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“Germany has a new populist party of the far left”, says Wolfgang Münchau in The New Statesman. Last week, Sahra Wagenknecht, the former leader of Die Linke (Left Party), created her own movement, along with nine of Die Linke’s MPs. This is “not a bunch of old Trots fighting their last political battle”. Wagenknecht is “well prepared” with a “clear agenda”. In contrast to most of the left and centre-left, whom she dismisses as “political representatives of the liberal metropolitan elites”, she wants to “revert to the old industrial model and reopen the pipelines that formerly carried cheap Russian gas to Germany” while capping immigration. The fact that polls put the new party at 14%, only one point behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), suggests that this mix of left-wing…

It’s a good rule of thumb to avoid new investment-trust issues until they have proven themselves. Still, there are always exceptions. In my experience, the most reliable trusts are launched in tough times. The Ashoka WhiteOak Emerging Markets Trust (LSE: AWEM) launched earlier this year, raising £31m, is a good example. Ashoka launched its Ashoka India Equity Investment Trust (LSE: AIE), managed by the same investment team, in July 2018 with just £46m. Since then, it has returned 131% against 74% for the MSCI India index, making it the best performer of the Indian trusts. Assets have grown to £263m. Prashant Khemka, the manager of both, spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, where he built the India and emerging-markets funds, managing up to $5bn. He left to found WhiteOak in…

Buy-to-let has bled to death Will Dunn The New Statesman The second quarter of this year sounded the death knell for small landlords, says Will Dunn. Research by Savills finds there is “no longer any profit to be made” from buying and renting out a property with a deposit of less than 30%. Since 2014, 73% of buy-to-let mortgages taken out fall into this category and today, landlords collectively owe £300bn to UK banks. While those with bigger deposits can still make money, the “flow of new landlords into the market” is expected to dry up. Of course, the great appeal of buy-to-let has been the rise in value of the underlying asset, but the market “is headed in the opposite direction” with the real-terms value of UK property falling…

bbc.com/worklife Ever since the launch of AI chatbot ChatGPT, employers have “scrambled” to keep its use in the workplace under control, says Alex Christian. Many are concerned that their data will be leaked as employees unintentionally train the algorithms with sensitive information, for example. Yet many workers have already come to rely on the new tool. “It was like discovering a video-game cheat,” says one business consultant. AI has already transformed the workdays of many office workers. It is now child’s play to get answers to questions that would otherwise require technical expertise, for example. AI can quickly aggregate content, for example, providing a useful first draft in moments, and help with technical or routine tasks such as coding. But because the technology is frowned upon, adepts have taken to…

Warsaw’s WIG 20 blue-chip benchmark is dominated by oil firm Orlen (15% of the index), the insurer PZU (14%) and the banking sector (collectively comprising over 30%). Investors can simply buy the market through the iShares MSCI Poland ETF (LSE: SPOL), and while this index is a little more diversified, with 37 stocks, that is still essentially the exposure you are getting. However, the market is more varied than this and plenty of Polish brands – both old and new – deserve some attention from investors. To give you a sense of what’s available in the wider market, these include chocolate maker Wawel, which trades on enterprise value to earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of just seven; Amica, which owns several global household-appliance brands; suitcase and bag maker…

Rumours are swirling that inheritance tax (IHT) could be cut or eradicated in the Autumn statement at the end of the month. This is good news as the so-called death tax is unpopular, but it is surprising that the government is considering tinkering with it given that it is quite a moneymaker for them. In the last financial year, a record £7.1bn was collected. That is £1bn more than the year before. The soaring value of assets, combined with a threshold that has been frozen since 2009, mean the taxman makes more every year. Few estates pay the tax However, far more of us fear IHT than ever actually pay it. Less than 4% of estates are liable for the levy, says Emma Agyemang in the Financial Times. Data from…

Small companies planning their finances for 2024 need to factor in the possibility of significantly higher energy bills. While gas and electricity prices have fallen from the huge peaks seen last year, the positive effect of this looks set to be outweighed by the loss of support from the Energy Bills Discount Scheme. Introduced by the government in April, this plan is due to close at the end of March 2024. While the initiative does not cap firms’ energy bills in the same way as the equivalent scheme for consumers, it does offer significant savings. Eligible businesses get up to £6.97 off the cost of each megawatt hour of gas consumption, and up to £19.61 off the cost of electricity. These discounts are applied automatically, with most businesses qualifying for…

Autumn and winter is a great time to visit Gleneagles in Perthshire, says Helen Wilson-Beevers in The Independent. “The leaves change colour and the crisp mornings offer an opportunity to wrap up warm, venture outdoors and later retreat to a luxurious, cosy corner.” The estate spans an “enormous” 850 acres beneath the Ochil Hills and includes the “world-renowned” golf course. Keen golfers can also visit St Andrews 45 miles away. “From arrival to departure, we were given a warm welcome.” There is much besides golf to keep you occupied out of doors. Gleneagles is offering an Adventure Pass, which runs to the end of the month, and which can be used to enjoy “field archery, stargazing, a moorland walk, owl exhibition and Talisker cocktails by the fire”. It’s not for…

Follow the driveway through 300 acres of rolling Hertfordshire countryside, past the 18-hole championship golf course, and The Grove’s redbrick façade comes into view, says Ben Harris in Country Life. It is a spectacular sight and the gardens are “immaculate”. The championship golf course is also “immaculately kept” and it is “what made The Grove famous”. Tiger Woods played here at a World Golf Championships event in 2006. Besides the links, guests can cycle, run or simply walk around the estate – there are three trails to explore, the longest of which is four miles. Tennis, archery, axe-throwing and laser clay shooting are some of the other activities on offer. Inside the hotel, “our spacious room overlooked the golf course and lush gardens, with a view… from every corner of…

Papal lawyers are seeking a jail sentence of 11 and a half years, plus £300m in “moral damages”, for Raffaele Mincione (pictured), a Catholic British-Italian fund manager, who they argue sold the Vatican an investment in west London flats at an inflated price, says Matthew Campbell in The Sunday Times. The Holy See sank €350m into the development before withdrawing from Mincione’s fund in 2018. It later tried to buy the building outright before finally selling up last year to a US investment firm for a reported £186m – less than they had paid to end their original agreement with Mincione. The Pope had also personally authorised the bugging and seizure of Mincione’s mobile phones while Mincione was in Rome. Mincione denies wrongdoing and he has brought a parallel case…

Fast-food chain McDonald’s demonstrated its “resilience” in the face of economic headwinds in the third quarter, says Lex in the Financial Times. Sales rose by 14%, while operating profits increased by 16%. The group seems to have benefited from a “barbell” pricing strategy, which involved “promoting traffic-driving deals on low-priced menu items alongside new, pricier offerings”. This in turn helped it “capture diners from both ends of the income spectrum”. Still, with the shares down by 12% from June’s record highs, there continue to be concerns that profitability “could fall if it leans too much on value items”, especially “if it prompts other fast-food chains to lower prices as well”. McDonald’s valuation “has now crept below the long-term average and doesn’t look too demanding”, says Derren Nathan for Hargreaves Lansdown.…

Politics & economics Much is “already known about poor-decision making, avoidable deaths, lockdown-breaking parties and atrocious procurement” during the pandemic, says The Guardian. But the evidence given by Dominic Cummings, Lee Cain and other key figures in the Covid inquiry this week still “has the power to shock” . According to Cummings, Boris Johnson was referred to as a “shopping trolley” owing to his “erratic nature and chaotic changes of policy direction”. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, describe the “Eat out to help out” scheme as the “Eat out to help out the virus.” What matters at this stage of the inquiry is not that Johnson and his advisers sent messages “most would regard as crass or insensitive”, says Annabel Denham in The Telegraph. It is why the…

When it comes to betting exchanges there are two options for politically minded punters: Betfair and Smarkets. Betfair has by far the biggest volume of money traded. For example, £6.2m has been matched on Betfair on the individual who will win the 2024 US presidential election, compared with only £1.8m on the equivalent market for Smarkets. Increased liquidity usually means lower spreads between backing and betting against. However, Smarkets does have a wider range of markets with 22, compared with just 11 for Betfair. These include a market on the Iowa Republican presidential caucus, as well as markets on individual state results in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. While they are very illiquid at present, this shows that the betting markets are…

Over the last few weeks the outlook for many French companies has deteriorated dramatically. The Altice empire, put together by billionaire Patrick Drahi, is in big trouble, ensnared in a corruption scandal, and raising emergency cash to stay afloat. Among other assets, its 24.5% stake in BT may have to be sold off, and its shares are down by almost 60% over the past year. Last week, shares in Worldline, the payments firm that is one of the biggest tech businesses in France, crashed by 60% as it warned on its profits for the year ahead. One of the country’s few high-tech champions, even if it dates back to the 1970s, is failing badly. It’s not looking much better at the drinks giant Rémy Cointreau. Over the last few months…

Crystal Amber Fund, the activist investment trust, has asked its shareholders to “be patient” after extending its wind-down process, says CityWire. Manager Richard Bernstein has opted to hike the trust’s stake in struggling banknote maker De La Rue. Crystal Amber now owns 17% of the firm. This seems “contrary to returning funds”, but Crystal thinks this is the “optimal” way to balance cash returns and maximise shareholder value. Crystal Amber has been liquidating its assets since March 2022 following an activist campaign by Saba Capital. The original target for liquidation was 31 December 2023. The increased stake in De La Rue and an additional investment in another holding, Morphic Medical, means it is unlikely to hit this target.…

city-journal.org “Effective altruism”, the philosophy that purports to direct charitable giving to where it can do the most good, has been discredited by the disgrace of leading proponent Sam Bankman-Fried. Good, says Robert Wright. The idea fails because it is a “voluntary form of central planning, and thus suffers the same pitfalls as other central-planning systems”. Effective altruists have no more insight into the world’s complexities than anyone else, and directing money to where it can do the most good means in practice that it is directed to where self-proclaimed experts believe it can do the most good. US history provides a practical alternative: “bottom-up experimentation”. Americans have long formed voluntary non-profit associations, helping ameliorate social problems not easily solved by government or business. Tens of thousands of such ventures…

Ididn’t buy shares in Uber, the ride-hailing app, when they first floated on the stockmarket in 2019. It was a big, glitzy event, but there were no profits in sight; the company seemed to be arguing with authorities and traditional taxis wherever it was touting for business; and employee discrimination and harassment claims were still fresh. Now, though, things look different. In August it reported its first-ever quarterly operating profit ($326m) between April and June, alongside the news that it had generated a record-breaking $1.1bn of surplus cash. After four years, Uber’s shares have barely budged but the business has changed a lot. Uber is a so-called “platform” business, which simply means it provides and maintains a digital space where users can come together and interact – in Uber’s case…

● Motorists have had to pay parking fines of almost £850m over the past 12 months, says Lucy Evans in The Mail on Sunday. One in four male drivers were issued with a parking fine, “more than double the number of female drivers caught out”. Overall, one in five motorists had to pay a parking fine in the past year. Data from car insurer Prima also found that “town-centre and workplace car parks were more common places for drivers to be fined” than on-street parking. Failing to understand signs and parking outside permitted hours were the main reasons that drivers were fined. But 14% of drivers knew that they should not have parked where or when they did, yet risked it anyway. ● With mortgage holders feeling the squeeze from…

● Small companies in Britain are spending 22% more on their credit cards each month than at the end of the Covid pandemic, new research from business software provider Intuit reveals. The increase reflects the financial pressures that many small businesses are facing, but also underlines the importance of shopping around for credit cards for businesses. Research suggests small businesses rarely change credit-card provider, even though the best deals offer far lower interest rates as well as a range of other perks. ● Just 2% of the smallest businesses have insurance that will protect them if they suffer a cyberattack – a data breach, hack or virus, for example. Insurer Aviva hopes to target this marketplace with a new policy aimed specifically at micro- businesses, with premiums starting from £50…

Chip Wilson (pictured), the founder of Lululemon Athletica, has rarely been out of the headlines over the last ten years, attracting plaudits and courting controversy in equal measure. “The 68-year-old entrepreneur was at the forefront of the movement that turned women’s activewear into everyday apparel,” say Jordan Hart and Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins in Business Insider. Wilson’s firm is a key player in a booming global “athleisure” market expected to be worth $662bn by 2030. Since Lululemon opened its first standalone store in 2000, its most popular items, notably leggings, have become status symbols amongst younger generations. The company is currently worth $49.6bn; with a personal fortune of $7.3bn, Wilson has joined the ranks of the ten wealthiest Canadians. He started out in 1979, having worked on an oil pipeline in…

Il Picciolo Etna Golf Resort & Spa in Sicily has “a lovely outdoor pool”, says Chris Folley in the Evening Standard. “If you are very unlucky your peace might be disturbed by the sound of ‘fore!’ and a wildly hooked shot bouncing in your midst – the pool sits right next to the approach to the 18th green of the 5,870-metre course.” But then, you really ought to be on the fairway. The resort has used the relatively small space to create “a real thinker’s course”. “‘Hit straight’ is the mantra here – fairways are narrow, blind shots are aplenty and dog-legs stop you in your tracks when you instinctively reach for the driver at the tee.” The greens are “manicured and true”, the fairways “well-maintained” and the bunkers are…

Two years of talks over a proposed merger between computer-drive maker Western Digital’s semiconductor business and Japan’s Kioxia Holdings, the world’s third- and fourth-largest manufacturers of flash memory, seem “to have fallen apart in the final stages”, says Nikkei Asia. Western Digital walked out of the negotiations. The sticking point seems to have been the continued opposition of South Korean firm SK hynix. Hynix, which owns a large indirect stake in Kioxia, was worried that the new company would threaten Hynix’s own spot as the second-largest flash-memory maker. While these concerns aren’t new, Kioxia “had assumed SK hynix would drop its objections somewhere along the line. But no”. No wonder the South Korean firm wasn’t happy, say Leo Lewis and Kana Inagaki in the Financial Times. The combined entity’s market…

● ”Waiter, there’s a fly in my takeover,” says Matthew Brooker on Bloomberg. The bid for The Restaurant Group (TRG), owner of Wagamama, by private-equity firm Apollo, may yet turn into a battle, after Pizza Express indicated it is interested in exploring an offer. The idea seems credible: Allan Leighton, chair of Pizza Express, had the same role at Wagamama, so he has “an insider’s insight into the business”. Still, Pizza Express has a lot of debt and it’s not clear how much the group of private-equity funds that own it might stump up in a bidding war. At minimum, Pizza Express would need to offer 71.5p – 10% higher than Apollo’s 65p – to release some of TRG’s shareholders from their commitment to accept Apollo’s offer. Ultimately, Apollo is…

■ Facing pressure from the passive fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) market, investment trusts have been cutting their fees over the past 12 months, says the Investors’ Chronicle. Figures from the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) and Fitz Partners, a research group that calculates fund fees, show that some of the UK’s biggest investment trusts have reduced their fees as they try to compete with equity ETFs, with average annual management charges of 0.2%. JPMorgan Asset Management-managed trusts have made some of the biggest changes this year, including JPMorgan Claverhouse, which reduced its management fee from 0.55% to 0.45% on the first £400m of net assets and 0.4% on anything above (this is unchanged). Abrdn-managed trusts, along with property funds Tritax EuroBox and Urban Logistics Reit have also announced fee…

conversableeconomist.com The “winds of public opinion and politics” have been blowing against globalisation for years now, says Timothy Taylor. Three main arguments are levelled against it: that it is bad for national security due to strengthening geopolitical rivals and creating risky and overstretched supply chains; it’s bad for workers and the poor; and it’s bad for the environment. The WTO’s World Trade Report 2023 takes on all three arguments. The first point forgets that the world trading system was set up in the wake of the world wars precisely because nations that trade have more incentives to avoid war. The obvious lesson from disrupted supply chains is to diversify sources, not have fewer global suppliers. Globalisation can disrupt national industries, which hurts some of that country’s workers in the short…

We are living in an uncertain environment, reflected in the high level of volatility across asset classes. But macroeconomic trends are difficult to forecast and building a portfolio of stocks based on such views is even more challenging. At Fidelity, therefore, we remain focused on a fundamentals-driven, bottom-up approach to investing, building a deep understanding of businesses and the price at which they are available. As a result, my investment process is to own good businesses run by managements whom we can trust. We buy these stocks only when we see an ample margin of safety. This leads us to take contrarian positions as it is easier to find undervalued businesses in countries and sectors that are out of favour with investors. One company we hold is Sinotruk (Hong Kong:…

Four Seasons Resort Mauritius at Anahita lies “along the pristine shores of Mauritius, where turquoise waters meet powder-white sands”, says Daniella Schoeman for Luxury Lifestyle Magazine. It is “a haven of tropical opulence and indulgence”. The garden pool villas, for example, exude “understated luxury, with elegant furnishings and thoughtful touches”. It comes with “your very own plunge pool, outdoor shower, and a beautifully landscaped garden”. The “breathtaking natural beauty of the island” has been “effortlessly integrated” into every aspect of the resort, so you can “wake up to the gentle sounds of the ocean” and “stroll along the pristine beaches”. Or you can simply tee off at the resort’s championship golf course, designed by golfing legend Ernie Els. “With panoramic views of the ocean and lush landscapes, this challenging 18-hole…

Moric Hausmarke Red S20, Austria £16.50, thewinesociety.com I am a massive fan of Roland Velich’s exceptional Weingut Moric wines. His favourite red grape variety is blaufränkisch, which he has elevated to Grand Cru-level heights in wines such as Lutzmannsburg and Neckenmarkt, which retail around the £100 mark. His Reserve red hovers around £40 and is the wine I would usually recommend people drink before they move up the ladder. These are wines with a peculiar angularity and stance on the palate. While they fleetingly resemble top-class red Burgundy in shape and size, the flavours are darker, more challenging and more malevolent. They don’t tip over into nebbiolo-like notes because the tannins are bright and crisp, nor are they as lusty or peppery as refined northern Rhône syrah. Roland’s red wines…

Thirteen Years, Five Prime Ministers and the Implosion of the Tories Ben Riley-SmithJohn Murray (£25) If you include the coalition years, Britain’s current period of Conservative government has not only outlasted Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s time in office, but also the long spell of Conservative dominance between 1951 and 1964. However, this continuity of Tory leadership has been accompanied by unprecedented turmoil at the top, especially since 2016. While the 1979-1997 period involved only two different PMs (Margaret Thatcher and John Major), and the 1951-1964 period involved four (Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home), 2010-2023 has seen five, a rate of churn unmatched for over two centuries. This new book by Ben Riley-Smith, The Telegraph’s political editor, takes a behind-the-scenes look at what went on…