Innehållsförteckning för Issue 964 från MoneyWeek

“The correct thing for Neil Woodford to do now is to give his investors their money back” Last weekend The Sunday Times ran an article written by an ex-St James’s Place (SJP) adviser. It made for disturbing reading. That’s not because of the way in which SJP charges its clients. We don’t like the ad-valorem model – in which advisers and managers take a percentage of your assets each year. We’d prefer a flat fee model. However that is, for now at least, the standard system – so we can’t single out SJP for criticism. We can, however, single it out for the scale of its fees (most comparisons have it coming out at the extremely expensive end) and for what The Sunday Times’ James Coney refers to as its…

Germany’s Morphosys may soon become into a commercially successful biotechnology firm, says Wirtschaftswoche. The group boasts over 100 drugs in research and development, one of the broadest pipelines in the sector. Many are being produced in partnership with others. The group hopes to launch its first drug on the US market by the end of the year: Tafasitamab, an antibody treatment for advanced lymphoma, a cancer of the blood; it augurs well that America’s Food and Drug Administration has deemed it a breakthrough. Heavy investment means Morphosys will post a loss of €80m this year, but it can afford to thanks to a cash pile worth €400m. “A speculative buy.”…

British Airways’ pilots this week embarked on the “first walkout by flight crew in the carrier’s history”, says Graeme Paton in The Sunday Times. The strikes came after its 4,300 pilots rejected a pay offer that the airline claims “would cost it £50m over three years, on top of the 11.5% pay deal already offered”. The union insists that a settlement will cost British Airways (BA) less than the £100m sales the airline stands to lose in the strike. This is “a textbook example of industrial-relations hubris”, says Simon Calder in The Independent. A union “representing a relatively well-paid group of workers” agrees to an above-inflation deal, “then backtracks and demands more”. At the same time, you have a “highly profitable employer” deciding to ground “virtually all” its flights rather…

The future of the HS2 high-speed rail line is “hanging by a thread” after the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced a delay of up to five years for completion of phase one accompanied by a “massive increase” in the estimated cost, from £56bn to £88bn, says Larry Elliott in The Guardian. For the “beleaguered construction sector”, scrapping such a huge project would be a “severe blow”. Some of Britain’s biggest contractors are already trying to avert such an outcome, warning that cancelling HS2 would drive up the cost of future projects because firms would “price in the political risk”, reports the FT. However, this is “not really the point”, says Elliott. Given the sum involved, it’s vital to ask whether the government has “got its priorities right”. If it really…

The death of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s former leader, has led to a “great outpouring of ambivalence” as Zimbabweans struggle to “make sense of the legacy of a man who fashioned their state and then did his best to destroy it”, say Peta Thornycroft and Adrian Blomfield in The Daily Telegraph. His supporters focus “the early promise of the independent state that he forged from the ruins of Rhodesia”; others remember the later years, “marked by hyperinflation, corruption and repression”. Sadly, many Zimbabweans are “too exhausted” by the ongoing economic crisis, largely caused by Mugabe’s “disastrous” polices, “to form a coherent opinion about the president who led them for 37 years”. Mugabe’s legacy will continue to be contested, says Petinah Gappah in The Guardian. But what matters most is what Zimbabwe’s…

Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, cheered markets last week by telling them: “We’re not forecasting or expecting a recession”. But that’s no surprise, says David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff – “Not once in the past five decades has the Fed ever predicted a recession – not even in the month before it happened”. As Rosenberg points out, Powell’s predecessors Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan (pictured below) each made similar claims ahead of the financial crisis in 2008 and the tech bubble bursting in 2001 respectively. At the end of the day, the US central bank is hardly going to come out with a negative statement about the economy if it can avoid it. “These guys (and the gals) are the resident cheerleaders,” after all. On top of that,…

The CEOs of Britain’s ten biggest housebuilding firms were paid a total of £63.6m last year – an average of £21.1m each, reports the High Pay Centre, a think tank. The figures were distorted by the pay of the top earner – Persimmon’s Jeff Fairburn, who, with a pay packet of £38.9m, received more than 60% of the total. Berkeley’s executive chairman Anthony Pidgeley – the second highest earner – pocketed £8.3m, while Barratt’s David Thomas got £2.8m. The average pay in the construction industry is just £24,964. The average CEO gets 89 times that; Fairburn made 1,561 times the average. The country’s housebuilders are accused of exacerbating the housing crisis by sitting on almost half a million unused plots of land, says The Independent. The top-ten firms completed just…

■ US fund managers making a big fuss of their emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria have failed to live up to their hype, says Patrick Temple-West in the Financial Times. In the year to 30 June 2019, for instance, six BlackRock sustainability funds voted against environmental and social proposals with strong support from investors 72% of the time. These funds have also been lambasted for holding the wrong assets: at Vanguard a fund was found to hold oil and gas firms despite being supposedly fossil-free. This will fuel suspicions that ESG criteria are just a marketing ruse to help justify the higher fees at actively managed funds compared with passive investments. ■ It makes sense to choose a fund that matches your risk tolerance, not just a…

stumblingandmumbling. typepad.com Some investment bankers are saying they would prefer a government led by opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn to a no-deal Brexit. That may sound strange, but there are good reasons for it, says Chris Dillow. Corbyn may put the wind up capitalists with his far-left rhetoric and proposals, but he is also offering things that look unlikely under Boris Johnson. Stability, for one. He cannot offer swift certainty on Brexit, but he will take no-deal off the table and put greater weight on economic interests than on conceptions of sovereignty. The second thing is growth. Labour is aware of our productivity problem and is thinking about how to end it. European history shows that capitalism can thrive with high taxes and big public sectors. Finally, capitalism requires not just…

By the time you read this sentence, the chances are the political situation in the UK will have undergone several new last-minute reversals, generating acres of newsprint and screen rants in the process. On page 8 we give a summary of the story so far, and on page 26 Helen Thomas of Blonde Money tries to cut through the noise to the fundamental narrative. Yet if the last few weeks have made anything clear, it’s that no one can be certain of anything. Of course, any sensible long-term investor already knows that. You can’t time the market. Instead, you have to focus on ensuring your portfolio (and your lifestyle generally) can withstand whatever the world is likely to throw at it. The goal is not to predict the future –…

What would happen to your business if its owner or a senior member of staff died or fell critically ill? A survey by Legal & General suggests that 26% of small businesses in Britain would have to close in these circumstances. The insurer reckons 15% of small businesses that have experienced these problems have already shut up shop. No wonder. In smaller businesses, knowledge, experience and expertise are often concentrated in the hands of a small number of key individuals. If one of those individuals is no longer around, the result could easily be a dramatic loss of customers or a collapse in efficiency. As sales slump and costs rise, those left running the business may not have the knowhow to save it, or the time to acquire that knowledge.…

“Alternatives” continue to be one of the smaller pieces of the pie chart in many end-of-year asset-allocation reports. This is an ironic anomaly given that alternative investments such as private equity or commodities are one of the oldest forms of investment and are often uncorrelated to the movements of traditional assets such as stocks or bonds. That means they can help investors diversify and dampen a portfolio’s overall volatility. We have seen many new alternative genres emerge. Often the right strategy is to let other investors learn the hard way first. The real risks may not be the elaborate ones listed in the placing memoranda, but rather the common-sense ones. Investment processes that emphasise diligence, debate and scenario analysis should pick up on these. “Oakley’s portfolio includes a stake in…

Tsuyoshi Kikukawa was born in 1941 and went on to join Olympus, a firm that mainly specialised in optical instruments, in 1964. Kikukawa championed digital photography and ran the team that released Olympus’s first digital camera in 1996. This was a success and digital cameras became key to the business. Kikukawa was then promoted, serving successively as managing director, president and chairman. What was the scam? The rise in the Japanese yen in the 1980s created problems for many Japanese technology firms, including Olympus since its costs were in yen and its revenues in dollars. Kikukawa’s predecessor, Toshiro Shimoyama, indulged in financial speculation to make up the difference, which resulted in large losses. After changes to Japanese accounting rules made it hard directly to conceal those losses, the company sold…

Book of the week Winning Against the Odds My Life in Gambling and Politics By Stuart Wheeler Quiller Publishing, £20 Financial spread betting is regarded with disdain by many commentators and regulators, who regard it as a dangerous form of gambling. It has, however, undoubtedly made some of the more exotic financial strategies more accessible to the everyday investor and spurred ordinary brokers with competition. The industry was effectively created by Stuart Wheeler and his business partner Tommy Richter, who set up IG Index in 1974 to take advantage of the surge in the price of gold following the end of the gold standard. This book is Wheeler’s autobiography. Adopted by a wealthy family, Wheeler enjoyed the benefits of an Eton education, which helped him get into Oxford. Stints as…

When we began writing about investment 20 years ago, we knew next to nothing about economics. We discovered the economic world along with our long-suffering readers, dot by dot, error by error, claptrap by claptrap. Now, we know a little more than next to nothing. But what we know most of all, and are absolutely confident about, is that next to nothing is about as good as it gets. Neither we nor anybody else will ever know, in detail, how an economy actually functions. An economy is a natural thing, evolved, not designed. It responds to billions of inputs, past, present, and future, far too numerous, ambiguous, and subtle for any person, group, or computer algorithm to master, and aggregating the desires, fantasies, and desperate midnight terrors of billions of…

TV presenter Helen Skelton (pictured) says she was scammed out of £70,000 after answering a hoax phone call purporting to be from her bank. Skelton, who used to present Blue Peter and has performed numerous feats of derring-do for charity, including cycling to the South Pole and kayaking the length of the River Amazon, says the scammers posed as her bank and told her that “something dodgy had gone on with my account”. They asked her “a few questions” and then the following week, “£70,000, all of my savings, had gone”, she told The Sun. Skelton is making a programme for ITV that she hopes will raise awareness of how easy it is to get scammed. “It’s happening to a lot of people and they are too embarrassed to say,”…

Could oil go to $25 per barrel? Reuters reported this week that Russia’s central bank is not ruling out a plunge in oil prices next year because of weakening global economic growth, which lowers energy demand. Brent crude is down by almost a quarter since hitting $84 a barrel in October 2018. However, this week brought talk of a renewed Saudi effort to raise prices. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman abruptly replaced energy minister Khalid al-Falih with royal half-brother Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. “Falih has paid the price for an oil price that remains stubbornly beneath the $70-$80 range” and Riyadh needs to bolster its budget, Derek Bower of RS Energy told the Financial Times. The flood of US shale oil has seen Riyadh and Moscow join forces to curb…

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is supposed to stimulate productivity and growth in other countries by transferring skills, technology and capital. But a large percentage of the world’s total FDI isn’t doing that, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund and the University of Copenhagen. Around $15trn, or 40% of the global total, is “phantom” investment, with money coming in, but not stimulating business activity. Multinational companies are channelling cash through “empty corporate shells” in other jurisdictions to minimise their tax bill. Luxembourg and the Netherlands account for half the phantom FDI. In Malta, Ireland and Switzerland less than 50% of FDI is real.…

A Czech lender to consumers with sketchy or non-existent credit histories is to become the first company to float in Hong Kong since Chinese internet giant Alibaba postponed its initial public offering (IPO) last month amid political upheaval. Prague-based Home Credit does business in ten countries and has a large Chinese division. It hopes to raise over $1bn. The IPO will be an important test of sentiment, notesJulie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes on Reuters, especially as the last four months of the year are usually the busiest for flotations in the territory. Over the past decade, they have accounted for an average of 51% of the funds raised every year.…

Marks & Spencer was a founding member of the FTSE 100 in 1984. Last week, it was formally ejected from the index, notes Louis Ashworth in The Daily Telegraph. Its market capitalisation had shrunk to a mere £3.6bn; two decades ago it was worth around £18bn. Marks & Spencer (M&S) isn’t the only retailer to struggle in recent years, says The Guardian. Competition from online and discount retailers has made trading conditions “extremely tough”, with BHS going under and Debenhams “fighting for survival”. However, there is “no doubt” that there has been a series of “clumsy missteps and about-turns” at M&S. It seems “no closer to cracking” the “all-important area of women’s clothing”. Indeed, the clothing side of the business as a whole still “struggles to present a coherent sense…

It almost seems as if there have been more Brexit-related twists and turns in the last month than there have been in the entire period since the June 2016 referendum. Nothing illustrates this better than the perceived chance of a no-deal Brexit. Just a few weeks ago, many people believed that it was extremely likely. Now, thanks to the passage of the Benn bill through Parliament, instructing the government to ask for an extension to Article 50 unless a deal acceptable to Parliament can be passed through the House of Commons, it looks very unlikely. These shifting perceptions have been reflected in Betfair’s market on a no-deal scenario. At one point the implied chances of a no-deal Brexit were nearly 50%. They then plunged to a low of around 15%.…

With more than $16trn-worth of bonds sporting negative yields and the US stockmarket trading at valuations not seen except at the peak of the tech bubble, it’s easy to assume that “everything is expensive”. And yet, that’s not strictly true. The gap between US stocks and the rest of the world is striking. American equities have massively outperformed both their developed world peers and emerging markets during the post-2009 equity rally. As a result, as Michael Mackenzie points out in the Financial Times, “a comparison of US and global equities through their dividend yields and price-to-earnings ratios bolsters the case for a reversal over the coming years that favours emerging markets and other developed world equities”. “Investors like to buy what’s popular, rather than what is hated” The first question…

Matthew Lynn City columnist They are meant to be the most exciting companies in the world, disrupting whole industries, launching exciting new technologies, and minting fortunes for their founders and investors in the process. Yet over the course of the last year, a few of the highest-profile technology businesses from the app economy have listed their shares and, almost as soon as they have done so, they have sunk like a stone. Tech stars fall to earth In the US, the two giants of the ride-sharing industry, Uber and Lyft, have both proved bitterly disappointing since making their public debut. Last week, both companies’ shares touched new lows. Uber was trading at $30, compared with an issue price of $45, and even that was less than many of its backers…

It’s been a wretched two and a half years since the Downing Strategic Micro-Cap Trust (LSE: DSM) raised £54m to invest in struggling companies that needed active management input to sort them out. The net asset value has fallen by 27%, the share price by 34% and one investment has been completely written off. The team led by Judith MacKenzie had such a good record with their Growth Fund following the same approach that targeting an annualised return of 15% (over three to seven years) for Downing seemed reasonable. So the micro-cap trust’s lousy start has been disappointing. The best explanation comes from Nick Greenwood, manager of Miton Global Opportunities Trust. “The Downing style,” he says, “throws up two or three opportunities a year and requires a lot of heavy…

Americans must get on their bikes Gillian Tett Financial Times Tens of millions of jobs in the US will become automated between now and 2030, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. And while automation, thankfully, is expected to create more new jobs than it destroys, because this new work will be skilled, certain demographics – Hispanics, African Americans, the young and old – will be “hit particularly hard”, says Gillian Tett. McKinsey also predicts that 25 megacities and hubs, home to just under 50% of the population, will account for nearly two-thirds of future job growth. Technology has destroyed huge numbers of jobs in the past (in 1800, 98% of Americans lived on farms; today the figure is 2%), possibly as swiftly, but mobility today is – unnervingly – much lower.…

brookings.edu/blog/future-development For developing countries, globalisation – the process of lowering trade barriers and integrating with the world economy – has been “enormously beneficial”, boosting investment and growth rates and reducing poverty. So why then does it elicit so much criticism? asks Shanta Devarajan. It’s not that globalisation causes inequality – in some liberalising countries inequality rose, but in others it fell. One reason may be that average growth rates hide a huge amount of variation. Some countries that have liberalised have done very well out of it (India, China) – others, less so (Brazil, Mexico). Why the variation? For trade liberalisation to have its intended effect, a host of other factors have to be in place. The production of exports relies on services from non-tradeable sectors – finance, transport, educated…

Investors in the UK are facing turbulence ahead regardless of the political outcome, and this is all happening at a time when the world is in a precarious and unusual economic state. However, as we point out on page 14, UK equities look cheap. As a result, in the event of a no-deal Brexit we wouldn’t be overly concerned – current valuations represent a decent buffer against nasty surprises. We have to admit that a Corbyn government is a tougher call, and one that probably involves being a lot pickier about what you invest in. Is a Corbyn government likely to inflict much damage on the resources sector? Probably not – the mines are mostly overseas and industrial companies are largely viewed benignly. But are utilities currently paying a sufficient…

There are several different websites where you can find tutors: tutorhunt.com; tutorfair.com; firsttutor.com; uktutors.com; owltutors.com, and keystonetutors.com, to name but a few. You’ll notice a lot of the same tutors advertising on each.You type in the subject, the level, the price range and so on – and up pop suggestions. We did not go with tutorhunt.com for any particular reason other than that it seemed fairly simple to use.You register, you can message tutors and chat about your needs, then when you decide you want to go with a particular tutor you have to pay a fee to the website (in the region of £25) to buy their contact details. Some tutors offer the first lesson free to compensate, otherwise it can feel like you are paying twice for the…

Is the Bank Referral Scheme a flop? At first sight, the plan – whereby small businesses turned down for lending by banks are referred to alternative finance providers – seems to be struggling. It secured just £16m of funding for around 800 companies over the year to the end of June. But things are improving. Launched in November 2016 the scheme was supposed to broaden small businesses’ access to funding, introducing them to a range of alternative finance providers that might prove a better option than traditional high-street lenders. When such a bank turns down an application for finance it must now offer to pass the firm’s details on to three platforms that serve as aggregators for alternative finance providers. Since launch, 30,000 small businesses have had their details referred,…

Smith & Nephew (LSE: SN) is a healthcare business that makes medical devices for three specialist sectors: orthopaedics, sports medicine and ENT, and “advanced wound management”. It started out as a pharmacy in Hull 160 years ago, and now operates in over 100 countries. It has been consistently profitable and carries little debt. After a solid 2018, the group had an unexpectedly strong first half in 2019, prompting management to upgrade its full-year growth forecast and driving the share price to a 52-week high. It has increased by 44% in the last 12 months. John Wood Group (LSE: WG) is an energy support-services company based in Aberdeen. Its main business is servicing the oil and gas industry, which has suffered as the oil price has declined, but it is diversifying…

The Anarchy The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire By William Dalrymple Bloomsbury Publishing, £30 At the height of its powers the East India Company had a private army numbering nearly 200,000 men, which it used to subdue or seize almost the entire Indian subcontinent through a “combination of  collaboration, coercion and conquest”, says John McAleer in the Evening Standard. This enabled it to assume powers normally associated with governments – indeed, Adam Smith called it a “company state” – such as collecting taxes, administering justice and waging war. This new account of the history of the company by William Dalrymple tells the story of its “extraordinary transformation” from an “unlikely business venture in Elizabethan London” to “one of Victorian Britain’s most influential institutions”. Dalrymple…

$10m The damages Ariana Grande is seeking from US clothing retailer Forever 21. The US singer (pictured) says the fashion chain employed a lookalike model of her for an online advertising campaign. She had declined to take part in it because the brand was unwilling “to pay the fair market value for a celebrity of Ms Grande’s stature”, the law suit states. £220m How much Amazon paid in direct taxes in Britain last year on total revenues of £10.9bn. It was the first time Amazon has published details of its tax payments in 21 years of trading in the UK. Its 27,500 locally based staff were its biggest direct tax expense, followed by business rates and corporation tax. £2m How much the BBC has agreed to pay towards Cliff Richard’s…

Markets have been experiencing “a collapse of confidence”, says Adam Tooze in The New York Times. The main problem is not the economic backdrop, but a deeper realisation. It seems finally to be dawning on investors that globalisation is “no longer supported by the combination of... economic policy and congenial politics” they once took for granted. World trade volumes have now shrunk for three consecutive quarters, notes Yasemin Engin of Capital Economics, a consultancy. In August, China’s exports to the US declined by 16% year-on-year, while imports from America fell by 22%. This year is set to be the worst for trade since 2009. The end of an era Between 1990 and 2008, global trade rose from 39% to 61% of world GDP. That brought real benefits. The World Bank…

“Much has been said about whether... ‘fossil-fuel billionaire’ David Koch and his brother Charles were ultimately responsible for the triumph of [Donald] Trump… The argument is that the use on a colossal scale of the Kochs’… ‘dark money’… fertilised the harsh soil in which Trump’s support flourishes. But the path was cleared for him a generation ago by another corporate celebrity… Lee Iacocca... who rescued Chrysler from... bankruptcy. Iacocca’s rants against Japanese incursions into the US car market, and the macho persona he projected in Chrysler television ads, won him such blue-collar popularity that he was urged to become a Democrat presidential candidate... if he had he might have beaten George Bush Sr in 1988 — and... the idea was born that business braggadocio plus protectionist rage add up to…

Three to buy Morgan Sindall The Sunday Telegraph This construction-services business operates in a sector that remains on “shaky ground”. The woes of Carillion, Kier, and Interserve have prompted tricky questions about thin margins and management practices in the contracting business. Yet cashflows at Morgan Sindall are healthy and higher full-year profit forecasts suggest that things are heading in the right direction. A growing order book shows that clients regard it as a reliable operator. On just eight times forecast earnings “the stock should build further from here”. 1,188p Pets at Home Shares The UK’s leading pet-care business sells products online and through its network of 452 physical stores. The £1.16bn business boasts a 23% market share in a “resilient niche” marked by high levels of repeat business. Management has…

• Jack Ma (pictured), the founder of Alibaba, is about to make history. He is the first major Chinese tech tycoon to step down as chairman of the firm he founded, says Louise Lucas in the Financial Times. But investors in the $462bn firm appear “unfazed” : the shares have gained 10% in the year since he announced his departure. No wonder. Alibaba “is woven into the fabric of daily life for hundreds of millions of Chinese as a means of buying and selling goods, making payments and as a source of entertainment”. Yet Ma’s “lofty” target of serving two billion customers around the world by 2036 appears “increasingly heroic in today’s climate”. • Office space provider WeWork has gone from being “one of America’s most valuable unicorn startups to…

An initial public offering (IPO) represents the first time that a company sells shares in itself to institutional investors (such as pension funds) and often also to individuals (retail investors). This process is also known as “floating” or “going public”. Companies go public for a wide range of reasons. They may want to raise funds for expansion, and choose to do so by selling part of the company rather than borrowing the money. Alternatively, the current owners – perhaps the original founders, or a private-equity fund – may wish to “exit” (ie, cash in on their investment). An IPO is underwritten by one or more investment banks, which typically earn large fees from the process. A prospectus with details of the company and the offering is issued to potential buyers.…

• Nissan boss Hiroto Saikawa is to step down after a scandal over his pay. Saikawa (pictured) was accused of improperly boosting his pay in 2013 by ¥47m (£360,000) by delaying his bonus by a week to take advantage of a rise in the share price, reports the BBC. Saikawa announced his intention to resign after a board meeting earlier this week. He has told the Japanese media that he will return the money, and described the bonus system as “a scheme of the Ghosn era” in reference to Carlos Ghosn, Nissan’s ex-CEO who has been charged with false accounting. • Norman Foster took home £6m in dividends last year from his architecture practice, Foster + Partners, reports The Sunday Times, while 140 partners at the firm shared £28.8m. Revenue…

Hedge fund Elliot Management is one of Wall Street’s most powerful activist investors; it has fought with Samsung and the Argentine government. Now it is taking on telecoms giant AT&T, says Drew FitzGerald in The Wall Street Journal. AT&T is trying to “remake” itself into “a media and advertising powerhouse”. It has taken over firms including HBO and Warner Brothers in an attempt to hoover up enough content (films and television programmes) to compete with Comcast and Netflix “in the battle for consumers’ attention”. However, the strategy has incurred debt of $160bn and Elliot is now agitating for asset sales and changes to the group’s management. It will seek its own seats on the board. It feels AT&T should refocus on telecoms.…

“They put me on stage, I had three lines, and I got paid $100. I knew straight away that I liked performing and hanging out with these weird, cool, adults.” Actress Julia Stiles (pictured) on how she fell into acting aged 12 when a family friend needed a child to deliver a few lines in a minor New York show, quoted in The Times “No wonder Bob Geldof is such an expert on famine. He’s been dining off I Don’t Like Mondays for 30 years.” Comedian Russell Brand on one of the few hits of the singer who organised Live Aid, the famine relief concert, quoted on Facebook “As a child I used to lie and steal a lot. [I culled my mother’s record collection]… which she kept in a…

washingtonpost.com After a carefree summer on the beach, getting back to work can be a shock, says Helen Carefoot. Here are a few tips on how to ease the transition. 1. Manage your responsibilities while away. Decide before you go on holiday what you can safely leave behind. It may make for a more enjoyable holiday and a less stressful return if you check in occasionally rather than just worrying about the email accumulating in your inbox. 2. Reserve a day for catching up. If possible, take an extra day at home to catch up on cleaning and laundry and so on. It took time for you to unwind – take extra time to ease back into the routine. 3. Empty that inbox. When you get back into the office,…

Where do you stand on the latest Brexit developments? Shaking your fist at the TV in outrage, or swooning with admiration at the audacity of our prime minister? As some have jokingly observed, with breathtaking twists and a cast of extraordinary characters, it’s like a reality television show. And, like a reality show, eventually you will have to cast your vote on the winner, leading to eviction for the unloved. On Boris Johnson’s Brexit Love Island there is a twist, however. The director of the show is one of the players. Johnson is pulling the strings to gain the result he wants. The stars of the show might all be real people in real situations, but their portrayal is confected. Johnson needs you to think that he – and only…

Nationwide is removing interest payments from its popular packaged bank account. From 1 November the FlexPlus current account, which costs £13 a month, will no longer pay 3% interest on balances of up to £2,500. The £250 fee-free overdraft facility on the account is going too, leaving customers paying an annual percentage rate (APR) of 39.9% if they stray into their overdraft. So is the account still worth £156 a year? It comes with family travel insurance, including cover for winter sports and golf up to the account holder’s 70th birthday. This is “good cover” that “could easily cost £120 a year to buy on its own”, says Miles Brignall in The Guardian. Account holders also still benefit from UK and European car breakdown cover, which could cost £110 a…

• What does your business do? We design and craft fine jewellery and sell it directly to clients. We are an online, contemporary diamond jeweller that has disrupted the fine jewellery industry. Our technology brings the world’s largest selection of diamonds directly from the source to the fingertips of the consumer (with a 360-degree view of the diamond) and allows them to create their own unique piece of jewellery, all at an accessible price. Our clients simply handpick the diamond or gemstone and combine it with one of our exquisite designs, or work with our bespoke team to create a newly imagined piece. It’s all made to order, fully transparent, and completely ethical. • What’s been your greatest achievement? It is hard to identify a single greatest achievement, as every…

The Aisch Valley in Bavaria apparently has the highest concentration of breweries in the world, says Andrew Bain in Lonely Planet magazine. Cycle paths along the River Aisch lead you to Bamberg, a “beautiful medieval city” that looks like “a Shakespearean stage set”. At the start of the 19th century there were 68 breweries located here. Today, Bamberg has the Franconian Brewery Museum (named after the region), “hillsides drilled with cellar-caves, and a Bamberg Brewery Trail that guides visitors between the nine remaining breweries and their brewery pubs” perfect for carb-loading ahead of the next day of bike riding. It’s just as well that cycling is a good cure for hangovers, says Bain – “or so I’m claiming”. Rooms from €118 at Hotel Nepomuk, hotel-nepomuk.de…

A couple of years ago I wrote six columns for the short-lived, highbrow, erotic magazine The Amorist. Its editor, Rowan Pelling, is a pal of mine and I relished the chance to write about wine and erotica. I think my articles turned out well, if a little lightweight in comparison with many of the other features in this sophisticated, arthouse journal. There is an undeniable link between well-chosen wine and sex – they are both sensual, pheremonal, indulgent, heady and memorable. In short, wine makes you feel particularly great when it tastes particularly delicious. Cent Visages is, by a long way, the sexiest wine I have tasted in a very long while. Leaving the mildly titillating label aside (Georgia O’Keeffe would be proud), it is the perfume and flavour here…

With all the real-life political drama going on, you might feel there’s little room left for the fictional kind. Hansard, though, is worth your time. The play, currently running at the National Theatre, takes an oblique look at contemporary politics by moving back three decades in time to one morning in May 1988. Robin and Diana Hesketh, played by Alex Jennings and Lindsay Duncan respectively, are a long-suffering couple. Robin is a junior minister; Diana is his mistress-turned-wife. Over the course of the 90-minutes’ running time, the couple bicker and spar over everything from the affair Diana suspects Robin is having to Conservative economic policy on declining industries. The row is nominally prompted by Robin’s support for Section 28, legislation that prevented schools from promoting homosexuality, but the wider contest…

• Emma Thynn, Viscountess Weymouth, is to appear on this year’s Strictly Come Dancing, says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. The daughter of an English socialite and a Nigerian oil baron, Thynn (pictured) is married to Ceawlin, Viscount Weymouth, the heir to Longleat in Wiltshire – “one of the most spectacular stately homes in Britain” with a world-famous safari park. “For this glam-aristo, being on Strictly is a dream come true.” Thynn is a model, former actress and sometime food blogger – and she is certainly no stranger to the lure of reality television, as she freely admits: “I’ve been offered many shows,” she says. “I always turn them down, but this is different.” • Last Sunday was National Waiters’ Day, says Saira Khan in the Sunday Mirror. “I…

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