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“At a time when unemployment is very low [Washington is running] an 8%-of-GDP budget deficit. That has… sent… public debt… to stratospheric levels…. The Congressional Budget Office [says the] public-debt-to-GDP ratio could rise to a Greek-like 110% before the end of the decade… both sides of the political aisle… bear responsibility… Democrats in office like to spend like drunken sailors, but they are… reluctant to raise taxes… during the Trump administration… Republicans… liked to cut taxes aggressively, but they were not prepared to cut public spending … enough to pay for those… History is littered with… countries that have experienced major exchange-rate crises and bursts of inflation because of irresponsible budget policies… [Unless] Washington… mends its budget ways… future generations [of Americans] should expect to have lower living standards.” Desmond…

Despite being free from a “debilitating breakdown in industrial relations and months of strikes under previous management”, Royal Mail continues to plunge “deeper into the red”, says Robert Lea in The Times. It lost £319m in the six months to the end of September, compared with £219m in the same period last year. The shortfall has helped cause a £243m loss at Royal Mail’s listed parent company International Distributions Services (IDS), which also suffered from falling profits at its European and American courier business GLS. The results have left Royal Mail, which is facing a long-term trend of declining letter volumes, and was recently fined by Ofcom for poor service, demanding that the government scrap its commitment to a universal six-day service. The firm’s argument that the requirement for Saturday…

Inditex, the Spanish retail giant behind fast-fashion brand Zara, remains a compelling buy, says Céline Panteix in Investir. The Madrid-listed group, which also owns the Massimo Dutti brand, is a “veritable steamroller”, with sales up by 13.5% and net profit soaring by 40% in the six months through the end of July. At 18.8%, operating margins are the highest in more than a decade. Inditex has more production in Europe and North Africa than competitors, enabling it to dodge the worst of Asian supply-chain pressures and react more quickly to new fashion trends. Those same supply-chain pressures have left competitors in the US in disarray, giving Inditex scope to grab more share in its second biggest market after Europe.…

The Home Office is looking at measures to reduce legal immigration and the “abuse” of work visas as it “seeks to reassure the public it has a grip on migration”, say Anna Gross and Delphine Strauss in the Financial Times. Proposed changes include raising the salary threshold of £26,200 for skilled workers and the minimum level of £20,960 for care workers. Health and care visas have driven immigration figures to record highs of 606,000 in 2022 and an expected 700,000 this year, says The Times. Of the 282,742 health and care visas issued in the year to June, more than half were issued to dependants. If immigration continues at the current pace, Migration Watch UK says the population will rise from 68 million to 83-87 million by 2046, says Allison…

It’s day two in the jungle and Nigel Farage is tucking into crocodile bum, camel teat and chicken feet. The Brexit campaigner, former MEP and GB News presenter was always going to be the main event on the reality TV programme I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, says Ed Power in The Telegraph, and he has not disappointed. He appeared “quietly disgusted by the fare”, but was presumably thinking of his £1.5m fee “and all the mouthwash it will buy when he leaves the jungle”. He almost certainly has bigger things on his mind, too, says Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator. Farage’s stated reason for going on the show is the hope that “those who hate me might hate me a little bit less afterwards”. But why would…

We were already used to Halloween and Mother’s Day being turned into major retailing events. Now we’re starting to get used to Black Friday as well, which started in the US as the day after Thanksgiving, which traditionally marked the start of the Christmas shopping season, and which retailers would celebrate with a few special offers to start the busiest period of the year. With the arrival of the American online shopping giants, led by Amazon, it has now been exported around the world. Even in countries such as the UK, where Thanksgiving is completely meaningless, Black Friday is now a major retail event. All the major chains now feel compelled to offer a range of special offers and discounts around the middle of November, or else face a huge…

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) is a way of measuring profit that can make it easier to compare the valuation of two companies. Ebitda may be helpful when it is difficult to compare firms using other profit measures – such as earnings per share (EPS) – because they have very different levels of debt, tax rates, or different accounting policies on, for example, the depreciation of fixed assets. Ebitda measures a firm’s profitability before these factors are taken into account. The two businesses can then be compared on a like-for-like basis by taking their enterprise values (EV – the market value of all their shares in issue, plus net borrowing or less net cash) and comparing this with Ebitda. The lower the EV/Ebitda ratio, the cheaper the…

“If a random person stops, she will charge them only $2. If she knows you, she will fully scam you. I’ll get calls from my friends saying she charged them $20 for a lemonade. She’ll grab their $20 and say: ‘I don’t have any change.’” Kim Kardashian (pictured) on her daughter’s lemonade-stand business, quoted in GQ “I discovered that lots of friends around my age were wearing dinky little hearing aids that I could scarcely see. They said I should go private and get some, what else are you going to spend your money on, you mean b*****d? The prices they paid ranged from £2,000 at Boots to £5,000 in Harley Street. I might spend that on a holiday in the West Indies, but not on titchy hearing aids.” Author…

noahpinion.blog The world could learn a lot from Singapore, says Noah Smith. The first thing that strikes you about it is that it is “stinking rich” – the third richest country in the world, about 65% richer than the US, and with a GDP per capita of $93,000. This gives it options when it comes to making the country a pleasant place to live. True, not every country can follow its economic model, acting as a gateway for foreign investment from the US to Asia. But it has followed its gameplan with “amazing skill” – leveraging its great education system, high levels of skilled migration and a highly focused industrial policy to great effect. The result is a built environment almost as dense as Tokyo’s, but one with lots of…

ValueAct Capital has built a stake in Disney, adding to pressure on the entertainment giant to shake up its operations, says Bloomberg. The size of ValueAct’s stake is yet to be disclosed, though it is said to be among the largest positions the entertainment and media giant. Renowned activist investor Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management has also been attempting to change the group’s strategy in recent years. The shares have fallen by 40% in the past two years. A key issue has been consumers’ shift towards streaming services in place of traditional television and cinemas. CEO Bob Iger has cut costs by axing 8,000 employees last year, while he also hopes to sell television channels such as ABC.…

● Nationwide says “mortgage arrears are creeping up, but at a slower pace than expected”, says Akila Quinio in the Financial Times. The building society saw a slight increase in bad loans in its half-year results, with 0.38% of its residential mortgage holders falling behind on their repayments for more than three months at the end of September, up from 0.32% in April. “Inflation, economic uncertainty and high borrowing costs remained ‘key risks’.” ● If you’ve been recently bereaved, watch out for scammers, warns Esther Rantzen in The Telegraph. “There are scammers who carefully peruse the obituary columns in newspapers to try to identify the bereaved and send them lying invoices in the name of the person who has passed away.” One trick is to pretend to be a life-insurance…

● Almost 10,000 savers trying to transfer their pension benefits have suffered unnecessary delays because of rules introduced to reduce fraud. Since 2021 defined-benefit (DB) pension schemes have been required to flag transfers of members’ money to other arrangements if the move raises suspicions of a scam. The member must then show they have taken professional advice on the transfer before it proceeds. But data from stockbroker Quilter suggests many schemes may simply be flagging all such transfers, including those where there is little risk of a scam. More than 9,500 transfers have been flagged for undisclosed reasons, Quilter’s research shows. ● Thousands of women who have shared part of their income-tax allowance with their husbands could face unexpected tax bills. Roughly two million couples take advantage of the marriage…

Children may already be compiling their Christmas lists, but traders also want a gift in the form of a “Santa Rally”. When this phrase was first coined in 1972, the rally only referred to the stockmarket’s performance during the final trading days between Christmas and the New Year. But in recent years the term has broadened to cover the entire month of December. The theory is that festive cheer and holiday household spending make the markets more optimistic. Ben Laidler of eToro also thinks that outperformance in December could be due to markets anticipating a new flow of cash from investors in January. Whatever the reason, there does seem to be strong evidence of a December effect, especially for smaller shares. Laidler notes that over the past 50 years, the…

Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Arnie”) is now 76 and entering the “fourth act” of his life, says Hannah Jane Parkinson in The Guardian. He’s been the world’s most famous bodybuilder, a Hollywood movie star and a governor of California. Now, he is reinventing himself as a self-help guru. It all started during Covid when Arnie started putting up videos on how to cope with the challenges of the pandemic that “radiated warmth”. He presented himself as a voice of reason in the Trump years. And now, following a three-part Netflix documentary released earlier this year, he has a book out: Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life. It might be a smart move financially. Schwarzenegger has already accumulated an estimated net worth of $450m, but the self-help industry is booming, and Arnie is…

2022 Tarima, Monastrell, Bodegas Volver, Alicante, Spain (£9.99, reduced to £8.99 in a “mix six”, majestic.co.uk) In Spain, the sun-loving mourvèdre grape is called monastrell, and it is surprisingly widely planted. In France, this mighty red grape is responsible for the broad-shouldered Provençal classic Bandol and for making up the numbers in southern Rhône red blends like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, alongside grenache and syrah. The Aussies coined the term “GSM” for their own particularly lip-smacking red blends, and traditional wineries tend to use the word mataro, like they do in California, for this heady red grape. While Spain also makes meaty reds from this evocative variety, there is a new wave of stunning, brightly-red-fruited, refreshing wines made from monastrell in Murcia, Jumilla, Yecla and, of course, Alicante. Bodegas Volver’s vineyards are located…

Pablo Picasso’s Femme à la montre (1932) became the most expensive artwork sold at auction so far this year when it fetched $139m with Sotheby’s in New York this month. Sotheby’s staff had to “[work] the phones to arouse bidders” because the painting had received an “irrevocable bid” before going under the hammer, says Zachary Small in The New York Times. That guaranteed that it would be bought if no higher bids came in, and put a floor under demand – demand that has been showing signs of slipping of late anyway. Such “financial engineering and tight choreography have become an industry standard as higher prices collide with the headwinds of economic uncertainty”. In an era of higher interest rates, investors/collectors don’t need to run the risks of what is…

Sotheby’s had set out to grab the headlines ahead of its marquee week of contemporary and modern art (see left) with an offering not normally considered to fall into either category – a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. Last week, the vintage classic car broke the record for the most expensive Ferrari sold at auction, when it fetched $51.7m with Sotheby’s in New York. That was $3.3m more than another 250 GTO sold on the auction block in California in 2018 (the same year a 250 GTO sold for $70m, but that had been a private sale and so it doesn’t count). However, a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé still holds the title for the most expensive car of any stripe to be sold at auction. That one sold for…

Everton FC has been docked ten points for breaching a £105m limit on financial losses incurred within a three-year period. An independent commission found the Liverpool side had lost £124.5m in the three years to 2021-2022. Everton will appeal the decision. The points deduction may be only the start of Everton’s woes, says The Telegraph. A previous ruling from May stated that if Everton were found guilty, rivals Leeds United, Leicester City, Southampton, Burnley and Nottingham Forest could sue for compensation. All except Nottingham had been relegated from the Premier League during Everton’s breach. Relegation is estimated to cost a club £100m. Manchester City, which also denies wrongdoing, could face a similar fate if it is found guilty of similar offences. Everton is currently in the process of being sold…

Global dividends dipped by 0.9% in the third quarter to $421.9bn, according to the latest Janus Henderson Global Dividend Index. The figure was distorted by several large cuts in the mining industry, which has been hit by weaker commodity prices. Stripping out currency effects and special dividends, payouts grew by 0.3% on an underlying basis, with nine out of ten companies worldwide holding payouts steady or increasing them. Commodities aside, dividend growth has been robust, says Ben Lofthouse of Janus Henderson. US dividends rose by a “healthy” 4.5% in the third quarter, with payouts from European firms soaring by 22.9% on an underlying basis, leaving “Europe comfortably on track to deliver record distributions this year”. British underlying dividend growth of 1.5% lagged behind, hampered by the FTSE’s skew towards struggling…

When he was chancellor, Rishi Sunak noted that “capital investment by UK businesses averages just 10% of GDP”, notably lower than the developed-country average of 14%. The gap explains much of Britain’s weak productivity performance but has proven resistant to attempts to solve it, says David Smith in The Sunday Times. Investment did pick up under George Osborne, only to plateau after the 2016 Brexit referendum shook confidence. The Treasury’s latest ruse to fix the problem is “full expensing”, which allows businesses to immediately deduct 100% of certain capital investments for tax purposes. But history shows that if businesses don’t want to invest they won’t, no matter how many carrots the Treasury dangles.…

Last week shares in Burberry fell by 11.2%, their worst daily fall since the outbreak of Covid, says Isabella Fish in The Times. The slide comes after the fashion house revealed that profit before tax declined by an annual 13% to £219m in the half-year to 30 September. Burberry warns that earnings for the entire year could come in at the lower end of analysts’ estimated range of between £552m and £668m. CEO Jonathan Akeroyd also criticised the government for not reinstating the 20% VAT shopping refund for tourists that was scrapped in 2021 after Brexit. He claims that this has led to tourists “shunning London stores in favour of those on the Continent”. Burberry has clearly had an arduous third quarter, with a “measly” 1% year-on-year rise in sales,…

Almost 100 new companies are waiting to list on Turkey’s stock exchange, the Borsa Istanbul, says Bloomberg. At least 50 companies are expected to float by the end of this year. Initial public offerings (IPOs) are likely to continue at that pace for the next few years. The boom has seen 49 companies raise 66 billion lira (£1.8bn) in 2023, an all-time high in records stretching back to 2010. The surge in IPOs is due largely to the ongoing stockmarket boom, in turn a consequence of the annual inflation rate of 60%. People are putting their money in equities to avoid it being rapidly eroded by rising prices. The benchmark index has risen by 45% this year.…

For decades, as a scion of the Kennedy family and an environmental litigator, Robert F. Kennedy Jr was considered an “establishment hero”, says Freddy Sayers on UnHerd. In recent years, his rhetoric against Covid lockdowns and vaccines painted him as a pedlar of misinformation and conspiracy theories. But since announcing he was running for US president, he can no longer be so easily dismissed. He could even determine the result. Third parties or independent candidates don’t usually get anywhere in the US, says Henry Enten on CNN. But polls currently have RFK Jr doing better than any independent or third-party candidate in a generation, and he has a real chance of affecting the outcome of the 2024 election. One poll had his support at 22% of registered voters – the…

● The £534m bid for Hotel Chocolat by American confectionary-to-pet-food giant Mars is “the sort of deal… that makes you wonder, once again, if the UK stockmarket knows how to value anything”, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. At 375p per share, this values the firm at a 170% premium to where it was trading before the offer. Co-founders Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris, who each own 27.1% of the shares, may have felt they were in no position to resist. Hotel Chocolate “has shown itself lately to have too much of a soft centre” – profit warnings after a “botched attempt” to expand in the US had seen the shares “melting away” since hitting a record high of 532p in 2021. Considering that, what Mars is offering looks like…

“The peace dividend is clearly at the end of the road,” says Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, one of the most successful hedge funds of all time. The world is heading towards greater unrest, as shown by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, he told Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum. This will have huge consequences for the global economy, not least in monetary policy. “We are likely to see higher real rates and we’re likely to see higher nominal rates.” Higher rates will make it more expensive to fund America’s debt, which has soared in recent years as a result of the pandemic and higher defence spending to support Ukraine. The current deficit is unsustainable, says Griffin. “We’re spending at the government level like…

aier.org “Mr Beast” made a name for himself as a social-media phenomenon, and has raised hundred of millions of dollars for humanitarian causes, says Jon Miltimore. His charitable efforts have helped clean up the oceans, planted 20 million trees, fed needy people in communities across the US and brought clean drinking water to an estimated 500,000 Africans. Critics, though, are not happy with his “philanthro-tainment” strategy and claim it is really all about enriching himself, exploiting his viewers for profit. The key word is profit, which became a dirty word over the course of the last century as students were “inundated with social justice tropes” and Marxism at universities. What Mr Beast’s success really shows is “the power of voluntary action and the miraculous power of the profit motive”. The…

■ Mark Mobius will retire from Mobius Capital Partners in the next few months, says the Financial Times. The 87-year-old began his investment career 40 years ago, developing a reputation as “one of the industry’s most prominent emerging market fund managers”. He scooped up bargains during the Asian financial crisis and in Russia in 1998. The bulk of Mobius’s career has been spent at Franklin Templeton. He launched one of the world’s first funds dedicated to developing economies in 1987, and grew the portfolio at Templeton Emerging Markets from $100m to $40bn during his time there. Later, in 2018, he founded Mobius Capital Partners with colleagues from Templeton. Primarily investing in Taiwan, India, South Korea and Brazil, the company’s $42m fund has returned almost 27% since its inception, compared with…

After a lifetime of work, many people have several different types of pensions by the time they are closing in on retirement age. They may have a defined-benefit (DB) plan, guaranteeing a certain amount of income in retirement, related to their salary when in work. They may have a defined-contribution (DC) pension, paying an income dependent on investment returns. And they are likely to have state-pension benefits, too. If you’re in this position, which of these pots of savings should you cash in first? There is no single right answer to this question. Much will depend on your individual circumstances and objectives. But one significant consideration is whether you’re planning to stop work completely or to retire gradually, perhaps by reducing your hours over time. If the latter, you will…

“Delays in the production of wide-bodied planes has benefited Amedeo Air Four Plus” The investment-trust sector has struggled this year, with sentiment dented by a perfect storm of rapid interest-rate rises and ongoing structural changes within the broader industry. However, bouts of investor scepticism are not uncommon over the history of this sector, which is still the ideal home for specialist vehicles of relatively illiquid assets. While we are convinced that the current clouds hovering over investment trusts will eventually clear, investors have the opportunity to gain exposure to strategies aligned to long-term thematic tailwinds at historically compelling valuations. In fact, some trusts today are trading on discounts to net asset value (NAV) not seen since the depths of the global financial crisis almost 15 years ago. Eastern promise close…

It has been another good fortnight for my long tips, with all but one of the seven appreciating. IT Services group Computacenter rose from 2,608p to 2,736 and outsourcer Mitie advanced from 101p to 106p. Luxury brand Watches of Switzerland climbed from 569p to 624p, kitchen supplier Howden Joinery increased from 642p to 691p and recruitment agency SThree went up from 383p to 405p. The only exception was discount retailer B&M, which declined from 534p to 533p. Overall, my long tips are now making a profit of £825. As you might expect, the rising market meant that my short tips struggled, with five out of seven going the wrong way. Electric car-charging company EVgo rose from $2.29 to $3.12, payroll company Paycom increased from $158 to $182 and air-taxi company…

Going… Christie’s in Hong Kong is gearing up for its Magnificent Jewels sale this week. The star lot is The Pink Supreme – a fancy intense pink cushion brilliant-cut 15.48-carat diamond that has been set into a gold ring with diamonds. Grading agency the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has certified The Pink Supreme as internally flawless for clarity. Pink diamonds are among the rarest of coloured diamonds and The Pink Supreme is expected to sell for up to HK$100m (£10.3m). Other gemstone rings appearing include a rectangular emerald of 17.05 carats with an upper estimate of HK$25m (£2.6m) and a rare 5.03-carat oval-cut ruby for HK$13.5m (£1.4m). Gone… Earlier this month, Christie’s sold the largest internally flawless fancy vivid blue diamond (pictured) to ever appear at an auction at…

“The global fight against inflation has turned a corner,” say Tom Fairless and Paul Hannon in The Wall Street Journal. Annual inflation fell to 3.2% in the US in October, and 2.9% in the eurozone. Price pressures remain more persistent in Britain, but an annual rate of 4.6% last month also marked a big drop from September’s 6.7%. Financial markets have reacted by moving forward expectations for interest-rate cuts, which are now priced to start in the US and euro area next spring, followed by the Bank of England in the summer (see below). The fall in inflation has been driven in part by forces beyond the control of central bankers, says Jeffrey Frankel in Project Syndicate. The global price index for commodities fell by more than 30% in dollar…

Five to buy Bioventix The Sunday Times This Surrey-based biotechnology company makes monoclonal antibodies from sheep; they are used in hospital blood tests. The firm receives royalties every time a test is performed, which provides a solid pipeline of revenue for several years after the initial production. That funds “generous dividends” and underpins a “sturdy” balance sheet. Small biotechs are risky, but Bioventix has a good history of staying ahead of trends, and the pipeline includes “promising work on screening programmes for… Alzheimer’s disease”. Given the shift towards more medical screening, the shares are a buy. 3,700p Cranswick Shares This food business supplies retailers and the food-to-go industry with pork products such as premium gammon and gourmet sausages. The business is also building scale in its poultry division – an…

There are two obvious ways to think about the US stockmarket. One is that it looks expensive compared with both peers and the past. For example, the MSCI USA index is on a trailing price/earnings (p/e) ratio of about 23.5 and a forecast one of about 19. The equivalent figures for the MSCI Europe are 14 and 12. (The MSCI USA is similar to the S&P 500, but I prefer using MSCI indices when making international comparisons because of the standardised data.) If we look at average valuations since 1957 (when the S&P 500 was created), the average trailing p/e has been about 19.5 – or 17.5 if you’d prefer to treat the era of near-zero interest rates since 2007 as an aberration that should be handled carefully in assessing…

Prices are key to solve water crisis Arunabha Ghosh Nikkei Asia A catastrophe looms unless we “restore and safeguard the water cycle”, says Arunabha Ghosh. Less rainfall across large parts of south and southeast Asia have reduced crop yields, while on the other side of the world, the Amazon has fallen to its lowest level in more than a century. But at least water is finding its way onto the global agenda. It will be discussed at this month’s UN Climate Change Conference and the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, of which I am a member, is trying to “tackle” the crisis head-on, looking at the three key pillars of water security: “the proper valuing and pricing of water, water recycling and the role of finance”. Water, our…

unherd.com/thepost To win a game of chess, one needn’t be a grandmaster, just better than your opponent. Similarly, Vladimir Putin may be no genius, but he seems to understand commodity markets better than his Western counterparts, says Ralph Schoellhammer. Moscow’s economy shows no sign of collapsing under Western sanctions, and officials are now admitting that almost no Russian oil is sold for prices below the $60 price cap. Soon after the cap came into force, Japan asked for an exception to keep its economy running. India, China and Saudi Arabia continued to buy Russian crude, refined it and then resold it to Europe and the US. Putin knew that notoriously in-elastic products such as oil and gas would render a price cap useless. If the international community had gone along…

Copper is an essential raw material in our modern economy. It is used in every electrical device and across the global electric grid. The average home contains 180kg of copper, while the average car has roughly 30kg of the red metal – electric vehicles contain double this quantity. As the global energy transition gathers pace, demand will only increase. National Grid estimates that by 2050, wires will carry 80% of the UK’s energy needs compared with 20% today, as technology such as electrical-powered heat pumps replace old-fashioned gas boilers. This means £19bn of new pylons and transmission systems containing billions of pounds of copper will be required. According to Goldman Sachs, just 4% of copper consumption in 2020 was allocated to green uses. By 2030, the figure is expected to…

Last week’s unexpected fall in inflation means interest rates may have peaked. Savers need to act quickly to find accounts before they disappear. If you were hoping to secure a rate of 6% or more, you are too late. Accounts offering these rates have disappeared as banks and building societies anticipate that the Bank of England will stick at a rate of 5.25% for the coming months. Interest rates have rocketed over the past year. Last September the best you could find on an instant-access account was 2.1%, but 14 months later you could secure 5.2%. If you haven’t moved your money in that period, you should. On a £10,000 balance that is a difference of £310, assuming your money was in the best account last autumn. The best instant-access…

If you’re moving abroad on a long-term basis, you might consider transferring your pension savings to a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme (QROPS). This is a pension plan recognised by the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs as an acceptable destination for your transfer. The scheme enables you to keep saving in a local pension plan in your new home country – and to draw a pension when the time comes. But experts are increasingly sceptical about such transfers. There is no particular need: you can draw benefits from UK pension savings while living abroad and make contributions to overseas schemes while leaving your UK plan where it is. Moreover, the abolition of the lifetime allowance (LTA) in the UK has removed one of the reasons why advisers recommended QROPS arrangements…

During the pandemic several companies saw their share prices soar as people assumed that the world would permanently shift online, only for stocks to tank when restrictions were removed and people returned to traditional spending patterns. One company that illustrates this is the online card retailer Moonpig (LSE: MOON). When it listed at the start of 2021 during a lockdown, people snapped up its shares, with prices rising by a third on the first day of trading. Yet the return to normality, combined with the effect of last year’s postal strikes, ensured that the share price began to trend downwards. At one point this year it was worth barely more than a quarter of its post-flotation peak. However, this year has seen a modest recovery, with the stock rising by…