Indholdsfortegnelse for 1203 i MoneyWeek

Teachers say that their job is especially gratifying when they can see the penny dropping in a student’s expression, especially if the student in question isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. It can be a similar story in finance. Markets are often a bit slow on the uptake (remember how global stocks made new highs as late as October 2007, when it was obvious that the credit crunch was the pin that would burst the credit bubble). But in the past few weeks investors seem to have twigged that we have shifted from the era of “lower for longer” to “higher for longer”, a structural backdrop we have been concerned about for some time. Recent moves in the markets reflect the expectation that US inflation and interest rates could…

“Higher interest rates have yet to hurt the... stockmarket, [but] commercial real estate (CRE) is a... different story... Urban office buildings [in the US have been] changing hands at 75% discounts to their last sales... Newmark, a real-estate advisory and brokerage firm, estimates that $2trn of US commercial real-estate debt will mature between 2024 and 2026. This debt will... have to be refinanced at much higher rates... $670bn, or roughly one-third... is distressed... Real-estate deal volumes were down by 51% last year... This is not only a problem for... investors, it is also a major problem for their lenders, who include many regional banks in the US... CRE was the first sector to feel the effects of higher interest rates, but won’t be the last. Corporate defaults are inching up...…

Gucci owner Kering is to spend €1.3bn ($1.41bn) on a property on Via Monte Napoleone, Milan’s most fashionable shopping street, say Angelina Rascouet and Antonio Vanuzzo on Bloomberg. The move follows the purchase of a building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue for $1bn. Kering has called the Milan investment part of a “selective real-estate strategy, aimed at securing key highly desirable locations” for its labels, and has said that it will “only purchase exceptional buildings in a limited number of cities if they create value”. “Europe’s luxury brands have spent more than $9bn buying boutiques on the world’s top shopping streets,” says Carol Ryan in The Wall Street Journal. Chanel and LVMH are both rumoured to be “hunting for luxury properties in New York”. Part of this is due to the…

Austria’s Schoeller-Bleckmann makes high-tech, high-precision components for the oil-services industry, supplying the likes of US giants Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, and Halliburton with drill heads and drill pipes. Its fortunes depend on the extent to which the oil industry is inclined to explore and produce, and in this respect a recovery appears to be in the offing: after years of cutting budgets, the sector is investing again. The uptick helped boost Schoeller-Bleckmann’s sales to a record €586m in 2023, while operating profits climbed by 6% to €102m. There are €162m of cash and liquid assets on the group’s balance sheet, while the stock yields 4.4%.…

Politics & economics Mexico has severed diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police stormed the Mexican embassy to arrest Ecuador’s former vice-president, Jorge Glas, who has been living there since seeking political asylum in December, says The Guardian. Glas, who served around half of an eight-year sentence on charges of bribery and corruption before being released early in 2022, remains under investigation for other alleged crimes. Under the Vienna Convention, the raid, which injured an unspecified number of personnel, constitutes an intrusion onto Mexican sovereign territory. Such violations are very rare. Ecuadorian “president-cum-strongman” Daniel Noboa knew there would be “international blowback”, but is gambling that the raid will benefit him at home, says Joe Daniels in the Financial Times. His war on drug traffickers has been very popular, despite leading…

On the eve of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial, punters finally seem to be getting cold feet about the former president’s chances of re-entering the White House. With £14.1m matched on Betfair, Trump is now barely the favourite at 2.34 (43.1%), with Joe Biden at 2.38 (42%). Indeed, with £2.5m matched on Betfair’s rival Smarkets, crossover has actually taken place, with Biden now the favourite at 2.24 (44.6%), compared with 2.32 (43.1%) for Trump. The fact that the implied chances of Biden and Trump winning are both below 50% suggests that punters still think there is a small chance that someone else could win. Interestingly, when you look at the odds on the party of the winning presidential candidate (or to be technical, the party with the most Electoral College…

A review of the performance of the Bank of England was always going to happen at some point. At its peak last year, inflation was running at more than 8%, one of the highest rates in the developed world, and more than four times the Bank’s legally mandated target. Questions needed to be asked and Ben Bernanke was a natural person to lead the enquiry. A respected academic economist, and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bernanke knows as much about central banking as anyone in the world. It remains to be seen what is included in his final report, but it is expected to suggest that the Bank follows the Fed with its “dot path”, essentially a form of forward guidance on interest rates, plus some minor upgrades…

Purchasing power parity (PPP) attempts to measure the absolute purchasing power of country’s currency, to indicate how over- or undervalued one currency is relative to another. and to help compare economic data between countries. It does this by comparing the price of identical goods in different economies. The idea is that a similar basket of goods should cost roughly the same wherever you go. If goods are cheaper in one country than in another, then that country should be able to export them to the other for a profit. In turn, those sales would boost demand for the exporter’s currency, driving the exchange rate higher, and eliminating the difference between the two. As a result, purchasing power between countries should tend towards parity in the long run. The “Big Mac…

Disney successfully defeated a boardroom coup led by activist investor Nelson Peltz after securing enough votes to re-elect all 12 of its board members at a shareholders’ meeting, says The Guardian. In a high-profile proxy battle with Disney, Peltz had demanded change and criticised top executives, arguing the company has lost its focus. Despite a last-minute endorsement from Elon Musk (who doesn’t own any Disney stock), Trian Fund Management failed to win enough votes to put Peltz and Jay Rasulo, Disney’s former chief financial officer, on the board. Disney’s shares have jumped by nearly 50% since October, when Peltz launched his campaign, which is estimated to have cost the entertainment giant $40m.…

“Did I use that leverage to my advantage? Yes… in the 11th hour [I said]: ‘You know, that’s a lovely offer of $9m. But I need one more to make it ten…’ To receive an eight-figure offer, for a woman, is huge. Sometimes women don’t like to talk about that. Whereas I don’t think the guys have any issues saying they get $20m a movie.” Actress Rebel Wilson (pictured) on how she negotiated $10m for Pitch Perfect 3 after she learned about market research revealing how popular her character was, quoted in The New York Times “I understand that corporate bullying to some extent is part of the game with the press, even though it’s a little childish to keep hammering the missing vowels in our name. Would you do…

awealthofcommonsense.com It’s been four years since Covid struck, and the US economy is roaring, says Ben Carlson. Net worth, stocks and house prices sit at all-time highs. “Call it a bubble if you want, but the artificial-intelligence revolution is coming regardless of current tech stock valuations.” Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has been “below 4% for more than two years”. Yes, consumer surveys report that people feel gloomy – inflation tends to dampen sentiment – “but you have to watch what people do, not what they say”. Even after you adjust for higher prices, Americans have started to spend in a frenzy that exceeds even pre-pandemic trends. Airports are “packed”. Post-lockdown “revenge spending” at restaurants shows no sign of slowing down. New businesses are being created at a pace rarely seen…

If you own a pet, you will know that vet bills have soared in recent years. But did you know it may be due to big companies ripping you off? The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is planning an investigation into veterinary fees after it found that 80% of veterinary websites don’t display a price list, while pet owners are not always informed of the cost of treatment before agreeing to it. The CMA fears this could mean pet owners are overpaying. There are also concerns about a lack of competition in the vet market after a huge increase in the number of practices owned by a small number of large corporations. If the CMA’s fears prove justified, it could gain the “power to compel companies to give it a…

Welcome to the 2024-2025 tax year – and a whole new set of allowances to help you save tax-efficiently using private pensions. This is the second successive tax year in which the new higher annual allowance for pension contributions applies, bringing further opportunities to maximise your savings. For most people, this year’s annual allowance is £60,000. This includes all pension contributions made by you, your employer or anyone else, as well as any basic-rate tax relief added by the state. Your pension provider will usually claim this basic-rate relief automatically on your behalf (higher- and additional-rate taxpayers can then claim additional relief through their tax returns). But you’re only entitled to tax relief on contributions of up to 100% of your earnings. “Very high earners forefeit some of the benefits…

“Oakley offers liquid access to the attractive private-equity market” Investment trusts, established in the 1860s, have weathered numerous economic storms, including the Great Depression, two world wars, and the 2008 financial crisis. Yet they now face some of their most challenging conditions on record. Recent economic difficulties, such as rising interest rates and inflation, have hit share prices and dented investors’ confidence. A key problem lies in the perceived high costs of investment trusts, particularly the ongoing charge figures (OCFs), which may appear higher than those for open-ended funds, deterring some investors. However, the government has indicated potential regulatory adjustments to address this misconception. Despite these challenges, opportunities abound. The sector is experiencing historically significant discounts to net asset value (NAV): many investment trusts are undervalued relative to the fundamental…

The House of Mouse Disneyland Hotel Paris has reopened after a three-year renovation, its first since 1992, says Charlotte Davey for Condé Nast Traveller. The check in is in a “palatial, light-filled library” – a nod to Beauty and the Beast, but also the world of storytelling more generally. “As we wait, cleaning staff in pressed white uniforms burst into song – Be Our Guest, what else?”. As the only Disney theme park in Europe, the hotel “taps heavily” into European fairy tales, such as Germany’s Snow White, France’s Cinderella and Denmark’s The Little Mermaid. The interiors are a celebration of them all, except in the 16 signature suites, each of which revolve around the theme of a particular Disney princess. The other 487 rooms are “really spacious, with seriously…

“We must make America pray again,” says Donald Trump (pictured). The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, beset by mounting legal costs, is now hawking Bibles for $59.99. The “God Bless the USA Bible” contains the King James translation as well as copies of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the lyrics of a country song, God Bless the USA. “All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favourite book,” Trump said. He is not selling them directly, but will receive royalties with each purchase. The Bible differs from his previous ventures – gold Trump trainers costing $399 and cologne for $99 – as it appeals to a large number of his followers, who are “passionate…

US “small-cap stocks are suffering their worst run of performance relative to large companies in more than 20 years”, says George Steer in the Financial Times. The Russell 2000 index of small and mid-sized firms has gained 24% this decade, compared with 60% for the large-cap S&P 500. A brief rally at the end of last year has already “petered out”. Historically, US small caps trade at similar valuations to the S&P 500, but there is now a marked discount, says Jill Carey of Bank of America. The last time “relative multiples” were “this cheap was during 1999 and 2000... that ended up being a great decade for small-caps”. US small caps are “cheap, they’ve underperformed for years, and a healthy economy means they have plenty of room to grow”,…

Silver US dollars per troy ounce Silver is close to a three-year high. At $28 per ounce this week, the precious metal hasn’t been this expensive since May 2021. Overshadowed by new record highs in gold, the silver rally has been driven by similar factors, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. US inflation remains surprisingly persistent, fuelled by “rampant US government spending”. That has sent investors looking for “stores of value”. Silver has particular contrarian appeal because it still trades 40% below its 2011 record peak. You currently need more than 80 ounces of silver to buy one ounce of gold, a gold/silver ratio well above the long-term average of about 65. That might “persuade some investors and traders that silver is” still a bargain “relative to gold”.…

Tesla’s stock has slumped on reports the group has jettisoned a “long-promised plan to offer an inexpensive electric car” to “drive its expansion in the mass market”, says The Times. The move, which CEO Elon Musk has denied, represents a “dramatic change of heart”, given that he has described Tesla’s primary mission as producing “affordable electric cars for the masses”. His first “master plan” in 2006 involved Tesla using the profits from luxury models to finance a “low-cost family car”. More recently, expectations for a $25,000 vehicle have underpinned Tesla’s dreams of selling 20 million vehicles by 2030, and Wall Street analysts’ sales forecasts of 4.2 million cars in 2028, up from 1.8 million last year. Tesla is also having to deal with cheaper Chinese brands, declining demand in China…

Barcelona-based Puig has announced Europe’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) so far this year, and the largest flotation in the luxury sector since Ermenegildo Zegna in 2021. The group, owner of make-up and perfume brands ranging from Paco Rabanne to Charlotte Tilbury, plans to raise €2.5bn when it lists in Madrid. The Puig family will retain a majority stake in the company, which bankers have valued at €8bn-€10bn. Last year Puig, which operates in 32 countries, made a profit of €465m on sales of €4.3bn, a figure that has doubled in just four years. The growth has been fuelled partly by acquisitions, with 11 takeovers in the past 12 years.…

● “It would be mean-spirited not to wish” Superdry’s CEO and co-founder Julian Dunkerton (pictured) well as the clothing retailer bids to revive its fortunes by cutting costs and raising new equity, says Simon English in the Evening Standard. But Superdry faces an uphill struggle. It is “stuck in the squeezed middle”. At the budget end of the market, Primark is thriving. At the top end, Burberry rules the roost. In the middle, Superdry, Ted Baker, and the rest have a really rough game to play. The upshot? ”Superdry’s best bet is to be bought by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, “with the kit downgraded and sold for cheap.” As an independent company, it has to “cope with Next and a revitalised M&S, which is nearly impossible. ● “Buyer beware” has…

The “engine of global growth is in Asia”, says Francisco García Paramés, the Spanish fund manager who has been one of the eurozone’s leading proponents of value investing over the past three decades. Europe is stagnant, while “moderate growth” in the US is underpinned by high public spending. Yet Asia should continue expanding at around 5% per year, thanks to China, India, and members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), despite a “sharp slowdown” in China’s real-estate sector. “That both China and the other countries have been able to grow, despite these headwinds, can be explained by the strength and dynamism of their economies,” says Paramés in his most recent commentary to his investors. Over the last three decades, the world’s economic output has shifted from the West…

■ Adviser Glass Lewis (GL) is urging Abrdn’s shareholders to vote against the asset management group’s pay report at the annual meeting on 24 April, says the Financial Times. Glass Lewis objects to new chief financial officer Jason Windsor’s £675,000 salary. It notes that it is 25% higher than his predecessor’s, and wants a “more thorough rationale” for the figure. Windsor’s salary is the same as for his previous job. Abrdn, like many asset managers, is under pressure from customers withdrawing money from funds run by stockpickers in favour of cheaper index-tracking products. It said Windsor’s pay was necessary to “attract the required skills and expertise”. Institutional Shareholder Services, another shareholders’ adviser, is recommending investors vote in favour of Abrdn’s proposals. CEO Stephen Bird’s pay increased to £2.1m last year…

bloomberg.com The world economy runs on “submerged fibre-optic lines no thicker than garden hoses”, says Bloomberg. Nearly 900,000 miles of such cables “criss-cross the world’s oceans”, carrying 99% of transoceanic communications (satellites account for just 1%). The vulnerability of such connections is clear. During the 1898 Spanish-American War “the US Navy slashed telegraph links” to Cuba, cutting the island off from Spain. Now Russia and China are investing in “spy ships, submarines and drones” that can hack and tamper with undersea connections. There are so many cables that new routes around bottlenecks can be found. Yet some places are vulnerable: just “14 cables connect Taiwan to the outside world”. The West has invested in “cable-repair ships” and better surveillance technology, but more needs to be done. New materials can strengthen…

The new tax year has dawned, and with it your new individual savings account (Isa) allowance. You can now invest another £20,000 into stocks and shares Isas, innovative finance Isas and cash Isas. If you have a lifetime Isa, you can deposit another £4,000, and you can add another £9,000 to a junior Isa. Things have changed with the new tax year too. You can now open as many Isas as you like if you don’t deposit more than your annual allowance. This is particularly useful with cash Isas, where you may want to split your money across an instant-access Isa, a fixed-term and a notice account. The best accounts available are Plum’s Cass Isa, which pays 5.17% and has instant access. It’s app-only, though. If you don’t want to…

● Almost half of savers under the age of 35 have considered reducing pension contributions owing to the cost-of-living crisis, new research reveals. The number of young people reducing their savings has worried advisers, who point out that the long-term effects are disproportionately high because of the effect of compound interest. For example, someone earning £35,000 a year and saving 5% – matched by their employer – would have an extra £1,400 of take-home pay if they stopped pension contributions. But their loss of pension income in retirement would be more than £4,000 a year. ● Compensation payments have begun to hundreds of thousands of pensioners who have been underpaid state-pension benefits because of administration errors by successive governments over the past three decades. The government is supposed to be…

2021 Port Phillip Estate, Single Block Morillon Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia £37.95, jeroboams.co.uk I am a huge fan of the wines from Port Phillip Estate, and at a recent Jeroboams tasting, Port Phillip’s MD Marco Gjergja was in London. He showed me a fabulous trio of his wines: 2023 Quartier Pinot Gris (£21.50), 2022 Red Hill Chardonnay (£25.50) and 2022 Balnarring Pinot Noir (£27.50). On any given week of the year, any of these wines could have sauntered into the headline spot on this page, given their ratio of sheer deliciousness/value for money! But, as I said farewell to Marco, he alerted me to a pair of “under the table” wines. This expression never fails to get the blood coursing through my veins, and Marco produced this week’s…

Battle for the Bird Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk and the $44 billion Fight for Twitter’s Soul Kurt Wagner Hodder & Stoughton, £20 Even at its peak, social-media platform Twitter (now rebranded X) had a much smaller user base than its rival, Facebook. But with Twitter being the top online social network for news and opinion, it became the cultural and political centre of the internet – in turn making it a target for political attacks from all sides of the spectrum, particularly when it came to its moderation policies during crucial elections or at times of crisis, such as during Covid. At the same time, Twitter the company has been riven by internal battles and has struggled to convert its influence into cash. This account by Kurt Wagner tells…

“I have a location that clearly seems to be undervalued,” says Wael Sawan, chief executive of Shell. The oil boss sent shock waves through the City with comments that “all options” are on the table as the FTSE 100’s biggest company looks to close a persistent valuation gap with its US-listed peers, says Hugo Duncan for This is Money. The City has faced a “string of disappointments” of late as big names move listings or opt to float abroad. For Shell, a £180bn business, to quit London would be a “hammer blow”. For now, Shell is focused on improving performance rather than the cumbersome process of moving the listing, says Javier Blas on Bloomberg. Commodity firms used to regard London as a natural home, but growing “apathy” towards fossil fuels…

The planned £15bn merger between Vodafone and Three could be derailed after the competition watchdog said it intends to launch a major investigation into the deal, says Daniel Binns on Sky News. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has already taken a first look, and last month it asked both firms to respond with “meaningful solutions” to concerns that a tie-up would reduce competition. But as Vodafone and Three have failed to do so, the CMA has decided to go ahead with a “lengthy, in-depth” examination, which will take at least 24 weeks and could result in the merger being blocked. Despite the CMA’s actions, both companies aren’t backing down, says James Warrington in the Telegraph. They remain “confident the deal would bring benefits for consumers”. They argue the tie-up…

Six to buy Fidelity National Information Services The Telegraph Also known as FIS, this US fintech specialist has been out of favour ever since it overpaid for rival Worldpay in a 2019 deal. The resulting value destruction has wiped 40% off the shares, but new management is finally cleaning house, including selling a stake in Worldpay to private equity in order to raise cash and reduce debt. The outlook for margins and profits is finally improving, while on 15 times forecast earnings the shares are “cheap for a tech company”. A mooted $4bn share buyback is an added sweetener. $72.50 M&G Interactive InvestorThis FTSE 100 savings and investment giant’s unusually high 9.5% dividend yield could be a sign that “something is profoundly wrong”. M&G has been getting little love from…

In a “landmark” decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has effectively ruled that “weak government climate policies violate fundamental human rights”, says Ajit Niranjan in The Guardian. Specifically, it found that Switzerland had violated the rights to family life of a group of older Swiss women by not doing enough to stop the planet heating by the Paris agreement target of 1.5˚C above preindustrial levels. The ECHR, led by court president Síofra O’Leary (pictured), rejected two similar claims from other countries on technical grounds, but the verdict has “set out a path for organisations to bring further cases” and “raises judicial pressure on governments” to do more to lower carbon emissions. What practical effects the ruling will have is “far from clear”, says Alexander Horne in The Spectator.…

One gets used to the strange logic that Wall Street uses to explain why stocks should always be going up and interest rates should always be going down. Even so, I was taken aback this week to see a JPMorgan analyst on Bloomberg claiming that high interest rates are actually driving inflation. He argued that higher debt costs are responsible for rising prices, from rent to insurance. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this idea, but it was still a surprise to see it on mainstream financial television. Ultimately, it is the flavour of monetary policy favoured by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has left his country in such a robust economic position, with well-controlled inflation of 68.5% in March and a currency that has retained a solid 7%…

Terry Smith’s Fundsmith Equity fund has underperformed its benchmark, the MSCI World index, by a wide margin over the past three years. In 2023, for example, the global equity fund returned 12.4%, below the 16.8% return for the MSCI World index. Although the £25.4bn fund is beating its benchmark in 2024, its performance since 2020 has led to some tough questions for the fund manager. Active fund managers are not known for outperformance, and Fundsmith has been the exception to the rule. The latest figures from financial data firm Morningstar showed that in the decade to June 2023, only a quarter of US-based active strategies survived and beat passive alternatives. In Europe, the figure was 17%. Fund manager GMO says that 90% of large-cap blend managers have underperformed the S&P…

The cost of reversing QE policies Joseph Sternberg The Wall Street Journal Last Tuesday, Sweden’s central bank asked taxpayers for a $4.1bn cash injection to “make good the losses” the Riksbank has experienced due to quantitative-easing (QE) policies, says Joseph Sternberg. The effect of QE policies, adopted “pretty much everywhere” since 2008, has been to turn central banks “into a form of asset manager”. In the good times, it was profitable: coupled with low interest rates, the policy “inflated the market value” of the assets they bought and allowed them to earn substantial interest from their own governments and corporate borrowers while paying “negligible interest to their creditors”. In the face of inflation, however, these policies are reversing, prompting the Riksbank to sell assets at market prices in order to…

spectator.co.uk Brexit should have offered Britain the chance to “move nimbly”, striking trade deals worldwide, says Damien Phillips. Instead, “trade has simply become another arena for showcasing the shortcomings of our politicians”. There have been some agreements, notably with Australia in 2021 and New Zealand the following year, though both have had little impact on GDP. The UK’s planned accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) is a “bright spot”. Yet hopes for a transformative deal with America are all but dead. Negotiations with Canada and India have collapsed over “trivial” British “hang-ups”. In the first case, spurious fearmongering about hormone-treated beef or chlorine-washed chicken from Canadian farmers impeded agreement; in the latter, quarrels about the visa regime for Indian workers. As for Latin America or…

“Nvidia, the poster child of the sector, doesn’t actually make its own chips” The semiconductor industry is a catch-all term for the broad range of companies that design, manufacture and sell microchips. Microchips, or chips, are a collection of switches controlled by electrical pulses. These switches are printed onto a board using a semiconductor material, such as silicon, or to a lesser extent germanium. The conductive nature of the board allows components to be etched into the material in layers, along with the connections to facilitate the flow of electrical signals. The thinner and more conductive the semiconductor material, the more components that can be included and the more powerful the chips. The latest tech allows 50 billion components to be included on a chip the size of a fingernail.…

● “Short-term savings rates are having a moment,” says George Nixon in The Sunday Times. The best available for savers this week is 5.21% on SmartSave Saga’s three-month bond. The next four best deals are all fixed for just six months. “You usually get higher rates if you tie up your money for longer, but expectations that interest rates will be cut this year mean that many of the best deals are now very short-term.” Allica Bank has a six-month bond paying 5.18% but you need a £10,000 deposit; or you can invest in its one-year bond with a 5.16% return. ● “Motorists on the hunt for more affordable car insurance are being warned to watch out for a marketing trick that makes deals look cheaper than they are,” says…

Savers on the verge of taking benefits from their pension, or transferring their savings to another provider, may need to delay taking action because of problems with new legislation. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is advising people potentially affected by the lifetime allowance (LTA) on pension savings to hold fire on withdrawals while the government seeks to amend a new law to abolish this cap. In previous years, pension savers who built up funds worth more than a certain amount – £1,073,100 in 2023-24, for example – were potentially liable for tax charges on the excess when they began drawing benefits. This LTA was formally abolished on 6 April, the first day of the 2024-2025 tax year, ostensibly ensuring that no one now needs to worry about the…

Joe Lewis (pictured), the 87-year-old British billionaire whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur football club, will avoid being sent to prison for insider trading, says the Financial Times. A federal judge in the US agreed to a £5m fine and three years probation instead, on account of Lewis’s cooperation with the court and his advanced age. Lewis pleaded guilty to fraud charges in January following an investigation in which he was found to have passed on stock tips to friends, private pilots and a girlfriend. The recipients made more than half a million dollars trading on inside information that Lewis had acquired through his seats on various corporate boards. In court, a “visibly shaken” Lewis admitted to his “terrible mistake” and apologised. Lewis is “no ordinary worshipper of Mammon”, says Alex…