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Inflation is still the biggest topic in investment. To get an idea of what’s going on and where we might be going, let’s consider a stylised picture of the economy over the past two years or so. In 2020, coronavirus triggered a lockdown that stopped people from going out for a prolonged period. But governments stepped in to pay workers who would otherwise have lost their jobs. So consumers maintained their pre-pandemic buying power, but could only spend their money on “indoor” goods and services, such as exercise bikes and Netflix subscriptions. Demand for these spiked. You might think the beneficiaries of this surge would have recognised it as temporary. But it seems not. Many appear to have either assumed the extra demand was permanent, or favoured a strategy of…

“At the recent... St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin struck a triumphalist note, crowing that ...‘gloomy predictions about the Russian economy’s future didn’t come true’. There has been no meltdown, not least thanks to eight years of conscious sanctions-proofing in Russia, and down to the financial wizardry of technocrats like central bank chair Elvira Nabiullina. Yet economic war, like the mills of God, grinds slowly... Russia is heading for a year-on-year decline in GDP of up to 15%, and inflation has hit 17%. Although it is easy to be mesmerised by the huge sums of money still heading to Moscow, largely thanks to its exports of oil and gas, the problem is that Russia cannot... buy what it needs, from microchips to spare parts, thanks to sanctions. It is in...…

Aston Martin’s shares jumped by a fifth last week as investors celebrated a capital injection from Saudi Arabia. The group “will raise £653m via a placing and rights issue”, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) injecting £78m into the company and agreeing to take part in a separate £575m rights issue. PIF will thus become Aston Martin’s second-largest shareholder, with 17% of the shares and two seats on the board. Executive chairman Lawrence Stroll argues that the deal “is needed to tackle Aston Martin’s oversized balance sheet”, with about half of the new funds put towards debt reduction, says Lex in the Financial Times. It should also give the company “more headroom to launch planned models”. Still, all this will “not come cheap”. The Saudis will get a 25%…

Shares in e-commerce specialist Shopify have fallen sharply in recent months as investors have fled growth stocks. But the slide looks overdone, says Börse Online. The group provides subscription-based software that allows companies to build online shops, and it also provides logistics and payment services. Covid-19 gave Shopify a big boost as companies rushed online. The group now boasts more than two million stores in 175 countries. This global presence entices not only new clients, but also software programmers keen to develop new applications. The group is now focusing on opportunities in business-to-business transactions.…

Soaring youth unemployment is a brewing crisis for China, writes Simon Wilson. Beijing’s pursuit of a zero-Covid strategy via harsh lockdowns has whacked the economy and it’s hitting young people hard. In April, the jobless rate among 16-to-24-year-olds climbed to a record 18.2%, three times the overall urban unemployment rate. Moreover, another 11 million students will graduate in the coming weeks, says Matthias Kamp in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Even those who find jobs see sharp falls in real wages. That’s fuelling fears that “young people without jobs or prospects for the future could take their frustration to the streets”. This marks the “final nail in the coffin of the implicit post-1989 deal between the state and college graduates”, says Eli Friedman in ChinaFile. The Chinese Communist Party has demanded…

Rishi Sunak may have got support from 137 MPs, compared with 113 for Liz Truss, but Truss is favourite to emerge as the next prime minister. With £2.98m matched on Betfair on the market for the next PM (along with a further £2.4m on the next Conservative leader), punters have Truss at 1.68 (59.5%). However, they still think the contest might not be a walkover, as Sunak (pictured) is only out at 2.46, which means they still give him a 40.7% chance of winning. My guess is that the contest is going to be a bit closer than the markets suggest. It’s true that Truss has a clear lead in the latest YouGov poll of members, with 54% of the vote compared with Sunak’s 39%, but this isn’t completely insurmountable,…

The massive leak of files from Uber last week has blown open the ride-sharing giant’s lobbying machine. European commissioners were rushing from meeting to meeting with lobbyists. Politicians were dazzled with campaign donations, jobs for families and friends, and the promise of lucrative consultancy contracts. Meanwhile, Uber’s staff openly boasted about how the company was built on law-breaking, tearing up labour laws and suppressing dissent. Drivers were encouraged to get into fights with their opponents because violence works. Managers were instructed to hit the “kill switch” to delete data whenever regulators or police threatened to seize it. Overall, the picture is of a firm rising to dominance using methods that the Corleone family in The Godfather might have found a little on the pushy side. Yet while nobody would deny…

Many investors use the price/earnings (p/e) ratio as a measure of whether a share is cheap or not. There’s a good reason for that – it’s one of the simplest valuation measures out there. You simply take the share price, and divide by the earnings (profits) per share. So a company with a share price of 50p and earnings per share (EPS) of 5p would have a p/e ratio of ten. A p/e ratio which is based on forecast earnings is often referred to as a forward p/e ratio, while one based on past earnings is sometimes described as a trailing p/e. P/e ratios are also sometimes referred to as “multiples”, as in: “Acme widgets is trading on a multiple of ten times its earnings”. In effect, a p/e of…

“To believe that you are worth the money you earn and to believe in your ability to make money. A lot of people have a lot of money blocks such as: ‘I don’t make money, I’m poor, I’m skint, I can’t make money.’ I’ve learnt to believe that I have a huge potential to earn a lot of money and the more I believe in that, the more money I earn and it feels really good.” Miquita Oliver (pictured), television presenter, on the most important thing she’s learnt about money, quoted in The Sunday Times “I’ve never really done things for the money, so it’s quite hard for somebody, because of the character that I am, to sway me in any way.” Singer Heather Small on the pressures of the…

conservativehome.com Nato is getting serious about the threat from Russia, says Sarah Ingham. On China too the era of diplomatic nicety is over as Western leaders increasingly acknowledge Beijing’s attempts to subvert global rules, control key technologies and instigate “malicious cyber” operations and disinformation campaigns. Signs of China’s far-reaching influence are easy to see – just look at our addiction to cheap Chinese imports. Yet “few are willing to start examining China’s deeper reach into our society”, whether in the form of telecoms or energy infrastructure. Much remains murky. “Does the China Investment Corporation, part of Beijing’s sovereign wealth fund, still have its holding in Thames Water?” We should also examine the PRC’s hold on our universities. In 500BC the military strategist Sun Tzu noted that “the supreme art of…

■ BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, reported a bigger-than-expected fall in earnings for the quarter to 30 June, amid what CEO Larry Fink described as the toughest environment in decades, says the Financial Times. The firm’s earnings fell 30% to $7.36 per share on revenue of $4.4bn, missing analysts’ forecast earnings of $7.90 per share and revenue of $4.65bn. BlackRock, like many other asset managers, has been hurt by volatile markets: assets under management (AUM) dropped by 11% to $8.5trn – the second consecutive quarterly drop after it peaked at $10trn at the end of last year. Lower AUM meant lower management fees, a trend made worse by the stronger dollar, which decreased the value of fees obtained from other currencies. However, the decline in assets was down to…

Homeowners, spoilt by years of rock-bottom interest rates, are suddenly having to grapple with dearer money. The Bank of England’s base rate has risen from 0.1% last December to 1.25% today, propelling mortgage rates upwards. At the end of 2021 the average rate for a two-year fixed mortgage was 1.4%; that same mortgage now costs 3.74%, according to comparison site Moneyfacts. On a £200,000 mortgage that is a difference of £236 a month. “Average mortgage rates are the highest we’ve seen since 2013,” Sarah Coles from Hargreaves Lansdown told The Telegraph. “An awful lot of people are going to find themselves having to stretch their money further.” Should you go green? One way to avoid high interest rates is to get a green mortgage. Though this was once a niche…

In days gone by, when the vast majority of savers used their entire pension fund to buy an annuity income at the point of retirement, planning to mitigate the risk of a last-minute collapse in the value of the fund was routine. That’s not necessarily the case today because the assumption is that most people prefer to generate retirement income through an income-drawdown plan, where the pension fund remains invested. That assumption is not unreasonable. Income drawdown plans are now more popular than annuities. However, thousands of savers still buy annuities each year – and with annuity rates up by a fifth this year, that number looks set to rise. Even those who opt for drawdown plans early in retirement often purchase an annuity later on. “Market declines will have…

The Jets Airline ETF tracks firms within the commercial airline, aircraft manufacturing, and airport- and terminal-services industries. This is the first unconstrained summer travel season in three years, so airlines and airports are bracing for what is expected to be a particularly busy three months. Airlines, in fact, have recently upgraded their second-quarter revenue projections, citing higher than expected demand. Here are three airline stocks I’m keeping my eye on as we head into the busy summer season. An American low-cost leader Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) has the number-one position in 23 of the top 50 markets in the US, and the focus at present is on restoring the network to pre-pandemic levels. It’s also concentrating on maintaining its low-cost advantage, a task that includes coming up with more efficient…

On the 25th anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, supposedly under the rubric of “two countries, one system” until at least 2047, Hong Kong’s battle for freedom looks “increasingly beleaguered”, says Martin Kettle in The Guardian. Still, the fact that a democracy movement still exists at all is down to the efforts of Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong. Patten spent the final five years of British rule balancing the need “to ensure the 1997 handover to China went as smoothly as possible” with “entrenching the rule of law and trying to extend democracy”. The Hong Kong Diaries combine his previously unseen diaries with a “passionate polemical essay” about China’s “increasingly brutal sabotage of the Hong Kong deals”. Patten’s diaries “are not recommended…

The impact of the cost-of-living crisis is even trickling down to penguins and otters in Japan, says Vice. Hakone-en Aquarium in Kanagawa, south of Tokyo, is cutting costs by buying cheaper varieties of fish, moving from the fattier aji (also known as Japanese horse mackerel) to the slimier saba variety. However, the aquarium’s fussiest eaters aren’t impressed with the change and continue to insist on aji, says Hiroki Shimamoto, the head zookeeper: some of the penguins turn their beaks up when offered saba, while the otters try it, but then spit it out. The cost of running the aquarium has risen 20% since the beginning of the year, as Japan’s import costs and energy prices have climbed. Good week for: Boris Johnson (pictured) is near the end of his time…

Taiwanese stocks have slumped this year amid the wider tech sell-off, with the local Taiex index down 20% from its January high. Small wonder, given that IT firms account for more than two-thirds of the MSCI Taiwan Index. Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing alone accounts for more than a quarter of the Taiex index. Taiwan controls 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity. Last week officials in Taipei decided the sell-off had gone too far, says Rebecca Feng in The Wall Street Journal. They authorised the National Financial Stabilisation Fund to step in. “The fund has the equivalent of $16.7bn to deploy, but didn’t specify how much it would spend and what stocks it intends to buy.” It’s the eighth time the fund has been deployed since it was…

Globalisation has been a boon for the world’s poorest people, says Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. “Between 1980 and 2019... the share of the world’s population in extreme poverty fell from 42% in 1981 to just 8.6% in 2018”. Since the 2008 financial crisis, global trade has ceased to expand faster than the world economy, feeding a perception that the era of globalisation is over. That is a mistake. In fact, world trade as a percentage of global GDP remains close to all-time highs. What is true is that trade liberalisation efforts have “essentially stalled” since China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. Freer trade encourages economic development. “These opportunities need to be spread more widely, not less so.”…

On Monday, Haleon, the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in London since Glencore’s £37bn flotation in 2011, made a “lacklustre” debut, says Judith Evans in the Financial Times. Spun out of GlaxoSmithKline, Haleon is worth £30.5bn, making it “the world’s biggest standalone consumer health business as well as one of the FTSE’s largest 20 companies”. However, even when you take into account Haleon’s £10bn debt, the total enterprise value of the company is still well below the £50bn that Unilever offered at the end of last year. This gap should prompt further questions from investors as to why CEO Emma Walmsley and the rest of the board rejected Unilever’s bid. Despite the underwhelming start, the £50bn Unilever put on the table is “likely to stick in investors’ heads as a…

The Hong Kong stock exchange saw its busiest day in more than a year on 13 July, says The Wall Street Journal. Chinese lithium producer Tianqi Lithium launched the largest initial public offering (IPO) of 2022 so far, selling $1.7bn of stock. Retailer Miniso Group Holding, asset manager Noah Holdings and natural-gas distributor Huzhou Gas also floated that day. All four opened below their IPO prices and stayed there for most of the day, reflecting ongoing nervousness among local investors over the impact of China’s lockdown and zero-Covid policies. The first half of 2022 was the slowest for new listings in over ten years, and the amount raised fell by 91% year-on-year.…

Hoboken Celsius collapses: New Jersey-based Celsius Network, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency lenders, appeared in a New York bankruptcy court this week, says Jonathan Randles in The Wall Street Journal. It defended its decision to freeze customers’ withdrawals last month, arguing it did so to prevent customers who stayed with the platform from being “left holding the bag”. Celsius has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which gives it breathing space from its creditors while it formulates a repayment plan for its users and weathers the downturn in the cryptocurrency market. The court questioned whether that would be possible given the volatility in cryptocurrencies. Last week, Celsius’s CEO Alex Mashinsky (pictured) disclosed a $1.2bn hole in the company’s balance sheet. Celsius says it owes users $4.7bn, representing most of…

● “Not another ‘shock’ result at Playtech,” says Alistair Osborne in The Times. “How many more can chairman Brian Mattingley deliver?” In February, a mysterious group of Hong Kong investors voted down the £1.2bn takeover that he’d agreed between the UK gambling-software firm and Australian gambling-machine maker Aristocrat Leisure. After that came the “thunderbolt” news that Playtech CEO Mor Weizer was in talks with Hong Kong’s TTB Partners about a possible bid. Then last week, Mattingley met with TTB and was told the bid was off due to market conditions, sending the shares down 18%. Mattingly says that came as “quite a shock” to him and Weizer, which is unfortunate: in their line of work, they should “have a vague appreciation of the odds”. Regardless, it seems “ridiculous” that Weizer…

“My baseline would be one of a recession by the end of this year,” Nouriel Roubini, of economic consultancy Roubini Macro Associates, tells Bloomberg. Moreover, due to a range of supply shocks including the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in China, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this won’t be the sort of recession we’ve been used to – instead we’ll suffer both slow growth and high inflation, or “stagflation”. “If you’re looking at consumer confidence, if you look at retail sales, if you look at measures of manufacturer activity, if you look at housing, they’re all slowing down very sharply at a time when inflation is still very high.” Roubini, who earned the nickname “Dr Doom” during the last financial crisis for his (rightly) bearish views on US…

collaborativefund.com “For a lot of people the process of becoming wealthier feels better than having wealth,” says Morgan Housel. “Most of us are unfathomably wealthier than we were a generation or two ago,” but we don’t feel correspondingly thrilled. What really gets the dopamine pumping is the feeling of being “on an upward path”. That’s why US households are feeling so gloomy about losing $700bn in wealth in the recent market slump, even though “US household net worth is $80trn higher today than it was ten years ago”. The key is to be patient with investing, knowing that for all the volatility and reverses “if you can stick around long enough the odds of eventual growth and success are in your favour”. And resist getting addicted to the sensation of…

South Korea occupies an unusual place in global markets. It’s a wealthy, innovative economy that’s home to major international groups – such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai – that have strong positions in key industries. Yet the market is consistently cheap in nominal terms. The MSCI Korea index trades on 7.8 times forecast earnings, against 14.5 for the MSCI World. There are several reasons why it’s on such a low valuation. Corporate governance remains an issue: family-controlled conglomerates (chaebol) dominate the economy and many have not always treated minority shareholders fairly. The stockmarket is still classed as emerging by MSCI – whose developed and emerging indices have a huge impact on how much gets invested where – due to trading restrictions. Many big firms operate in cyclical industries, and cyclicals…

When a company floats on the stock exchange, the buoyancy of the share price represents a tension. Management wants to set a high price for the shares existing shareholders are selling, but that high price is anchored on future expectations. The higher the expectations, the higher the risk of disappointment following the listing though. Currency trader Argentex (LSE: AGFX) was founded in 2011 and listed on Aim in June 2019 at 106p, valuing the company at a market capitalisation of £120m. It raised £12.5m in new capital in the initial public offering (IPO), while existing shareholders sold £46m of stock. At the beginning of 2020, the shares peaked at over 200p. Then came the pandemic, then the departure of a co-CEO who sold his 10% shareholding, followed by earnings downgrades…

Savers beware: rising interest rates could mean savers may have to pay tax on their interest for the first time in years. In 2016 the government introduced the Personal Savings Allowance (PSA). This meant basic-rate taxpayers could earn up to £1,000 interest a year before income tax became due. Higher rate taxpayers can receive up to £500 a year. However, rising interest rates mean the amount of savings you can have without breaching the PSA has shrunk significantly. In January the best rate you could get on an easy access account was 0.67%. Now you can earn up to 1.56% from Virgin Money. So in January a basic-rate taxpayer could have had almost £150,000 in that easy-access account and not have to worry about tax. Now the amount safe from…

Lawyers representing pension schemes run by BT, Marks & Spencer and Ford have told the High Court that government plans to change the way inflation is calculated could cost retirees thousands. The schemes are challenging plans due to come into effect by 2030 that would change the definition of the RPI measure of inflation so that it more closely tracks the CPI benchmark. That will also directly hit savers whose pension payments go up in line with RPI each year; they would then receive smaller annual pension increases as CPI is lower. BT alone has more than 80,000 pensioners likely to be affected, the High Court heard, with the average pensioner losing £34,000 over the course of their retirement. The government has already ruled out compensation. Employers are also concerned…

Pharmaceuticals group Indivior’s (LSE: INDV) share price has defied the ongoing bear market, says Yahoo Finance. The company specialises in developing machines to combat mental illness and substance-abuse disorders. It has been a consistent performer recently: in the first quarter of 2022 net revenue rose by 15% year-on-year to $207m, while operating profits climbed by 6%. Investors have also been impressed by its profitability: it boasts a five-year return on capital of 18.4%. The shares have doubled over the last 12 months, outstripping the market by 93%.…

John Major was born in Surrey in 1943. After jobs in insurance and the London Electricity Board he moved into banking. In 1989 he became chancellor and played a key role in convincing Margaret Thatcher to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which fixed the value of sterling against various European currencies. ERM membership obliged the Bank of England to intervene whenever sterling fell below a certain value, by either buying pounds or hiking interest rates, in the hope that this would help curb inflation. But the costs of German reunification convinced the Bundesbank (Germany’s central bank) to hike rates, forcing the Bank of England to follow suit in order to burnish sterling’s appeal. But by 15 September 1992 investors had lost confidence in the pound and began selling it.…

I tasted a huge number of pretty pricey rosés the other day, and none of the wines was particularly earth-shattering. Many had expensive bottles and flashy labels to match their ambitious prices. One bottle stood out from the crowd. Looking more like a child’s plastic cricket bat than an elite pink wine, Nomade is packaged in an eco-friendly, flat bottle made entirely from ocean plastic salvaged from seashores. It weighs just 63g, and everything, including the cap, is 100% recyclable. The flat design is 40% more space-efficient, too, whether it’s destined for a shipping container, your fridge, or for maximising bottles in a picnic bag. When I showed the bottle to my wife, she said, “It had better taste good looking like that”. By the time I had unscrewed the…

The US switched to a “soft” dollar in 1971. It was a dollar that looked for all the world like the 1969 dollar. But it was different. It was no longer convertible to gold, it was a technocrat’s dollar – flexible, adjustable, and prey to temptation. New dollars are conceived in the credit market. When banks lend, they don’t actually reach into their vaults to draw down their depositors’ savings. Instead, they just create the money “out of thin air”, as a book-keeping transaction. It doesn’t matter if there are any savings or not. Thus, as borrowing grew, 1971-2022, the money supply grew… and aged. From 1971 to today, federal debt grew three times faster than GDP. And soon there was a big pile of grumpy, old debt that needed…

In recent weeks investors had started to bet on “firm signs that the inflationary peak is in sight”, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “We’re not there yet.” Annual US inflation hit 9.1% in June, the highest level since 1981. The price rises were driven by soaring energy prices, up 41.6%, the biggest jump since April 1980. Annual rises in food costs, up 10.4%, and shelter, up 5.6%, also registered new multi-decade highs. UK consumer price inflation hit a new 40-year high of 9.4% last month (see page 12). Central banks will keep on tightening The inflationary pot “just keeps bubbling over”, says Danni Hewson of AJ Bell. Markets expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by 0.75 percentage points later this month. Analysts also think the Bank of…

Six to buy Associated British Foods The Sunday Times Shares in Primark’s owner Associated British Foods have fallen far below pre-pandemic levels owing to rising inflation and shaky consumer confidence. Higher wages and energy prices are increasing Primark’s operating costs, and although it will raise prices in the autumn, margins will suffer this summer. It’s a similar story at the food business. However, “the sell-off looks overblown”. Primark is “an obvious beneficiary” of shoppers looking for more affordable alternatives, and the “demise of weaker rivals” will also increase customer numbers. Steady demand for food should offset volatility in the retail sector. The stock looks “excellent value” on a 2022 price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 11. 1,620p Auction Technology Investors’ Chronicle Auction Technology might be one of the few companies “happy about…

This week, Britain was hit by a heatwave that “shattered” records, with temperatures of up to 40°C in some areas, says The Guardian. Much of Europe was also affected, with “wildfires raging in France, Spain and Portugal”. Polls suggest that people already consider climate change Britain’s fourth most pressing problem, so these events “could lead to it climbing further up voters’ priorities”. Heat is shaping up to be a “silent disaster”, say David Fickling and Ruth Pollard on Bloomberg. “Heatwaves could become a far more damaging phenomenon in the 21st century than more familiar cataclysms such as cyclones and floods”. India is currently struggling with a heatwave that in some parts of the country is bringing a combination of both high heat and high humidity perilously close to the limits…

Two key things matter for stockmarket valuations. One is earnings (both current and anticipated). The other is what investors are willing to pay for those earnings. At any given time, investors as a group may be willing to pay more for a given pound or dollar of earnings than they are at other points. This is what market analysts mean when they talk about “multiple expansion” or “contraction” – they mean that the price/earnings (p/e) ratio is going up or down, driven purely by changes in the “p” rather than any change in the “e” (see below). That raises an interesting question: what makes investors more or less willing to pay “up” for earnings, especially at times of extreme over or undervaluation? During the dotcom bubble in the late 1990s,…

The key to effective sanctions Nathaniel Taplin The Wall Street Journal Last year Lithuania “irked Beijing by permitting Taiwan to open a local representative office with ‘Taiwan’ in the name”, says Nathaniel Taplin. China saw it as a step towards recognition of the self-ruled island, which it regards as its own territory. You might think Beijing would find it easy to punish an economy just 0.4% the size of China’s. Informal sanctions did see Lithuanian exports to China tumble 80% in six months. Yet they had little political impact because only 1% of Lithuanian exports went to China before the measures. As with Trump’s tariffs on China or European action on Russian oil, attempts to sanction exports directly often prove “ineffective”. Sanctioned countries just sell their wares to someone else.…

ft.com The investing industry is full of “bullsh*t”, says Benn Eifert. The “most common and insidious form” is not outright fraud, but “overoptimism: offers of tantalising risk/reward [ratios] that defy any notion of reality”. Look out for psychological pressure tactics such as scarcity – “you’re about to miss the big returns; the fund is about to close” – or attempts to “launder credibility” through “brand-name firms or authority figures”. Outrageous claims are especially common in new technologies, such as cryptocurrencies. “It should be self-evident that a 20% low-risk investment return cannot exist.” If a product offers “projected returns far above historical equity returns”, or rewards far higher than bond yields with scant risk, then steer clear. Also be aware of “perverse incentives for the people selling the investment”. The recent…

Activist campaigns against European companies reached a new record in the first half of 2022, says the Financial Times. There were 35 campaigns by activist investors during the period, an increase of 67% on the previous year, according to investment bank Lazard. More than one-third of those were directed at UK companies, including Nelson Peltz’s successful push for a board seat at Unilever, pressure from Third Point to split Shell into separate oil and gas, and renewables businesses, and a demand by Chinese insurer Ping An that HSBC should break up into Asian and Western operations. Meanwhile, French firms have become popular targets for activists: they accounted for 20% of all campaigns so far, triple the rate of five years ago.…

● “Families have been hit by the biggest jump in childcare costs on record,” says Harry Brennan in The Daily Telegraph. Nanny fees now average £32,500 a year, a 13% increase from the year before. In previous years annual salaries rose by just 2%. The increase was mostly driven by surging demand and limited spaces in nurseries and other cheaper alternatives, as well as staffing shortages. Rising childcare costs are causing problems for parents across the country. Parents pay £138 on average for 25 hours of childcare for children under two; in 2001 it cost just £102. There is no long-term strategy from the government to support working families, Joeli Brearley, founder of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, told The Daily Telegraph. “Childcare is a cost parents pay so that…

● The number of people underpaid state pensions because of repeated government failings could be as high as 221,000, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has now conceded. The number represents a 67% increase on its previous estimate of how many people have been affected. Victims of administrative errors going back 20 years – largely women – are owed compensation of more than £1.3bn, the DWP believes. ● Pension dashboards, offering savers a digital view of all their pension schemes in one place, will finally start going live next year, a new government briefing paper promises. The initiative has been championed by pension experts as crucial for providing savers with a means to keep track of their retirement provision – many savers now have more than ten different pots…

Twitter’s (NYSE: TWTR) share price sank by 11% after its aborted $44bn sale to Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, says Bloomberg. It was struggling for years before the latest setback. It’s been unprofitable for most of the past decade. One key problem is enticing people onto the platform; Facebook has 1.9 billion daily users, Twitter has only 230 million, a figure that is barely growing, notes The Economist. Facebook’s parent, Meta, also rakes in more than $3 a month in advertising revenue per daily active user, while advertising revenue generates less than $2 a month for Twitter. Its shares are down 40% in a year.…

Boris Johnson’s time in office has lasted just three years, but has been more eventful than that of many longer-serving prime ministers. His administration had to deal with unprecedented challenges, while mired in scandals and feuding. Johnson’s partner Carrie reportedly had a hand in both the policy decisions and the drama and is blamed by many for his political demise. Unfortunately, First Lady, by former Conservative Party treasurer Michael Ashcroft, is largely a straightforward biography of Carrie. It covers her family and childhood, her time at university and her career in public relations, including her brief stint as head of communications for the Conservative Party. Only the last few chapters deal with her relationship with Johnson and her time as Britain’s unofficial “first lady”. Ashcroft tries hard to uncover some…

£39.4m The cost of the 169,291 tonnes of extra cardboard unnecessarily used annually owing to delivery boxes not fitting their contents, according to packaging specialists DS Smith. The 85 million cubic metres of extra air transported could fill 34,000 Olympic pools. $169m The asking price for the most expensive flat ever listed in New York City when it was put on the market last summer. The penthouse apartment, at the top of a “spindly” skyscraper that sways in the wind, is once again up for sale, says The Times. £2.3bn The forecast value of bottled water sales in Britain by 2026, during which time the market is expected to grow by a fifth, according to retail analysts Mintel. Despite environmental concerns, one in six people drink bottled still water every…