Innehållsförteckning för Issue 997 från MoneyWeek

An art thief has been captured on CCTV smashing his way into a museum to steal a £5m Vincent van Gogh painting while the building was shut to the public due to the coronavirus lockdown, says Adam Forrest in The Independent. The robber stole Van Gogh’s 1884 The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring from the Singer Laren Museum, just outside Amsterdam. No suspects have been arrested yet. Kanye West (pictured) finally made the Forbes billionaire list after criticising the magazine for not including him last year, says Teresa Roca in The Sun. However, he’s still not happy with his ranking – Forbes reckons West, 42, has a net worth of $1.3bn, but the rapper texted the magazine to say: “It’s not a billion. It’s $3.3bn since no one at…

Those hoping for a swift rebound should keep an eye on the steel market. The alloy is used for everything from cars to energy equipment. American steel firms are gloomy, says Bob Tita in The Wall Street Journal. Mills are operating at 56% capacity because of a sharp drop in demand. The price of a “hot-rolled coiled sheet of steel” is now 50% off a July 2018 high. The oil price crash means little demand for new drilling rigs, while the idled auto industry has cost the steel sector $1bn in lost sales. Producers of iron ore, the main ingredient used in steel, are more optimistic, says Neil Hume in the Financial Times. Chinese steel production remained resilient during its coronavirus lockdown, allowing iron ore prices to stay above $80…

Norwegian video-conferencing company Pexip is seeking to raise $200m in “the largest software IPO [initial public offering] in Scandinavia”, says Richard Milne in the Financial Times. Pexip has experienced a seven-fold surge in usage as the pandemic has forced millions of people to work from home, and is catching up with market leader Zoom. The company is seeking to raise around $100m in fresh capital on the Oslo stock exchange, while existing shareholders will sell a similar amount of shares. Pexip is hoping to achieve a valuation of about NKr6bn (£462m). The group experienced a 50% year-on-year jump in annual recurring revenues to $57m in the first quarter of 2020.…

HSBC has delivered a “stark warning” on the “deep and lasting” impact of coronavirus on the financial sector, say Stephen Morris and Primrose Riodan in the Financial Times . It reported a 48% year-on-year slump in first-quarter pre-tax profit to $3.2bn. Provisions for bad loans quintupled to $3bn as it expects the global lockdown measures to lead to a “run of potential bankruptcies and defaults”. Provisions could total $7bn-$11bn by the end of the year thanks to a severe global recession. The crisis is good news, at least in the short run, for the 35,000 employees who were at risk from being made redundant in the “restructuring” that was announced in February, says Simon Clark in The Wall Street Journal. HSBC has now decided that it will delay the “vast…

Donald Trump’s disastrous press conference last week, combined with a slew of bad head-to-head polls in key states, has caused the odds on his re-election to drift out further. At the moment, with £27.9m matched, the online exchange Betfair has him at 2.12 (47.1%) to win the election. Joe Biden (pictured) continues to languish at 2.34 (42.7%), suggesting that many think that he’ll drop out between now and November. I think that Biden’s chances of winning should be much higher and Trump’s much lower – but if you’ve already bet, don’t bet any more. In any case, I’d suggest taking the 1.09 (91.7%) on betting exchange Smarkets on whether the presidential election will go ahead this year. Such odds would normally be too short to be worthwhile, but I  think…

“At a time when so much is uncertain, one thing is clear: government spending is back on,” says Sebastian Lyon, founder of Troy Asset Management, in his latest letter to investors. The US alone will spend $2.2trn to support its economy. And at the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England “the printing presses are working hard to offset the coming slowdown”. These steps are likely to mark the start of “a new chapter for the monetary backdrop”. While deflation must reign in the short term given the collapse in economic activity, this “previously inconceivable” scale of stimulus measures “has laid the foundations for a rise in the rate of inflation”. Unlike the response to the global financial crisis in 2009 – which merely saw “the…

Big companies who paid their bosses generously during the upswing of the past few years are now tapping state aid to help pay their staff’s salaries, says Alex Ralph in The Times. At least 18 firms in the FTSE 100 have sought to tap the tax-payer funded furlough scheme, under which the government covers 80% of wage costs up to £2,500 a month. Those 18 bosses were paid an annual average £3.6m over the last five years, during which the firms spent atotal of £321m on chief executive pay, according to the High Pay Centre, a think tank. In the FTSE 250, at least 23% of businesses are applying to the scheme. They paid their bosses £1.9m a year on average over the same period. Almost 40% of blue chips…

■ American hedge fund giant Citadel has placed bets worth £275m against UK supermarkets, says Jamie Nimmo in The Financial Mail on Sunday. Citadel has been building up short positions in Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, meaning it will profit if the food retailers’ share prices fall. It has amassed a short position accounting for 3.6% of Morrisons’ shares, worth £162m – one of the largest on record in the UK and up from 2.4% a month ago. The hedge fund first disclosed a short against Sainsbury’s at the end of March and has increased that position to 2.5%, worth around £133m. The move may suggest that Citadel thinks the chains will not be immune to the costs of the coronavirus outbreak, even though their shares have held firm so far. Citadel…

aei.org A recent article in The Wall Street Journal asks whether we will forgive Amazon after the crisis, says James Pethokoukis. The argument runs that when they needed it most, consumers have encountered long delays and restrictions on what they can buy. Really? For many people Amazon has emerged as a “lifeline” during quarantine. The retailer has created 175,000 new jobs in the past two months to cope with the extra demand. Amazon has had problems, not least workers’ complaints about inadequate safety measures in warehouses. Yet it is now responding, going so far as to construct its own testing lab. To me, Amazon seems a “good example of an institution doing its part” in a crisis. There has been much talk of a “techlash” in recent years, with consumers…

■ Fraudsters are using the government text messages sent about the lockdown as “inspiration for scam messages”, says Kenza Bryan in The Times. It’s often hard to tell a scam text from a real one – so government agencies and companies are trying to make the scammers’ lives more difficult with a new identification scheme. Fourteen banks and government departments have registered an exclusive claim on sender identification names such as HMRC, DVLA or HSBC, to stop scammers “hijacking” these names to appear alongside their messages and appear more credible. Meanwhile, a blacklist of at least 400 sender IDs associated with scam texts will be shared with phone firms and messaging services to block them from all networks. ■ New data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is reviving concerns…

Ever since the pension freedom reforms of 2015, financial watchdogs have tried to persuade members of final-salary pension schemes not to transfer their savings to alternative plans. While transferring could unlock more flexible pension arrangements, these are hardly likely to be worth giving up guaranteed retirement income for. Until now, the choice has been for savers to make. But amid the Covid-19 panic, the Pensions Regulator has introduced emergency measures. Some 5,500 defined benefit pension schemes covering more than six million members now have the right to suspend all transfers and requests for transfer quotes for up to three months. Transfer requests put in before the regulator’s announcement can also be put on hold. The regulator says its chief concern is that volatility in financial markets is making it difficult…

Some real estate investment trusts (Reits) with safe income streams have sailed through the great virus crisis (GVC) almost unscathed – yet their share prices have fallen to significant discounts to historic net asset value (NAV). Among them are BMO Commercial Property Trust (LSE: BCPT) and Secure Income (Aim: SIR). Launched in 2005, BCPT was one of the first to take advantage of a new tax regime exempting from taxation at the corporate level property companies that paid out at least 90% of their income to investors and thus qualified as Reits. BCPT sought to provide investors with an attractive yield and some potential for capital and income growth from investing in adiverse portfolio. At the end of 2019 it had assets of £1.37bn, financed by £310m of debt and…

Stockmarkets around the world plunged in mid-March, but they have rallied strongly over the past six weeks, with the FTSE All-Share up by around 20%. Nonetheless, there are still plenty of bargains around. One case in point is ITV (LSE: ITV). It was trading at around 150p at the start of the year, started to decline in February, and then plunged by two-thirds to a low of 54p at the start of April. Even today it still trades at only 76p, down by around half from its pre-crisis peak. It’s clear that ITV will suffer some economic damage as a result of the lockdown. With no one buying anything, firms are drastically cutting back on the advertising spending that ITV relies on for around half its revenue. At the same…

Transocean (NYSE: RIG) is a leading international provider of offshore drilling services for oil and gas wells. Last week the shares fell sharply after analysts at RBC Capital said that bankruptcy was no longer merely possible, but probable given plunging oil prices, which will “undoubtedly cause rig utilisation, day rates, and cash margins to fall during the second half of this year and into 2021”. Throw in the company’s $4.3bn of debt, the largest amount among energy companies with junk-rated credit, and it’s hardly surprising that the stock has lost 89.1% in a year.…

2018 Château d’Esclans, Les Clans, Côtes de Provence, France £56.20, hedonism.co.uk; £44.95, finewinedirect. co.uk; £54.95, secretbottleshop.co.uk ; £65.85, amazon.co.uk; £59.99, thewinereserve.co.uk; £54.95, slurp.co.uk. The top-flight 2018 releases from Sacha Lichine’s temple to elite rosé have just arrived in the UK. While a few merchants stock my featured Les Clans, the pinnacle wine, Garrus, is available from just one! I have tasted every single wine from this estate since Sacha dared to dream that he could turn the wine world on its head fifteen years ago. As if to underline his success, a few months ago Bernard Arnault’s LVMH group bought amajority stake in this stellar brand. While the most famous Provence rosé on the planet is Esclans’s very own Whispering Angel, it is the two estate wines that I completely adore.…

Gold coins have been traded since at least the Bronze Age and collecting them is a hobby almost as old. The first-century Roman emperor Augustus was an “avid collector” of ancient Greek gold coins, says Amanda Foreman in The Wall Street Journal. His face was featured on the aureus, later to be replaced with the solidus as the gold coin of the later, Eastern Roman world. Angels, ryals and guineas would pop up among others as variations of gold coins in England from the Middle Ages onwards, down to the 24-karat Britannias and 22-karat sovereigns that are still legal tender today (although no longer in circulation) BullionByPost (bullionbypost.co.uk) sells all of these, including the “high-grade gold” ryal of King Henry IV (1367-1413) pictured above. It is on the market for…

• Victoria Beckham (pictured) “thinks we were all terribly arsey about her when she decided to use our money to furlough her fashion company workers”, says Rod Liddle in The Sun. “How could we be so mean as to expect a woman who has an estimated wealth of £335m –acquired largely through singing badly – to dig into her own pockets? Rather than scrounging off the taxpayer.” The “stinking rich” have no self-awareness and even less shame. Even worse is “old beardo” Richard Branson. The Virgin founder and philanthropist wants £500m to bail out his airline. And how about Apple boss Tim Cook, who boasted of sending a few safety masks to Britain? “So kind of you, Tim. Now, how about your company pays its proper share of tax in…

It’s not looking good for cricket fans. Cricket Australia (CA), the sport’s national governing body, this week warned that it may lose hundreds of millions of dollars as tournaments are cancelled due to coronavirus, says the Australian Associated Press. Chief executive Kevin Roberts said the group is exploring all options to ensure an India tour next summer – a series played in a single city at a stadium with no spectators is one proposal. Meanwhile, in England leading sports advisory firm Oakwell Sports Advisory has recommended that the England and Wales Cricket Board borrow against its broadcast contract in order to turn itself into an “internal lending bank” to help its counties over the cash-flow problems caused by coronavirus, says Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. The counties face overall…

“The yin to Keynes’ yang is the great Austrian school economist Ludwig von Mises. [In] Human Action, Mises wrote about the impossibility of economic calculation in the centrally planned economy. Central planning cannot work because it rips out a [key] characteristic of the economic structure, what Mises calls ‘economic calculation’... the planned economy is just a system of groping about in the dark. How, for example, can a state planner... know what the correct supply of shoes, cars, mobile phones, or anything else in the economy, should be? The central planner can’t. But the free market can, through a process of trial and error if nothing else. Entrepreneurial risk-takers can. Central planning, on the other hand, is actually the elimination of... action. In the planned economy in its idealised state…

Three to buy ASML Shares The market crash has created an opportunity to buy this Dutch monopoly. ASML is the only company in the world able to produce the precision ultraviolet tools needed to manufacture certain types of microchips. The semiconductor industry is investing heavily in new technologies as part of its “shrinkage roadmap”, which should underpin future orders. On a price/earnings multiple of 23.2, the shares haven’t been this cheap since 2017 and would need to rise 30% from here to regain their pre-crash rating. €265 Whitbread The Daily Telegraph Shares in the owner of Premier Inn hotels and the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre restaurants have slumped so much that the firm is trading close to book value. Most recent results showed a company with “minimal net debt and…

• Unilever has admitted that global lockdowns are starting to “lay waste to basic personal grooming routines”, reducing sales of items ranging from haircare products to deodorants, says Judith Evans in the Financial Times. What’s more, based on post-lockdown evidence from China, Unilever doesn’t expect sales of such products to bounce back soon, even after restrictions are eased. People will still spend “more time at home, more time cooking... and maybe less on personal care occasions”. Personal care products aren’t the only part of the business that is suffering. Unilever’s food service business, which supplies restaurants, has also been badly affected. The turbulence resulting from the crisis means that Unilever’s underlying sales have been “flat” in the first three months of this year, a poor performance compared with 3.1% growth…

Over the last three months, most of us will have been glad of any uninvested cash in our portfolios. That’s partly for reassurance: since we don’t know how long the coronavirus crisis will drag on and quite how terrible the economic consequences will be, it’s psychologically easier to feel we have a bit of a buffer to cover any unexpected expenses or losses to our income. We don’t want to have to sell investments at depressed prices or rely on dividends when they are being slashed. But more optimistically, having excess cash lets us take advantage of any opportunities that the market plunge throws up. The ultimate option While cash normally seems like the dullest part of a portfolio, crises are a sharp reminder of why many notable investors see…

How Asia made science serve society Terence Kealey The Daily Telegraph South Korea and Taiwan have handled Covid-19 “superbly”; the UK and US “catastrophically”, says Terence Kealey. Whereas the US is recording some 30,000 new cases a day, Taiwan is recording about five. This is in part because “Eastern countries believe science should serve society, whereas Western countries believe society should serve science”. Hence in January, South Korean authorities invited 20 biotech companies to develop a Covid-19 test (leading to prompt, effective contact-tracing) while in March, Britain’s chancellor was announcing an extra £800m annual funding for pure science. The idea that markets fail when it comes to science because industrialists can copy each other’s technology and will “fear to invest in original research” came from the economist Kenneth Arrow…

project-syndicate.org Policymakers have vowed to do “whatever it takes” to respond to Covid-19, says Project Syndicate. Yet while rich countries enjoy rock-bottom borrowing costs on their trillion-dollar rescue packages, emerging nations are desperately short of cash. Scared investors have been withdrawing funds from these markets. More than 100 countries have now turned to the International Monetary Fund for assistance, but its resources are limited. G20 governments recently agreed to suspend debt repayments from 76 of the world’s poorest nations, but there is a glaring loophole: private creditors. There must be full and equal private-sector participation so that public funds don’t end up being used to subsidise continuing payments to commercial bondholders. The World Bank should create a central credit facility to ensure that funds diverted from debt payments are only…

A credit card can be a lifeline in these turbulent times. From helping you get refunds to providing you with interest-free debt, here’s how your flexible friend can help fix your finances. Customers who are struggling to get their money back for travel, accommodation, events or anything else that has been cancelled may be able to get a refund from their credit-card provider. Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, your credit-card provider is jointly liable if you don’t receive goods or a service that you paid for with your credit card. The item has to have cost between £100 and £30,000, but you only need to have paid for part of it on your credit card to be protected for the whole amount. This can help if a…

What happens to your company pension if your employer puts you on furlough during the pandemic? With organisations employing around four million people applying to take part in the government bail-out scheme in its first week alone, this is a key concern for a huge number of savers. There’s good news and bad. Happily, the furloughing scheme includes pensions: the government’s promise to cover 80% of wages, up to £2,500 a month until at least the end of June extends to the pension contributions your employer makes on your behalf. But less positively, these contributions will be calculated with reference to a smaller sum than usual, which means less money going into your savings. And the state will only pay the minimum contribution permissible under auto-enrolment. Lower contributions Both these…

This newly built five-bedroomed Scots Baronial-style tower house is in a commanding position on the south bank of Loch Melford. It is surrounded by 107.5 acres of woodland and has spectacular views over grounds that lead down to a loch and the surrounding mountains and glens. It has a great hall that is eleven metres long with oak floors, underfloor heating, a magnificent stone fireplace and doors leading onto a castellated terrace. It also has a German-designed kitchen and a gym suite with a sauna. Can you guess the asking price? Answer at the side of this box.…

Miton Global Opportunities seeks to find pricing anomalies and special situations within the investment trust market. We hope to buy good assets for as little as seventy pence in the pound. Investment trust shares are openly traded on the stockmarket and change hands at alevel decided by the balance of supply and demand, not by the official valuation of the underlying portfolio, the net asset value (NAV). Recent market turmoil has caused some investment trust discounts to NAV to widen to an extent not seen since the financial crisis of 2008. The wheat has yet to be sorted from the chaff following the sell-off and this has created some excellent deep-value opportunities. We often say we can buy a pound’s worth of assets for as little as seventy pence; in…

The US announced a $12.1m (£10m) economic development aid package for Greenland, a move “welcomed” by the government of the Danish territory, says the BBC. The US is competing with Russia and China for access to Greenland’s Arctic resources of mineral deposits. Last August, US president Donald Trump expressed an interest in buying the country – an idea dismissed by Denmark as“absurd”. Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand, who specialises in oil, made a mint betting on US crude’s recent historic crash into negative territory, reports David Sheppard in the Financial Times. Andurand began betting against oil early in the year, saying he saw “little respite” for the industry until a vaccine is discovered for coronavirus. His core fund for Andurand Capital Management ended the first quarter up 63% on the…

France’s Séché Environnement does the jobs everyone hates, as Wirtschaftswoche points out. The group’s offerings range from decontamination and hazardous waste disposal to household and industrial waste recycling. Acquisitions helped it grow sales by 23% to €688m in 2019; operating income climbed by a similar proportion to €46.8m. Séché Environnement now operates in 15 countries and wants to bolster the percentage of international sales to 30% from today’s 25% over the next two years. The group should enjoy long-term growth as the global population rises and environmental regulations become more stringent. The stock yields almost 3%.…

Just Eat is about to be eaten. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has approved Takeaway.com’s £6.2bn takeover, says James Cook in The Daily Telegraph. The CMA’s decision comes months after it announced a “surprise” investigation into whether the deal would have reduced competition by discouraging Takeaway.com, which is based in The Netherlands, from re-entering the British market independently. However, the watchdog has now decided that it was “unlikely” Takeaway.com would have resumed operations in the UK after pulling out in 2016 following hefty losses. The deal follows a “bidding war” between Takeaway.com and Prosus, the investment arm of technology group Naspers, for Just Eat. The merger reflects awider trend in online food delivery, says Ingrid Lunden on techcrunch.com. While such technology platforms have proved popular, their growth has come…

Donald Trump’s “erratic handling” of the Covid-19 pandemic, the dire economy and a “cascade of ominous” polling have made Republicans “increasingly nervous” that they could lose both the presidency and the Senate, say Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman in The New York Times, writes Emily Hohler. He is “trailing significantly” in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and is behind even in “must-win Florida”. Although Trump is “well ahead in money” compared to the presumptive Democrat nominee, Joe Biden, several super PACs (political action committees) plan to “spend heavily” on Biden’s behalf and Democrats have raised much more than Republicans this year. And Trump’s single great advantage, “access to the bully pulpit,” has “become a platform for self-sabotage”. His daily press briefings on Covid-19 are now looked on by Republican…

A call option gives the holder the right (but not the obligation) to buy an asset, such as a share, for an agreed price (the strike price), on or before a certain date (the expiration date). When you buy a call option, you pay a fee (known as a premium) to the seller of the option (also known as the writer of the option). If you exercise the option, the seller must sell you the underlying asset at the agreed price. Otherwise the option expires worthless and the seller has no further liabilities. You can use call options to bet on the price of an asset rising, while limiting your potential loss to the premium that you paid. Let’s assume that Acme Widgets is trading at 100p per share and…

• Google chief executive Sundar Pichai’s (pictured) promotion to the head of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in December came with a healthy payrise, says MarketWatch. Pichai’s base salary rose from $650,000 to $2m. His total pay for 2019 came to $280m thanks to stock awards tied to his promotion. Despite the median pay at Alphabet being a“relatively high” $258,708, Pichai’s pay for last year was still 1,085 times higher than the average employee’s. • Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, received $21.6m in total pay for 2019, 1.1% less than the $21.9m she received for the previous year, says Reuters. Barra got a $2.1m salary, stock awards worth $12.1m, share options worth around $3.5m and a performance-based award worth $2.7m. Her pay was 203 times that of the median…

Activist investor ValueAct Capital has built astake of over $1.1bn in Nintendo in a bet that new products and digital software distribution will boost growth at the Japanese gaming company, says Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Reuters. ValueAct first began buying Nintendo – known for its gaming consoles and iconic titles such as Mario Kart and Donkey Kong – in April 2019 and now holds 2% of the firm’s shares. US activists are increasingly targeting cash-rich Japanese firms and publicly trying to pressure them into raising dividends or share buybacks. But ValueAct has taken a low-key approach, which helped it gain a seat on the board of optics giant Olympus last year. In March, the fund also took a 7% stake in chip and display materials maker JSR.…

“I’ve been in the business long enough to see that people who are the most talented never get the recognition. If you have ambition, you can make it through that door.” Rapper and actress Eve (pictured) on whether ambition or talent matters more, quoted in the Financial Times “I owe my dad my career, in the sense that I wanted to become an actress because he pounded me and my brother with culture when we were younger. We didn’t have a lot of money, but he made sure we had access to films and music.” Actress Hayley Squires, quoted in The Guardian “Any spare kit I found lying around, I used to steal and sell. Ihad quite a successful eBay account selling all my England under-19 training kit.” Former England…

inc.com You love your spouse and want to spend more time together. Just don’t start a business, says Mark Peter Davis. Of course, there are married couples who run successful start-ups, but there are also many who “lose their relationships”. The first question: who’s in charge? One of you usually ends up taking the reins, whether intentionally or not. Yet that can foster resentment, whether because of outright bossiness or more subtle things, such as feeling excluded from important decisions. At its worst, even a happy marriage can devolve into bitter “workplace politics”. A healthy relationship requires two people who are “just as much individuals as they are a unit”, but working together every day limits each partner’s personal space. On the roller-coaster ride of a new business venture many…

If the Covid-19 lockdown has affected your family income, you should check if it’s worth claiming child benefit. This is available to anybody living in the UK who is responsible for a child under 16 (or under 20 if they are in approved education or training), and pays £21.05 a week for your eldest child and £13.95 for every other child. However, if the highest-earning parent earns more than £50,000 a year, they have to pay some back via their tax return. If they earn more than £60,000, they have to pay it all back. So many high-income families don’t usually claim. If you want to start claiming for the first time, you need to send off a paper form, which you can download at gov.uk/child-benefit/how-to-claim. It can take up…

Two important initiatives designed to make pension savers’ lives easier have fallen victim to the Covid-19 crisis. The pension dashboard, an online tool allowing savers to track all their different pension schemes through one simple portal, now looks set to be delayed once again. The dashboard was held up by Brexit and the general election, but had been due to go live this year. Now, however, the industry group overseeing the project has effectively put it on hold. Meanwhile, the Financial Conduct Authority, the City regulator, is postponing its pension investment pathways initiative from August until next February. The idea, reflecting concern that some pension savers are making inappropriate investment choices, is to provide default investment options based on how people plan to use their pension schemes.…

The defence sector can generate growth, but also provide investors with a hedge against uncertainty because it sells long-term, crucial security projects to deep-pocketed and committed governments. One of the most attractive “pure-play” defence stocks is Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), a big firm offering broad exposure to aircraft, including its potentially $1trn flagship F-35 Lightning II jets programme; maritime strike and sensor capability and drones. It’s also big in missile defence and hypersonics (weapons that can travel much faster than the speed of sound). Lockheed is active in cybercomputing and AI and it will transport the first woman and next man to the moon. Much of what it does is critical to the security of the US and Nato. Recent earnings beat expectations. The stock has outperformed the market for…

A palatial estate with a wild Hollywood history is on sale for $29.995m, say Neal Leitereg and Jack Fleming in the Los Angeles Times. The 18,401-square foot mansion at 1235 Sierra Alta Way was built in 1953. The architect included “a mirrored master suite, orchid greenhouse, rooftop garden, artificial beach... and an indoor-outdoor lagoon” with a secret underground cave. Rock star Prince (pictured) rented the house from basketball star Carlos Boozer for $95,000 a month in 2005, and “stylistically overhauled” it, adding gold lions at the gates, a hair salon and a dance floor. Boozer sued Prince for violating the lease, but settled for $500,000. The ten-bedroom, 13-bathroom mansion contains a ballroom, wine cellar, and two-storey gym. The property also includes an English Tudor house on an adjacent lot.…

Greatland Gold (Aim: GGP) is a miner focused mainly on gold in Tasmania and Western Australia. It is “another Aim success story”, says Lee Wild on Interactive Investor. The group’s shares outperformed during the recent virus-induced market mayhem as the company unveiled an exciting series of updates from its exploration programme in Australia. An auspicious backdrop for precious metals is providing a fillip too. The share price has more than quintupled over the past 12 months, gaining 415% .…

Childhood friends Mordecai Weissman and Myron Goodman founded O.P.M. Leasing Services in 1970 above a sweet shop in New York. O.P.M – whose initials officially stood for Other People’s Machines, but seems to have been a cynical play on Other People’s Money – borrowed to buy mainframe computers from IBM, which it leased to large companies. By offering substantially lower rates than its competitors and by allowing companies to return the equipment if it became obsolete, O.P.M. quickly took a large share of the market. By 1978 it was one of the five largest leasing companies in the United States, employing 250 people over 11 offices. What was the scam? O.P.M. lost money from the start because of low rental fees and poor management, and quickly became insolvent. However, the…

£90 The average amount spent by vinyl-record buyers in 2019, a 10% increase on the previous year. That’s according to All About The Music 2020 , the yearbook of the British Phonographic Industry, the umbrella group for the country’s record labels. A fifth of vinyl records are bought by those with no means of playing them. €1bn The estimated cost to the island of Sicily in March and April from lost tourism owing to the Covid-19 outbreak. The regional government is planning to lure tourists back by paying for half of plane tickets, one in three nights spent in hotels and all museum admissions, using a €50m war chest. Tourism accounts for 13% of Italy’s gross domestic product. 1,393 The percentage rise in electronic sales of Nathan Wolfe’s 2011 nonfiction…