Innehållsförteckning för 1076 från MoneyWeek

A man has been fined £90 by Bath and North-East Somerset Council, after a CCTV camera mistakenly identified a woman’s T-shirt design for his customised number plate, says The Daily Mail. David Knight lives in Surrey, and was charged with driving down a bus lane due to the error. Fortunately, the penalty has since been waived. A £295,000 bottle of wine has been stolen from a hotel complex in south-west Spain this week, says The Guardian. The 1806 Château d’Yquem, hailing from the exclusive Romanée-Conti winemaker in Burgundy, France, was among 45 bottles stolen by an unidentified English-speaking couple staying at the hotel. Described as “professionals”, they are assumed to be working for a private collector, as the bottle could not easily be sold.…

Hong Kong thinks of itself as the world’s “commercial gateway to China and the rest of Asia”, says Helen Davidson in The Guardian. But tough border restrictions, including “harsh mandatory quarantine” periods of up to 21 days, even for vaccinated visitors, are putting that reputation at risk. While other business centres learn to live with Covid-19, Hong Kong is prioritising reopening its border with mainland China. That means the territory is following Beijing’s “zero Covid-19 approach” to pandemic control. The Asia Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a financial lobby group, has warned that “Hong Kong’s status as an international financial centre is increasingly at risk along with its long-term economic recovery and competitiveness”. Long quarantine periods make it hard to do business and reduce the city’s appeal to top…

European gas prices soared to record levels last month as the recovery collided with global energy shortages. Dutch TTF gas futures, a benchmark for European wholesale prices, rose above €100 per megawatt hour for the first time. But prices dropped sharply over the last week after Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered Gazprom officials to send more supplies to Europe. With Russian storage facilities almost full, the firm will start to fill storage units in Austria and Germany soon. More than 40% of the EU’s gas comes from Russia; Norway and Algeria provide much of the rest. The UK gets less than 5% of its gas from Russia, but a lack of domestic storage makes British prices sensitive to the European wholesale market.…

Biotechnology company LianBio has raised $325m in its initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq, selling 20.3 million shares for $16, says Filipe Pacheco on Bloomberg. The IPO price values the company at $1.68bn. The company provides medicines to Chinese and Asian markets. This is a rare event: US IPOs by Chinese companies have “nearly vanished” since July after Beijing announced a cybersecurity probe of mobile-tech company DiDi Global shortly after it listed in New York. Forty-six companies based in China and Hong Kong raised more than $15bn in the first half of the year in the US, but since then there have been only five listings, raising a total of $329m.…

Barclays’ CEO Jes Staley has resigned after being told of the preliminary conclusions of an investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) into his links with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, says Kalyeena Makortoff in the Guardian. It seems regulators were unhappy with “how Staley had characterised his relationship with Epstein to Barclays”. It was “a mistake to let Staley stay”, says Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. After all, this wasn’t the first time that Staley had fallen foul of regulators. His attempt to unmask a whistleblower in 2016 led to a £642,000 fine from the FCA and the PRA, who said that he “failed to act with due skill, care and diligence”. Not only did the board overlook this “poor judgement”, but it…

US president Joe Biden suffered a “bitter political blow” this week as Democrats went down in a “shock defeat” in the election for governor of Virginia, a state which Biden won comfortably in 2020, says David Smith in The Guardian. Both Biden and Barack Obama had been in the state campaigning for former governor Terry McAuliffe, but the Republican Glenn Youngkin pulled off an upset victory, winning in “key counties that Biden swept in 2020”. The contest in Virginia has been seen as a “litmus test” of Biden’s presidency and coincides with his agenda “stalling” in Congress. His approval rating has sunk to 42%. Former president Donald Trump claimed his endorsement of Youngkin had provided a “huge boost” to his campaign, says William Saletan on Slate. Yet the polls suggest…

The bosses of Britain’s privatised water companies have been paid more than £65m in the past five years, reports The Times. Highest paid is Severn Trent Water’s Liv Garfield, who has been given more than £17.3m since 2014. Last year she was paid £2.8m, which includes a basic salary of £735,000 and £1.9m in “bonuses and incentives”. Second-highest paid is Steve Mogford of United Utilities. He was paid £2.94m last year and £12.3m since 2017. Thames Water’s chief executive, Sarah Bentley, was paid £1.23m this year, and its chief financial officer £1.21m. The company was fined £4m in May for allowing untreated sewage to flow into a park and river in Surbiton. Between them, Britain’s water companies were found to have discharged raw sewage into water courses more than 400,000…

James Glassman has worked as a columnist for The Washington Post and as an adviser to president George W. Bush. But he is almost certainly best known for a book on investing that he co-wrote with economist Kevin Hassett. Dow 36,000 was published in 1999, when the Dow Jones index was sitting around the 10,000 level. This week, the Dow hit 36,000 – a mere 17 years after the pair had expected it to. “The title was easy to caricature,” Glassman tells Bloomberg’s Michael P Regan. But he doesn’t regret the name of the book. “What I do regret is intimating that Dow 36,000 was going to happen... within a few years.” As one economist told him, “never associate a date with a number”. That said, as Regan points out,…

■ Financial-advisory and asset-management firm Lazard is in advanced talks to acquire $30bn hedge fund-firm Brigade Capital Management, say Sridhar Natarajan and Katherine Doherty on Bloomberg. The move comes asasset managers explore ways to boost profitability amid fierce competition from the passive-investment sector, which has attracted a large number of clients throughout the pandemic. The deal would enhance Lazard’s asset-management unit and help it expand. In the last week two other mutual funds have reached their own deals: T. Rowe Price unveiled a $4.2bn deal to buy Oak Hill Advisors, “embracing a credit-focused firm in a rare acquisition beyond its core mutual fund business”. Last Monday Franklin Resources said it was buying private-equity fund manager Lexington Partners for $1.75bn. Brigade has previously led negotiations for control of companies “on the…

For all the fanfare about cheaper draught beer and sparkling wine, few will be raising a toast to last week’s Budget. Tax hikes and personal-allowance freezes will leave the average household £3,000 a year worse off next year than they were at the time of the last general election, according to calculations by Hargreaves Lansdown. The already-announced health and social care levy, a 1.25% hike in national insurance that takes effect next April, plus an associated dividend-tax hike, will net the Treasury £13bn a year. More insidious are frozen personal allowances. In April, the chancellor froze the basic-rate tax band at £12,570 and the higher-rate band at £50,270 until 2026. At a time of high inflation and strong wage growth, many earners will be sucked into higher bands over the…

• Savers moving their money out of defined-benefit pension schemes are now paying higher charges for their new arrangements than ever before, new data from XPS Pensions reveals. The analyst says that the typical saver moving their money from a final-salary scheme to a different pension – a shift that regulators advise against in the vast majority of circumstances – is now paying the equivalent of 1.9% a year in charges on their new scheme. The cumulative effect of this charge could be that savers run out of money in their new schemes – where pensions are not guaranteed – ten years earlier. • Savers nearing retirement and planning to convert their pension funds into income by buying an annuity could be worse off following last week’s Budget. The chancellor’s…

Over the past fortnight three of my six active long tips have risen, with the rest falling. Media group ITV went up from 104p to 106p, homebuilder DR Horton increased from $85.35 to $90.22, and mobile-phone company Airtel Africa advanced from 98p to 110p. However, construction firm Morgan Sindall fell from 2,355p to 2,267p, spread betting specialist Plus500 declined from 1,436p to 1,256p and wealth manager Rathbone Brothers went down from 2,000p to 1,987p. Overall, the gains outweigh the falls. My active tips are making a net profit of £2,730, up from £2,487 a fortnight ago. Sadly, three out of four of my short tips went against me. Electric-car company Plug Power increased from $32.59 to $41.65, which means that you would have covered your position at $40. Tesla has…

The stock of THG (LSE: THG), formerly known as The Hut Group, has slid further following a corporate shake-up meant to restore investors’ confidence by recruiting a non-executive chair to “improve transparency”, says the Financial Times. The e-commerce company has come under “sustained pressure” over the last few months amid concern over its opacity and governance. Sales in the three months to September increased by 38% year-on-year, but analysts were quick to note that currency movements were hurting margins. Shares in the company have lost 67% over the last 12 months.…

• It’s back to the 1950s with cosmetics mogul Charlotte Tilbury (pictured), who says she never let either of her two husbands see her without her slap, says Jan Moir in the Daily Mail. Tilbury even wears her make-up to bed, putting on what she calls her “bedroom eye”. Oh, Charlotte. “That is almost as tragic as the price of your products. Let’s be honest. For many women, ‘keeping the magic alive’ in their marriage means making their husbands disappear in a puff of smoke.” Nobody has the time to be painting on a bedroom eye, whatever that is, at the end of the day. Then again, you have to admire the folksy intensity of her relentless product-pushing. “ Buy my make-up, you lazy slatterns! Charlotte would sell Nudegasm Face…

Charlie Munger (pictured), billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has donated $200m to University of California, Santa Barbara, to be spent exclusively on dormitories that he has designed, says The New York Post. Munger’s 11-storey, 1.68-million-square-foot construction could hold an impressive 4,500 students, but only 6% of them would have windows in their rooms. Named “Munger Hall”, the eccentric architectural experiment would become the eighth-densest neighbourhood on the planet, falling “just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh”. The efficiency of the project is unquestionable, characterised by Munger himself as “our version of ship architecture on land”, but risks significant damage to student wellbeing from a lack of exposure to sunlight. Consulting architect Dennis McFadden has condemned these plans, calling them a “social and psychological experiment with an unknown impact” and recently quit…

“Nothing gets in the way of the equity bulls,” says Ipek Ozkardeskaya of Swiss banking group Swissquote. Despite shortages of semiconductors and workers, the energy crisis and ongoing pandemic-induced dislocations, stocks are at record highs. Strong earnings America’s S&P 500 index produced its best weekly performance in almost three months last week. The momentum continued into this week. On Monday all three big US indices – the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the tech-focused Nasdaq – closed at record levels, say Caitlin Ostroff and Alexander Osipovich in The Wall Street Journal. On the other side of the Atlantic, the pan-European Stoxx Europe 600 also hit an all-time peak; France’s CAC 40 posted its first record close in 21 years. Fears that global supply-chain problems would erode earnings…

“During the... pandemic... public companies slashed or cancelled payouts to shareholders... In our anti-business media, it was much said that dividends, akin to City bonuses, were inherently immoral anyway... [now] payments by UK companies are returning to normal... dividends surged to £35bn in the third quarter — led by miners, oil giants, housebuilders and banks, and almost double the figure for last year’s third quarter... Capitalism’s detractors will accuse boardrooms of heaping riches on the rentier class... Ibeg to differ... Earth currently needs private-sector investment on a huge scale... to decarbonise the energy, transport, construction and food industries while sourcing rarer minerals needed to drive cleaner technologies. That capital will be raised only if it offers appropriate returns... Why should any investor take risks… without reasonable reward?” Martin Vander Weyer,…

Five to buy Speedy Hire The Sunday Times Speedy Hire has expanded under CEO Russell Down. In addition to supplying heavy equipment and aerial platforms to big construction companies, it has begun providing DIY tools that are now stocked at 20 B&Q stores. That number is set to double in the next few months. Speedy Hire has been promoting its green credentials, switching its vehicles to electric or hydrotreated vegetable oil-powered engines. Sales in August were up by 4% from the same month in 2019; in the 12 months to the end of March the group reported £363.6m in sales and a pre-tax profit of £12.3m. Nonetheless, the shares look undervalued. 64p Softcat Investors’ Chronicle IT company Softcat provides software, hardware and IT services. It has benefited from the switch…

• Coca-Cola has decided to exercise options to acquire the 85% of BodyArmor sports drinks it doesn’t already own, says Amanda Gomez on Breakingviews. The price, “somewhere north of five times revenue”, doesn’t look “excessive” given the drink’s fast growth, with BodyArmor’s top line “growing around 50%” a year. At the very least Coca-Cola will get some “extra muscle” in the fight against rival PepsiCo. Taking over the second-largest firm in the sports-drink market will raise Coke’s share of the subsector from 14% to 31%; Pepsi controls 66% of it. • Soaring oil and gas prices produced a sharp bounce in profits at BP in the third quarter, prompting the energy giant to buy back another $1.25bn of shares, says Emily Gosden in The Times. Brent crude averaged $73.51 a…

The recent round of election results in the US (see below right) vindicates my tip on Michelle Wu to become the mayor of Boston. It also vindicates my advice not to bet on either the Virginia or New Jersey (which remains too close to call) gubernatorial contests. The big winner, though, is Donald Trump (pictured). With £578,000 matched on Betfair, he is now the favourite to be next elected president at 4.2 (23.8%), ahead of both the incumbent Joe Biden at 6.6 (15.2%) and Kamala Harris at 8.6 (11.6%). As both his victory in 2016 and four years later the loss that was closer than expected show, it’s risky to bet against Trump. But I still wouldn’t want to bet on him. Firstly, he still has to face multiple criminal…

It’s like fighting a war, argued economist Paul Krugman – no point worrying about the cost. It’ll create a “stronger industrial base”, said economist Mariana Mazzucato. It’ll “speed the recovery”, said Janet Yellen, another economist, now Treasury secretary. When President Biden unveiled his huge $1.9trn stimulus programme at the start of the year, it had no shortage of cheerleaders from the economics establishment. And yet, only a few months later, the plan is starting to come apart. Throwing caution to the winds Biden’s plan to shrug off the centrist caution of previous Democratic presidents and transform the US economy was supposed to rival Roosevelt’s New Deal in ambition. Infrastructure would be rebuilt, climate change dealt with, new industries created, poverty defeated. Money would not be any object. Higher taxes on…

There’s a famous Mark Twain quote in which the great American wit gives the following investment advice. “October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.” Yet historical data – as often highlighted by excitable market commentators – can seem to imply that certain months are in fact more dangerous, or more profitable, than others. A look at returns on the Dow Jones index going back to its creation in May 1896 shows that the average monthly return each July is more than 1.5%. By contrast, looking back across those 125 years, the worst month by far is September, with an average monthly loss of just over 1%. So is the…

When Peter Spiller took over the management of the Capital Gearing Trust (LSE: CGT) in 1982, it had assets of just £500,000. Now, 39 years on, the fund is valued at £864m and its shares have multiplied 237 times in value, equivalent to a compound annual return of 15%. Under Spiller, the trust has only had one down year, 2013, when it lost 2%. This performance far exceeds that of all stockmarket indices, both in terms of performance and volatility. Returns have been more pedestrian in recent years. A five-year return of 41% reflects a compound annual return of 7.1%, a little ahead of the FTSE All-Share index, but well behind global markets. This has not prevented the shares from trading at a persistent premium to net asset value (NAV),…

Rishi Sunak is fighting the last war Philip Pilkington Unherd German policymakers, scarred and fixated by the hyperinflation of the 1920s, sharply reduced government spending in the early 1930s when economic turbulence hit, leading their country into a “punishing depression”, says Philip Pilkington. Like the Weimar Germans, chancellor Rishi Sunak is today “fighting the last war”. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, higher government spending has been a key policy tool, which makes sense when unemployment is high and inflation is low. But today, we have the opposite problem. The labour market is extremely tight and businesses are grappling with supply disruptions; both phenomena are the result of Covid-19-induced “onerous lockdowns and vaccine-related regulations”. Inflation is already ticking up. Hiking spending and increasing taxes (which business will just pass on…

The Dish of the Day at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, as fans of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know, was a prime cut from the Ameglian Major cow, an artificially created, speaking bovine quadruped, which was bred to actually want to be eaten. The beast unconcernedly offers diners its shoulder braised in white wine sauce. When the animal goes off to shoot itself, it winks at the more squeamish customers, telling them not to worry as “I’ll be very humane”. Advances in modern technology have got us used to life imitating art. So you will probably not be surprised to hear that today Ameglian Major steaks – or at least, cuts of meat that have involved no cruelty to the animal or harm…

Should you invest your pension savings in infrastructure assets – the energy, transport and digital networks the UK needs to fund its future? The government is keen for savers to do so; last week’s Budget raised the possibility of increasing the legally binding cap on the charges made by occupational-pension funds, to allow for the launch of infrastructure investments, which can be more expensive. Of course, just because the state sees savers as a handy source of infrastructure finance doesn’t mean you should sign up. But there are some good reasons to consider investing pension-fund money in infrastructure, whether via your employer’s scheme when this becomes possible, or though an individual pension arrangement. This is an asset class that offers a reliable stream of income over an extended period, often…

One of the key trends over the past year has been the sharp increase in private-equity firms bidding for listed British companies in order to take advantage of the relatively cheap valuations in London’s stockmarket. One sector that has seen a frenzy of activity has been supermarkets. Wm Morrison shareholders were recently bought out by private-equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) following a bidding war with private-equity rival Fortress. The fight proved highly lucrative for WM Morrison’s shareholders. The final acquisition price represented a61% premium to the stock’s level before the first bid was announced in June. However, while the battle between Fortress and CD&R for control of WM Morrison may be over, the speculation about which supermarket could be next has only just begun, especially since Fortress has…

Media coverage of space often focuses on billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson and their private space companies. But the number of publicly-traded space-industry stocks is growing quickly. Some companies have been in the market for decades, and anew wave of companies is going public this year, mostly through special purpose acquisition company (Spac) transactions. Space is an inescapable part of life, whether you check the weather forecast or watch a film using satellite television. The underlying index for the Procure Space UCITS ETF in Europe (LSE: YODA) and the US (Nasdaq: UFO) reflects the diversity of the space industry. These stocks, all in the YODA ETF, showcase the way we will communicate, navigate, and travel in future. Extraterrestrial internet connectivity Globalstar’s (NYSE: GSAT) shares jumped…

£470 in bond for six bottles, rennaisancevintners.com ; £380 in bond for six bottles, Wimbledon Wine Cellar 020-8540 9979 The topic of top-end Californian pinot noir might seem a little esoteric, but I cannot get through this week without flagging up this wine for you because I know that there are super-nerd fans out there, and they will go gaga for this wine. The 2018 The Pivot is the finest American pinot noir I have ever tasted. Made by Ted and Heidi Lemon from a 2.8-acre biodynamic vineyard, this is the most beautifully thought through, carefully judged, respectfully oaked and finely tuned red wine, and it manages to add a whisper of whole-bunch detail (37%), too – Ted and Heidi adding ravishing “seasoning” to their pristine fruit with consummate accuracy. I…

Two remarkable stories have been taking shape – indicating a further separation of the ridiculous from the sublime. Like castaways on icebergs, drifting farther and farther apart, doomed, damned, dismally dipping into the dark, dank deep… Evergrande and shiba inu might have waved to each other as each waited to sink. “You buy a coin. Others buy one.They go up. But why buy in the first place?” Evergrande’s feet are already wet. It is a real company. It operates in the real world and provides a real product – real estate. But the firm borrowed money at an unreal rate – made artificially low by the flood of US dollar credit washing over the globe. It used the money to buy real things – cement, steel and labour. And it…

€471m The starting bid for the 16th-century Villa Aurora in Rome when it goes up at auction in January. A ceiling painted by Renaissance master Caravaggio in 1597, valued at €310m, is largely responsible for the lofty valuation of the former hunting lodge. £2m How much the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority is to receive from the government to develop a business case for a new Beatles attraction on the city’s waterfront. It will provide “an immersive experience”, says mayor Steve Rotheram. $744,993 How much a page from an astronaut’s manual – upon which were scribbled by astronaut Gene Cernan the last words spoken on the moon – fetched at RR Auction in the US. Cernan read out his short speech while standing on the lunar surface on 14 December…

Editor-in-chief: Merryn Somerset Webb Executive editor:John Stepek Editor:Andrew Van Sickle Markets editor:Alexander Rankine Comment editor:Stuart Watkins Politics editor:Emily Hohler Digital editor:Ben Judge Webwriter:Saloni Sardana Wealth editor:Chris Carter Senior writer:Matthew Partridge Writer&editor: Nicole García Mérida Contributors:Bill Bonner, Ruth Jackson-Kirby, Max King, Jane Lewis, Matthew Lynn, David Prosser, David Stevenson, Simon Wilson Art director: Kevin Cook-Fielding Picture editor: Natasha Langan Chief sub-editor: Joanna Gibbs Founder: Jolyon Connell Account director: Joe Teal (020-3890 3933) Group advertising director: Caroline Fenner (020-3890 3841) Chief customer officer: Abi Spooner Publisher: Kerin O’Connor Chief executive officer: James Tye…

Pop singer Adele sold out 130,000 tickets for a gig at Hyde Park’s British Summer Time Festival in under five minutes last week, says The Sunday Times. Prices ranged from £90.45 for general admission tickets to £579.95 for VIP guests. Fans are eager to see her first performance in five years. The estate of David Bowie (pictured) has entered talks to sell the musician’s songwriting catalogue for $200m, says the Financial Times. Audio streaming has renewed the popularity of 20th-century hits and investors have rushed to purchase the rights to high-profile artists’ work, regularly drawing nine-figure sums in sales. Copyright royalties from sought-after tracks offer a steady income stream for investors.…

Smart-stereo systems maker Sonos has stood its ground against “tech Goliaths”. It recently won a preliminary ruling against Google’s parent company Alphabet for patent-infringement over the design of its smart speakers. Demand for the group’s products has risen in the last year. It has persuaded people to pay up for its premium offerings, while the post-pandemic trend towards larger residences is also helping: people are investing in new sound systems for their homes. Sonos beat sales expectations by 20% for its June quarter and raised full-year guidance for 2021 revenue and earnings. But its growth is still not reflected in its stock price. “It’s worth tuning in.”…

• Bobby Kotick, chief executive of videogame publisher Activision Blizzard, whose titles include Call of Duty, Guitar Hero and Candy Crush, has said he will take a 99.9% pay cut, from $154m to just $62,500, the minimum salary allowed under Californian law, says the Daily Mail. Kotick’s usual salary is around $1.5m, with bonuses and equity grants making up the extra. Kotick (pictured) says he will not resume taking his regular wage until the company’s “frat boy culture”, which has allegedly enabled sexual harassment to go unchecked, is fixed. The group is facing investigations from multiple state and federal agencies. • Glencore has said it won’t cut the pay of its new chief executive despite a widespread shareholder rebellion, says The Times. Gary Nagle, who took over the mining and…

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 –…

Cevian Capital, Europe’s largest activist investor, has increased its stake in education-publisher Pearson to 8.5%, says Simon Foy in The Daily Telegraph. It looks set to seek a seat on the board and “[intensify] its shake-up of the publisher”. The news comes under a week after Pearson posted a poor trading update that wiped 10% off its shares. The group has issued several profit warnings in recent years as publishers struggle with the rise of online rivals. CEO Andy Bird has since shifted Pearson’s focus to virtual learning, launching an app that offers students in the US access to its 1,500 titles for a monthly subscription. But student enrolment at community colleges has dropped during the pandemic. Analysts think it will never return to pre-virus levels.…

“[It’s not true that] if you’re an artist and [something you’ve written is] made into a popular TV show you too are going to make millions and millions of dollars! The reality is, it’s a business. The people who make the money are the people who are on the inside… and if they don’t want to cut you in, they don’t cut you in. I know so many really rich guys. I know almost no really rich women that made their money on their own [as opposed to through extravagant divorces]. Maybe Martha Stewart.” Candace Bushnell (pictured), author of Sex and the City, which became a popular television show in the 1990s, quoted in The Sunday Times “I was having coffee with my tour manager when he opened up a…

Good news for 1.75 million low earners missing out on thousands of pounds’ worth of tax relief: last week’s Budget committed the government to closing the “net pay anomaly”, through which they lose out. The issue affects employees who are members of occupational-pension schemes at work, but who do not earn enough to pay income tax. In theory, these workers are entitled to a 20% income-tax relief top-up on their pension contributions from HM Revenue & Customs, even though they are non-taxpayers. In practice, however, this doesn’t happen, because the system can’t cope with the “net pay” arrangements that most occupational schemes use. These deduct pension contributions from employees’ salaries before tax is taken off. Around 1.75 million employees are missing out on more than £100m ayear of tax relief,…

One trading technique that has achieved a cult-like following in recent decades is Elliott wave theory. Developed by the accountant and consultant Ralph Nelson Elliott, who first published his ideas in 1938, the basic idea is that markets, like all human behaviour, follow a predictable pattern. In the case of the stockmarket, Elliott argued that market prices tend to follow an eight-stage process, with the markets rising in five waves (sometimes known as a dominant trend) and then falling in three waves (sometimes known as a correction). In the first wave prices rise, even though both news and sentiment are still negative. They then fall back slightly in wave two. In the third wave prices rise again, surpassing the levels of the first increase, before retreating again in wave four.…

Shares in NatWest (LSE: NWG) fell slightly last week despite unexpectedly strong profits for the third quarter after analysts pointed out a “squeeze on loan margins and the bumpy transformation of its markets unit”, says Bloomberg. However, they are still up by 101% in the last 12 months. Operating profit jumped by £1.07bn, up £355m from the same quarter last year. The bank highlighted ongoing weakness in its fixed-income division, but cheered investors by reducing its bad-loan provisions by £242m and offering a “rosy outlook for the economy”, which followed upbeat forecasts from rival banks.…

Zachary Joseph Horwitz was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in Tampa, Florida, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, before doing a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Indiana University. After briefly running FÜL, ahealth-food restaurant in Chicago, he moved to Los Angeles to seek his fortune under the stage name Zach Avery. He won a few minor roles in various films, including Fury, Curvature, Farming and The White Crow, then moved into film production, setting up 1inMM (“One in a Million”) Capital in 2013 with a fellow producer (who denies involvement in fraud) supposedly to finance low-budget films. What was the scam? The idea was that 1inMM would acquire the rights to various low-budget films and then sell them on, in Latin America and other markets, to HBO and Netflix. To…