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Business for French escargot farmers slowed to “a snail’s pace” in 2020, says Kim Willsher in The Guardian. The country’s 400 snail f mers, who produce specifically for the festive season, usually make around 70% of their sales in November and December. Yet with seasonal festivities all but cancelled in 2020, Christmas markets called off, tourist numbers collapsing and restaurants shut, business for snail farmers has been “desperately sluggish”. Box office revenues in the UK plummeted 76% in 2020, from £1.35bn in 2019 to £322.9m in 2020, says Naman Ramachandran on Variety. Despite a promising start, with revenues up 20% year-on-year at the start of last year, venue closures and delayed releases meant overall, 2020 saw less than one visit per person to cinemas, around one third of the usual…

Gold has raced off the starting blocks for 2021, hitting a two-month high on Monday. Trading around $1,946/oz earlier this week, the yellow metal remains short of the all-time high achieved last August, when it hit an intra-day high of $2,075/oz. Despite the dip since then gold investors are sitting on tidy profits. Gold rose by 22% in 2020 and has gained 65% since August 2018. It faces two key issues in 2021. Firstly, the vaccines, which have taken some of the shine off gold, says The Times. As a safe-haven asset, the metal attracts less attention when the economy is doing well, as is expected this year. Investment bank analysts are cautious, with HSBC predicting gold will finish 2021 at $1,907; Bank of America predicts $2,060. Secondly, bitcoin has…

The automobile industry has passed a key milestone. Last year the sale of electric cars in Norway eclipsed those of vehicles with internal combustion engines for the first time. Battery-powered vehicles comprised 54.3% of all new cars sold in the country last year, says Victoria Klesty on Reuters – a global record and a huge advance on the 1% just a decade ago. In December electric cars made up 66.7% of the car market, a monthly record. Norway is blazing a trail by becoming the first nation to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025. It completely exempts electric cars from the taxes imposed on traditional ones. Audi’s e-tron sports utility and sportsback models have knocked Tesla’s Model 3 off the local market’s top spot.…

Shares Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba’s online-listings businesses are less capital-intensive and more profitable than those at Amazon. On a valuation less than half that of its US peer the shares look interesting for those prepared to stomach the risks ($256). Iron ore and copper producer BHP stands to gain from a bull market in industrial metals. The firm’s “commodity mix” and “ESG [environmental, social and governance] credentials” are superior to some of its rivals’. A forecast 2022 dividend yield of 5.7% is not too shabby either (1,983p). A recovery is gathering pace at medical-products firm Convatec. The return of elective surgeries this year and the structural tailwind of an ageing population promise a “new phase of profitable growth” (204.5p). Spirits maker Diageo is a “quality business” that will profit from…

This column had a good year in 2020 – indeed, the best year since it began, writes Matthew Partridge. In January, I suggested that you lay (bet against) Rebecca Long-Bailey’s campaign to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. The bet paid off when Keir Starmer won. I also correctly predicted that Australian politician Gladys Berejiklian would manage to cling on, at least until the start of this year, and that Labour would get most seats in the local Northern Territory elections. I tipped New Zealand Labour to win too, as they indeed did (although the election had to be briefly postponed). By far the biggest betting event of the year, however, was the US presidential election. Few could have predicted how much money would be placed on the result, with…

• Unions have “blasted” a $46.5m bonus secured by General Electric chief executive Larry Culp (pictured) last month, says the Financial Times. The terms of Culp’s bonus scheme were rewritten after the shares in the US conglomerate fell during the pandemic. Instead of the share price needing to be above $19, the bar was lowered to $10. The shares then traded above $10 for 30 days during November’s stockmarket rally, at which point the bonus, due in 2024, was locked in. If the share price were to rise to $16.68 (originally $31), Culp would be in line for the maximum $230m windfall. He earned $24.6m in 2019. • Almost 41% of shareholders voted against a new bonus scheme for executives at Informa last month, says The Times. The exhibitions group…

Cliff Asness, co-founder, AQR Capital Management “I think everyone knows what they’re supposed to do here,” says Cliff Asness, the co-founder of quantitative investing group AQR. Markets generally are now so expensive that the expected return on a 60/40 portfolio (that is, the traditional mix of 60% global equities, 40% global government bonds) “is at a record low”. Meanwhile, “value” stocks are as cheap relative to “growth” stocks, such as Tesla, as they were in the 1990s tech bubble. Anyone paying attention to history would at least have to consider “lightening up” on growth and sticking to, or even adding to, their positions in value. Yet, while value has started to make a bit of a comeback since November, it’s only been a modest rebound and has left AQR’s overall…

unherd.com Until recently, the English did not expect much from their footballers, says Will Lloyd. They were “greedy, horny and vulgar”; a gift to tabloid editors and “a reliable disgrace to their country”. They were regularly a disgrace on the pitch, too. Now, the “face of football is changing” and England’s players are a “source of pride rather than embarrassment”. Witness Marcus Rashford and his campaign for free school meals, which forced the government into two U-turns on the issue. The change of image is down at least in part to Roc Nation Sports, an agency that manages athletes, and creates buzzy media campaigns around issues of social justice. Now, footballers are England’s “unacknowledged legislators”. Rashford received an MBE and millions of children have received lunch, and his campaign has…

■ “Positioning was everything” for British funds last year, says James Phillipps on Citywire. Technology was the key trade and the FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google) led US equities to record highs. A skew towards US tech allowed fund manager Baillie Gifford to claim three of the top five highest-returning funds. Baillie Gifford American saw growth of 121.8%, “no surprise” given that its portfolio includes Tesla, Zoom, and Amazon, all of which benefited from the pandemic. Morgan Stanley’s US Growth, whose largest holding Zoom rose fourfould over the year, came in second, returning 110.4%. Baillie Gifford Long Term Global Growth Investment, which, like its sister funds, has shares in Tesla, Tencent and Amazon, rose by 95.6%, while the Positive Change fund, which holds stakes in Moderna and Teladoc,…

A subsidiary of American International Group (NYSE: AIG) almost caused a global financial meltdown during the great financial crisis of 2008-2009 by betting on complex credit derivatives, before it was bailed out by the Federal Reserve. However, this once-sprawling conglomerate has been slimmed down and restructured by outgoing chief executive Brian Duperreault and is now a more focused operation insuring mid-market to large corporate clients and high net-worth private clients. It is in the sweet spot of the current improving market. Lloyd’s-based Beazley (LSE: BEZ) has had a bad 2020. Covid-19 losses have hit its conference and event cancellation insurance portfolio and led to two profit warnings and a capital raise. However, it is generally considered one of the smarter Lloyd’s operations, is now cheaply priced and should regain its…

Shares in battery-technology group Ilika (LSE: IKA) dipped in March 2020 when markets were first hit by Covid-19, but have been in an “upward trend for the whole year”, says Andrew Hore on Interactive Investor. The company decided to establish its own manufacturing facility after raising £15m last March, which will lead to “improved operating margins”. Its batteries are used for wireless sensors and medical devices. Over the longer term its Goliath battery, used in electric vehicles, could tap “an enormous market”. The stock has soared by 596% in the past 12 months.…

Philip Arnold was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky in 1829. After serving as a soldier in the Mexican-American War (which saw the US take over California), he became a gold prospector and was successful enough to return to Kentucky and buy a farm. By 1870 he was back in California and working as a prospector when he claimed to have discovered, along with his cousin John Slack, a large deposit of diamonds. This attracted the attention of several wealthy investors, including the founder of the Bank of California. What was the scam? Arnold and Slack’s “discovery” was the result of their buying diamonds and mixing them in with their samples. On this basis they attracted money from investors and used it to buy additional diamonds, which they then claimed were part…

The Ford Mustang is often considered the original “pony” car: the younger, more-compact sibling of the distinct American muscle car. The small but powerful car first appeared in 1964 and is the oldest Ford brand still in production. Now Ford has converted this symbol of American engineering into the Mach-E, a “near-silent, totally environment-friendly galloper shaped like a crossbreed cocktail of Aintree winner and steeplechase champion”, says Georg Kacher in Car magazine. The fully electric car will sprint from rest to 62 mph in around five seconds, depending on which model you buy, and has an advertised range of between 248 and 379 miles, which is as much as any Tesla currently on the market and considerably more than the Mach-E’s main rivals, the electric Jaguar, Mercedes and Audi. “The…

Love Island star Zara Holland (pictured rose to fame on the ITV reality show, w contestants looked for love in a villa in Spain. Now she and boyfriend Elliott Love, 30, have been charged with breaking coronavirus quarantine rules in Barbados, says Nick Fagge on MailOnline. Holland, 25, who is now facing up to a year in prison and an £18,000 fine, fled her hotel room after being instructed to quarantine when her boyfriend tested positive for the virus upon arrival. The couple were “intercepted at the airport” after police visited their hotel room to ensure they were quarantining, but found it empty. She issued an apology to Barbados via the local newspaper, but more than 3,500 people have signed a petition calling for the couple’s arrest.…

Has the stockmarket caught vertigo? US indices ended 2020 on record highs, with the S&P 500 registering a 16.3% gain for the year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq soared by 43.6%, its best annual performance since 2009. The end-of-year cheer was helped by last-minute agreement on a $900bn pandemic stimulus package in Washington. But things reversed on the first trading day of 2021: the S&P 500 fell back 1.5%, its biggest one-day drop since the end of October. Stocks wobble… By mid-week traders were digesting the results of two tight elections in Georgia that looked likely to give the Democrats control of the US Senate (see page 13). The prospect of Democrats taking the “trifecta” of the White House and both houses of Congress raises the risk of tech regulation, says Randall…

“Investors might expect the US stockmarket to prefer a Republican president to a Democrat one, with the Grand Old Party generally seen as being in favour of small(er) government and less inclined to interfere in... markets... However... Over 18 presidencies since the election of Harry S. Truman in 1948, the Dow Jones Industrials has, on average, done better under Democratic presidents than it has Republican ones. Even more intriguingly, with 2021 in mind, the Dow has done much better in the first year of a Democratic term than it has a Republican one, with an average gain on 13.1% compared to 2% from their rival incumbents... there is more than just politics at play when it comes to how a stockmarket performs, with monetary policy, economic performance and the possibility…

• Another British bookmaker could be about to fall “into American hands”, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. Ladbrokes’ owner Entain is being pursued by MGM Resorts, an operator of Las Vegas casinos. Entain’s board rejected a £8.1bn bid on Monday. Cash-strapped US states are deregulating online gambling, unleashing a rush for market share. Entain’s shares have surged. Investors expect a higher bid and, ultimately, a deal to materialise: “Money talks even more loudly in the betting industry” than it does elsewhere. • Shareholders of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot parent PSA have approved a merger that will create the world’s fourth-biggest car maker. Stellantis, the new entity, will have a combined €200bn in revenue and nine million annual vehicle sales, says Valérie Collet in Le Figaro. The deal has been…

France’s Nacon has climbed by around 40% since it listed in February 2020. But there should be plenty more gains ahead, as Der Aktionaer points out. The global video games markets is expanding at around 12% a year and Nacon is a one-stop shop for enthusiasts: it develops and publishes games but also sells so-called peripherals ranging from headphones to controllers. Sales and net profits bounced by an annual 36% to €86.6m and 47% to €9.6m respectively between April and September as lockdowns kept people at home. The strong bounce was due largely to peripherals; a further fillip awaits now that the games arm, which published no new titles in the summer, is about to release five new ones. New controllers for the popular PS5 and Xbox consoles are also…

“Although the UK formally left the single market and customs union last week, Northern Ireland has stayed in the single market for goods and will continue to follow EU regulations,” says Liam Kelly in The Times. This allows the border with the Irish Republic to stay open and keeps the Good Friday Agreement “intact”. Instead, there is now a customs barrier between Britain and the island of Ireland. Being able to “sell freely” to both Britain and the Republic is “vital”. In 2018, they jointly accounted for £14.8bn of Northern Ireland’s £21.7bn of exports, of which just £2.5bn went to the rest of the EU. Notwithstanding the “added red tape and cost” of bringing products in from Britain, the region now finds itself in a “unique regulatory position”, says David…

We thought it was all over. After years of wrangling, stand-offs, walk-outs and arguments, the UK and the EU finally reached a trade deal just before Christmas, and with only days remaining before the transitional arrangement expired at the end of the old year. And yet, just when you thought we could safely forget about wrangling with Michel Barnier, it turns out the arguments are set to continue. Talks will start this week between the UK and the EU over a deal for financial services. There will inevitably be lots of pressure to make concessions and secure access to the European market for the UK’s banks, insurers and asset managers. That should be resisted. In truth, the same hardball “no deal is better than a bad deal” stance will work…

When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, setting goals is old-fashioned. These days, say the productivity gurus, it’s all about developing good habits. One healthy financial habit to acquire, if you haven’t already, is the practice of rebalancing your portfolio at least once a year. Rebalancing is a simple concept. When you invest for the long term, you should have a plan in mind as to where you are going to put your money. This is known as “asset allocation”. It doesn’t have to be complicated – we generally suggest a division between stocks, bonds, property, gold and cash. Your precise asset allocation will depend on your time horizon and risk appetite (which in turn should mostly depend on your time horizon). “Markets are starting to anticipate the return of…

Britain’s slump isn’t all it appears Ed Conway The Times The UK suffered the biggest slump in 2020, according to the OECD club of nations, with GDP falling at an annual rate of 9.7%, worse even than Spain (8.7%), says Ed Conway. But while the report seems to confirm the idea that the UK has suffered a “uniquely dismal fate in the face of the virus”, there is a more likely explanation: that the figure reflects the way we calculate GDP. Back in 1997, when Gordon Brown started “pumping money into public services”, the more he spent the more GDP rose “because public-sector economic output simply equalled what we paid for it”. It made “no allowance for quality”. To reflect productivity better, the Office for National Statistics therefore began…

collaborativefund.com/blog In 2014, Amazon was a puzzle, says Morgan Housel. It was big and growing, and competitors feared it, but it didn’t appear to be a great business: profit margins “wobbled between negligible and negative”. It was “easy to mock and call a bubble”. But Jeff Bezos had a different view: margins don’t matter. Dollars do. A huge business with low margins is preferable to the opposite. As Bezos says, investors can’t spend percentage margins. What matters is always the actual amount of dollars. The same applies to individual investors. Choosing the investments with the highest annual percentage returns doesn’t matter; generating wealth does. And for that, compounding is “the whole secret sauce, the rocket fuel, that creates fortunes”. Earning 20% in one year or over three years may be…

Gold’s reputation as the best, probably the only, asset to have preserved its purchasing power over millennia is undisputed. But for mortal investors, it is much less reliable. Its price spends years, even decades, in the doldrums before taking off in an exhilaratingly exponential pattern when the world’s economy hits a trouble spot –only to burn out and fall just when the momentum appears unstoppable. Every dollar on the gold price would drop straight through to an increase in the profits of gold mining companies if they didn’t sell most of their output forward in order to reduce the risk to profits of a falling price. The benefit of a higher gold price is also reduced by it becoming easier for the workforce to demand higher wages and for equipment…

With the UK now officially out of the European Union, what does it mean for you next time you travel to the continent? Before heading to the EU check your passport. In the past you could enter EU countries as long as your passport hadn’t expired. Now, the government is advising that you have at least six months left on your passport when you travel. We will face longer queues at borders as Britons won’t be able to use the EU fast-track passport control and customs lanes. You should also be prepared to show your return ticket when entering EU countries. There is also a possibility that you’ll be asked to prove you have enough money to fund your stay. “The duty-free allowance will now include 18 litres of wine…

The eleventh-hour Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union has not resolved all the uncertainties facing Britons who hope to retire and live in an EU member state. Existing expatriate retirees are protected. They will retain their right to live in the EU state where they currently reside and to receive free healthcare. But there are no guarantees about the future. One problem is residency. Britons travelling to the EU will now need a visa if they intend to spend more than 90 days in an EU country over the course of a year (see also page 26). That’s not to say you won’t be able to secure permission to live in France, Spain or another EU state, but there are no automatic rights to do so. In…

Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LSE: GKP) is an oil and gas explorer. Once a “darling of the stockmarket”, it has disappointed recently, says Simon English in the Evening Standard. It has named Jon Harris as its new CEO after investors complained about the disparity between his predecessor Jon Ferrier’s pay and the firm’s performance. Gulf was hit by the collapse in oil prices in the spring, and has struggled to find its feet. The shares are still a far cry from the “now astonishing-looking” 41,000p mark they reached when investors thought it could become a major oil player.…

A revamped Georgian spa in the Peaks Buxton Crescent originally catered to Georgians in search of a curative dip – it was built in the 1780s before falling into disrepair 200 years later, says Kate Leahy in The Guardian. Following a revamp, the 81-room hotel in the Peak District has reopened. The spa is still home to the original thermal pool surrounded by Victorian cast-iron pillars and there is a new stained-glass dome, casting a warm light across water naturally heated to 27.5˚C. “Nearby, there’s a relaxation pool beneath twinkling mood lights and upstairs an indoor/outdoor hydrotherapy pool. Elsewhere, there’s a salt cave (good for respiration), three saunas (Finnish, biothermal and infrared) and two steam rooms (traditional and aroma).” Treatments include therapeutic hot mud baths. From £125, ensanahotels.com/buxton. A blissful…

2018 Kelly Washington, Pinot Noir, Central Otago, New Zealand £29.95, jeroboams.co.uk Tamra Kelly-Washington is a gifted winemaker and one who goes the extra mile for every one of her carefully crafted wines. Highly experienced, having worked to great acclaim in both Europe and also her homeland of New Zealand, she consults for Michael Seresin’s wines in Marlborough and is responsible for giving his portfolio an exquisite, new lease of life. She also works with her husband, Simon, on their family wine label, and this newly released pinot will show you, in just one sip, why she is a force to be reckoned with and a name to follow very closely. The grapes are sourced from the Monte Rosa vineyard in my favourite sub-region of Central Otago, Gibbston. The wines from…

Going… A marble statue of Autumn carved by the Italian Renaissance sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini when he was no older than 20 is heading for sale with Sotheby’s in New York on 29 January. Autumn takes the form of a “bearded man of the woods” carrying a bough of fruit over his head (pictured). It is one of only a few sculptures that the younger Benini produced with his father, with other examples to be found at the J. Paul Getty Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Autumn was created between 1615 and 1618, at a time when Gian Lorenzo was too young to take on commissions on his own, for Prince Leone Strozzi, one of the Berninis’ first major patrons in Rome. The statue has been given an…

• Almost nothing seems beyond Mary Berry (pictured), whose status as a national treasure was recognised last year when the Queen conferred a damehood on her, says Richard Eden in the Daily Mail. “But despite a talent for knocking off a blemishless Victoria sponge, Dame Mary is, it appears, fallible in one respect: reading the property market.” The former Great British Bake Off judge and her husband put their Grade II-listed, 18th-century home in Buckinghamshire on the market in 2017 for £4m. But despite its two-bedroom cottage, tennis court and four acres, the asking price had been trimmed to a little under £3.5m by 2019, before it was finally sold to businessman Adrian Patten for around £2.5m. “Among other interests, Patten is the director of a restaurant company. He couldn’t…

What separates the rich from the rest of us? Ernest Hemingway claimed it was the fact that they had more money. But what accounts for the fact that some have it and others don’t? How come some families stay rich generation after generation, while others never have a nickel? “Culture,” you will say. “Education,” perhaps. You won’t be wrong. But what, specifically, about culture and education is it that makes such a big difference in outcomes? The secret is simply this: the rich take the long view. “A friend credits a single stock for lifting his family out of near-poverty” Consider: if you thought you’d live forever, would you do anything differently? Wouldn’t your attitude toward your money change a little? Wouldn’t you slow down, realising that you’re not in…

Sales of premium wine in a can rose dramatically this year as Britons took up drinking outdoors in the face of coronavirus restrictions, says Louise Eccles in The Times. Waitrose reported a 40% rise in sales of the tinned tipple compared to the same period in 2019. The surge in the popularity of canned wine was put down to the fact that it can be enjoyed outdoors “without juggling glasses, a corkscrew and a bottle”. Meanwhile, a more traditional festive treat enjoyed a bumper year as sales of Brussels sprouts jumped 11% from 2019 to £10m, says Fraser McKevitt on Kantar. The controversial Christmas staple saw its popularity surge despite families cutting back celebrations with “muted spending” on Christmas dinner generally.…

Despite the pandemic 2020 was a remarkable year for initial public offerings (IPOs), says the Financial Times. Companies raised almost $300bn worldwide, more than in any other year apart from 2007. Investors were quick to snap up shares in technology firms as consumers and businesses settled into working from home. Snowflake, the cloud-computing provider, and Unity Technologies, which provides technology for video-game developers, made successful debuts. Overall activity in the US and Asia jumped by more than 70%from 2019, but listings in Europe fell by a tenth. Several big names look set to float in 2021, says Graeme Evans in Interactive Investor. One to keep an eye out for is Darktrace, the Cambridge and San Francisco-based cybersecurity company. It is thought to be working towards a £3.8bn listing early this…

Even though 2020 was “a stinker of a year”, says Simon Usborne in The Times, olfactory historians have found much to be excited about. Research into smells is a growing field. They are “the most fragile part of our history”, according to Caro Verbeek, a Dutch art and scent historian. “More than photos or sounds, they represent situations, interactions and emotions.” Scent historians specially recreated the aroma of the Battle of Waterloo for a tour at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, for instance. Visitors smelt horsehair, mud, gunpowder and Napoleon’s cologne. Now, historians are keen to capture the “smellscape” of 2020. Because worldwide restrictions meant reduced travel, the year of the pandemic smelled distinctly different from those which came before it. “Traffic pollution masks other smells,” says researcher Kate McLean. So lighter aromas…

Levels of pay in the transport sector have come under renewed scrutiny after Cabinet Office data showed that 13 of the 15 highest-earning government officials work on the railways or roads, says Graeme Paton in The Times. In all, transport bodies accounted for 31 of the top 50. Mark Thurston, CEO of HS2, the company building the high-speed railway, was the best-paid official at the end of September, with pay of between £620,000 and £625,000, excluding bonuses. Andrew Haines, boss of Network Rail, was the second-best, earning up to £590,000; his chief financial officer, Jeremy Westlake, was third with £589,999. Network Rail, which maintains Britain’s 20,000-mile railway, accounted for 11 out of the 15 top earners. Despite senior pay being cut by £1m in the past 12 months across transport…

The balance of payments is the record of all transactions between a country and the rest of the world. Defined as simply as possible, the balance of payments is broken down into the current account and the capital account. The current account includes payments for exports and imports of goods and services, as well as money sent home by citizens working abroad and income from foreign investments. The capital account covers the difference between the amount that the country’s residents are investing abroad and the amount that foreigners are investing in it, plus some smaller items such as capital transfers and grants to other countries and changes in foreign currency reserves held by the central bank. The balance of payments is an accounting identity in which every debit must be…

“It was very windy and the driver of… one of those really heavy American cars opened the door to me and when I got out, the full force of the wind sent the door right on to my face and knocked me out… I had a huge egg-shaped thing on my head and sent a Polaroid to my kids saying, ‘This is what your mother has to do to pay for your school fees’.” Joan Collins (pictured), in The Mail on Sunday “Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.” Oscar Wilde, quoted on telegraph.co.uk “They were all hot from the excitement of Snapchat and Instagram, where you invest $1m and 18 months later you sell it for $1bn. [Yet when I…

mrmoneymustache.com The Covid-19 crisis has gone on now for month after month, “fraying nerves and sanity everywhere” – but it wasn’t all bad, says Mr Money Mustache. When this crisis finally recedes into the rearview mirror, we will be able to see more clearly all the positives. For one, “the future of work” arrived. Working from home has been greatly expanded, with “almost universal approval”. In the future, we will still be able to “hang out” with our co-workers, but on our own terms, “not 9-to-5 every day because the boss says so”. This will have huge benefits, reducing commuting costs and improving quality of life as people leave congested metropolitan areas for small towns. Companies will also be less constrained by geography when looking for talent and will reap…

Activist hedge fund Third Point has called for a partial breakup at technology company Intel, says James Cook in The Daily Telegraph. Intel’s shares bounced after Third Point urged it to “spin out” its chip-manufacturing business and to “undo aseries of costly acquisitions” such as the $16.7bn purchase of chipmaker Altera in 2015. But amove to sell off Intel’s chip-manufacturing facilities could fall foul of the US government, which has expressed “national security concerns” about the global chip supply chain in recent years. China’s largest chip maker, SMIC, was placed on an American sanctions list in December, so any deal that sees more chip-making divisions sold to foreign businesses could run into trouble.…

Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. It is used by insurers to reduce their exposure to major catastrophes. Most insurers operate in a single country or region and so can have concentrated exposure to a particularly costly event, such as an earthquake or hurricane in that territory. In extreme cases this could bring down the insurer. Using reinsurance they can pass on some of their losses above a certain level to other, larger insurers. These reinsurers can build a balanced portfolio by reinsuring insurers across several different territories and different types of risks. In turn reinsurers can pass on their biggest risks in the “retrocession” market. This is the “Wild West” of the insurance world, where the risk may be taken on by lightly regulated funds, in countries such as…

Last year was dominated by disruption and uncertainty. But 2020 also saw venture capital trusts (VCTs), introduced 25 years ago to support small, innovative businesses, emerge as the investment of the moment. Firstly, with tax rises of more than £40bn a year “all but inevitable”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, VCT tax relief looks increasingly attractive. When investing in VCTs you receive up to 30% tax relief – a £3,000 saving on a £10,000 investment. All returns, typically paid through dividends, are also tax-free and you can invest up to £200,000 a year. Secondly, VCTs invest heavily in the technology sector, one of the few to have largely dodged the Covid-19 bullet and likely to play a key part in any recovery. Indeed, many VCT-backed companies have experienced…

Scottsdale in Arizona is a magnet for classic-car auctions in January and this year looks to be no different. First up, on the 21st, auction house Bonhams will be holding its tenth annual classic car sale at the Westin Kierland Resort in Scottsdale. An “exceptional and rare” factory restored 1958 Porsche 356A 1600 T2 Speedster is expected to make around half a million dollars. A 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Cabriolet A is also up for sale. Bonhams is keeping its valuation for this one under wraps, but a 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster version sold for $9.9m at RM Sotheby’s Scottsdale sale in 2016. This year’s RM Sotheby’s Arizona sale gets under way the following day and will be livestreamed online. Bidding closes at Gooding & Company’s Scottsdale Edition sale…

£16.5m The combined value of the first five Aston Martin Goldfinger DB5 continuation models, replicas of the car driven by James Bond, that were delivered to customers just in time for Christmas. The £3.3m cars sport revolving number plates and fake machine guns. 4.7m The estimated number of households in Britain that have struggled to pay their telecoms (including internet) bills in September, representing 19% of the roughly 1,000 households surveyed for a report by the regulator, Ofcom. £183.6m The total value of fines issued by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) last year, compared with £392m in 2019, and nearly £1.5bn in 2014. Just ten wrongdoers were fined, far fewer than the 21 in 2019 and the record 48 set in 2013. The yearly average is 29. £750,000 How much…