the Conservative party conference, currently scheduled for October. With £127,729 matched, they have him at 1.66 (60.2%) to depart before then, with the odds on him surviving until then at 2.42 (41.3%). Perhaps the only crumb of comfort…

Ever since Woolworths closed its doors for the final time in 2008, the post-Christmas retail collapse has been as much a part of the festive season as leftover turkey and worryingly high credit-card bills. Retailers are critically dependent on the festive season, often the one month when they actually make any money. Many of them would hang on, hoping that Christmas would save them for another year. When that didn’t happen, there would often be no choice but to call in the receivers. Comet, Blockbuster, Austin Reed, Maplin and Toys R Us are among the household names that have disappeared in this way over the last few years. Many more announced profit warnings or the closure of some stores. People still like to shop But so far, 2022 has not…

The “January barometer” is a persistent rule of thumb that stockmarket returns in the month of January give a good idea of what to expect for the rest of the year. If stocks go up in January, they’ll end the year higher. If they go down, it’s time to get out. This January has got off to a somewhat mixed start, with investors in the UK so far having a rather better time of it than their counterparts in the US. So is there anything to the idea, and if so, should you be acting on it? At first sight, the evidence actually seems quite compelling. As with most of this sort of research, the majority of the work has been done on the US. One paper by Lawrence Brown…

The public firm is alive and well David Wighton The Times There has been much “hand-wringing” about the shrinking pool of public companies in the past 20 years, says David Wighton. “Doomsters” say that this trend has been bad for ordinary investors, who can’t access the private markets, and bad for the City, which is losing out on fees. Yet not only was there a “wave of flotations” around the world last year, but it seems that the situation may also have been “greatly exaggerated in the first place”. Most of the decline happened before 2010 and was driven largely by consolidation in a few sectors such as banking and tech, according to research by McKinsey. There may be fewer public firms, but – certainly in the US – their…

econlib.org The return of inflation has seen some commentators call for a return to wage and price controls. As we saw in the early 1970s, when then-US president Richard Nixon tried it, this is a “terrible idea”, says Scott Sumner. Nonetheless, there is an argument for such controls – just not the one that its supporters might assume. Wage/price controls cannot stop inflation, which is caused by monetary policy. What they might be able to do is prevent high unemployment. Since it’s politically difficult to cut wages, amonetary policy that sharply and unexpectedly reduces inflation may lead to aperiod of high unemployment until wages adjust to the lower level. The “dirty little secret” of wage/price controls is that the government’s actual objective is to control wage growth to try to…

French philosopher Simone Weil once said the future is made of the same stuff as the present. So I’m going to abstain from any 2022 futurology and will instead pose five questions most private investors would be well served to ponder as we go into the new year. From tech to VCTs Do US technology growth stocks have much further to run? The average price/earnings(p/e) ratio of the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google) is over 40. They may be overvalued by traditional metrics, but the continued flow of money into them shows investors don’t care. If the secular drivers pushing these types of shares higher stay in place, it has implications for UK venture capital trusts (VCTs). These tax-efficient venture funds are not the same as the US…

Finance has used technology “since the days of the abacus”, as Philipp Buschmann, the chief executive of smart-banking platform AAZZUR, puts it. However, up until a few years ago most financial firms and institutions remained relatively insulated from the digital revolution that had disrupted many other sectors of the economy. Even the rise of online banking had failed to challenge the dominant retail banks in the UK, while basic financial tasks such as processing payments or making cross border transactions still relied on the infrastructure created decades ago. That’s changing – and changing fast. Customers are now much more comfortable carrying out a wide range of tasks through new channels such as apps. They are increasingly looking for the kind of convenience in financial services that they are getting elsewhere…

Last Monday was Divorce Day, so named because it is the most popular day of the year for people to contact solicitors about splitting up. There’s nothing like the combination of Christmas stress, January money worries and the thoughts about the future that a new year brings to make people reassess their marriage. If you are thinking about divorce, you may want to wait for a different new year in order to save yourself thousands of pounds. The new tax year dawns on 6 April and brings with it “the biggest shake-up in divorce laws for 50 years,” says Toby Walne in The Mail on Sunday, allowing couples to get divorced without anyone having to take the blame. The change means there will be no need for legal wrangling over…

• Small businesses face a £5.7bn bill from April when employers’ national insurance contributions are due to go up. Business advisers are urging employers to plan ahead for the higher costs: contributions are due to rise by 1.25% to 15.05% on 6 April. The increase means that a small business with five employees each earning £30,000 a year will pay an annual national insurance bill of around £16,500. • April’s national insurance contribution increase could be particularly challenging for businesses that employ significant numbers of staff who earn the national living wage, which is also due to increase in three months’ time. From 1 April, the headline rate of the minimum wage will rise 6.6% to £9.50. This is the rate employers must pay to staff aged 23 and over.…

In 2021, I followed the lessons from the previous 12 months, analysed in our Christmas issue, with some resolutions for the new year. This year, I’m going to do the same thing again, with three principles that I’m going to follow in 2022. 1. Avoid revisiting past tips In the past I’ve revisited both successful and unsuccessful share tips. However, while this can sometimes work, provided the justification and conditions are good, it’s always good from a psychological perspective to take a break. While I’ve made it a rule to wait at least six months before tipping a share again, I’m going to extend this rule to one year from the time the trade was closed, no matter how good I think the investment case is. 2. Find more short…

Shares in international advertising firm M&C Saatchi (LSE: SAA) jumped after it revealed it had received a preliminary takeover approach from AdvancedAdvT, which has bought a 9.8% stake in the company. AdvancedAdvT was founded by Vin Murria, deputy chair at Saatchi, who already holds a 12.5% stake in the firm. Saatchi’s share price hit an all-time high in March 2019, but plummeted later that year due to a costly accounting scandal. The firm struggled through the pandemic, but has since stabilised and won contracts from the likes of Apple and Reckitt, says Sky News. Its shares are up 118% over the last 12 months.…

Leslie Payne was born in Paddington, London, in 1924. He served in the army in World War II, seeing action in Italy, and rising to the rank of sergeant (he would later falsely claim to have been a major). Upon discharge in 1947 he became a vacuum cleaner and radio salesman before running a car dealership in Stratford. In 1959 a dispute over a hire-purchase agreement brought him into contact with the notorious gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who were impressed by his business acumen and appointed him their business manager. What was the scam? Payne helped the Krays branch out from protection rackets, low-level thuggery and taking a cut of the earnings of other crooks, into “long firm” frauds. These involve using a respectable front man and false references…

“The smart infotainment system will keep you entertained while the car charges ” You could be forgiven for thinking the new electric Tesla Model Y is just a Tesla Model 3, the best-selling car in Britain, “that’s been pumped full of growth hormone”, says What Car magazine. It has a higher driving position and more room inside than its hatchback predecessor. And like the Model 3, there is a Long Range version and a Performance model. The Model Y is not quite as rapid as the Model 3 due to the extra weight it carries, but the Performance version can still hit 60mph from a standing start in 3.5 seconds. As for going the distance, the Long Range can officially clock up 315 miles on a single charge. Sure, you…

$1trn The rise during 2021 in the collective wealth of the world’s richest 500 billionaires to $8.4trn, thanks to soaring stockmarkets, cryptocurrencies and commodity prices, according to Bloomberg. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk was top of the list, adding 75% to his fortune last year. NZ$1,006,632 The record-high average price (£500,000) of a house in New Zealand, according to analytics company CoreLogic New Zealand. Values surged 24.4% last year due to low interest rates and a dearth of new housing, but the market is expected to cool in 2022. £1,200 The expected increase in household bills this year as energy prices and taxes continue to rise, says The Times. The Bank of England forecasts inflation to reach 6%, a level not seen since 1992. £9.7bn How much British consumers spent on…

Sales are soaring at luxury carmaker Rolls-Royce as the pandemic encourages wealthy customers to splash out, says the Financial Times. The company sold 5,586 vehicles in 2021, up 49% from the year before and the highest number in its history. Buyers think “life can be short, and you’d better live now than postpone it to a later date”, says chief executive Torsten Müller-Otvös. Mary Trump, the niece of former US president Donald Trump, has spent some of the proceeds of her tell-all family memoir on a $7m luxury condominium in New York, says The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, sold more than 1.35 million copies in its first week on sale in July 2020, according to…

Graham Holdings is “a small-scale version of [Warren Buffett’s] Berkshire Hathaway , with a large group of unrelated businesses and a strong balance sheet”, says Barron’s. It used to own The Washington Post newspaper until it sold that to Jeff Bezos for $250m in 2013. Now it flies under the radar and is “little-followed by Wall Street”. Yet it owns valuable assets including “local TV stations, the Kaplan education business, manufacturing and healthcare operations, several auto dealerships, and restaurants”. Book value is $800 per share based on the accounts, but the real value could be over $1,100, making the stock look cheap at $590. It’s an “inexpensive, asset-rich company” in a pricey market.…

Troubled carmaker Aston Martin Lagonda was forced to announce yet another profit warning last week, when it admitted that annual profits will be £15m lower than thought after it shipped “just ten of its Valkyrie hypercars”, says Hugo Duncan in the Daily Mail. This poor performance comes despite previous hopes that it would have delivered 25 of the new models by now. Aston Martin argues that the delays are only a “timing” issue and will have little impact on its long-term profitability, as all of the limited-edition cars it plans to make have already been sold to customers. Yet despite its insistence that profits “will not suffer in the longer term”, the delay is embarrassing, says Peter Campbell in the Financial Times. The Valkyrie is a “flagship product” that “has…

Every January, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, showcases the latest, and often weirdest, gadgets set to transform our lives, says Tom Knowles in The Times. This year’s buzzwords from the show were “matter” and “metaverse”. The former describes the new code of practice that tech firms are “begrudgingly” signing up to, which will allow the internet-connected appliances in our “smart” homes to “talk” to each other – whether that be the light bulb, unveiled by Shanghai-based Sengled, that can read your heart rate and sleeping pattern, or the WashTower, an “intelligent” washing machine and dryer from Korea’s LG that senses the size and fabric type of a load, along with “level of soiling”. Meanwhile, “metaverse” is the “hottest new term in Silicon Valley” and refers to…

• Deborah Turness (pictured), CEO of ITN, has been hired to take over from Fran Unsworth as CEO of BBC News. She will be paid £400,000 a year, around £60,000 more than Unsworth, says MailOnline. Turness began at ITN last April, having before that worked as the first female president of a US network news division, NBC News. • Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is raising the pay of four of its executives, from $650,000 to $1m, weeks after telling employees it wouldn’t adjust salaries for rising inflation, says The Verge. Chief financial officer Ruth Porat, senior vice-president Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president and chief business officer Philipp Schindler, and chief legal officer Kent Walker will also be able to participate in a $2m annual performance-based bonus scheme and have been granted…

The price-to-sales (p/s) ratio is the market capitalisation of a company divided by its revenues. So a company that has a market value of £25bn and sales of £10bn has a p/s ratio of 2.5. This is sometimes also known as a “sales multiple”. All else considered, the lower the number, the cheaper the stock. The p/s is calculated in a similar way to other metrics such as the price-to-earnings (p/e) ratio (market capitalisation divided by profits). But of course, sales aren’t the same as profits, so the p/s may at first glance appear less useful as a gauge of whether a firm is cheap or not. However, it can be a helpful tool when looking at firms or sectors where earnings are temporarily depressed as a result of one-off…

“I’ve always been good at putting money away – although I probably wouldn’t have thought about a pension in my 20s if it hadn’t been for my financial adviser. At that age you’re like: ‘What? I’m never going to be 60!’” BBC presenter Philippa Forrester (pictured), quoted in The Daily Telegraph “I once threw £300 out of the window of a bus. I’d taken the money out of the bank and I wanted to make sure I had the right amount, so I had it on my lap. But at the same time, I was eating an orange, throwing the peel out of the window, and I threw the money out instead. This was in the 1970s, so that was a lot of money.” Singer Patti Boulaye, quoted in The…

theconversation.com Charity shops are no longer solely the preserve of those seeking cheap goods out of necessity, says Esther Pugh. They are becoming “the highly revered stomping ground” of savvy shoppers, “swooping like jackdaws” into what have become contemporary Aladdin’s caves of surprising treasures. The eclectic shops “satisfy a desire for individuality and authenticity” and provide a “thrilling shopping experience” that is a welcome antidote to the overly designed retail spaces of first-hand shopping. They also do good beyond the funds they provide for the charities that run them. There are currently more than 11,000 such shops in the UK, raising about £270m a year for all kinds of good work. But they are also asocial good, providing employment to 25,000 people and volunteering opportunities to 233,000 more. They help…

Toshiba’s plan to break up into three companies is being fought by activist investor 3D Investment Partners, says Bloomberg. Singapore-based 3D, which is the Japanese technology conglomerate’s second-largest shareholder with a 7.6% stake, claims that the strategic review behind the proposal doesn’t address underlying issues and that a break-up would only create “three small Toshibas with similar problems”. Instead, 3D wants Toshiba to consider selling all or part of the company, and has criticised the board for ending talks on the sale of a stake to a private-equity firm. Toshiba has faced a series of controversies, from an accounting scandal in 2015 to revelations of collusion between executives and government officials to influence shareholder votes in 2020.…

Investing in fintechs can be difficult because most of them are still private companies. One solution is to buy an investment trust that specialises in such companies. William Howlett of Quilter Cheviot suggests looking at Chrysalis Investments (LSE: CHRY), which “aims to harness the long-term growth potential of fast-developing companies at an advanced stage of private ownership and considering a stockmarket flotation”. Chrysalis’ portfolio holds several fintech companies, including Klarna and Starling Bank, as well as Wise (LSE: WISE), which went public in July. European bank Ing (Amsterdam: INGA). may be worth considering: it is one of the few mainstream institutions that “has had success with digital transformation”, reckons Howlett. He particularly likes the fact that it has “delivered essentially branchless banking at scale in markets such as Germany and…

■ The state pension has long been an integral part of most people’s expected retirement income, but “even though it has existed for more than a century it could be worth pretending that it may not be there in the future,” says David Brenchley in The Sunday Times. While there is not yet any talk in government of scrapping the state pension, “there are plenty of younger people who are concerned about its future”. This is an expensive benefit, costing around £118bn a year, and that figure is expected to rise as the number of claimants increases from 12.4 million in 2017 to 16.9 million in 2042. Some protections that have been in place are being eroded – the triple lock has become a double lock, at least temporarily –…

Almost one in three small businesses have seen the late payment of their invoices increase over the past three months, research from the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) shows. Almost one in ten are worried the issue now threatens the viability of their business. The FSB believes small businesses are seen as an easy target by larger organisations struggling with their own cash-flow problems in the face of difficulties. And while successive governments have promised to offer smaller businesses more protection from late payments, initiatives such as the Prompt Payment Code, a voluntary scheme, appear to have had limited success. That leaves firms struggling with late-paying customers by themselves – and it is increasingly clear that businesses must be prepared to take a tough line. That includes doing due diligence…

My long tips have put in a mixed performance over the last few weeks, with four out of the six increasing in price. Supermarket chain J Sainsbury rose from 276p to 279p, wealth manager Rathbone Group advanced from 1,892p to 2,060p and mobile phone company Airtel Africa rose from 126p to 135p. Bus company National Express also went up from 247p to 255p. However, homebuilder DR Horton fell from $105 to $96 and construction firm Morgan Sindall fell from 2,425p to 2,362p. Overall, the falls in the latter two shares cancel out the gains in the other four, with the result that my long tips are making a profit of £3,823, exactly the same as during my previous update in our Christmas issue. The good news is that both my…

Trainline (LSE: TRN) is a UK-based digital rail and coach ticket-booking service. Its shares slumped after the government unveiled plans for a state-run ticketing app, threatening its dominance of the sector. The company had been struggling throughout the pandemic after ticket sales plummeted, on top of an underwhelming initial public offering (IPO) in 2019. Trainline is also burdened by £169m in net debt and despite some recovery in recent months, it made a £9m operating loss in the six months to August 2021. The shares have declined steadily since September and have fallen by 48.8% in the last 12 months.…

£19.95, reduced to £17.95 by the case, greatwine.co.uk Marty Edwards started his working life as an elite Navy clearance diver. He then moved from special ops to working at his family vineyard, The Lane in the Adelaide Hills, where his wines won countless awards and legions of fans. With 20 years of experience asa specialist viticulturalist, last year Marty struck out on his own, releasing a trio of scintillating wines under his new Silver Lining label. Marty uses specific parcels of vines in the Hills and overlays them with the elegance and control found in the finest of European wine styles. My featured 2020 sauvignon blanc is as sophisticated and refreshing asany Loire superstar’s creation and, in addition, there is a2020 chardonnay and 2020 shiraz available, too. The sauvignon has…

Going… In the early years of the 20th century, then-US president Theodore Roosevelt decided the designs on his country’s coins did not reflect the emerging greatness of his nation. As a young man touring Europe years earlier, he had been impressed with the high-relief designs on the ancient Greek coinage he had seen in museums. So, in 1905, he met with American sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens and together they redesigned every denomination. Two years later, the $10 “rolled-edge” gold coins had been set for release when they were melted down due to design issues – all except for 42 examples. One (pictured right) will be offered by Legend Rare Coin Auctions on 27 January at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It is expected to sell for at least $500,000. Gone……

• ”Pass me the onion,” says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Lottie Moss (pictured), the younger half-sister of model Kate Moss, filmed herself “bawling and crying” over the leak online of some of the “saucy” photographs she sells to her followers on social-media platform OnlyFans. The younger Moss claims to make around £70,000 a month by charging fans a monthly £14 subscription and £1,000 for a nude video. “She’s got a Lottie cheek, hasn’t she? I suppose feminists like me should regard this lucrative revenue stream as a marvellous symbol of female entrepreneurship, not to mention an artistic display of she-empowerment.” But it’s hard not to see it as anything other than a “peep show designed to keep the dirty-mac brigade happy”. It’s hard not to “suspect that Lottie…