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Fans of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk will effectively be paying more for their chocolate fix after Cadbury’s owner Mondelez shrank the size of a 200g bar in response to rising costs, says the BBC. Bars will now be 10% smaller – 180g – but will still cost £2. A German antiques dealer named as Roben D. has been arrested on charges of illegally aiding the $4m sale of an Egyptian golden sarcophagus, says The Times. The sarcophagus was stolen during the Egyptian revolution in 2011 and traded through several dealers before being sold to New York’s Met Museum in 2017. Roben D. is also accused of illegally selling $55m of artefacts to the Louvre Art Museum in Abu Dhabi.…

“In times of crisis, not much in financial markets roars ‘safe haven’ louder than the Japanese yen,” says Jamie McGeever on Reuters. From the 1990 Gulf war to the 2020 pandemic, Japan’s currency usually rallies in tough times. Japanese asset managers – “one of the world’s biggest investor pools” – bring funds home when the going gets tough. And slower growth usually sinks commodity prices, another win for a major energy importer such as Japan. But not this time. The yen has hit a seven-year low against the dollar, says Takako Gakuto in Nikkei Asia. With annual inflation still at just 0.9% the Bank of Japan, the central bank, has not joined the global rush to hike interest rates – this week it was forced to buy huge amounts of…

Soaring natural-gas prices are making fertiliser more expensive. Natural gas is “the main input for most nitrogen fertiliser, forcing some producers in Europe to cut output”, says Bloomberg. A US gauge of nitrogen fertiliser soared 43% last week to hit $1,625 per tonne, a record in its 29-year history. Russia and Belarus account for more than a third of global supplies of potash, another key fertiliser ingredient, but Russia has now curbed exports in response to sanctions, says Barron’s. “Results are predictable: potash fertiliser prices have soared by three-quarters this year.” Africa is thought to rely on Russia for up to 70% of its fertiliser supply. As corn and wheat prices soar, “nations far from the conflict will pay the heaviest price”.…

• Retail group Next claims that it could generate £14.7bn of cash between now and 2037. That may seem like hubris, or a gesture to reassure investors after it trimmed this year’s profit forecast by £10m, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. But if you look at the small print of the forecast, its logic is compelling as it is based on the savings from a shift from physical stores to online. The credibility of its forecast seems bolstered, too, by the fact that the boss has had “many years of success” and “has no plans to retire”. Many companies are claiming to be “in the game of attracting long-term shareholders”. Next is showing that they mean it. • The struggling UK fashion brand Ted Baker was right to reject…

Cordiant Global Agricultural Income (CGAI), a new investment trust set up to provide financing for farmers in South America, is aiming to raise $300m through a listing on the London stock exchange in early April, says The Mail on Sunday. The firm will provide long-term loans of up to $50m for agricultural businesses that want to expand, improve efficiency and become more sustainable. It will start with a portfolio of eight loans totalling $115m and the managers say they have a deal pipeline worth almost $1bn. CGAI is targeting a 4% dividend yield on the $1 initial public offering (IPO) price in the first year, rising to at least 6.5% by 2024, and a total net asset value return of 10% per year.…

The sanctioning of Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who has controlled Chelsea football club for nearly 20 years, and who started the flood of foreign money into the game, resulted in the club going up for sale. By the time you read this we might know who has bought it. Potential bidders for an asset that was expected to command well over £3bn included a consortium led by the owners of the LA Dodgers; another led by the Ricketts family who own the Chicago Cubs; a team led by the property developer Nick Candy; and one or perhaps two others who may yet make the final round. An offer from Amazon, Netflix, Disney, or Sky’s owner, Comcast, would really shake things up – there could well be a surprise before…

Investors in Barclays got a nasty shock this week when the bank revealed that a US paperwork blunder will cost it around £450m (see page 7). Put simply, Barclays messed up the administration requirements around the issuance in the US of financial products called structured notes and exchange-traded notes (ETNs – see below). “Barclays issued $15bn more securities than it should have” So what went wrong? Any financial securities sold to the public in the US have to be registered with the US financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As Bloomberg’s Matt Levine explains, this is usually done via a blanket “shelf registration statement”, which contains a “very large arbitrary number for how many securities you might sell”. In 2019, Barclays registered to sell just under $20.1bn of…

Living out a fantasy is not cost-free Nina Xiang Nikkei Asia The computing power required by the “metaverse”, purportedly the next stage of the internet where people can immerse themselves in digital alternative realities, will have a big impact on the climate, says Nina Xiang. The computing capabilities required will be “several orders of magnitude more powerful” than the current system. As a rough comparison, bitcoin mining consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. That is around 0.5% of global energy consumption worldwide and more than seven times the electricity use of Google’s global operations. Considering at least a dozen tech giants are now “ramping up” infrastructure for the metaverse (everything from computing to storage and networking will need major upgrades), consumption may be many times greater than for…

stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com “Everyone says we have an inflation problem,” says Chris Dillow. “Everyone is wrong.” The biggest reason for the inflation we’re seeing is that petrol prices and utility bills are soaring. Even if prices in the rest of the economy were flat and inflation below its 2% target, we would still be handing over a bigger chunk of our incomes to “monopolistic utility companies and foreign despots”. This is an echo of an old problem, described by David Ricardo in 1815, who thought that as the economy and population grew, demand for food from the limited supply of fertile land would raise food prices, choking off growth and transferring income from productive workers and capitalists to owners of land. Trade and technical progress meant this never happened for food, but…

The remarkable speed at which scientists were able to discover new vaccines and treatments during the pandemic and roll out mass usage seemed to show that there is no medical affliction which is beyond the scope of ingenuity and innovation. This seemed likely to usher in a new golden era for the healthcare sector, and for biotechnology in particular, that would boost the private companies at the forefront of the medical revolution. “The biotech sector is in its biggest bear market in 30 years” Instead the biotech sector is in its biggest bear market in 30 years. In 12 months, the S&P Biotechnology index has lagged the S&P 500 by 64%, falling nearly 50% back to the level of mid 2015. The broader healthcare sector has fared better, thanks to…

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Fears of global warming have created massive enthusiasm for “green investing” over the past few years. Industries that furthered the goal of cutting emissions – such as renewable energy – have found it easier to raise capital. Financial institutions have allocated more money to environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies in general. Funds claiming to follow ESG principles now manage $6.1trn, representing 10% of worldwide fund assets, mostly in Europe. Asset managers have shown that they are willing to use their power to structurally shift our economies. The five largest investment managers – BlackRock, Vanguard, UBS, State Street and Fidelity – hold a combined $22.5trn in assets, giving them an enormous amount of clout if they act together. Last year we…

Shipping rates can be very variable. Shares in ship owners can be even more so. This is a high-risk area that’s not for the faint hearted. But if you can cope with substantial volatility in return for the possibility of making well-above-average returns by timing the market right, shipping stocks can be a very interesting and under-followed area of the market. That makes it well worth getting to know what drives the sector. The ideal time to get into shipping shares is when they’re sinking fast, accompanied by sentiment that’s drowning in doom and gloom – so long as you understand what’s driving it. Shipping is cyclical and prone to extremes due to its financial and operating leverage. Ship owners generally fund their fleets with debt, leaving their balance sheets…

There is less than a week to go until national insurance contributions increase, but there is still time to take action to mitigate the tax rise. In last week’s spring statement, chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak refused to backtrack on his plans for a 1.25% increase in national insurance. But salary sacrifice schemes, offered by many employers, are a great way to reduce the impact of the increase, which comes into effect from 6 April. In a salary sacrifice scheme, you give up some of your salary in return for your employer giving you a benefit of the same value. The most obvious example is a contribution to your pension plan, but some employers also offer benefits ranging from childcare support to the cycle-to-work scheme. In many cases, these…

Investing in any bank’s shares may seem a contrarian proposition at the moment. Investing in a bank in a country that has been invaded by Russia might then seem on the hazardous side of contrarian. Yet the Russian invasion of Georgia happened in 2008 and that means further military conflict is unlikely. Therein lies the opportunity. Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2008 in support of South Ossetia (a Russia-friendly breakaway province) was a brief and one-sided escapade. Sadly it may even have encouraged the Russian tyrant to think that an invasion of Ukraine would be similar. A solid economy Following the invasion, Georgia is now less reliant on Russia both as an export market (14% of exports) and as a source of remittance flows from Georgians working abroad who send money…

Palm oil plantations owner MP Evans (Aim: MPE) should benefit from rising demand, says the Mail on Sunday. Most vegetable oils come from palm, soy, rapeseed and sunflower. Almost half of sunflower oil is grown in Ukraine and will be disrupted by Russia’s invasion. Palm oil prices were already rising amid supply shortfalls in Malaysia and have now soared to above $1,800 per tonne, from a long-term average of $750. Higher palm oil prices will mean higher costs for everything from margarine to shampoo, but should boost profits for producers. MP Evans’ share price has risen 43% in the last twelve months.…

John Meriwether was born in 1947 in Chicago and studied at Northwestern University before graduating with an MBA from Chicago Booth School of Business. He then joined Salomon Brothers as a bond trader and pioneered a strategy known as fixed-income arbitrage, eventually rising to the position of vice-chairman. A scandal in the bank’s bond trading division, over the placing of fake bids for US government bonds, ultimately resulted in Meriwether being fined $50,000. He then decided to strike out on his own and formed his own hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). What was the trade? LTCM specialised in statistical arbitrage strategies. It would identify two types of securities, mostly bonds, that were very similar and whose prices followed each other closely, and then waiting for their prices to diverge.…

How to Create, Sell and Buy Non-Fungible Tokens Matt Fortnow and QuHarrison Terry Wiley £18.99 Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are essentially digital files linked to a blockchain ledger, are the latest “hot” investment in the art market. Many collectors are willing to pay huge sums for them. But there is still a lot of uncertainty about what exactly NFTs are, and whether they constitute a fad or a serious new asset class. In this book, tech entrepreneur Matt Fortnow teams up with marketer QuHarrison Terry to demystify the subject. The book is primarily aimed at those looking to create and sell NFTs, rather than those thinking of buying them. Indeed, the sole chapter on buying NFTs is barely more than ten pages long, and dances around the core issue of…

Last week the rouble rose nearly 7% against the dollar when Russian president Vladimir Putin demanded that “hostile states” pay for Russian energy imports in roubles. Natural gas and oil prices soared on the news. What’s going on? Let’s take a guess. The West, led by the US, sanctioned Russia’s dollars. Russians who had no part in Putin’s war suddenly found their money was no good. They couldn’t access their foreign bank accounts. They couldn’t go about their business as usual – even as they were offering valuable goods and services to overseas buyers. Financially, they were cancelled. It was inevitable Russia would consider its options. “The decline of theUS empire continues one blunder at a time” Economist Michael Hudson comments: “If you sanction a country, you force it to…

This year’s Oscars goodie bags (pictured) are as strange as ever, says The Times. All Academy Awards nominees are given a an unofficial collection of gifts assembled by Los Angeles-based marketing company Distinctive Assets (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts itself stopped handing out official gifts 20 years ago), which are full of products from brands that hope to score some free publicity through association with the stars. This year’s collection – valued at $140,000 according to some reports – include offers for arm-sculpting liposuction and free construction work for their homes. But the most controversial is a certificate for a one-square-foot plot of land in Scotland that claims to make the recipient the title “Lord, Laird or Lady of Glencoe”. The certificates give neither ownership of the land, nor…

America’s recession alarm has sounded. The most watched part of the US yield curve – which plots the yields on different maturities of US government bonds – has briefly inverted for the first time since 2019. In normal conditions, investors holding longer-duration bonds will demand higher yields than those holding shorter ones. But if markets think that interest rates in the future will be lower than they are now – eg, because a recession forces interest rate cuts – then the usual pattern can invert. On Tuesday, yields on the two-year US Treasury note rose as high as 2.45%, a fraction above the 2.38% yield on the ten-year bond. Other parts of the curve, including the five-year to 30-year and the five-year to ten-year spreads, had already inverted, but the…

“In the early hours of 8 March the [nickel] price doubled. The London Metal Exchange (LME) suspended trading… judging that prices no longer reflected the underlying physical market… it went further… [by cancelling] all trades made after midnight… The LME justified its actions as protecting the integrity of the physical market. In doing so, it created a divide. On one side are the miners and metal-bashers that rely on [it] for trading, pricing and hedging services. On the other side are fund managers, who use its futures and options to gain exposure to commodities… The LME… seems to have favoured the first group over the second… But speculators are vital. Producers sell futures to insure themselves against a price rout that would threaten their solvency. Someone has to take the…

Australian bank Macquarie is to spend £4.2bn on a controlling stake in a critical part of the UK’s gas network, says Gill Plimmer in the Financial Times. The deal will involve it taking a 60% slice of National Grid’s gas transmission and metering business, with an option to buy the remaining 40% in the future. Macquarie will acquire 7,660km of pipes transporting gas to heat homes, and power industry and electricity generation across Britain – this on top of its ownership of Cadent, which runs half of the eight local gas distribution networks, which it bought in 2017. National Grid had been looking for a buyer to take a majority stake in its transmission unit for some time, says Archie Mitchell in the Daily Mail. The decision to sell to…

Three to buy Cambridge Cognition The Sunday Times We’re living longer, but “our brains can’t always keep up”. Cambridge Cognition makes specialist software for tasks assessing brain health during clinical trials. The company is a “tiddler” with a market cap of just £35m, but revenues rose 50% to £10.1m last year when it signed up more clinical-trial contracts than at any time in its history. It also turned a “very modest” profit and now has a “decent cushion of £3.8m net cash” thanks to an increase in customers pre-paying for its software. Buy. 142.8p HomeServe Shares Household repairs service HomeServe has sold off due to concerns about its growth prospects in the UK, but the “star performer” is its US business. Management says earnings from this are running ahead of…

The lack of consistent financial reporting on climate-change risk means that investors and companies have had to “hazard their own guesses” over its impact on markets and the economy, says Anne Simpson in the Financial Times. This is set to change now that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has voted to issue proposals for mandatory climate risk reporting by public companies in the world’s largest regulated capital market. The move complements work by global bodies, such as the International Sustainability Standards Board, and will force companies to give investors more information, which “could revitalise capital allocation for the benefit of all”. Nonsense, say Jay Clayton and Patrick McHenry in The Wall Street Journal. Climate change is “one of the most complex and significant issues of our time”, and…

• Starbucks’ chief executive Kevin Johnson (pictured) is to receive a golden goodbye of at least $60m when he steps down from his role at the coffee chain, to be replaced by former CEO Howard Schultz, says MarketWatch. During his five-year tenure, he earned $79m, despite underperforming the US benchmark S&P 500 index. Johnson even made an extra $12m paper profit on his 3.2 million shares and options in Starbucks, with a gross value of almost $300m, after the share price rallied on the news of his retirement. • A £2.9m annual all-share bonus from a new incentive scheme lifted the pay of Warren East, the outgoing CEO of aircraft engine-maker Rolls-Royce, close to pre-pandemic levels last year, says the Financial Times. His total pay came to almost £4m for…

An exchange-traded note (ETN) is a financial security that trades on a stock exchange and is designed to deliver the return on an underlying index to an investor, after fees. That sounds a lot like an exchange-traded fund (ETF), which also trades on a stock exchange and aims to give an investor an easy way to track an underlying index. However, the structure of the two securities is very different. An ETF usually owns the securities in the index it tracks (or in the case of a synthetic ETF, enters into a swap deal with a bank, which is backed by collateral held by the ETF, whereby the bank agrees to deliver the return on the index). An ETN, by contrast, is a type of debt security, similar to a…

“I think if I wasn’t queer, I’d probably be working at…. Ernst & Young. Doing some sort of mid- to top-tier accountant role… Subconsciously, very early on, I knew I was not going to thrive in a corporate environment. The way I speak, let alone dress, was not encouraged.” Comedian Joe Lycett (pictured), quoted in The Guardian “You shouldn’t be loyal to your bank. They don’t deserve it; it’s your money. Your job should be to pay as little to your bank as you possibly can and earn as much from your bank as you possibly can. It doesn’t pay to be loyal.” Mark Mullen, boss of online lender Atom, quoted in The Times “If you care about the reality of doing good and not the perception of doing good,…

bloomberg.com/opinion “Doomscrolling” refers to people’s tendency to run through their social-media feeds ceaselessly to learn the latest about the pandemic or the war, says Tyler Cowen. This “never-ending stream of information shapes our perception of time” and makes it seem like the bad things have been going on for longer than they have. This matters. A few generations ago, people would have heard that there was a big battle going on over a place called Dien Bien Phu, and would learn about what happened on the nightly news or in the morning newspaper. These days, every moral outrage is taken in as it happens, giving rise to an increasing sense of urgency that something desperate must be done to stop it. This is dangerous because it makes it harder for…

The largest shareholder in asset manager WisdomTree is teaming up with an activist hedge fund in an attempt to force out CEO Jonathan Steinberg, says the Financial Times. Graham Tuckwell, the founder of ETF Securities, ended up with an 18.7% stake in WisdomTree after selling his firm’s European business to it in 2017. The deal was intended to make WisdomTree a bigger player in ETFs: Steinberg said he expected assets to eventually reach $100bn, but so far the firm has reached $78bn. Tuckwell has accused Steinberg of destroying half WisdomTree’s market value, and is now working with hedge fund Lion Point, which owns a 3.1% stake, to get himself and two other nominees onto the board. WisdomTree’s shares have fallen 79% since their peak in 2015.…

Investment in oil and gas exploration in the North Sea is likely to increase to boost domestic supply to the UK. Drilling in deep waters will be required and highly cyclical operators such Maersk Drilling (Copenhagen: DRLCO) and Odfjell Drilling (Oslo: ODL) will benefit from it. These companies had a tough time following the peak in commodity prices a few years ago and went through several years of restructuring. They require sustained high oil price levels to earn good returns. The wave of mergers and acquisitions – often led by Maersk Drilling – and completed restructurings indicates the sector is ready for a new cycle. Investors may even want to consider Seadrill once it relists after restructuring in chapter 11 bankruptcy (for the second time in four years), since it…

Inflation in the UK is running at 6.2% a year (if you use the consumer price index – CPI), or as much as 8.3% (judged by the old retail price index-based measure that used to form the basis of the Bank of England’s inflation target). Unfortunately, this month the cost of living squeeze is only set to get worse. Here’s what’s changing – and what you can do to lessen the impact. The deep freeze on allowances The personal allowance (the level of earnings at which you start paying income tax) will be held at £12,570 until 2026, while the higher-rate income tax threshold will be frozen at £50,270. This is “probably the biggest change coming in from 6 April”, says AJ Bell. Usually these thresholds would increase in line…

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that the basic rate of income tax will fall from 20% to 19% in April 2024. It’s the first cut to the basic rate in 16 years, and Sunak has said the tax cut would be worth £175 on average for 30 million people. So what’s not to like about it? Well, if you’re a pension saver, the reduction will mean less money going into your pension. That’s because when you make a pension contribution your scheme is entitled to claim a top-up on your behalf from HM Revenue & Customs to the value of basic-rate tax. Basic-rate taxpayers currently get 20% relief. That 1% cut therefore equates to a 5% cut in the upfront tax relief you’ll enjoy – every £100 paid into a pension…

Shares in online wine retailer Virgin Wines (Aim: VINO) have slumped to their lowest price since listing one year ago after the firm announced lower profits in the six months to December, says The Drinks Business. Sales of £40.6m were comparable to 2020 and up by 55% from 2019, but pre-tax profits fell from £3.4m to £3.2m. A trading update in February that warned of lower full-year sales and profits expectations due to “uncertain trading”, “numerous headwinds related to cost pressures” and issues with Christmas deliveries caused shares to drop by 23%. They are now down by 44% over the past year.…

2021 Thistledown, Gorgeous Old Vine Shiraz, Small Batch, Riverland, Australia £14.75, vagabondwines.co.uk The shiraz or syrah grape variety is equally at home flying solo or being used as a component in a blend. It dominates the partnership in this thrilling wine by taking up 86% of the bottle, and the remaining proportion is a rather unlikely 14% zibibbo, or muscat. I have never tasted a shiraz/zibibbo blend before, and it occurs to me that the name Gorgeous is entirely apt here. This is a wine that majors on fresh berry fruit notes drawn from a single vineyard of old-vine shiraz while the zibibbo adds lustre and gloss, a little like those wines that employ viognier to do a similar, but perhaps more perfumed, task. While some find shiraz/viog blends a…

Get Rich or Lie Trying Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy Symeon Brown Atlantic Books, £16.99 The rise of the “influencer economy”, fuelled by social media, has “changed the way we work, rest and play”, says Chris Stokel-Walker in New Scientist. This has been a “boon” for some people – it has transformed celebrity culture and helped make millionaires of “people who might otherwise be trapped in a dead-end job” – but there is little dispute that it has been “far from a uniformly good thing for society”. As Channel 4 News journalist Symeon Brown argues in this book, “the seedy side of social media can be as harmful as it is helpful”. Brown’s book focuses on interviews, which makes it more about human stories than statistics, says…

• ”Huge congratulations” to Harpreet Kaur (pictured) for winning the final of the BBC’s The Apprentice, says co-host Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. Kaur receives £250,000 in investment for her business, along with a partnership with host and tycoon Alan Sugar. “It is well deserved.” She and finalist Kathryn Burn have “proved themselves as true businesswomen”. So isn’t it annoying that, according to Kathryn, some fans of the show have turned their triumph into a political row for pointing out that the female contestants have posed in bikinis on Instagram? Kathryn is entitled to “celebrate her glamorous side as well as working hard and owning a company”. But some viewers say she can’t pose in a bikini and be a businesswoman, “as if it’s simply not possible to…

£100m The cost to Transport for London from a four-year deal mayor Sadiq Khan previously agreed with unions that raises annual pay for 15,000 London Underground workers by retail price index (RPI) inflation plus 0.2%. That translates into an 8.4% pay rise from April. $25.9bn The value of global music revenues last year, an 18.5% rise on 2020, and the most since records began in the 1990s, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Paid subscriptions rose by 80 million in 2021 to a total of 523 million. €2.4bn How much the French government has paid private consultants for reports and advice since 2018, drawing criticism from the Senate. The government defended the spending, arguing that Britain spends 40 times more on private consultants. $125m The sale price…

Tickets for shows by Chris Rock (pictured) soared after the comedian was slapped by actor Will Smith at the Academy Awards ceremony this week, says Business Insider. The price of a table at Rock’s next show rose from $338 to $450 on reselling site StubHub after the incident. Rock, who was presenting the awards, made a joke about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, prompting Smith to storm on stage and strike him. Craft brewer Stone Brewing has been awarded $56m in compensation after beer conglomerate Molson Coors infringed its trademark, says Reuters. Stone Brewing argued that Molson Coors had been losing market share to craft brewers and that its focus on the words “Stone” and “Stones” in adverts for Keystone beer were an attempt to capitalise on Stone’s goodwill.…

Barclays has been landed with a £450m bill as well as facing delays to its share buyback plan and scrutiny from regulators after the bank “mistakenly issued $15bn-worth more of financial products in the US than it had permission to”, says the Financial Times. The mistake centres on its decision to issue $36bn of exchange-traded notes, which are linked to oil and volatility futures, despite the fact that it only registered $20.8bn (see Strategy, page 18). As a result, it will have to repurchase the notes at the price they were originally issued at. Shares dipped by 2.3% on the news. The problem may seem little more than a “clerical error”, but it is proving “embarrassing and costly” and “raises further questions” about how the bank is run, says Rochelle…

Pesticide maker FMC isn’t a household name, but soaring food prices should encourage investors to take a look at it, says Al Root in Barron’s. Cash-rich farmers will be willing to spend more on crop-protection products, which in turn will make it easier for agricultural-products suppliers to raise prices. FMC’s sales could grow by 5%-7% this year and earnings per share by 10%. However, “spiking commodity prices isn’t a long-term strategy for value creation”: the case here rests on investments in research (6% of sales per year), including “more sustainable technologies” such as peptides and enzymes. Despite the growth potential, FMC trades on 15 times forecast earnings – a discount to the S&P 500.…

Boris Johnson’s energy strategy, promised within “days” on 9 March, has been delayed again, possibly until 4 April, says the BBC. The delay is attributed to disagreements between Johnson and Rishi Sunak, says Oliver Wright in The Times. Johnson wants the UK to get 25% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2050, which would require up to six new power stations. Sunak is said to be baulking at the cost, arguing it “represents poor value and would lead to substantial long-term increases in energy bills”. The Treasury argues that there are cheaper alternatives for providing a “base load” when generation from renewables fails or demand peaks. These include generating hydrogen with gas alongside carbon capture and storage, and investment in storage technology. It points out that nuclear power stations…

Despite a slight dip in the polls over the past few days, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, seems to be on course for a convincing victory in the first round of the coming elections, and a strong victory in the run-off. With £19,896 matched on Betfair, he is 1.05 (95.2%) to get the most votes in the first round, far ahead of Marine Le Pen, who is in second place at eight (12.5%). Most importantly, with £2.68m matched on Betfair, he is 1.11 (90.9%) to be re-elected as president, with Le Pen again in second place at 13 (7.7%). The fact that Macron’s victory is seen as inevitable has led both Betfair and Smarkets to offer some additional markets on various aspects of the contests. The most attractive of these is…

Wall Street has handed itself the biggest collective windfall in decades, says Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou on Bloomberg. According to New York state’s comptroller, the average bonus has risen 20% this year to a record-high of $257,500. Payouts at Goldman Sachs are up 23% to around $30m on average for top performers, followed by Jefferies with $25m. “The bump for dealmakers is roughly twice that.” Despite the air of nervousness due to pandemics, wars and financial uncertainty, plenty of “Wall Street’s traditional courtiers” – estate agents, private-jet services, purveyors of luxury goods – are “still dreaming of the golden crumbs that might fall off the bonus cake”. In particular, the rise of “hybrid working” is causing the “well-heeled” to seek out more space and amenities in the city, such as properties with…

Pierre Andurand founder, Andurand Capital “I don’t think that suddenly they stop fighting, the oil comes back... The oil’s going to be gone for good,” says commodities trader Pierre Andurand, founder of Andurand Capital. He tells Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast that he expects crude oil prices to soar to $200 a barrel by year-end as rival producers struggle to replace Russian supply. Andurand made millions by shorting oil when prices turned negative in April 2020, as a pandemic-driven supply glut overwhelmed physical storage capacity. He believes that the situation has now dramatically reversed. Sanctions placed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have removed around four million barrels a day from circulation, and that will be hard to replace. For example, US shale oil supply has been limited, partly because…

thecritic.co.uk The UK government’s official response to last year’s Sewell report on race and ethnic disparities was welcome, says Rakib Ehsan. The “grievance-industrial complex” would have us believe that racism and “white privilege” lie at the heart of societal problems. “As well as being empirically suspect, this threatens to fundamentally undermine social solidarity in our multiracial democracy.” Tony Sewell’s work reveals the reality that, within both the white and black British populations, certain ethnic groups perform far better than others on a range of social and economic metrics. Asian minorities of Indian and Chinese origin, for example, are thriving, and outperform the white British majority at school and in terms of median hourly pay. This shows that “an optimistic, family-orientated traditionalism rooted in hard work and discipline is an effective…

■ SDCL Energy Efficiency Income Trust has raised £100m in its second fundraising round in a year. The trust, which invests in energy-efficiency projects, hopes to take advantage of rising demand for energy-saving solutions caused by soaring prices, says Investment Week. The placing was increased from £75m to £100m due to strong demand. In September it raised £250m, up from an initial target of £175m. ■ Scottish Widows is to sell all stocks and bonds of firms where tobacco is more than 10% of sales, says The Times. It also plans to screen out all firms that get more than 5% of sales from thermal coal and tar sands (down from 10% now). The decision will affect the pensions and savings of over a million customers, although the effects will…

• Around two million workers will receive a pay rise this month as the national living wage (the name given to the minimum wage for those aged 23 and over) rises to £9.50 from £8.91. The boost equates to a pay rise of more than £1,000 a year for a full-time worker. The national minimum wage, meanwhile, is increasing to £9.18 an hour, from £8.36 for those aged 21 or 22; to £6.83 from £6.56 for 18 to 20-year olds; and to £4.81 from £4.62 for the under-18s. The rate for apprentices will also rise to £4.81 from £4.30. The increases still lag the “real living wage”, which is reported by the Living Wage Foundation (LWF) and based on research by Loughborough University into what the public views as being…

• The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) now expects the Treasury to receive £1.7bn of income tax from people over 55 using the flexible withdrawal rules to take money out of their pension savings in the 2021-2022 tax year. That’s a £500m increase on its projection just six months ago, a footnote in last week’s spring statement revealed. The numbers reflect the OBR’s view that very large numbers of people have brought forward plans to cash in their pension as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, raising fears that some savers could run out of money later on in retirement. • Pensioners could see the biggest-ever rise in state pensions in April 2023. Last week, the government confirmed that its “triple lock” guarantee will be reinstated. The pledge to raise…

Pictet’s Asia ex-Japan strategy is a long-only, high conviction and fundamentally driven portfolio. We focus on cash-generative businesses and invest in both structural compounders and cyclical-inflection opportunities. Asian equities are attractive due to the strong earning potential of companies and appealing valuations, especially relative to developed markets. A focus on stock selection has been the driver of outperformance and the holding period for each stock is typically three to five years. Asia remains the fastest-growing region in the world. It is among the most advanced in terms of e-commerce and fintech. The companies below showcase three of the most interesting picks across a variety of sectors. A key player in renewables Innovation across the region is on show in the renewable energy sector. Sungrow (Shenzhen: 300274) is a key player…