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It is an iron law of economics that the recession everyone thinks can’t possibly happen is happening right now. Conversely, the recession everyone expects doesn’t materialise. Or at least comes along far later than expected. We may now be heading into one of those. Exhibit A: The International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, always the last to know what’s going on in an economy, have taken a recession out of their forecasts. More seriously, as Capital Economics points out, the full impact of the rise in the cost of borrowing has yet to be felt. Over the past decade there has been a shift from variable to fixed-rate loans, but households and businesses will at some stage have to refinance at higher rates once their deals expire. The…

“Alibaba Group Holding’s restructuring into six separate companies was [deemed] a sign of easing tensions with the [Chinese] government... Yet the... very existence... of Chinese private [tech] companies... depends on the mercy of the Communist Party. Regulatory risk in China continues to have a chilling effect on innovation. Research and development via state-owned funds and companies has paid off in a few areas such as aerospace, those... are the exception... the influx of state money [is] dwarfing private flows [and] distorting capital allocation... Innovation, almost by definition, is disruptive and challenges the status quo, but this jars with the ethos of the party’s top leadership. When the... rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX exploded... after takeoff, Musk... did not consider this as failure, but as learning. That is the mentality…

Shares in Dr. Martens (DM) fell by 12% after it revealed that pre-tax profits had slid by 25% in the year to 31 March 2023, say Laura Onita and Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu in the Financial Times. This was due to marketing and distribution problems in America in addition to a dip in demand as high inflation squeezed consumers. The negative guidance about the coming year, meanwhile, is “the latest in a string of disappointments”, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. The increased investment will lead to lower profit margins, while investors will also be concerned about the “bulging £258m inventory pile”. This surplus stock equates to 246 days’ sales and “raises the risk that the company has to discount to shift the stock”, which could undermine the brand. With the…

Medical-equipment group Steris is in rude health, says Teresa Rivas in Barron’s. It specialises in sterilisation chemicals and disinfectants, products always in demand in hospitals – especially as they resume normal operations following the pandemic. The group is on course for sales of $5.3bn in the year to 31 March 2024, a rise of 7% from last year and a new record; earnings per share should also hit a historic peak. The group’s shares fell in February when supply chain problems, rather than internal ones, lowered sales. The stock is trading on 22.3 times forward earnings, compared with a five-year average of 25, while the group’s first opportunistic share buyback is another plus point.…

Politics & economics For thirty years, Hong Kong was the only place in China where the victims of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in Beijing could be publicly mourned, says Tiffany May in The New York Times. Then, in 2020, Hong Kong’s government banned the annual 4 June gathering. This year, pro-China groups organised a festival to celebrate the city’s handover to Beijing in Victoria Park where the vigil is usually held. In addition, around 5,000 police officers patrolled nearby streets, four people were arrested for “acts with seditious intention” and another 27 people were detained. More than 100,000 people used to attend the vigil and many more mourned or lit candles, says The Economist. When it was first banned in 2020, Hong Kong’s government blamed…

A few weeks ago, Greece went to the polls to choose a new government. The results gave the incumbent New Democracy 40.8% of the vote, more than even pre-election surveys had been suggesting. While this was an emphatic victory, it wasn’t quite enough for an outright majority under the proportional representation rules. As a result, Greece is going to the polls again on 25 June, this time using a new electoral system that gives bonus seats to the party that gains the most votes. The fact that all the latest set of polls has New Democracy with leads of 21%-22% means that the outcome isn’t really in doubt, so it’s hardly surprising that no bookmaker or exchange is running markets on the overall winner. Still, Bet365 is running a market…

Ever since taking over as shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves has been restoring her party’s reputation for economic competence. With the party far ahead in the polls, she has launched one of the big themes of her likely chancellorship. She wants pension funds to invest far more in British companies, and especially in start-ups, and the big green energy projects that a Labour government will be committed to. So far, she is restricting herself to simply “encouraging” them to invest in a certain way, but it might not be long before that turns into a “target” and then a “rule”. Meanwhile the Tony Blair Institute has come up with a plan for merging thousands of small occupational funds into a handful of “superfunds” that, it argues, will be cheaper to manage,…

Market timing refers to any strategy that involves trying to predict future price movements and shifting between different investments to take advantage of them. To take a simple example, if you believe that shares are likely to fall and bonds to rise over the next month, you would buy bonds and sell shares. You would only intend to hold these positions for as long as you think bonds will keep beating shares: as soon as you think the trend will reverse, you would buy shares and sell bonds. These predictions and trading decisions may be based on economic data: in the example above, you might believe that GDP growth will be much worse than expected and investors will dump shares because they fear a recession is coming. They could be…

“I still trade, I’m still actively involved and I have a small pension through which I invest in one or two relatively volatile stocks. I don’t let anyone else hold my pension fund, in case they lose it!” Rogue Trader Nick Leeson (pictured), who broke Barings Bank, continues to dabble in markets, quoted in The Telegraph “There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.” J.K. Galbraith, quoted in The Times “The Royal Family costs UK taxpayers in the region of £86m per…

aier.org When I see a pineapple, “I can’t help but wonder at the progress of humanity”, says Laura Williams. For its story is, in microcosm, the tale of how enterprise-driven innovation and global trade have changed the world for the better. Pineapples originated in South and Central America, several millennia ago. When they were first shipped to Europe and North America, from the 16th century onwards, one fruit could cost up to $8,000 (in today’s money). Pineapples became the ultimate status symbol – rented by the hour as the centrepiece for lavish parties, where guests could marvel at their exotic strangeness. Since then, a succession of technological innovations and specialisation – canning; mechanisation of peeling and processing; refrigeration – have transformed the humble fruit’s prospects. Improvements in shipping mean that…

The main multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test at present is the highly promising Galleri test developed by Grail, which was bought by Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN) in 2020. While the deal may need to be unwound owing to pressure from competition regulators, “there is the possibility that Grail may be spun out directly to Illumina’s shareholders, which means [they] may still be able to benefit”, says Julie Utterback, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. What’s more, Illumina’s legacy genomic-sequencing tools “remain a key building block of most liquid biopsy tests”, ensuring that the firm will benefit when such tests take off. That justifies the 2024 price/earnings (p/e) ratio of 66. One outfit making a splash developing liquid biopsies is Guardant Health (Nasdaq: GH). This is a risky investment as the company is…

Activist investor Cevian Capital has dumped its stake in Aviva after successfully pushing the insurer to return more capital to shareholders, says The Times. Since Cevian first revealed it was building a stake in the FTSE 100 company in the autumn of 2020, Aviva has returned more than £5bn to investors. “Aviva has produced strong shareholder returns, including substantial distributions of excess capital,” said Niko Pakalén of Cevian after the disposal was announced. Aviva is now a “focused and well performing insurance company”, having sold off its operations in France, Turkey and Singapore to concentrate on its core UK market, according to Cevian. The stock has returned nearly 21% per year over the past three years.…

One way to get around the low rates on cash balances is to buy money market funds. These funds own short-term debt from governments and companies. Their holdings normally have a maturity of less than a year and typically much less: a large part of the portfolio may be maturing in days. Such bonds are called “cash-like” because they can be sold quickly when needed. In theory, these are very safe and liquid assets, but it is important to know that they are not entirely risk-free. A borrower could default on its debt, and if that happened, the loss would not be protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (unlike cash in a bank, which is covered up to £85,000 if the bank falls). These risks are very low with…

Start-up businesses secured investments worth £205m using the seed enterprise investment scheme (SEIS) in the 2021-2022 financial year, a 16% increase on 2020-2021, according to new data from HM Revenue & Customs. HMRC’s figures provide the most recent snapshot of the SEIS’s popularity, but changes introduced in April could broaden the scheme’s appeal even further. Investors can now put £200,000 into a SEIS, twice the previous limit, in order to benefit from tax perks such as 50% upfront income-tax relief. The changes also opened up the scheme to more companies. The new rules mean that in order to consider raising money through the SEIS, a business must be no more than three years old and have no more than £350,000 in gross assets – compared with two years’ old and…

The Close Portfolio Conservative, Balanced and Growth fund range seeks to achieve resilient returns over the long term through a company-led approach to investing in a multi-asset context. It acquires “cheap durables”: direct interests in predictable businesses purchased at attractive cash-based valuations that will appreciate and repay their debts. The current economic backdrop requires a careful application of this long-term approach in the short run. Inflation has reached levels not seen for a generation and central banks responded last year by increasing interest rates. Today the economy is decelerating, profit margins are being squeezed, and debt is more expensive and less readily available. As a consequence, we expect a recession in America and potentially in other developed markets. This is likely to entail a fall in corporate profits, which would…

Rowan Atkinson (pictured), a keen car collector with a degree in electrical and electronic engineering, advises drivers to refrain from buying electric vehicles [EVs] until better fuels and technology come along. Greenhouse gas emissions are nearly 70% higher in the making of an electric car as opposed to a petrol one, according to Volvo. “Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn,” says the Mr Bean actor. He may feel “duped” by EVs, but the reality is other fuels are either years away or very expensive, and we’ve gone too far down the electric route to change course, says Michael J. Coren in The Washington Post. EVs are also much greener over a car’s full lifespan. “In a few decades……

“China’s post-Covid recovery was supposed to be world-shaking. Instead, it looks merely shaky,” says The Economist. While headline growth remains respectable – the comparator is last year’s locked-down economy, after all – “growth from one quarter to the next may fall close to zero”. The CSI 300 stock benchmark is down by 1% so far this year, lagging most other global markets. China’s post-lockdown economy enjoyed a strong start to 2023, but then faded in the spring, says Nathaniel Taplin in The Wall Street Journal. Purchasing managers’ indexes (PMI) for May show that growth in services activity is slowing. More concerning still are manufacturing PMIs, which have shown contraction for two months in a row. “Unemployment in the 16-to-24 age bracket is already above 20%” and the rate is even…

“Inflation is becoming the ultimate stealth tax,” says David Smith in The Sunday Times. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have frozen UK tax thresholds until 2027-2028. The measure will net the Treasury an extra £27bn annually by 2025-2026 and amounts to “the biggest stealth tax increase in British history”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). High UK inflation brings bigger nominal wage increases, thus propelling millions more people into higher tax bands. In the early 1990s, just 3.5% of UK adults paid the higher rate of income tax, but that will rise to 14% by 2027-2028; 3.1% will be paying the additional 45% rate or the 60% effective marginal rate that kicks in above £100,000 as personal allowances are tapered.…

Shares in Asos surged by 7% on Monday on the news that it had received a £1bn takeover offer last year, says John Abiona on This is Money. While the online fast-fashion group, which owns Topshop and Miss Selfridge, recently fell out of the FTSE 250, the Turkish online retailer Trendyol was willing to offer between £10 and £12 a share in December. While the talks with Trendyol, backed by China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba, appear over, the approach at between £10 and 12 a share has been seen as an indication that Asos was attracting potential bidders; it could “become the latest household name to be taken off the London stockmarket”. News of outside interest in the company comes at a crucial time for Asos, say Ben Harrington and Sam…

Rubrik, an American cybersecurity software start-up, is reportedly preparing an initial public offering (IPO), says Reuters. The group sells cloud-based ransomware protection and data-backup software to more than 5,000 companies, including chipmaker Nvidia and DIY chain Home Depot. Rubrik achieved a valuation of $4bn when it raised funds two years ago and new plans to raise around $750m. The US IPO market has struggled over the past year due to the volatile backdrop for equities, but is slowly picking up. Last month pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson raised $3.8bn when it spun off its consumer healthcare arm Kenvue, the biggest listing since 2021.…

Washington, DC The SEC takes on crypto: Changpeng Zhao (pictured), the founder of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is facing some hard times, says Anita Ramaswamy on Breakingviews. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the markets regulator, is suing Binance for, among other things, inflating trading volumes (known as “wash trading”) and helping US customers to trade illegally in unregulated digital assets. In its defence, Binance says the SEC has been vague on how cryptocurrencies should be regulated and that the regulator is acting beyond its remit. To be fair, Gary Gensler, head of the SEC, has “bent over backward” to avoid explicitly stating which digital assets fall under his agency’s purview. But the charges are, nevertheless, “concerning”, since, as Zhao himself has pointed out, securities exchanges are…

● ”Sales up, profits up and a scorching 13% share price bounce, not to mention the restoration of a dividend axed during the dark days of the pandemic,” says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. “Can this be the same Marks and Spencer that has seemingly spent the last 20 years in a state of perpetual decline?” Under CEO Stuart Machin, who took on the job a year ago, there are signs of real momentum. But top brass must tread carefully when comes to cutting costs. “M&S is certainly in a much better place than John Lewis, yet the flagging fortunes of its arch-rival offer a salutary lesson in the dangers of wielding the axe too keenly.“ One common complaint about John Lewis is that a “‘skeleton’ store staff has led…

High-flying chipmaker Nvidia is “priced ahead of the curve”, said high-profile technology investor Cathie Wood, defending her much-mocked decision to drop the stock from her flagship Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund (ETF) between November and January. The sale meant that Wood missed out on the explosive rally in the stock, which is up almost 170% so far this year. Wood was supposed to be “the stock guru that spots the next secular tech trend”, says Shuli Ren on Bloomberg. But the Nvidia decision shows that ”she has been caught wrong-footed”. That single decision alone means that her ETF has underperformed index funds that track the Nasdaq tech benchmark. Her explanation for ditching Nvidia centres on its high valuation – the chipmaker trades on 25 times expected sales – but she didn’t…

theconversation.com Online shopping should be a boon for people who can’t easily get to a supermarket, especially in rural areas. But in practice, the uneven availability of online groceries is worsening Britain’s “urban-rural inequality”, says Andy Newing. When households order online from the big chains, their orders are generally assembled in a local supermarket that has been designated an “online fulfilment store” – with dedicated staff, storage space, vehicles and drivers. This makes sense logistically, but it means that online shopping – and especially a choice of outlets – is not available everywhere. Instead, access is concentrated around the network of stores that each grocer already operates. These are mainly in and around major towns. Might this change? Only if the big grocers, or new innovators, make the investments and…

The UK is in a little financial trouble. Public-sector spending has already reached £1.2trn, or 48% of GDP. That’s another peacetime record. Total government debt is now more than 100% of GDP (up from below 30% before the global financial crisis). That wasn’t a particularly big deal last year. Low rates meant that interest payments were exceptionally low in 2022. Unfortunately that is about “to change dramatically”, says MacroStrategy’s James Ferguson. Firstly, because 28% of our outstanding debt is index-linked. That will raise interest rates by at least 2.5% of GDP this year. At the same time, it seems clear that the UK is heading for at least a slowdown (judging by the way our money supply is shrinking) and possibly a recession. That has historically added roughly 2%-2.5% of…

■ Terry Smith has dumped Amazon from his flagship Fundsmith Equity fund only a year and a half after buying into the tech giant, says Citywire. “We exited our position in Amazon during the month,” notes Fundsmith in its end-May investor factsheet, but gives no further details on why the change was made. Fundsmith Equity, which is the UK’s largest retail fund at £23.4bn in assets under management, first announced that it had invested in Amazon in October 2021. At the time, the decision caused surprise as Smith had frequently criticised Amazon, but it “began something of a pivot towards the biggest US tech stocks” – Apple and Alphabet were later added to the portfolio, joining older positions in Microsoft and Meta. Amazon was never a large holding – it…

● Travellers coming to London by train to catch the Eurostar can protect themselves from delays and cancellations by buying a little-known type of ticket, says The Guardian. If you buy a special London International CIV ticket and miss your Eurostar connection due to a late-running train, you’ll be permitted to travel on the next available Eurostar. CIV – which stands for convention internationale pour le transport des voyageurs – is a set of European rules that protect international rail journeys. These special fares are available from most (not all) UK stations, but can only be bought in person at staffed ticket office and you will need to show a Eurostar booking. A CIV fare is usually slightly higher than a regular ticket, although it also has fewer time restrictions…

● Leading energy suppliers have responded to criticisms of high prices by introducing new tariffs for some small business customers. Groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses have attacked the energy sector for locking firms into long-term deals at the top of the market last year, with many firms struggling to cope with the cost of their contracts. Now suppliers including British Gas and Octopus Energy have begun formally offering “blend and extend” tariffs to some of these customers, allowing them to renegotiate costs. ● Does your company sell online? If so, now may be the time to look at how well your digital services are working. New research from GFS and Retail Economics reveals that 24% of purchases are abandoned at the point that the consumer reaches the…

How 30 People Found Financial Freedom – and You Can Too Edited by Jonathan Clements Harriman House (£17.99) Given the ongoing cost of living crisis, working out how to optimise your personal finances has never been more important. Doing this through trial and error can prove painful and expensive, so it’s far better to learn from the experiences of other people who have faced similar problems. My Money Journey consists of 30 essays by contributors to Humble Dollar, a US personal finance website, detailing their struggles with money. The essays are divided into five categories. “Fierce frugality” looks at the benefits and costs of saving large amounts of money. “Family first” discusses the best way to help your relatives through financial management. “Slow and steady” focuses on those who have…

Stockmarkets are “partying like it’s 1999”, says Randall Forsyth in Barron’s. In a rally with “shades of the dotcom boom”, US equities are being powered higher “by a relative handful of technology stocks” that investors are betting will “fundamentally change the world”. On Monday, America’s S&P 500 briefly achieved a 20% gain from its lows of October last year. Such a rise from a trough is the commonly accepted definition of a bull market. Thus reaching that milestone would often be considered sufficient to mark “the end of the gnarly bear market” that began in the summer of 2022, says Matt Phillips of Axios. Yet not everyone agrees that the bear is dead. Some market watchers believe that “the market has to hit a new high before we can confirm…

WE Soda is set to launch the FTSE’s first major initial public offering (IPO) this year, “raising hopes a dearth in public listings could be coming to an end”, says Simon Hunt in the Evening Standard. The company, controlled by the billionaire Ciner family of Turkey, is the world’s largest producer of natural soda ash, 60% of which is used in glass manufacturing. The firm plans to price the shares by the end of this month, aiming for a valuation of around £6.5bn, and hopes to enter the blue-chip FTSE 100 index after listing. It says the money raised will contribute towards a $5bn investment in two new production facilities in Wyoming. WE Soda’s plan to list in London is a “ray of light” for the market, says Susannah Streeter…

Five to buy Eden Research The Mail on Sunday Farmers spend £45bn a year worldwide fighting pests and disease. Most of these treatments “are made from synthetic chemicals” and there is thus growing pressure from consumers and regulators to find greener alternatives. This firm uses terpenes, natural compounds in fir trees, to create a product that keeps fungal diseases off crops. Recent approvals from Poland, New Zealand and California shows that officials are getting onside. The firm has also developed other products that dissuade birds from eating crop seeds. While it has been “loss-making to date”, sales growth and positive regulatory trends herald “a bright future”. 3.7p Lok’n Store The Sunday Times New-build living rooms are “a third smaller” today than in the 1970s as “developers squeeze more properties onto…

After “12 weeks of crisis”, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) – until now the main trade association for British companies – won a “crunch vote of confidence” with 93% support from members on Tuesday, says the Financial Times. The vote comes after several claims of misconduct at the organisation, including two allegations that are under police investigation. The fact that 93% of those voting endorsed the plan sounds like a “thumping endorsement”, but things are a little more complicated, says Nils Pratley in the Guardian. The CBI has constantly refused as “a matter of deep principle” to reveal “how many companies and trade associations are members”. While several high-profile firms and associations such as BP, Tesco and NatWest, have quit the CBI, the fact that only 371 out of…

Oil rallied a bit this week after Saudi Arabia announced that it would cut production (see page 4), yet the idea that these cuts are bullish for oil in the short term seems rather optimistic. Instead, this looks rather like a classic example of trading on narratives instead of facts: a tighter market would in theory be bullish, Saudi Arabia reducing supplies in theory means a tighter market, thus this is a bullish development, therefore buy oil. Thus traders buy oil and the price goes up for a short while. However, gains are likely to last only for a few days until – as with the wider Opec production cut in April – the concrete realities of supply and demand reassert themselves. In reality, production cuts are a sign of…

A new world for investors Felix Martin Breakingviews Globalisation is dead, says Felix Martin. And under its replacement, “securonomics”, national security takes precedence over economic efficiency. To say this “volte-face” matters to investors is a “colossal understatement”. As top US securocrat Jake Sullivan puts it, “unqualified support for free markets is over”. Domestically, “industrial policy is back” (witness the CHIPS Act). Internationally, securing supply chains takes priority over costs and trade agreements will be designed to support foreign and environmental policy. “Friendshoring” will replace offshoring. For investors, this means that the “currencies, bonds and equity markets of countries” allied to G7 countries are likely to outperform while firms such as BAE Systems will benefit from the “renewed appetite” for defence spending. It’s not all opportunity. This shift is at odds…

capx.co An overlooked but highly significant aspect of the recent Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protests is that the people taking part, and their sympathisers, are “exactly the sorts of people one would expect to vote Tory,” says William Atkinson. One study of Extinction Rebellion found that their supporters are overwhelmingly middle-class, highly educated women from the south of England. They’re the “Blue Wall personified”. This doesn’t mean that great swathes of England are readying for an eco-uprising. The great “unspoken truth” of English history is that we are “rubbish” at protesting. While the French shut down Paris and burn down buildings over a rise in the pension age, all we can manage are “blue-haired Oxford undergrads sticking themselves to a floor”. What all this does mean, though, is…

Earlier this year, I found myself in hospital undergoing various scans and tests. While I thankfully got the all-clear, others aren’t so lucky. There were 391,000 cancer diagnoses in the UK alone in 2019, according to Macmillan Cancer Support. There is therefore huge demand for better ways to diagnose cancer as fast as possible. The cancer diagnosis market is already worth an estimated $135bn, and is expected “to exceed $250bn by 2030”, says Maximilian Martin, global head of philanthropy at Lombard Odier. Ageing populations in developed countries and greater access to treatment in emerging markets are driving demand. On the supply side, recent progress has “opened up vast possibilities”. From sick care to healthcare Better diagnosis is a key part of responding to the challenge posed by ageing populations. Creaking…

The City of London is grasping the nettle of carbon reduction by introducing new planning “guidance” that will require developers to assess the carbon impact of projects over the whole life of their building. It is urging them to consider refurbishing existing buildings rather than demolishing and replacing them. “Planning authorities throughout the UK will adopt similar policies over time,” says Nick Gregory of Waypoint Asset Management, “but very few developers have the skills to re-engineer existing structures to create high-quality buildings. Those that do will be rewarded.” Carving out a niche One such example is Derwent London (LSE: DLN), the £2.5bn office developer. “Refurbishment was our bread and butter,” says executive director Nigel George, “notably the refurbishment of tired multi-let buildings.” Now new-build accounts for two-thirds of Derwent’s development…

Investment platforms are still paying interest rates far below the Bank of England (BoE) base rate, with one platform paying nothing at all in interest on cash held within individual savings accounts (Isas) and self-invested personal pensions (Sipps). While there has been pressure on the banks and building societies failing to hike savings rates in line with the base rate – which is now 4.5% – platforms have largely escaped the same criticism. The worst offender among major platforms is Barclays Smart Investor. It only pays interest on cash balances held in general investment accounts (GIAs), where cash is kept in an account called an Investment Saver, which directly pairs with the GIA. The current rate on this is just 0.70%, regardless of how much cash is held. Most other…

Would a Labour government raise capital-gains tax (CGT) rates or abolish exemptions and reliefs? The shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves insists that the party has no plans to do so, but with the next election in sight, financial advisers report increased interest from business owners thinking about selling ahead of a potential tax hike. The current CGT system is certainly generous to business owners. For most people, CGT is payable at a rate of 20% when they sell an asset at a profit, assuming that they’re higher- or additional-rate taxpayers and they’ve used up their annual CGT allowance of £6,000 (falling to £3,000 in the 2024-2025 tax year). On residential property sales, the rate goes as high as 28%. But business owners typically pay only 10% CGT on the first £1m…

In my conversations with executives, analysts and fund managers over the past few months, one topic has come up again and again: Britain’s desperate lack of high-quality commercial property. The situation is particularly acute in certain niche markets, such as industrial property and central London. Buyers are starting to take note. Industrials Reit (which I highlighted in early February as “far too cheap”) is in the process of being acquired by US private-equity giant Blackstone for 168p a share, a slight premium to its underlying book value. The stock was trading at a discount of 24% to its book value at the beginning of February, at a price of 124p. In London, the supply-demand balance is particularly acute. Supply is constrained by red tape and building costs while demand is…

Harry Nimmo was born in 1957 and studied geography at the University of Dundee before working as a geologist in Saudi Arabia. Believing that the growth of the Saudi economy was unsustainable, and fed up with the lifestyle, he decided to use the money he had saved to do an MBA at Edinburgh University. After that he joined Standard Life (now known as abrdn) as an investment analyst, launching its UK Smaller Companies Fund. He was later put in charge of the UK Smaller Companies Trust. In 2022 he finally retired after 37 years working at Standard Life. What was the trade? In late 2005 Nimmo became interested in the online-fashion retailer Asos, which had listed in 2001 at the tail end of the dotcom boom. Even though internet stocks…

£14.65, per bottle, reduced to £13 each by the case; £34.65, per magnum, reduced to £30.80 each by the case; £91.50 per double magnum, Haynes Hanson & Clark, hhandc.co.uk; 020-7584 7927 I have been buying this wine every year since it first landed on our shores back in 2006. It’s funny how brands come and go; some skyrocket, then fizzle, and others ghost off, never to be seen again. Powerhouse rosés such as Mirabeau and Whispering Angel forge forwards with ever-increasing volumes and, to my mind, quality. While these are both reliable producers making delicious wines, I like to mix it up a bit and champion underdogs whenever possible. So it is that Pique Roque, a quiet, unassuming wine with rare purity and verve, always manages to find its way…

Palo Alto A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Malcolm Harris Riverrun (£30) The Californian city of Palo Alto has seen its international influence mushroom in recent years, thanks to its role as one of the “hubs of the global tech economy”, with some of the largest technology companies having headquarters there, says Lois Beckett in the Guardian. This makes it the ideal framing device for a look at what the writer Malcolm Harris calls the “Palo Alto system”, a strategy “to achieve fast growth and big returns for investors at  any cost, with a focus on exploiting young talent and new technologies”. In this “hotly anticipated” book, Harris argues that ever since the late 19th century Californians have made their fortunes by “moving fast and breaking people”. “Deeply…