Innehållsförteckning för 1035 från MoneyWeek

A 36-year-old man who claimed to be “too afraid of coronavirus to return home” was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after police f nd he had been living there for three months, says Helen Sullivan in The Guardian. Aditya Singh had been on his way back to India after living in California for five years, but after getting off a flight from Los Angeles, simply remained and lived in the airport’s secure area, before other staff caught him using an airport ID badge that had been reported missing by its owner. French woman Jeanne Pouchain is fighting to prove that she is still alive. In 2017 she was ruled dead, apparently the result of a court administrative error that arose out of a long-running dispute with a former employee,…

Three to buy J Sainsbury Shares A very strong trading update from the UK’s second-biggest grocer has made the City “sit up and take note”. Like-for-like sales jumped by 9.3% year-on-year over the Christmas period, while online sales vaulted by 128% in the three months to 2 January. Digital sales now account for 18% of the chain’s grocery revenue, up from just 7% a year before. The shares have a long record of disappointing but trading on a price-to-book value of just 0.75, value investors will spy an opportunity. 238p The PRS Reit Investors Chronicle There is huge demand for rented accommodation, but unfavourable tax changes have meant that many private landlords have decided to quit the market over the past few years. This Reit offers investors a headache-free way…

• Dating app Bumble, which requires women to make the first move, has decided to take advantage of a “steamy” initial public offerings (IPO) market to go public, says Lauren Silva Laughlin on Breakingviews.com. The appetite for technology flotations, as well as the fact that its revenue rose by 11% in the 12 months to September, means that it should “attract plenty of suitors”, enabling it to surpass the $3bn price tag implied by the amount of money that Blackstone paid to take a majority stake at the end of 2019. Note that shares in rival Match have appreciated by more than 80% since early 2020, and if Bumble can match Match’s enterprise-value-to-revenue figure, it will be valued at more than $10bn. However, investors should tread carefully: “Average revenue per…

Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte is “clinging to power” after narrowly winning a vote of confidence in the Senate while failing to gain the support of an absolute majority, says Hannah Roberts for Politico. The vote comes after former PM Matteo Renzi pulled his centrist Italia Viva party out of the governing coalition over differences in the country’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery plan, plunging Italy into “political chaos”. Renzi’s decision to withdraw but abstain in the crucial vote of confidence means that Conte may have avoided being forced to resign or call new elections, but now presides over a “weakened, minority government”. The government has seen its popularity fade in the face of a second wave of Covid-19 infections, and now faces a “precarious period” as any divisive issue could jeopardise…

The pandemic has taken a huge toll on people’s mental and physical health. Japan is pioneering solutions in both fields. Aman “has earned an enormous online following and a modest living by renting himself out to the bored, lonely or needy as a companion who does nothing”, says Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. Tokyo’s Shoji Morimoto is a concerned citizen who is paid by his clients for idle conversation to ease their loneliness. He’ll sit down with you, eat the lunch you’ve brought him, and hang on your every word, regardless of what you are saying, all for a fee of ¥10,000 (£70). Attracting social refugees, outcasts and those who just need a good chat, Morimoto’s unorthodox service has become famous for its judgement-free companionship in a world where…

• The cash bonus Apple’s boss Tim Cook (pictured) rose by 40% last year to $10.7m, having taken a 36% hit in 2019 owing to declining revenue tied to weaker iPhone sales, says The Wall Street Journal. More people working from home during the pandemic last year helped boost Apple’s profit by 3.9%. But for 2021, Apple’s top brass will have their cash bonuses determined by environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, says CNBC. Hitting or missing ESG targets will affect the awards by 10% in either direction. • The UK division of Elliott Management, one of the leading activist hedge funds in the US, paid its 107 staff £93.3m after recording a rise in revenue and profit in 2019, says The Times. Pretax profits edged up to £6.4m from…

Book value is also known as shareholders’ equity or net asset value (NAV). It is the value of all of a company’s assets, less all of its liabilities (debts) and can be found on the balance sheet in a company’s annual report. Book value is sometimes used as an estimate of what a company would be worth if all of its assets were sold for their balance-sheet values. It’s often used as a way to value firms such as banks, housebuilders and insurers. When you know the book value, you can get an idea of how cheap or expensive a share is by dividing the share price by the book value per share (hence the price/book, or p/b, value ratio). A p/b of below one means that – technically speaking…

“I am 66. Ishould be sensible, sit down and think about my pension, my future and my care home. Am I? No.” Historian Mary Beard (pictured), in The Sunday Telegraph “There is nothing so dangerous as the pursuit of arational investment policy in an irrational world.” J.M. Keynes, quoted in a Rothschild & Co Wealth Management note “Never lend money to your friends. I’d like to think I’d stand up when friends are in genuine need. But I’ll give it to them, not lend it, because it causes resentment. I’d rather keep friends than lose them over money.” Actor James Cosmo, quoted on telegraph.co.uk “For those who had assumed that it might turn into a currency – terribly sorry, but this is... a highly speculative asset which has conducted some…

economist.com Habits can be slow to form, but once they are, they become entrenched, says The Economist’s Bartleby columnist. Given the length of the lockdowns, this means that some of our new working patterns might be permanent. That’s no bad thing. For one, “Zoom fatigue” has brought home a lesson that should have been learned already: most meetings waste most people’s time. Ask whether a meeting is really necessary, cut out the ones that aren’t, and productivity should improve. The best habit cultivated in the pandemic is flexible working. The curse of “presenteeism” has been lifted as workers have proved they do not need to be “under the beady eye of the boss” all day to “get on happily with their work”. When offices reopen, they can become “a refuge,…

There is a plethora of funds covering consumer and luxury goods, but I can find none which are specifically for the beverages sector. Fortunately, there is an array of good large and medium-sized companies. Of the ten largest alcoholic-drinks companies worldwide, the Japanese ones desperately try to buy growth and overpay; so too the Americans, while China’s Moutai is absurdly valued. Nevertheless, three of the ten are good long-term investments. The UK’s Diageo (LSE: DGE) has been a global success story and has consistently beaten the UK All-Share Index and most of its peers. With a £71bn market capitalisation, it owns a stable of famous brands across most spirit and beer categories and continuously adapts its portfolio to changing tastes. As for all beverage companies, the pandemic has hit sales,…

While the UK “may enjoy something of a Brexit bounce”, it’s unlikely many “old economy FTSE 100 stocks” will outperform companies in “more dynamic” stockmarkets abroad this year, says Mark Atherton in The Times. So consider funds elsewhere, particularly in Asia, “which I think will be the best-performing region over the next decade”. Veritas’ Asian fund, with large holdings in Samsung and Alibaba, has produced healthy returns, delivering 67.1% over three years, the second-best showing of the 101 in its sector. Baillie Gifford’s Positive Change fund, Edinburgh Worldwide investment trust and Pacific Horizon investment trust are also worthy buys from the “most impressive” fund manager in the UK. They all boast major stakes in international stars such as Tesla, Moderna, and Chinese online grocer Dada Nexus. Back in Britain, small…

■ As much as £800m of “lost” pension assets could be handed to charity under government plans to broaden the scope of the Dormant Assets Scheme. The scheme, launched in 2011, currently focuses on bank and building society accounts where there has been no activity for 15 years and where the provider is unable to contact the account holder. Such cash is donated to charity. Initiatives linked to the Covid-19 pandemic have received £150m over the past 12 months alone. Now ministers want to extend the reach of the scheme to pension funds: life insurers and other pension providers are sitting on hundreds of millions of pounds of savings where they have lost touch with the original investor. These assets would also be made available to charity, although ministers suggest…

Revenue at bus and rail operator Stagecoach (LSE: SGC) has slumped since the start of the pandemic, says Angharad Carrick in City AM. Profits fell to £5.4m in the six months to 31 October, down from £65.9m during the same period the year before. The losses are in large part due to the closure of regional bus and tram services. The UK’s third lockdown, announced in January, is a further blow to the group’s prospects. To cap it all, Stagecoach has also lost the East Midlands Trains franchise. Shares in the company have fallen by almost 50% since this time last year.…

Superstar winemaker Giorgio Rivetti is most famous for his trio of masterful Piemonte reds, Barbarescos Gallina, Starderi and Valeirano. He has ventured south to Tuscany, too, where his rich, layered, oak-soaked style of red winemaking works well with his various “Super-Tuscan” incarnations. But his most remarkable recent release is, shock-horror, awhite wine, and it comes from the little-known Colli Tortonesi region of Piemonte. Situated some 50 miles to the east of Alba, the wines from the hills to the east of the town of Tortona are starting to register on curious, wine-geek palates. Best-known for producing workmanlike versions of the red grape barbera, it is the super-rare, indigenous white grape timorasso that has shone a spotlight on this region. Ialways seek out examples of timorasso when I tour Piemonte, but…

A group of 30 people whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by gambling addiction are asking the government to tighten regulations around the industry. Having lost a total of £12m between them, members of Gambling with Lives’ top priorities include introducing a maximum stake limit for online slot machine games; affordability checks; and the barring of gambling on credit cards, says Gabriel Pogrund in The Times. Those participating in the campaign stress not only the money lost, but the personal costs of their addiction. “My mind was on gambling 24/7... I lost two marriages, lost many properties, and declared bankruptcy,” says 45-year-old Hussain Vorajee. Despite claims that considerable restrictions might drive gamblig ddicts to more risky “black-market venues, the campaigners insist that the resulting harm from the current system is…

Investors are pencilling in higher inflation. US inflation expectations, as measured by the ten-year breakeven rate (the gap between the yield on the ten-year Treasury bond and the rate on its inflation-linked counterpart) recently went above 2% for the first time since 2018, says John Detrixhe for Quartz. That’s “not exactly Argentina-style hyperinflation”, but it marks a big increase since last March, when the breakeven rate slumped to 0.5%. An inflationary spring Renewed lockdowns mean that inflation remains subdued for the time being. The annual rate of consumer price inflation in the UK (CPI) is just 0.6%. In America consumer prices rose by 1.4% last month on a year before. Nevertheless, concern about inflation is now apparent everywhere, from the bond market to business surveys, says Neil Irwin in The…

“The foundations of our economy and markets grow increasingly fragile as policymakers treat the symptoms but not the underlying disease eating away at... the global economy. The symptoms are low productivity, massive overcapacity, massive speculation, and widening wealth inequality, and the disease is runaway debt caused by misguided fiscal (including tax, especially tax) and monetary policies promulgated by intellectually and morally corrupt ruling classes. Waiting for this regime to change is not a promising investment strategy, but riding it to the end is even more dangerous. Investors need to... focus on capital preservation rather than chasing returns that are not generated by economic growth but instead by central-bank money printing and momentum-driven market structures. And... they need to own gold... to save themselves.“…

The pandemic has “put a premium on living space”, says Andrew Bary in Barron’s. Rising demand for roomy, “more expensive” single-family housing bodes well for Toll Brothers, America’s biggest luxury-home builder. Home buyers signed 3,407 contracts in the three months to November, an increase of 68% on a year earlier. Toll has also “broadened its portfolio beyond the top coastal markets” to more affordable homes elsewhere, allowing it to cash in on the ongoing shift from high-cost California and New York to the likes of Austin and Denver. A demand overhang in the overall housing market and a reasonable valuation of under ten times 2021 earnings are further plus points.…

Chinese electric-vehicle (EV) company Nio, listed in New York, has become “one of the most popularly traded stocks in Britain” because many see it as “the next Tesla” says The Times. The stock has risen 28-fold from $2.11 in March to about $60 today. Nio’s market value eclipses that of both General Motors and Ford. Nio is also endorsed by many “admired and successful technology investors” who argue that it is “probably the clear leader” among Chinese electric-car companies. Nio’s surge marks a sharp change in fortune from last year, when it “appeared to be teetering on the edge of insolvency”, says Alison Tudor-Ackroyd in the South China Morning Post. Not only had Covid-19 “crimped” sales, but the company was also reeling from the Chinese government’s cuts in subsidies as…

“The post-Merkel era has begun,” says the Financial Times. On Saturday, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) elected as its new leader Armin Laschet, a close ally of Angela Merkel who is “committed to the outgoing chancellor’s centrist brand of politics”. The party “gambled on continuity rather than a shift to the right under closest rival Friedrich Merz”. The CDU is “riding high in the polls” ahead of federal elections on 26 September, but it is about to lose Merkel, its “greatest asset”. The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, will decide who will run as their joint candidate in March. With many doubting Laschet’s ability to lead a national campaign, he will “need to assert himself quickly”. Alongside uniting the party and maintaining the CDU’s ratings,…

In a few months’ time, much of Britain is set to go to the polls. Council elections are due in large parts of the country and there will be amayoral contest in London, Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and West Yorkshire, as well as elections for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. The ongoing Covid-19 restrictions may shift the current date of 6 May, but the vaccine rollout means they are still likely to take place sometime this year. One of the most interesting contests isin West Yorkshire, which is electing a regional mayor for the first time. The new mayor will have powers over transport, skills, the economy, housing and regeneration. Ladbrokes has Labour candidate Tracy Brabin (pictured) as the favourite to win the election at 1/5 (83.3%), with…

Having elected to sacrifice some of their pay during the pandemic, some chief executives were handed performance shares during the trough in the stock-market, says Simon Duke in The Times. Yet thanks to ultra-loose monetary policy, the FTSE 100 has jumped 35% from its low point and CEOs now stand to make more from their bonuses more than they forewent in salary. “That looks tin-eared when the fate of the economy is so precarious.” Prudential handed its boss, Mike Wells, two share awards worth a potential £5.5m in April and May. ITV’s Carolyn McCall received about £2.5m in April and newspaper group Reach paid its boss, Jim Mullen, bonus shares in March, which have since doubled in value to £1.5m. These awards won’t vest before 2023, and targets must be…

Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance, Wharton Bondholders beware – inflation is coming, writes Jeremy Siegel in the Financial Times. Early last year, inflation seemed the last thing to worry about as the pandemic struck and oil prices fell below zero, says Siegel, best known for his 1994 book Stocks for the Long Run (in which he makes the case that long-term investors should buy and hold shares, rather than try to time the market). However, “those who study data on monetary conditions knew that the unprecedented build-up in liquidity would see the economy boom and prices rise as soon as vaccines” promised an end to Covid-19. After the 2008 crisis, central banks printed money but it flowed into asset prices rather than consumer prices. Today, the new money is not…

promarket.org Donald Trump portrays himself as an “anti-politician”, an entrepreneur who could cut through bureaucracy and get things done. Plenty questioned Trump’s entrepreneurial credentials, says Natasha Piano. Whether such credentials are in fact appropriate for political leadership was not asked. Economist Joseph Schumpeter is remembered for “glorifying the entrepreneur’s role in creative destruction and innovation”. We have forgotten that he also warned against “exalting entrepreneurs as the redeemers of inefficient political systems”. That could, he said, have “dire consequences for the health of the polity”. For an entrepreneur, a single-minded pursuit of profit-maximising initiatives is an attribute. For a political leader, “such narrow focus on delivering his own policy proposals can ultimately undermine faith” in the nation’s institutions. The incentives and behaviours that motivate entrepreneurs are “usually incompatible with those…

“The central principle of investment,” said John Maynard Keynes, a highly successful fund manager as well as an economist, “is to go contrary to the general opinion, on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merit, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive.” In October, the contrarian trade was to switch out of the technology stocks that had outperformed in the pandemic and buy lockdown-hit value stocks. The announcement of vaccines in November duly led to a dramatic rebound in value stocks as an end to restrictions was factored in. The consensus view has now turned in favour of value over growth and against the tech-heavy US market. Another good year? Advocates of such a strategy are urging investors to take profits in Scottish Mortgage Trust (LSE:…

As the deadline for tax returns approaches, families should check whether they owe HMRC child benefit. In 2013 the High Income Child Benefit Charge was introduced. If you receive child benefit and you, or your partner, earns more than £50,000 a year, you have to repay some or all of the money. The taxpayer must “submit a tax return and notify HMRC they are liable for the charge,” says Harry Brennan in The Daily Telegraph. “Families face fines for failing to declare, even if they have never done their own taxes before.” “The £50,000 threshold has not changed since 2013, so more families are liable” The High Income Child Benefit Charge is calculated on a sliding scale and equates to 1% of the child benefit for every £100 you earn…

The world is at a tipping point. US president Joe Biden’s bold environmental plan is reinvigorating international efforts to fight climate change, while major economies from Europe to China have pledged to invest trillions of dollars to achieve their ambitious net-zero carbon goals. Renewed policy momentum comes at a crucial time for the clean-energy industry. Thanks to advances in technology, many renewable energy sectors are now beginning to achieve economies of scale unthinkable just a few years ago and have consequently become cost-competitive with fossil fuels. All of this heralds a dynamic new era for the global clean-energy industry. Billions of dollars of new private and public investment should flow into green infrastructure and energy technologies over the next few years, turbocharging the sector and creating an attractive and diverse…

“Athleisure is the modern equivalent of the upper classes’ status-signifying tweed. And JD Sports has the royal warrant” When two youthful entrepreneurs, John Wardle and David Makin, opened their first sports shop in the Pennine village of Mossley in 1981, they aimed to sell what they wore on the terraces of Manchester City’s old Maine Road ground. John David Sports, as it was then known, “was never a typical sports shop”, the company’s longstanding PR man told the Financial Times. “It was terrace wear: Sergio Tacchini, Lacoste, Fred Perry.” And therein lay the seeds of the “athleisure” movement that has since swept through retail. Another early JD Sports associate was Peter Cowgill, a then 30-something accountant whose firm, Cowgill Holloway, was hired to do the books. Cowgill, now 67, is…

• Enid Blyton fans will tell you that a picnic involves “a full-on wicker hamper with china plates, real cutlery, lashings of ginger beer, a dog called Timmy and a tartan blanket”, says Jane Moore in The Sun. Not so Derbyshire police. Upon spotting Jessica Allen and Eliza Moore with a takeaway cuppa, they “gave them both an on-the-spot fine of £200 for driving – separately, I might add – five miles to a beauty spot for ‘a picnic’”. Still, the overreaction is understandable given the mixed messages coming out of Whitehall. While the “essential travel only” edict isbeing adhered to by the majority of us, the flight path in to Heathrow is still going strong and we’re being, ahem, treated to dozens of photos of celebrities and influencers, such…

$583bn The value of Russia’s international reserves. For the first time, gold made up a bigger percentage of that amount (23%) than US dollars (22%) as of the end of June 2020. In 2018, dollars accounted for 40%. President Putin is seeking to “de-dollarise” the economy and lower its vulnerability to sanctions, says Bloomberg. €60m How much France could lose every year post-Brexit from being unable to fine British motorists for driving offences caught on camera. Britons received fines 444,000 times last year. Belgians got 295,899, Spaniards 262,012 and Germans 249,291. C$1,546 How much (£893) each partner of a married couple were fined in Quebec province, Canada, for breaking Covid-19 curfew rules. The wife, who had her husband on a leash, told police she was just out “walking her dog”.…

Oxford University received a £100m donation this week to create an institute to “combat ‘the silent pandemic’ of antibiotic resistance”, says Tom Whipple in The Times. The donation by chemicals giant Ineos is one of the largest ever to a British university and will fund scientists’ work for the next five years. Around 1.5 million people a year die from antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Multiverse, an education start-up co-founded by former prime minister Tony Blair’s eldest son, Euan Blair (pictured), has raised $44m from investors, including General Catalyst and GV (formerly Google Ventures) in its latest funding round, says Jonathan Moules in the Financial Times. The fundraising values the group at around $200m. Blair, 37, is also chief executive and owns a 47% stake.…

While the MSCI World index, which tracks shares in 23 developed countries, regained its 2007 high in 2014, the MSCI Emerging Markets index has only just eclipsed its pre-crisis high. Currency crises in Argentina and Turkey, along with the collapse of the oil price in 2014 – undermining a central emerging market export –are key reasons why the index has been so slow to return to its peak. However, the combined GDP of the 25 countries in the index has more than doubled since 2007, rising from $14.4trn to $29.7trn, says The Economist. Much of this growth was already in the price then, but this statistic is also a reminder that “the incumbent companies in an index do not always share in an economy’s success.”…

Shares in Affirm, alender to consumers led by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, doubled at their initial public offering (IPO) last Wednesday “in a sign of... continued exuberance for new US listings”, say Miles Kruppa and David Carnevali in the Financial Times. Shares rose to $97.24 by the end of the day, a 98% increase from their initial price, giving the company a market value of $23.6bn. Affirm offers a “buy now, pay later” zero-interest product that allows online shoppers to spread out payments. It makes most of its revenue from the fees it charges merchants: sales through Peloton, the fitness company behind pricy stationary bikes, comprised 28% of sales in the year to June.…

Thanks to the lockdown, only a quarter of shopping centre Hammerson’s tenants are allowed to remain open, says Joanna Bourke in the Evening Standard. Shops in its sites in France are subject to a 6pm curfew. It has therefore been forced to agree “rent holidays, deferrals and ... monthly payments for some firms across its estate”. Hammerson collected“just 41%” of the rent it was due to receive for the first quarter of 2021, though this is an improvement on what it received when the first lockdown was imposed. Even before the crisis, Hammerson was under “sustained pressure”, with retailers struggling to contend with “online competition, high business rates and rising wage costs”, says Louisa Clarence-Smith in The Times. Since March retailers have paid only about 50% of the rent owed…

Anyone who invests in the FTSE 100 will have to get used to some new names over the coming year. The world’s dullest major index is about to get a tech makeover, with a series of floats of high-tech, internet-based companies. The takeaway app Deliveroo, which has kept plenty of people going through lockdown, has just completed a round of fundraising that valued it at $7bn, ahead of an expected listing sometime in the spring. Checkout, the payments-processing start-up that is one of the most impressive tech firms in the UK, hit a $15bn valuation on its latest fundraising and is likely to look to list its shares soon. Revolut, the fast-growing finance app, is now valued at $20bn. If it lists its shares Monzo probably won’t be far behind…

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital is a highly successful distressed-debt investor, whose regular memos on markets and investing are widely regarded as “must-reads”. His latest piece addresses the “value” versus “growth” debate. He raises some good points on the debate, worth highlighting here – but there’s another interesting point about his letter, which I’ll get to later. “It’s much harder to find obvious bargains in today’s markets” As Marks notes, value investing has its roots in an era when information on companies was much harder to come by and investment management was “a cottage industry” rather than the massive business it is today. As a result, in the early days it was easier to hunt down companies that were obviously cheap – trading for less than their book value (see…

Why Europe is losing the big tech race Editorial The Economist Pre-launch hype surrounding the videogame Cyberpunk 2077 turned its Warsaw-based creator, CD Projekt, into the country’s most valuable listed company, says The Economist. However, since it was launched while still “littered with bugs”, victory “soon turned into a farce” and its share price “halved as complaints and refund demands poured in”. This “peculiar cocktail” of success and failure serves as an “allegory for Europe’s videogame industry”. European game-designers often come up with bestselling games, yet these firms are “dwarfed by American and Chinese rivals”. Any potential threat – eg, Minecraft maker Mojang – is “swiftly gobbled up”. Just as Europe failed to produce its own Facebook or Amazon, “so too has it failed to control the platforms that dominate…

jamestown.org China’s current Five Year Plan sets out a route to decarbonisation and energy independence, with “ambitious goals” to become carbon-neutral by 2060. The plan has collided with reality, says Elizabeth Chen. Amid the coldest winter since 1966, provinces across the country have struggled with the worst electrical blackouts in nearly adecade. Many have imposed limits on peak usage. Coal production stoppages and reduced imports have combined with higher than usual industrial production and winter demand to cause the electricity shortages and sent prices “skyrocketing”. As a result, coal power plants, put into reserve in 2017, have been brought back into use. Users were supposed to be transferring from coal to gas under the Five Year Plan, but gas storage facilities have failed to keep up with demand. All this…

US video-game retailer GameStop has reached a deal with activist investor RC Ventures, says Connor Smith on Barron’s. RC’s manager Ryan Cohen, who also co-founded online pet-supplies retailer Chewy, will join the retailer’s board, along with two other Chewy executives. The news eclipsed the firm’s lacklustre holiday-sales figures, with the stock gaining 10%. Cohen, who holds a 13.8% stake in GameStop, increased his holding in December. He urged GameStop to adopt the “world-class infrastructure” of Chewy, which was “worth multiples of GameStop’s current market capitalisation”. The deal is “good news for the retailer”, with the “Chewy alumni bringing a depth of knowledge that could help the company transform the enterprise to a digital-first name”.…

New regulations on incomedrawdown plans should make it easier for savers to make sensible decisions on retirement. The rules, which come into effect on 1 February, are primarily aimed at savers who don’t take financial advice before opting for a drawdown scheme, even though the schemes require some challenging investment decisions. Income drawdown plans have become the automatic choice for many savers as they reach retirement and need to begin taking an income from their pension fund. But unlike annuities, which were once the most common way to convert savings into income, they don’t pay a guaranteed income for life. Savers must manage their pension funds to keep generating the income they require while ensuring there is enough cash to last them through their retirement. Regulators have long been concerned…

Boku (Aim: BOKU) is a mobile-payments platform enabling users to pay for goods and services using their mobile-phone number. The company benefited greatly from people being confined to their homes last year as its software is used to pay for video games, music and “hundreds of apps” via mobile-phone bills, says Joanne Hart in The Mail on Sunday. The recent announcement that its 2020 results would be better than expected has prompted brokers to predict a doubling in annual profit to $9m. The stock has gained 107% in the past 12 months.…

Elizabeth Bigley was born in Ontario, Canada in 1857. In 1879 she was arrested for forgery for passing off worthless cheques to merchants, but was acquitted on grounds of her age and insanity. She later worked in Cleveland, Ohio as a psychic, calling herself Madame Lydia DeVere. In 1889 she was again arrested and this time convicted of forgery and spent several years in prison before being pardoned by the then governor of Ohio (later President) William McKinley in 1893. By 1897 she was back in Cleveland, living under an assumed name, with her new husband Dr Leroy Chadwick. He married her believing her to be the illegitimate daughter of wealthy industrialist Andrew Carnegie. What was the scam? The now Mrs Chadwick claimed that Carnegie felt so guilty about not…

Foretelling the End of Capitalism Intellectual Misadventures Since Karl Marx Francesco Boldizzoni Harvard University Press, £28.95 “It’s been a rough decade for capitalism,” says Alyssa Battistoni in the Boston Review. Free markets have been subject to renewed and hostile scrutiny “by everyone from Bernie Sanders to the Financial Times” for more than a decade; aglobal pandemic has “put new strain on a system that has barely recovered from the last crisis”. But as Francesco Boldizzoni makes clear in his new book, those who foretell capitalism’s demise have a long record of being proved wrong. His book looks at those intellectuals and economists over the last two centuries “who have predicted capitalism’s downfall”. The book is a “sprawling, informative, thought-provoking and opinionated history of ideas”, says Andrew Stuttaford in The Wall…

President-elect Joe Biden has laid out his plans for a $1.9trn Covid-19 relief package, including $1,400 stimulus cheques sent to struggling Americans. The amazing thing about it is that it already surpasses the actual damage caused in the US by the coronavirus lockdowns – byas much as ten times. “The amazing thing is that the stimulus surpasses the costs of lockdowns” The loss of GDP caused by the shutdowns and associated recession is said to be about 3%, or less than $600bn. The stimulus used by the feds to offset the losses, however, has already totalled some $2trn for the Cares Act and about $3trn in additional Federal Reserve money-printing. (There is considerable overlap in those numbers and it’s hard to pin down the exact cost. National Economic Council director…