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Netflix. Are you still watching it? I can’t remember when we last did. We aren’t alone. Netflix has just reported losing customers for the first time in a decade (see page 10). It is already 200,000 down and reckons it will see another two million customers cancel this quarter. You might see this more as symptomatic of the cost of living crisis and the many economic miseries ahead than anything else. That’s not entirely unreasonable. On page 9 we look at the danger to the global economy from Xi Jinping’s inflexible empire (see page 20 for a little more optimism). On page 4 and page 14 we look at what you should worry about in France (the election and the insanely high levels of debt) and on page 5 we…

A non-fungible token (NFT) of the first tweet sent by Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey (pictured) that was bought by crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for $2.9m last year has failed to attract much demand after going up for sale, says Bloomberg. Estavi wanted $48m for the NFT – a digital certificate giving “ownership” of the tweet – but the highest offer on the OpenSea marketplace was $280. A “decentralised finance project” (ie, cryptocurrency) called Beanstalk Farms has been hijacked out of $76m, says the Financial Times. A user took out a flash loan (a very short-term loan) to acquire enough Beanstalk tokens to vote through changes to the project’s protocol, then sent all its reserves to their own wallet. Calling the debacle a hack or a theft is debatable, says the…

The diamond industry is seeing a “spectacular reversal of fortune”, say analysts at Bain, a management consultancy. Store closures and supply-chain disruptions at the start of the pandemic sent sales of rough diamonds down by 31% in 2020, but 2021 brought a rapid recovery. With travel and other “experience” gifts still limited by restrictions, revenue from diamond jewellery sales rose 29% to top its pre-pandemic level. Huge pent-up demand from the wedding industry is also playing a role. Diamond-mining revenue jumped 62%, also rising above pre-pandemic levels. This is in line with history: the industry usually takes 12-18 months to come back after a crisis. But “production is not likely to reach pre-pandemic levels within the next five years”. Miners remain hesitant about launching new projects, which should cap production…

• Petropavlovsk – “the specialist in internecine warfare with a sideline in gold mining” – has finally overdone the Russian roulette with a proposal to sell all its operating subsidiaries, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. The miner was set up by Peter Hambro and Pavel Maslovskiy in 1994, but both founders have been ousted and it has “degenerated into an oligarchs’ plaything”. Sanctions mean that it can’t service its $287m debt with Gazprombank (which also buys 100% of its gold), nor access cash in Russia to repay $304m in bonds due this year. A great company has been screwed up by idiots, says Hambro. “That’s a polite way of putting it.” • GlaxoSmithKline is “refusing to sit on its laurels”, says Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. CEO Emma…

An operator of floating liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals has become the first major US initial public offering (IPO) since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, says Reuters. Excelerate Energy owns ten floating storage and regasification units and operates in seven countries in the Americas, the Middle East and South Asia. The firm raised $384m from an IPO that valued it at $2.54bn. US investors have bid up shares with exposure to LNG in the expectation that they will benefit from sanctions on Russia, which supplies around 40% of Europe’s gas. In 2021, Excelerate made $41.2m in net income from revenue of $888.6m, with around 47% coming from LNG and natural gas.…

• Asset-management giant BlackRock has handed its chief executive Larry Fink (pictured) a 21% pay rise, taking his total pay to $36m last year, says the Financial Times. The “bumper” pay award includes cash and equity incentives on top of Fink’s $1.5m base salary. BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, recorded net inflows of $540bn for 2021, while assets under management surpassed $10trn for the first time, in December, thanks in part to the popularity of its actively managed funds. • Shareholders in Amsterdam-based car group Stellantis took “the unusual step” last week of rejecting the Jeep maker’s pay plan for its top executives, says The Wall Street Journal. Just over half of investors cast their non-binding votes against the plans, which include almost €19.2m in pay for CEO Carlos…

A poison pill, as the rather melodramatic name suggests, is a strategy designed to protect a company from an unwanted takeover approach. The defence usually works by promising to flood the market with new shares under certain circumstances, making it far more costly for any predator to mount a successful bid. The term is in the news right now because Tesla founder Elon Musk has launched a hostile takeover bid for social media website Twitter (see page 10). It’s by no means certain or even likely that Musk’s bid would succeed in any case, given that many Twitter shareholders believe it’s too low, but the board has decided to take no chances. In this case, if anyone acquires more than 15% of the company without board approval, existing shareholders –…

“I mean, if my smile was insured, there would be someone at my house on a nightly basis saying, ‘You need to floss longer’.’’ Julia Roberts (pictured) denies the story that her smile is insured for $30m, in an interview with The New York Times “Inflation was a sleeping dragon; this dragon has now awoken.” Otmar Issing, one of the architects of the euro, quoted in the Financial Times “One day in 1985… my manager put a piece of paper in front of me and told me to sign. I did, without looking, like any self-respecting artiste. Fortunately it was not a wildly inequitable contract, but a pension scheme.” Pop star turned priest Richard Coles, quoted in The Sunday Times “The Zombies were sheltered from the total lack of touring…

theconversation.com Just as the business world was emerging from lockdown, it was plunged into new crises, says Oliver Laasch. More may be coming – we seem to have entered an “age of accelerating grand crises”, and there may be no going back to “normal”. Businesses need to adapt. First, they should adopt “reactive business models” that can respond to crises. This means aligning management practices with the “new normal” that follows the crisis rather than clinging on to the old ones. Second, businesses must accept that reality is now one characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. That means being agile and quick to adjust, and shifting to products and services that address “timeless and fundamental needs” rather than “superficial wants”. Chinese electronic goods firm Haier, for example, responded to…

The activist investor that called for Peleton to fire its founder CEO in January has now taken aim at his replacement, says the Financial Times. Blackwells Capital, which has a stake of almost 5% in the maker of luxury exercise bikes, says that Barry McCarthy has failed to reform the firm’s corporate governance. It wants to scrap a dual-class shareholder structure under which co-founder John Foley and other insiders have super-voting shares with 20 times the votes of ordinary stocks, giving them effective control. The firm also wants McCarthy to explore a sale of Peleton to a potential buyer such as Amazon or Nike. Peleton’s shares soared during the pandemic, but its market cap has fallen from almost $50bn to $7.9bn since gyms reopened.…

Sea (NYSE: SE) is the leading e-commerce and fintech player in Southeast Asia and the second player in Latin America. It recently exited India but will return later this year. The stock has collapsed on worries over profitability in the company’s gaming business and lack of profits in e-commerce. However, the Southeast Asian e-commerce business will turn profitable this year and the gaming business will prove much more resilient. Valuations are now close to the depressed levels of Chinese tech stocks, even though it remains the region’s best hope for a $1trn market-cap company. State Bank of India (NYSE: SBI) is the largest bank in India. It was mired in bad debts and political intervention but Modi has severed those ties, and SBI is now a leading beneficiary of the…

$159,222 How much the US Federal Aviation Administration transport agency is pursuing in fines from two passengers for alleged unruly behaviour during two domestic flights, says The Wall Street Journal. The record-high fines are for $81,950 and $77,272. £1,000 The “welcome bonus” British Airways is offering cabin crew who already have the necessary credentials, amid staff shortages at the airline. The pay package consists of £16,800 in basic pay, rising to £28,000 with duty pay and a tax-free subsistence allowance. $13.6bn How much tax the wealthiest 25 Americans collectively paid between 2014 and 2018, worth about 3.4% of the $401bn they earned combined in that period, according to analysis from ProPublica, a US nonprofit organisation. £100 The new price of a tourist visa to visit Britain, required by visitors from…

A range of flapjacks made by one of Britain’s biggest manufacturers are too chewy to be exempt from VAT, according to a tax tribunal, says The Times. Judges ruled that 36 products made by Glanbia had a “dense, chewy consistency”, were often described as having protein and providing energy and are not something to be eaten at “celebratory functions”. As a result, they must be classified as confectionary and are subject to VAT – a decision that is likely to cost Glanbia millions of pounds in retrospective tax for sales between 2016 and 2018. Traditional flapjacks (pictured below) are treated as cakes, which are zero-rated for VAT purposes, as are biscuits that are not covered with chocolate. Any biscuits coated partially or wholly in chocolate are liable to VAT because…

“Never since the fall of Pétain and the return of democracy in 1945 has the far-right been so close” to taking power in France, says Philippe Aghion in Les Echos. On Sunday centrist Emmanuel Macron faces far-right rival Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. In 2017, Macron beat Le Pen in a landslide, winning 66% to 34%. Since then, Le Pen has softened her image, including ditching plans to leave the euro, and their rematch will be much closer. Polls give Macron a narrow lead, close to the margin of error. Investors breathed a sigh of relief after Macron won the first round on 10 April, with the yield spread between French and German bonds retreating from a two-year high. A surprise victory for Le…

“If cryptocurrencies can’t have their moment in the sun when the entire Western monetary system is called into question, it may be time to call it quits… [With] many nations now aware of the perils of depending on currencies weaponised by Western governments, it is remarkable that prices aren’t reflecting the possibility of higher crypto adoption… After Russia invaded Ukraine, rouble trading in bitcoin and tether hit 6.6bn rubles on 7 March… But volumes quickly plummeted back to pre-invasion levels… Whatever financial back door crypto offers, it doesn’t even seem to be big enough for expert sanction evaders… To be sure, there is still likely illegal activity in Russian crypto… But the sums liquidated are in the range of tens of millions of dollars, which is minuscule relative to the…

“Tesco is protecting its profit margins – for now,” says Oscar Williams-Grut in the Evening Standard. Britain’s biggest supermarket reported operating profits of £2.8bn for 2021, with operating margins rising to 4.6%, up from 3.1% the previous year. “But pressure is intensifying as the cost of living crisis ramps up and inflation soars.” Shoppers are turning to discount chains such as Aldi and Lidl, forcing Tesco to respond with price matches, discounts and other promotions. Wholesale food prices are going up, as are wage bills, and it will be increasingly hard to pass these on to consumers. Hence these results “will be the high-water mark for profits”, with chief executive Ken Murphy saying earnings could drop by £400m in the coming year. That downbeat outlook took the City by surprise…

Three to buy Bunzl The Telegraph Bunzl is a manufacturer of packaging, hygiene equipment and personal-protection items that does business in 31 countries. The firm has been able to pass on rising costs to customers while optimising operational efficiency by consolidating its warehouse space and increasing automation. Bunzl deploys a successful “growth through acquisition” strategy, having acquired four companies last year. A price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 19 and yield of 1.9% aren’t cheap, but earnings and dividends have grown strongly for many years. 3,065p Games Workshop Investors’ Chronicle Demand for this firm’s cult tabletop games, figurines, and video games remains strong, despite recent supply-chain problems. The company has a fanatical fan base, which powers strong sales and growing royalty income. In the six months to November, royalties doubled to £20.1m.…

“History could come full circle in the Philippines next month,” says Julie McCarthy on NPR. “Decades after dictator Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in a popular uprising that laid bare the brutality and sweeping corruption of his regime, his son is poised to revive the family’s political fortunes in next month’s presidential elections.” Ferdinand Jr – known as Bongbong – is the favourite in the elections on 9 May, even though his father’s 21 years in power saw the “arrests of 70,000 people, the deaths of nearly 4,000, the stifling of free speech and the persecution of political rivals”. Marcos has won support due to fading memories and a savvy alliance with Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte, who is running for vice president, says Chad de Guzman…

Executive pay for FTSE 100 bosses has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, says Harriet Agnew in the Financial Times. Median total pay rose 34% to £4.1m in 2021 from the previous year and just shy of the £4.2m trousered in 2019. That’s according to analysis by accountancy firm PwC of the 50 biggest London-listed companies to publish pay reports, based on financial years ending in or after September 2021. Growth was predominantly driven by a big increase in annual bonuses, which, on average, paid out 82% of the potential maximum, compared to 44% in 2020 and 66% in 2019. Bosses of the biggest businesses across the pond have also done well, according to similar research by data firm Equilar, says Jennifer Liu for CNBC. Median pay reached $20m for 2021,…

“I thoroughly admit that it wasn’t necessarily the last few months that I was wanting or expecting,” James Anderson tells Harriet Agnew in the Financial Times. Anderson retires this month from Scottish Mortgage (LSE: SMT). Since he became manager in 2000, the investment trust (part of MoneyWeek’s model trust portfolio) has returned around 1,400%, compared to less than 350% for the FTSE All-World benchmark, due to a high-conviction focus on fast-growing stocks such as electric car group Tesla. However, recent months have been tougher. The trust’s share price is down about 35% since peaking in November. Markets have turned against growth stocks in general due to concerns about rising interest rates and inflation. But China’s crackdown on the private sector under president Xi Jinping’s “common prosperity” doctrine hasn’t helped the…

conservativehome.com Consumer capitalism has led us to expect instant gratification, says Emily Carver. We can summon goods to our home with a swipe of a smartphone. This is making the NHS look “staler and more antiquated by the day”. Waiting lists are at a record high and continuing to grow; cancer screening is failing; A&E departments are at breaking point; face-to-face GP appointments are “as rare as gold dust”. Public satisfaction is at a 25-year low. We’re beginning to fall out of love with “our NHS”. And we’re voting with our feet. Polling has shown that close to a third of 18 to 34-year-olds are considering funding their own care and 85% of patients on NHS waiting lists have paid for or are considering private medical treatment. As a result,…

■ Uncertainty and market volatility has “killed off” new investment trust launches, says Dave Baxter in Investors’ Chronicle. Not a single new trust has floated so far this year, in contrast to the end of 2021, when eight launches raised a total of £2bn, according to brokers Numis. Cordiant Global Agricultural Income (CGAI), the sole trust to come close to an initial public offering (IPO), delayed its plans in early April. That said, “some interesting new trusts may be waiting in the wings”, says Numis – as well as CGAI, these include an agri-tech fund, a life-sciences fund and a trust aiming to provide funding to female and underrepresented entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, existing trusts in certain sectors are still finding it easy to raise more cash, including renewable energy funds and…

Despite widespread pessimism about the property sector during the earlier stages of the pandemic, there has been nothing but good news in the last year. The average house price has reached £274,000, up nearly 10% year on year, according to the UK House Price Index compiled by the Office for National Statistics, amid “an unprecedented lack of supply”. The number of completed new dwellings remains consistently above 200,000 after ten years of lower output following the financial crisis. Lockdown closed restaurants, coffee shops and pubs and shifted shopping online, leading to many empty properties on the high street, but the premises have been filled by new tenants. Only the former department stores are struggling to find new purposes. A focus on streamlining supply chains means that the boom in logistics…

Owning a pet is an expensive business. The price of vet and other pet services rose by 17% between 2015 and 2020, according to the Daily Mail. One of the largest possible outgoings is medical treatment. Advances in veterinary science mean a whole host of illnesses that would have resulted in a pet being put down years ago can now be treated, at a cost. This has led more of us to insure our pets so that we don’t have to find the money to pay vets’ bills ourselves. But pet insurance isn’t cheap and premiums are rising far faster than inflation. So deciding whether it’s best to take out a policy or “self-insure” by putting aside money for possible expenses isn’t straightforward. Beware the small print The principle of…

• One third of small businesses are considering offering customers the option to pay via digital currencies over the next 12 months, according to a new survey by accounting software company Sage. While only 13% of small businesses currently offer cryptocurrency payments, 33% are planning to begin doing so within the next year. Sage’s research suggests finance directors at small companies are increasingly familiar with digital currencies because they’re using them in their personal lives – and that they believe customers are eager to pay in this way. • Almost nine in ten small businesses don’t know how much carbon their company is responsible for emitting, says a survey from banking group NatWest. The research suggests that while almost half of small businesses believe it is now important for them…

In late 1969, the Ekofisk oil field was discovered in the North Sea by Phillips Petroleum Company, and it became obvious that it contained a large amount of oil. Within two years, the field was consistently producing, and Norway’s government introduced new regulations to ensure that it, rather than the oil firms involved, received most of the revenue. Thanks to these policies, as well as the rise in oil prices, large sums of money flowed to the Norwegian treasury, enabling the government to support a high level of public spending. What was the investment? After two decades it became obvious that simply spending the tax revenue was not a good idea. It made the prospects for the economy, already highly dependent on oil, even more closely linked to the price…

Going… A “magnificent and extremely rare” large doucai Chinese vase, dating from the Qianlong period (1736-1795), is the highlight of Christie’s Chinese ceramics sale in Hong Kong on 30 May. Doucai refers to the decorating technique by which fine underglaze cobalt blue lines were painted onto the porous unfired clay. The design, the ruyi motif, is based on the form of a lingzhi, a type of fungus, expressing a wish that the emperor receive everything he desired on his birthday. The body of the vase features four gilt Buddhist symbols of good luck, and the handles are formed as dragons. The vase (pictured) is valued at HK$30m-HK$50m (£2.9m-£4.9m), with the proceeds to go to a fund for the acquisition of artworks. Gone… A blue-and-white Chinese vase that was filled with…

Train passengers will be able to travel more cheaply for a short while, thanks to a sale on advance train tickets, says the BBC. The “Great British Rail Sale” will see some off-peak prices cut by half between 25 April and 27 May: a London to Edinburgh ticket will be as low as £22 on some services. But the promotion ends before the four-day bank holiday for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which begins on 2 June. A man who was fired in 2019 after suffering a panic attack as a result of a surprise birthday party thrown by his employer has been awarded $450,000 in compensation, says The New York Times. Kevin Berling had asked Gravity Diagnostics not to hold any event for him because he had an anxiety disorder.…

First-quarter results from JPMorgan “suggest disappointment is in store for investors hoping higher US interest rates can keep the good times going”, says Lex in the Financial Times. America’s largest bank reported a 42% drop in net income. The plunge was partly due to a tough comparative period a year ago. Back then, it was able to boost profits by releasing $4bn in reserves that had been set aside for loan losses that never materialised. This time, it had to set aside $1.46bn in reserves, including $600m to reflect a higher risk of a US recession. Meanwhile, a slump in deals hurt investment banking income, which fell 28%. “It was always going to be tough for Wall Street to live up to 2021, a year that was as good as…

New York-listed North European Oil Royalty Trust “sits at the intersection of even higher energy prices, Russian sanctions and Germany’s energy dilemma”, says Philip MacKellar in The Globe and Mail. The trust gets royalties on gas from two concessions in Germany that are operated by ExxonMobil and Shell, and pays these to investors every quarter. The size of the payout varies with energy prices: the most recent was $0.25, which is triple that of two years ago and should rise further. However, at a share price of $17.50 and with a proved reserve life of six years, long-term value will depend on whether higher energy prices lead to an increase in successful exploration and production drilling.…

Home secretary Priti Patel overrode objections from civil servants to press on with her plan to send migrants who seek asylum in Britain to Rwanda, says Sebastian Payne in the Financial Times. She faced criticism from opposition politicians and human-rights groups, and from Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who called the plans “ungodly”. That’s understandable, but misses the point, says David Goodhart on Unherd. The plan is “designed to be a game-changer”. Whatever the protestations of high-minded people, no democratic country can live with 50,000 people a year entering illegally in “such dramatically visible fashion”. The ongoing influx “undermines faith in government and the whole immigration system”. And Patel’s plan, if implemented successfully, would not have to last long. As soon as asylum seekers coming to the UK see…

On Sunday, France will elect its president for the next five years. It will almost certainly be close. Emmanuel Macron, the centrist incumbent, looks to be slightly ahead of Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger. Markets will breathe a sigh of relief if he scrapes home. But hold on. In reality, whoever wins, France’s massive debts are starting to pose a systemic risk to the global financial system – and that is not going to go away whoever takes charge of the Élysée Palace next week. In many respects, Macron has been a decent, if hardly spectacular president. That may have obscured the extent to which France has quietly turned into one of the biggest debtors in the world. Macron may have talked about balancing the books, but under pressure…

FTSE 100 companies will earn a record £169.7bn in 2022, reckons investment platform AJ Bell. In total, they will return £114bn of that to shareholders, which so far looks likely to consist of £81.2bn in dividends and £32.7bn in buybacks. The biggest payer is mining giant Rio Tinto, which shows just how far miners have come since the last commodity cycle. Boom and bust cycles have been a feature of mining ever since humans first discovered the dirt beneath their feet might be valuable. The rise of China in the mid-1990s and early 2000s set off a super cycle, which saw prices boom for the best part of two decades. “Big miners are prioritising financial stability” Miners borrowed huge sums to expand their output to meet what seemed like never-ending…

The Tories are bereft of ideas Martin Fletcher New Statesman Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been of surprising benefit to Boris Johnson’s government, providing “a pretext for excusing, rising above, distracting attention from and generally avoiding direct responsibility for the relentless, unremitting litany of domestic woes that is now engulfing Britain”, says Martin Fletcher. The UK is experiencing the steepest decline in living standards since 1956-1957, the highest tax burden since the 1940s, rising fuel and food prices, inflation, a reduction in benefits, NHS backlogs and much more. In short, it’s coming apart at the seams and yet the government is confused, “deeply divided between those favouring a low-tax, low-regulation Singapore-on-Thames model, and those favouring a high-spending, interventionist European-style social-democratic model. It is split between spenders, borrowers, belt-tighteners and…

adamtooze.com There’s a lot of talk about the consequences of the Russian attack on Ukraine for US dollar hegemony, but there are more immediate issues, says Adam Tooze. One of the “fallacies of the current moment” is to imagine that Putin has “rudely disrupted an otherwise functional system”. In fact, the signs of tension among the more fragile low-income and emerging-market economies have been “mounting for years”. Debt relief measures for struggling economies in the wake of Covid-19 were “derisory”, and they now face a “triple whammy” of rising energy and food prices, and interest rates. Their currencies are also devaluing against the dollar, which is an important driver of inflation for many poorer countries. Sri Lanka is one example of where the mounting pressure of debt has finally exploded.…

Thematic funds – those that track a big, long-term trend – are popular with investors, but less so among more disinterested observers and analysts. A few years ago, Nicolas Rabener, who runs a fantastic research firm called FactorResearch that makes its superb analysis free to use, looked at the three-year record of carefully chosen thematics against a broader benchmark. He found that many of the earlier thematic strategies underperformed, probably because they were chasing the wrong stocks. “Once an industry outperforms, investors flock to it in a chase for performance, which often leads to expensive valuations,” he said. “Eventually mean-reversion sets in, and with it less attractive subsequent returns.” The wrong approach Joachim Klement, a strategist at investment bank Liberum, is another sceptical smart analyst. In one of his blogs…

On 24 October 2020, Alibaba founder Jack Ma gave a now-infamous speech, criticising Chinese regulators for stifling innovation and calling for reforms. Since then, the Chinese internet sector is down by 60% – and by 72% from its subsequent peak high in February 2021. The extent of the collapse is in line with the slump in the Nasdaq in 2000 as the first internet bubble burst. In that case, the Nasdaq didn’t bottom until late 2002, but the subsequent returns have been dramatic. The best stocks are up by eye-watering amounts. Amazon has risen 55,000% since March 2001. Could there be similar opportunities today in the Chinese tech sector? On the flip side, the best-performing large equity market in the world since the pandemic lows in March 2020 is not…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has alerted democracies to the dangers of dictators with expansionist ambitions. The results will include strengthening of protective alliances and increased spending on defence. Germany, which has long undershot the Nato target of 2% GDP on defence, is now preparing to exceed that. Japan, which is conscious of China’s threats to invade democratic Taiwan and the South China Sea islands, has set a record defence budget for 2022. Australia is increasing its defence force by one-third. Defence companies are thus likely to see sustained growth in orders. I recommended Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence company, in June 2020 (up around 22% since) and I am now recommending the world’s second-largest defence company – Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX), which was formed by the merger of Raytheon…

• If you built up unused childcare vouchers during the pandemic, you may be struggling to spend them. The voucher scheme was closed to new entrants in October 2018, but existing members can keep buying childcare vouchers from their pre-tax salary, saving tax and national insurance. Yet some childcare providers are choosing to stop accepting vouchers “because of the paperwork involved”, says The Times. Parents are free to switch to the new tax-free childcare scheme that replaced the vouchers, but “there is no mechanism for converting unused vouchers into deposits in tax-free childcare accounts”. What’s more, many vouchers have an expiry date. Those from Sodexo expire after 30 months, while paper vouchers from Computershare expire after 12 months although e-vouchers have no expiry. • If you are planning a trip…

Our fund invests in special companies run by first-class people. We seek capital-light businesses that are rich in intellectual property (IP) and we place strong emphasis on management teams. Every year we meet over 300 companies, but invest in only a handful of names. We invest with conviction – our portfolio has only 35 companies and our top ten companies account for 45% of the portfolio value. Our time-frame is long term – we accept short-term volatility and our portfolio turnover is low. We are bottom-up stock pickers rather than macro forecasters. That said, no stock picker can ignore the impact of major economic shifts such as the ones we are seeing at present. Inflation is hurting companies across many sectors and unless they are well positioned and able to…

“NFTs of photos of Koons’ art will cost $2m each” Until now, the focus of lunar exploration has been to get to the moon, and then bring stuff back – stuff like a bag full of dust for scientific study, for example (see right). But now, there’s an altogether different kind of space race under way – the race to take stuff to the lunar surface. Stuff like art. It began when Nasa asked robotics companies to come up with pod-like lunar landers to ferry equipment to the moon ahead of its own planned trip to since 1972, says Kelly Crow in The Wall Street Journal. At least two of those companies also plan to be the first to send up art. (In fact, that race may have already have…

A “contingency” sampling of lunar dust that Neil Armstrong collected from the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 was the star lot of the Bonhams “Space History” sale in New York last week. According to Armstrong’s biographer James Hansen, the astronaut was so focused on taking photos on the moon that at first he neglected to collect the sample that was a mission priority. If the mission had had to be cut short, Nasa would at least have this small sample of dust and small rocks to show for its efforts. But Armstrong did fill the Teflon bag with two scoops of surface matter, weighing around a kilo in total. The bag then made its way back to Earth – only for Nasa to lose it. In…

• ”Sometimes a break-up is so bitter that one or both parties seem to spend the rest of their lives trying to destroy the other,” says Virginia Blackburn in the Daily Express. Take Hollywood actors Amber Heard (pictured) and Johnny Depp, for example. Depp lost a libel case against Heard in London in 2020, when he sued News Group Newspapers. Now he is suing the actress for defamation in the US over a piece she wrote in The Washington Post in 2018, saying she was a victim of domestic violence. He’s demanding $50m. She’s countersuing with a $100m claim. “How is this going to benefit either of them?” At 35 years old, Heard still has a life ahead of her. Depp is 58 and “he should know when to let…

Wars are hard to win; often, they’re not worth fighting. During the Cold War, for example, a candidate for prime minister of Denmark came up with a novel and refreshing idea. He proposed to replace the entire defence budget with a single recording – “We surrender” – in Russian. But now we have another war. And our blood is up. This is no time to wave the white flag. Thankfully, we are told, the international community has rarely been as united as it is today in applying sanctions against Russia. “The EU has funnelled $38bn into Putin’s war machine” Oh yeah? South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, for one, is not onboard. Vladimir Putin has thanked him for his “balanced approach” to the war. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro has refused to take…