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“Nobody knows anything.” Always remember screenwriter William Goldman’s famous dictum when confronted with economic and market forecasts, especially if they have been as consistent as a weathervane. Following the banking turmoil, the fashionable view of the global economy’s prospects seems to have shifted to a “hard-landing” recession. This scenario has eclipsed “a fashionable opinion just weeks ago” that the world would shrug off higher interest rates entirely, says The Economist. In January analysts were expecting a mild recession. There are always excuses, of course. Forecasting has become especially difficult of late; wild swings in growth and a sharp fall in the number of people responding to economic surveys during Covid have muddied the waters. GDP revisions in the single-currency area are four times larger than normal. On the subject of…

“Corporate greedflation in this economic cycle is astonishing. The latest [US] profits data delivered another shock to my weakening confidence [in] the capitalist system... corporates in developed economies (especially the US) have used the excuse of rising raw material costs to push prices up well beyond cost pressures, to expand profit margins to unprecedented levels. Companies have used first the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine to ‘profiteer’. [Rising profit margins are historically unusual in a weakening economy.] At a time when social cohesion is already fraying... companies generating supernormal profit margins in a crisis can only inflame social unrest... [If this continues then policymakers will step in. Financiers are not] sympathetic to the use of price controls and windfall taxes [yet] something seems to have broken with capitalism.”…

Orange, formerly France Télécom, is getting leaner and meaner, says WirtschaftsWoche. It has embarked on a revamp, shedding peripheral divisions such as its bank and television service OCS in order to refocus on its core telecoms business. This is in solid shape, with the number of mobile customers climbing at an annual pace of 5%. Growth is especially brisk in Africa and the Middle East, where demand for mobile-based money transfers and financial services, a key focus for the telecoms giant, is on the rise. Orange is bolstering its presence in Senegal and Mali. The annual payout, meanwhile, is set to rise by another 4% this year. The stock’s trailing yield is just over 6%.…

A gala dinner in Belfast on Wednesday hosted by Rishi Sunak marked the culmination of a “mammoth series of events” marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, says the BBC. In a speech to close a three-day conference at Queen’s University earlier in the day, Sunak hailed the deal as “one of the most extraordinary achievements of our lifetimes”. Although there was no “explicit mention” of Stormont or the Democratic Unionist Party, the prime minister’s words about fulfilling the “true promise” of the agreement will be seen as an echo of the government’s “call for power-sharing to be re-established”, says Amy Gibbons in The Telegraph. The agreement, may be “revered as Holy Scripture”, says Daniel Hannan on Conservative Home, but let’s “not pretend” that it was…

In a fortnight, those living in 230 unitary, metropolitan and district councils in England will be voting in local elections. Until recently, the betting exchanges and bookmakers have largely ignored these contests. This is starting to change. Smarkets is offering markets on control of Surrey Heath, West Berkshire and Wirral, and although none are liquid enough to recommend, Ladbrokes is also offering eight markets on Cheshire East, Sheffield, Swindon, Walsall, Bolton, Stockport, West Berkshire and East Cambridgeshire. The situation is complicated by the fact that in some areas the entire council will be up for re-election, while in others only a third of the seats will be up for grabs, which makes it much harder for control of councils to change hands. And the results will be determined by local,…

Six months into his premiership, Rishi Sunak comes across more and more as the UK’s head boy. In a speech on Monday he announced plans to make sure the nation is proficient in mathematics. Students will be made to stick with the subject until they are 18 (although not to do an A-Level). A group of advisers, including mathematicians and business representatives, will examine the “core maths content” taught in schools, and look at whether a new qualification is necessary. According to Sunak, numeracy is at the heart of a modern, dynamic economy. A “cultural sense that it’s OK to be bad at maths”, he told his audience, had left the UK one of the least numerate countries in the developed world, and that unless everyone comes out of school…

A cash shell is a listed company whose assets consist largely of cash or cash equivalents and no significant operating assets. The company’s directors or investors will often be looking for an opportunity to buy or merge with another company that has an operating business. A cash shell may set up, raise funding and list specifically with the intention of carrying out an acquisition. In this scenario, they are frequently referred to as a special purpose acquisition company (Spac). This term originated in the US in the 1990s, but has become popular globally – perhaps because it sounds more purposeful and respectable than “cash shell”. Merging with a cash shell can be attractive for a private firm that wants a listing, but doesn’t want to go through an initial public…

“It was devastating because I was put into a financial situation that I had no idea of. I was at the height of my career and I found out that we were in debt to such a degree that I didn’t own anything. I had to give it all away – the homes, everything. [My husband] had invested it in properties and things I knew nothing about, all of which he got me to personally sign. [He was] one of the top professionals in the financial industry.” Actress Jane Seymour (pictured) on the collapse of her third marriage, quoted in The Times “Always fly first class. Or your children will.” Opinion columnist Jeremy Clarkson in The Sunday Times “Most people in life don’t have a choice, they haven’t had it…

rlo.acton.org Businesses today often claim that their organisation is a “family”, says Michael Matheson Miller. The idea, of course, is to signal to employees that they are valued and not seen as simply cogs in a machine. It also reflects the need we all have for a sense of meaning from our work. But a business is not a family, and we should stop saying that it is. Firstly, it is simply not true, and everyone knows it. You cannot get the sack from your family, however much they may want to. That’s what families are for – to nurture you whatever your mistakes and failings. Businesses take you on conditionally in order to achieve their own goals. Repeating a falsehood just because it sounds nice creates cynicism, and calls…

An activist investor is pushing picture agency Getty Images to explore deals with tech firms or put itself up for sale, says Reuters. Trillium Capital argues that the firm can find new growth opportunities for its image library through deals with Adobe, Meta Platforms, Microsoft or Nvidia – and that all of these firms could be takeover suitors. Getty went public in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) in July 2022 and briefly traded at more than $37 per share, but has now fallen to roughly $6. About 80% of the shares are owned by the Getty family, the Koch family and asset manager Neuberger Berman, says Barron’s, and Trillium has also suggested they should consider taking it private again or looking for a private-equity buyer.…

Energy giant Shell (LSE: SHEL) is the seventh-largest producer of natural gas. However, it has ambitious plans to increase production of gas while reducing its oil output, believing oil to be a declining sector. It is also putting money into liquefied natural gas (LNG), with 18 carriers and 65 chartered vessels, which jointly comprise 11% of the global LNG shipping fleet. The stock is on a 2024 price/earnings (p/e) ratio of seven and yields 4.2%. Norwegian energy giant Equinor (Oslo: EQNR) is Europe’s second-biggest producer of natural gas, with a large number of fields in development. In an attempt to reduce its carbon emissions it is investing large sums of money in carbon capture and storage, most notably the Northern Lights project. This aims to store carbon emissions from onshore…

Cash seems a little more attractive these days, especially if you are willing to lock your money up in a fixed-term account. You can get about 4.5% for a one- or two-year fix (there isn’t much of a premium for a three- or five-year one right now), mostly from smaller banks and building societies such as Hampshire Trust Bank and Tandem. The biggest high-street names offer a maximum of about 4%, such as Tesco Bank, TSB, Halifax and National Savings & Investment. All UK-regulated banks and building societies have Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection for savings accounts, but this only covers amounts up to £85,000 per person per institution (not per account). So if you have a large lump sum to save, you will need to chose providers more…

Good news for small businesses looking to raise cash from equity investors. Venture capital trusts (VCTs) raised £1.08bn during the 2022-2023 tax year, which ended on 5 April. The total was slightly down on the 2021-2022 tax year’s take of £1.13bn for VCTs, but was still the second-highest annual total ever. Two record funding years mean VCTs are awash with capital to invest in eligible companies – and 80% of new cash raised must be invested within three years under the terms of the scheme. For firms that meet the eligibility criteria, this may be a golden opportunity to secure funding on favourable terms. The rules on eligibility are relatively narrow but will still cover large numbers of small businesses. Firms must generally be privately owned, rather than listed on…

Over the past fortnight six of my long tips have appreciated. Retailer Dunelm rose from 1,106p to 1,141p, luxury-clothing retailer Burberry advanced from 2,572p to 2,587p, builder DR Horton climbed from $96.64 to $98.15 and telecoms group Gamma Communications increased from 1,095p to 1,112p. Discount chain B&M European Value Retail also went up, from 482p to 496p, while brick and tile maker Ibstock rose from 172p to 173p. However, estate agent Savills fell from 982p to 955p and online retailer Asos dropped from 827p to 741p. My eight long tips are making net profits of £2,376, down from £2,400 two weeks ago. As for my short tips, real-estate investment trust Digital Realty fell from $96.72 to $93.25, AST SpaceMobile slipped from $5.08 to $4.44, electric-car charging firm EVgo went down…

Heart On My Sleeve, a new song that went viral online last weekend, has been pulled from multiple music-streaming platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify, at the request of Universal Music Group (see page 20), says Nichola Rutherford on BBC News. The publisher is claiming copyright infringement after the song’s anonymous creator, known as Ghostwriter, used artificial intelligence (AI) software to closely mimic the voices of rappers Drake (pictured) and The Weeknd (both of whom are on Universal’s roster of artists), singing about the pop star and actress Selena Gomez. It was streamed 629,439 times before it was taken off Spotify – worth $1,888 at the platform’s lowest royalty rate of $0.003 per stream. AI has been used in music before, but the song’s popularity prompted a statement from Universal.…

Which will be the next financial landmine to “go bang”, asks Oliver Shah in The Sunday Times. Commercial property is a good bet. The sector’s 3% prospective returns looked appealing at a time when “money was pretty much free”. Yet “when the all-in cost of money suddenly spikes to about 8%, the bet can sour very quickly”. Investors had been worrying for years about the “bloodbath” in retail. Now the trend towards working from home is putting offices in peril too. Prices have fallen by about a fifth from their apex “across various property subsectors”. In the US, commercial-mortgage-backed securities (CMBSs) have “dropped to levels not seen since the early days of the pandemic”, says Sam Goldfarb in The Wall Street Journal. The rout could spell more trouble for banks,…

Over the last three decades Americans have been “getting more productive more quickly than workers in other rich countries”, says The Economist. A major factor is US corporate management culture, which is more competitive and profit-driven than elsewhere. One recent study concluded that America Inc’s high-quality management explains “as much as half of the productivity lead that it has over other developed countries”. That has translated into superior stockmarket performance. $100 invested in the S&P 500 index in 1990 would have grown to $2,300 today. By contrast, the same amount invested in a tracker of developed markets excluding America would today be worth “just about $510”.…

Glencore’s bid for rival miner Teck Resources “has come under renewed pressure”, says Helen Cahill in The Times. Legal & General has decided to “vote for Teck’s pre-existing plan to spin off its coal assets rather than lend support for a $23bn merger of Glencore with its Canadian competitor. Next week Teck shareholders will vote on the board’s bid for a demerger of its coal assets into a new company called Elk Valley Resources. Glencore, by contrast, wants to merge the two firms – creating “the third-largest copper miner in the world” – and spin off the combined coal assets. There would also be a separate firm made up of Glencore’s thermal coal business and metallurgical coal assets run by Teck. The Canadian miner deems this plan to be “opportunistic…

“Hong Kong could use a shot of something,” says Breakingviews. Enter ZJLD Group, a maker of the white spirit known as baijiu, which comprises 66% of China’s alcoholic-drinks market. It is set to start trading next week. At the top of the marketed price range the initial public offering (IPO) would raise $812m, making it Hong Kong’s biggest listing this year. In that case ZJLD would be worth $5.4bn. The hope is that the flotation will “invigorate valuations in a city dragged down by a global technology rout”. It may start a trend: on the mainland the state is directing funding to strategic sectors such as semiconductors, so more consumer companies may now head to Hong Kong.…

New York Goldman Sachs misses out: Rising interest rates have been a gift for big US banks with large loan books and loyal depositors, says John Foley on Breakingviews. They tend to lend at high rates, borrow at low ones and pocket the difference. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup collectively made 34% more in interest in the first quarter than they did a year earlier. But not Goldman Sachs. Interest was just 15% of its revenue, with the latter falling 5% year on year as the fees it earned from its core trading and investment banking sagged. Rising rates cooled corporate bosses’ and private equity firms’ risk appetite. Goldman is trying to amass its own deposit hoard, but that is coming at a cost, as evinced by the “rich”…

● Things are looking up for easyJet, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. True, a forecast half-year loss of £415m doesn’t sound great, but CEO Johan Lundgren (pictured) now expects full-year results of £260m. Demand is up – despite the cost-of-living crisis – and capacity is tight, so fares are rising. The shares are back to 520p, from sub-300p in October, but they were twice that when the airline last produced the kind of second-half result that Lundgren promises. “Deliver it and investors should be flying.” ● The hostile takeover of engineering group GKN by turnaround specialist Melrose in 2018 was “a key test for British capitalism“, says Neil Unmack on Breakingviews. Melrose was lambasted as an “asset stripper” and politicians from all parties lobbied to stop the deal. Five…

Higher interest rates have ”created a wave of destruction with many unintended consequences”, says Chamath Palihapitiya, the investor known as the “Spac king” for his role in backing several special purpose acquisition companies. “The amount of absolute value destruction, not just in companies, but entire sectors … was alarming,” he writes in the latest annual letter to investors in Social Capital, his investment firm. The US market for Spacs – or cash shells as they are commonly known in the UK – boomed in 2021, but many have since slumped. Notable flops include space tourism business Virgin Galactic, online real-estate investor Opendoor, healthcare firm Clover Health and online bank SoFi – all of which were among the 10 deals in which Palihapitiya was involved. In addition to the Spac bust,…

iea.org.uk In communist countries, there was no problem identifying the elite, says Kristian Niemietz. The ruling party constituted the political, economic and cultural elite. But in pluralistic societies such as Britain there is no such thing as “the elite” – rather, “multiple, overlapping elites and establishments”. Specify whether you are talking about economic, political or cultural elites, and much of the debate stirred up by Goodwin (see top story) should evaporate. Except it doesn’t because the cultural elite is harder to define and “cultural power” harder to measure. It is no less real for all that. Post-Covid, for example, books about “white privilege” and “structural racism” were suddenly everywhere. Why? Because Britain has a woke cultural establishment that has the power to “force its obsessions on the country”. It is…

■ The manager of the Ashoka India Equity (AIE) Investment Trust is aiming to bring off the first listing of a new trust in London for 18 months, says Citywire. Mumbai-based WhiteOak Capital, founded by AIE manager Prashant Khemka, wants to raise £100m for the Ashoka WhiteOak Emerging Markets Trust (AWEM). The trust will invest in growth companies at reasonable valuations across emerging markets globally, with an environmental, social and governance (ESG) filter. There will be no fixed management fee, but the manager will receive a performance fee based on outperformance over the MSCI Emerging Markets index over three years. A discount control mechanism will allow shareholders to redeem at net asset value (NAV) once per year. AIE, which raised £45m when it listed in 2018, now has a market…

In 2004 James Turk and John Rubino published The Coming Collapse Of The Dollar And How To Profit From It: Make A Fortune By Investing In Gold And Other Hard Assets. Amazon tells me that I “purchased this item on 18 Feb 2006”. Isn’t digital record keeping amazing? It remains one of the best books about gold and gold investing that I have ever read, beautifully articulating the anti-dollar, anti-fiat, anti-money printing, pro-gold narrative. Those that followed the advice of the book will have made good money – as long as they got out in 2011. There’s just one thing: the dollar never collapsed. Sure, its purchasing power has steadily eroded. Each year it buys you 10%-15% less house, less S&P 500, and less goods and services than the previous…

● The Labour Party has vowed to ban “rip-off” subscriptions that automatically renew, if it wins the next election, says The Mirror. New laws will force businesses to offer customers the option for manual renewal – where they must agree to renew each time payment is taken – although they will still be able to consent to automatic renewal if they wish. At present, customers only need to be informed that a renewal payment will be taken – by direct debit or continuous payment authority on a credit card – and may have to actively cancel if they no longer want the service. Britons spent £500m on subscriptions that renewed without them realising in 2021, and more than £300m on unused subscriptions, according to research by Citizens Advice. ● Investment…

● Apprentices have helped small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generate cost savings or additional revenues worth £550m in recent years. A study by technology company Multiverse shows that small companies taking on apprentices have recorded benefits including reduced staff turnover, lower costs and higher productivity. While SMEs have sometimes struggled with the red tape of apprenticeship schemes, the research suggests it is worth persevering – particularly at a time of skills shortages and elevated job vacancies. ● Small businesses need to get on top of energy bills before its too late, experts warn, amid fears that the less generous help available from the state could leave many firms exposed. On 1 April, the government’s Energy Bills Discount Scheme replaced the previous support arrangement, offering less generous assistance to small firms…

When buying and selling shares there is always a temptation to focus on the companies hitting the headlines. However, sometimes the best trading returns don’t come from the most high-profile stocks but from the ones that simply put in a consistently strong performance year in, year out. One of these is Computacenter (LSE: CCC), which has amassed an incredible streak of increasing adjusted per-share earnings for 18 years in a row. What’s more, the latest evidence, including a 28.5% increase in revenue in 2022, suggests the company has plenty of room to grow even further. Computacenter focuses on providing IT services to companies and governments, mostly in the UK, Germany and North America. It receives roughly 80% of its gross revenue from technology sourcing, helping companies install networks and buy…

The past 18 months have been a tough period for growth investors, with interest rates rising rapidly in an attempt to curb surging global inflation. Growth company valuations have contracted significantly, as less value is ascribed to expected future profits owing to the higher discount rates. This trend has created a number of interesting investment opportunities in growth companies globally, and – of particular interest to us – in UK equities. Companies’ operational and financial performances during the past year and a half have remained relatively strong, with businesses continuing to implement their long-term growth plans. With interest rates now approaching levels widely expected to prove a peak, and with inflation set to subside during the remainder of 2023, we believe that current conditions have created an exciting opportunity for…

(£23.99, selfridges.com; £19.50, specialistcellars.co.uk; £21.50, davywine.co.uk) Torbreck is my Australian Winery of the Year. I am currently taking no fewer than three of the wines in this article, including my featured Woodcutter’s, around the UK on my 100 Best Australian Wines Roadshow. Feedback from the first half of this tour has been overwhelming, and this is no surprise when you taste these stellar red wines. Since winemaker Ian Hongell arrived at this world-renowned winery nearly a decade ago, the wines have become increasingly refined. It is amazing to think you can drink insanely beautiful Torbreck shiraz for 20 quid! 2020 The Steading (£35 per bottle, averys.com; £23 per bottle in bond, laywheeler.com) is a thrilling grenache blend that makes many Châteauneufdu-Papes slope off in shame. It is another bargain-priced, truly…

New Bank of Japan (BoJ) governor Kazuo Ueda has “the worst job in international finance”, says William Pesek in the Asia Times. Over the past decade his predecessor, Haruhiko Kuroda, who stepped down this month, has embarked on money printing on a vast scale, turning the BoJ into what amounts to “the world’s biggest hedge fund”, with a 52% share of Japan’s government bond market as well as a chunk of domestic stocks. Kuroda instituted a policy of yield curve control (YCC), which sees the BoJ guide short-term rates to -0.1% and implicitly cap the ten-year Japanese government bond yield at 0.5% (buying bonds via open-ended money printing), says Leika Kihara for Reuters. Japan has been the last big holdout for ultra-easy money even as other central banks have tightened…

Six to buy Empiric Student Property Shares While the wider property market wobbles, student accommodation remains one area with positive dynamics. Empiric’s shares trade on a 19.3% discount to 2023 forecast net asset value (NAV), much cheaper than the 3.1% premium at peer Unite. Empiric has a patchier record than its bigger rival but its move towards “clustering” – developing new accommodation near existing sites to harness economies of scale from building management and other services – shows promise. The group is also moving into the untapped postgraduate market. 91p Ferguson Barron’s America’s biggest distributor of plumbing and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) kit moved its primary listing from London to New York as it refocused on its North American business. On a modest 14 times forecast 2023 earnings the…

America’s national-security bureaucracy was left “shaken” last week when a 21-year-old military reservist, Jack Teixeira, uploaded hundreds of classified files to an internet forum “to show off to friends”, says The Economist. The files included “detailed assessments of Ukraine’s armed forces, the course of the war and the effectiveness of particular American weapons there”. They also included “a variety of CIA reports on world events, including private conversations inside allied governments, among them Israel, South Korea and Hungary”. The US has acknowledged that the materials “are highly classified and contain sensitive information”. The leaks contain “few startling revelations”, says the Financial Times. But the news nevertheless “deals a new blow to US prestige and security”. The information could be of use in Russia’s military operations and jeopardise the intelligence-gathering capabilities…

We’re one year on from the point where central banks belatedly began raising interest rates and it’s still far from clear what this new investment era will be like. Many sensible analysts seem to doubt that it will be vastly different to the past decade: they expect inflation to tick back down to around the 2% target, and rates to be cut significantly in response to slower growth and the threat of recession. Our MoneyWeek ETF portfolio tries to avoid staking everything on a specific idea – it aims to be positioned for a broad range of likely outcomes. I don’t believe I have any greater skill in forecasting the economy than anybody. Still, the path to this scenario feels narrow, because the world has changed greatly in the past…

Doctors are not underpaid Kate Andrews The Spectator It is “incorrect” to say that junior doctors, who were on strike for the whole of last week at a time when NHS waiting lists exceed seven million, are “outrageously underpaid”, says Kate Andrews. Although their pay scale starts at around £29,000, a typical doctor for NHS England is paid more than £37,000 in their first year while average earnings for a Foundation Year 2 doctor exceed £43,000. A few years on, and a junior doctor’s wage approaches double the average wage. That’s before factoring in the taxpayer-funded 20% contribution to their pension pot (the UK average is under 5%). Jeremy Hunt removed the £1m lifetime allowance on pensions in a bid to stop the exodus of doctors. “Very few other professions”…

unherd.com That the “woke” elite identified by Goodwin (see above) is “overrepresented in certain sectors” is a horror story that is certainly true, says Kathleen Stock on Unherd. Still, that doesn’t mean elite ranks generally are “brimming with them”. Today, most of the people who were formed in the expansion of the universities work long hours in finance, business, the civil service or law, and do not spend much time thinking or talking about politics. They earn large amounts of money, “live in nice clean houses cleaned by other people”, and send their children to private school. But they have not changed character from the time when they were at university – which is to say that they don’t have the time or the inclination to talk about politics, tend…

Do the exceptionally wide discounts to net asset value (NAV) of private equity trusts represent a bargain or are they a warning of trouble ahead? Keynes reminded us that “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”, but markets can also be prescient. Investors often smell trouble before companies acknowledge it but does that apply to private equity trusts? Pantheon (LSE: PIN) trades at a 50% discount to its end of February NAV, but after adjusting for listed holdings and cash of about 57p a share, the discount is 56%. Due to lags in the posting of valuations by the underlying funds, just 30% of the unlisted portfolio was valued at the end of December, with the remainder at the end of September. The NAV return over the…

Until early 2022 it was assumed that the days of gas – and other fossil fuels – as an energy source were numbered. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the economic consequences of the upheaval in energy markets have “increased the amount of attention paid to energy security”, says George Grant of Stag Energy. This in turn has “led to a greater acceptance of natural gas” as an energy source. However, the surge in interest in gas isn’t just a short-term trend. It is a response to a growing awareness that it will play a key role in the transition to renewable energy, a shift that will take longer than widely expected. Renewables remain unreliable Renewable energy is getting cheaper and more efficient, while it also stands to benefit…

Call it a warning shot. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last month plunged many small businesses in the UK into full-blown panic. Rapid intervention by regulators and the government meant businesses were able to keep trading with minimal disruption, and largely without financial loss. But the crisis was a reminder that 15 years after the global financial crisis, businesses are still highly vulnerable to problems in the banking sector. Is there anything you can do to protect your firm from future failures, given that it is difficult to predict where these might strike? Well, a good starting point is the Financial Services Compensation Scheme’s (FSCS) deposit protection agreement. In the event that a bank goes bust, taking a company’s money with it, the scheme will normally refund lost deposits…

The UK is second only to the US when it comes to scientific publications and Britain’s strong position in science supports many scientific-instrument companies. There is a growing global market in this sector owing to steady organic expansion in scientific enquiry and experimentation, with higher education a key growth driver. The market is growing at around 5.5% a year and is set to reach $54.6bn in 2027. British firms hold leading positions in many niche markets. A good example is Judges Scientific (Aim: JDG), which has built up a substantial business by acquiring top-quality smaller companies in two major areas of technology and then expanding these businesses and helping them develop a global presence. The result is a group with a market value of £589m whose sales have jumped by…

The US Federal Reserve meets in early May to decide on the direction of interest rates. Many analysts think there may be one more interest-rate hike in the next few months, but no more after that; rates could even start to come down later this year. In theory an interest-rate cut should be good for markets as it will reduce companies’ borrowing costs, while making bonds relatively less attractive than shares. An interest-rate reduction could also prompt consumers to spend, boosting GDP, at least in the short run. However, things are a little more complicated. For instance, a cut (or a hike) may have already been anticipated by the markets, and therefore priced into the price of shares by the time it appears. Note, too, that since 1977 the Fed…