Innehållsförteckning för 1098 från MoneyWeek

“The resolve of central banks has not yet been tested to destruction by markets” A central banker gave investors a nasty wake-up call this week. It wasn’t one of the usual suspects – Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, or Bank of England boss Andrew Bailey. It was Lael Brainard, who is set to take over as vice-chair of the Fed. On Tuesday, she warned that quantitative tightening (QT – the process by which the Fed sells the bonds it bought under quantitative easing) will start earlier and be more aggressive than investors had hoped. Why is this significant? Because when Brainard was nominated to take the vice-chair role by US president Joe Biden late last year, she was widely viewed as a “dove” who would err on the side of…

Former university administrator Jamie Petrone-Codrington has pleaded guilty to stealing $40,504,200 of computers from Yale University between 2013 and 2020, says the Yale Daily News. Petrone-Codrington, who was authorised to make individual purchases of up to $10,000, regularly ordered and resold large amounts of electronics. She was caught when an anonymous tipster spotted her loading equipment into her car. Tim Haywood, a former star fund manager at GAM, breached the firm’s rules by accepting a personal trip to Sardinia on a private jet owned by now-collapsed financial firm Greensill Capital, the Financial Conduct Authority has ruled. The flight was valued at £15,000. The regulator has already fined GAM £1.9m and Haywood £230,037 for not properly managing conflicts of interest, but did not initially release its full findings.…

The “flow of deals that fund the bonuses of… bankers and brokers has come to a juddering halt”, say Jim Armitage and Laith Ak-Khalaf in The Sunday Times. Six months ago, banks were adding staff to take advantage of the craze for special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs). Now technology shares are slumping and appetite for Spac deals and initial public offerings (IPOs) has cratered. “A bank such as JP Morgan did about 175 such deals in Europe last year, [but] so far in 2022, you can almost count them on one hand.” Globally, deals in the first quarter fell 23% on the year to hit $1trn (£763bn), according to data from Refinitiv. That follows a very strong year in 2021, but it is still the lowest level since the beginning…

Britain is missing out on the export recovery. Global goods exports are now 8.2% higher than they were on the eve of the pandemic, with advanced economies up an average of 5%, according to data from the CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Yet the volume of UK goods exports sits 14% lower compared with the start of 2020. “The UK’s trade deficit in January was easily the biggest on record, at a huge £26.5bn for goods, and £16.2bn for goods and services together,” says David Smith in The Sunday Times. “It isn’t hard to see why”. UK exporters “are operating with one hand tied behind their backs” due to “an economically damaging Brexit done in such a way that little or no thought was given to the consequences”.…

• Pearson’s board has “just about made the right call” in rejecting a £6.6bn bid from private-equity firm Apollo, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. The offer was “punchy, but no knockout” and Pearson is showing progress. The shares are up from 510p to 739p since CEO Andy Bird joined from Disney in 2020, and operating profits rose by one-third last year. Still, much rests on Bird’s “big idea” of Pearson+, a subscription service for textbooks in the style of Disney+ that aims to meet demand for a “lifetime of learning”. Bird sees this as a £7trn opportunity by 2030. The fear for “long-suffering” investors is that “even so, on past form, Pearson will make a hash of it”. • Rachel Osborne has got clothing brand Ted Baker “off the…

Ride-hailing, e-commerce and fintech company GoTo, Indonesia’s biggest tech firm, has raised 15.8trn rupiah ($1.1bn) in one of the world’s largest initial public offerings this year, says Bloomberg. The firm will be valued at $28bn, based on the IPO price of 338 rupiah per share, when it begins trading on 11 April, making it the fourth most valuable company on the Jakarta stock exchange. GoTo was formed last year through the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia, Indonesia’s two most valuable start-ups, and is the country’s largest digital platform, although it remains loss-making. Southeast Asian tech peers such as Sea, Grab and Bukalapak have all seen their shares tumble in recent months.…

• Deliveroo’s boss founder Will Shu (pictured) received a 15.6% pay rise, taking his salary from £519,200 to £600,000 this year, says The Guardian. It follows a 47% rise between 2020 and 2021. Shu was also handed shares worth £5.2m in the takeaway delivery firm, and he is set to get another £5m-worth next April, as part of a six-year package agreed at the time of Deliveroo’s initial public offering last year, then worth £105.6m. Its valuation has since fallen to just over £30m. • Mark Hartigan, the CEO of LV, has been awarded a £511,000 bonus despite a “calamitous year” in which policyholders rebelled over the mutual insurer’s plan to sell itself to the US private-equity group Bain Capital, says The Times. Advice on the aborted deal cost the…

“The US stockmarket has been going up for 12 years now – the longest in American history... in my view, we have to be near the end,” Jim Rogers tells Indian newspaper The Economic Times. Rogers, a noted commodities investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund in the 1970s with hedge-fund tycoon George Soros, warns that rising interest rates will put paid to the bull market in stocks. As for other asset classes, Rogers dislikes bonds intensely. “I would not buy bonds unless it is a special situation somewhere.” But commodities should do well due to ongoing “supply shortages”. To take one topical sector, “electric cars use much more copper and lithium than petrol cars”. Despite his concerns about America’s “staggering debt”, Rogers currently owns US dollars because they will act…

realclearworld.com Military analysts in the West thought that invading Russian forces could overrun the capital of Ukraine in a matter of days, says Brian Michael Jenkins. More than a month after the invasion, Kyiv stands. What did the analysts miss? Military experts base their assessments on the military capabilities and technologies both sides have available. Other factors are considered in theory, but are difficult to quantify – motivation, morale, the will to fight, the role of leadership, and the individual decisions made by thousands of soldiers or an entire population. Of these, the will to fight is “arguably the single most important factor in war”. A collapse of morale can “bring down an army faster than a virus; stubborn courage can be equally infectious”. Ukraine has “reminded the world that…

Fund fees have fallen globally over the last three years in the latest sign that active managers are “feeling the heat” as investors turn to cheaper products, says the Financial Times. Research from Morningstar found that fees have dropped in most of the 26 countries it studied. In major markets such as the US, fees have fallen by more than a quarter since 2010 due to a combination of regulatory intervention and the increase in passive funds that charge lower fees. This has “pushed active managers to slash costs to compete, while putting strain on their margins”. But fees remain high in regions where funds are mostly sold through banks, such as Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. ■ Greencoat Renewables has raised €281.5m in an oversubscribed fundraising, says Investment…

Funeral plans have been around for decades now and have become increasingly popular as people try to minimise the huge cost of a funeral. But a badly managed route to increased regulation is causing chaos. Death is an expensive business. The average cost of dying – that’s your funeral, wake and any professional fees incurred in the process – is £8,864, according to SunLife. That puts it in the top five biggest expenses you’ll ever face after weddings, cars and houses. Understandably, many people have tried to take care of the cost of their funeral long before they die by purchasing a funeral plan. “If you are considering buying a funeral plan, wait until after FCA regulation” These allow you to pay in advance so you have the peace of…

Time is running out for businesses to join HM Revenue & Customs’ Making Tax Digital system for value added tax (VAT). Officially, 1 April was the deadline for all VAT-registered businesses to sign up. In practice, you must be ready by your next VAT return deadline, which is typically the eighth of the second month following the end of your accounting period. So businesses with VAT accounting periods from 1 February to 30 April will need to file their return for that period on 8 June and need to be ready for Making Tax Digital by that date. The Making Tax Digital initiative is aimed at getting businesses, and eventually individuals, to file their tax returns online. The idea is to keep all relevant records digitally and then upload the…

With a £13.3bn market cap, ABF is valued at 0.95 times last year’s turnover – which was in turn depressed by the pandemic. Given an average price/ sales ratio of 1.26 over the last five years, that’s low. The price/book ratio – another value measure –stands at just 1.33, against a five-year average of 2.12. The low valuation is at odds with the very solid trading update. The group expects second-half growth in adjusted operating profit, leading to “significant progress” in adjusted earnings per share (EPS). Analysts’ average EPS estimate for the 12 months to end-September 2022 is 136p, according to Refinitiv’s data. At the current share price of 1,660p, that’s a forward price/ earnings (p/e) ratio of just 12.2. For the following year, analysts forecast EPS of 146p, for…

JD Wetherspoon’s (LSE: JDW) interim results showed sales for the 26 weeks to the end of January were down 13.5% to £807.4m from the same period pre-pandemic. The pub operator was harmed by a decline in sales caused by Covid-19 restrictions at the end of 2021. Rising costs due to inflation also meant operating margins were “barely into positive territory”, says Hargreaves Lansdown, although it has navigated supply-chain issues and labour shortages better than some competitors. Dividends, which were scrapped in 2020, have not yet resumed. The shares are down by 42% over the last 12 months.…

£31.90, theatreofwine.com; £28.00, lockettbros.co.uk I have featured many rare wines on this page over the years, but this fellow and its stablemates must be the most unusual and also the most difficult to track down. While Theatre of Wine stocks my featured 2018 vintage, Lockett Bros is still showing the 2016 online, but I am assured they have some 2018 in their cellar. Made by Chianti legend Paolo di Marchi’s son, Luca, in a far-flung corner of Alto Piemonte, this is the first vintage of Uvaggio that includes 100% fruit from Lessona. Nebbiolo forms the body, taking up 85% of the blend and the rare vespolina grape makes up the numbers. The haunting nebbiolo perfume of wild black cherries, raspberries and rhubarb is underpinned with remarkable mineral-fringed tension. The Lessona…

The pretext for Roman emperor Claudius’s invasion of Britain in 43 AD was the reinstallation of King Verica on the throne of the Atrebates tribe, a Roman client kingdom located in parts of what are now Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. Caesar had used much the same excuse to land his legions in Kent a generation earlier. (The real reason was that he was looking for silver and an excuse not to go back to Rome after his conquest of Gaul.) Verica had been deposed by Caratacus, chief of the Catuvellauni, a rival tribe located just north of the River Thames. Off to Rome he ran. Claudius, who had recently come to power in a military coup and needed a propaganda win to secure his reign, answered his cries. Verica liked…

• Qatar has done it, says Oliver Holt in The Mail on Sunday. Last Friday, the draw was made for the group stage of the World Cup. That was the final frontier after which Qatar cannot be stripped of holding the tournament later this year. “No going back now.” But that doesn’t change the fact that this was a £200bn “heist”. It was stolen from the rest of the football world by the “crooks and charlatans and hoodlums of Fifa 12 years ago”. Of the 22 executives of world football’s governing body who voted, “at least 16 have either been banned, accused of or indicted for criminal corruption, involved in FBI cases, or accused of ethical violations but not convicted”. More than 6,500 migrant workers have died in construction. We…

£335 The price of chancellor Rishi Sunak’s new Common Projects trainers. The shoes, beloved by A-list celebrities such as Jay-Z, Drake and Reese Witherspoon, have become “one of the most sought after [footwear brands] in the world”, says The Daily Mail. $65.1bn The value of the global art market after it grew by 29% year-on-year in 2021, back to pre-pandemic levels, according to the 2022 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. The US is still the biggest player, with around $28bn-worth of art sold during the year. £62,000 The cost of a new four-seater golf buggy with fridge and infotainment system that the Queen, 95, is using to take spins around the grounds of Windsor Castle, says The Sun. The “Queen Mobile”, built by Danish firm Garia, has…

Police have begun handing out the first fines to government officials who broke coronavirus rules by attending parties during lockdown. Those fined include Helen MacNamara, the former deputy cabinet secretary and Whitehall ethics chief, who provided the karaoke machine for a “raucous” gathering on 18 June 2020, says The Telegraph. Fines were also given to attendees at a leaving do on 17 December 2020 for Kate Josephs, who was director-general of the Covid-19 Taskforce and wrote the regulations that made the gatherings illegal (Josephs has not confirmed whether she has received a fine). The £50 fixed penalties are small compared to the maximum amount of £10,000 that was imposed on 371 people who hosted gatherings, including two men aged 20 and 23 who were fined for a mass snowball fight…

The West’s decision to sanction Russia’s central bank raises deep questions about the future of the global monetary system, says Jon Sindreu in The Wall Street Journal. The US and its allies have frozen Moscow’s access to more than half of its $630bn in foreign reserves in response to its invasion of Ukraine. The implication – that reserves held by unfriendly governments can be turned into “worthless computer entries” – is likely to drive a shift out of dollar assets and into alternatives such as “gold and Chinese assets”. That could undermine the dollar’s role as the world’s leading currency. Challenging the dollar’s hegemony Dollar dominance rests on two pillars. First, it accounts for about 59% of the foreign exchange reserves held by the world’s central banks, far above the…

“The use of economic weapons during war has a long history. But the rise of… cross-border supply chains has given [them] unprecedented power… large and powerful states can use a variety of techniques – including cutting off the supply of some vital input – to flatten another country’s economy… a major power that is in conflict with a developing country can spark hyperinflation… by printing the local currency and showering the notes on cities… Unless such actions are formally prohibited, someone is bound to resort to them at some point. The severe sanctions that the West has imposed on Russia…have escalated economic warfare to an unprecedented level… we have rules that govern conventional warfare, such as a prohibition on targeting civilians, we will need to create rules for what is…

Shares in Twitter rose by 27% in a day – the most since it listed in 2013 – after a filing revealed that Elon Musk had spent $2.9bn to buy a 9.2% stake in the company, says Callum Jones in The Times, making him its biggest shareholder. Musk is a “prolific” user of the microblogging service, with 80 million followers, but has recently claimed that he was giving “serious thought” to developing a rival platform. The unexpected investment will broaden a corporate empire that already spans cars (Tesla) and rockets (SpaceX). The news of Musk’s stake sparked speculation as to his intentions, with attention falling on somewhat arcane details, such as the decision to disclose his stake via a 13G form, which denotes an investor who plans to be passive,…

Three to buy ConvaTec Shares The transformation of this medical-technology firm “appears to be bearing fruit”. The group registered 7.9% growth from its top 12 priority markets in 2021, and expects to deliver organic sales growth of between 4% and 5.5% for 2022. Focused acquisitions are helping growth, non-core businesses have been sold and efficiency measures have paid off. It’s the “clear market leader” in the disposable infusion market: its infusion sets, used by diabetic patients, have around 80% market share. Margins have the potential to continue improving. 221.9p. Energean Investors’ Chronicle Gas exploration and production company Energean is predicted to double revenue this year and post over $1bn in pre-tax profit in 2023. The company is listed in London and Tel Aviv, and Israel is key to its growth.…

Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam has announced she will not seek a second term in office, says the BBC. Lam was at the helm during a time of mass unrest and helped usher in new laws that eroded the territory’s civil freedoms. Massive pro-democracy demonstrations, of the kind that had prompted Lam’s predecessors to resign, led under Lam to greater Chinese control in Hong Kong. Lam refused to answer questions about her decisions or the role she played in events. She did, though, “pay tribute to her backers in Beijing”, says Matthew Brooker on Bloomberg. Her governance style came to epitomise how the administration of Hong Kong – which was promised a high degree of autonomy after the 1997 handover from Britain – had become “more overtly wedded to Beijing…

Pay for top chief executives in the United States has “gained steam” and is on course to set another record high amid a tight labour market, says Theo Francis in The Wall Street Journal. Median total pay for S&P 500 bosses (including restricted stock) rose to $14.2m last year, up from $13.4m in 2020, according to the paper’s analysis. Most of those bosses received a pay rise of 11% or more, and pay rose by at least a quarter for almost a third. Of the highest pay deals so far disclosed this year, David Zaslav of media group Discovery earned $246.6m, Amazon’s Andy Jassy received $212.7m and Pat Gelsinger of chipmaker Intel got $178.6m. As multiples of the median pay for employees in their companies, Jassy earned almost 6,500 times…

Thatcher era was an aberration Adrian Wooldridge Bloomberg The 1990s saw a “great uncoupling” between left-wing political parties and “big labour”. The same may now happening between conservatives and big business, says Adrian Wooldridge. In the US, politicians and thinkers on the right from Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell to Ben Shapiro and Oren Cass are critical. Fashionable causes include “national greatness, Catholic social thought and post-liberalism”. Globalisation and immigration are held responsible for lowering incomes; tech and media industries for “degrading” culture, even humanity. The central idea is that the common good must be “forged” by government policy not market forces. British conservatives echo such themes. But while conservatism at its best is “about the pursuit of a civilised life rather than economic growth for its own sake”,…

palladiummag.com Milton Friedman was among the first to predict that one result of the internet would be the development of digital currencies, making it harder for the state to collect tax, says Samuel McIlhagga. Cyber-anarchists ran with the idea, and for a while, with the rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it looked like the libertarian dream was becoming reality. Those familiar with history might have seen what was coming next. New technologies are a threat to the state at first –consider the threat posed by the printing press. But following widespread adoption, political bodies co-opt the technologies for their own purposes. For all its liberatory potential, the internet is now an essential tool for China launching its own digital currency to rival the dollar, Middle Eastern autocrats seeking to…

The exchange-traded fund (ETF) market has seen a flurry of recent launches, especially when it comes to actively managed ETFs. These became popular in the US and have now made their way to the UK. Most ETFs are passive funds, following an index. But actively managed ETFs either have a manager who uses a public benchmark index, but might make some changes (and so deviate from the underlying index), or uses an internal index that is essentially just like any actively managed portfolio. The rise of Chinese green-tech For example, JPMorgan Asset Management has recently launched a string of active ETFs covering Chinese bonds and stocks, including some with an environment, social and governance (ESG) filter. Equity funds include the JPM China A Research Enhanced Index Equity (ESG) ETF and…

• You’ve got six months left to spend your paper £20 and £50 notes before they are withdrawn from circulation, says The Telegraph. Anybody who has paper notes should spend them or deposit them at a bank or post office before 30 September. Old-style paper notes have been replaced with new polymer designs, which are more durable and harder to counterfeit, but there are estimated to be £7bn of old paper £20 notes still in circulation and £10bn of old £50 notes. You won’t be able to spend these after 30 September, but you will be able to deposit them at your bank, and at some Post Office branches. “The Bank of England will exchange all old notes for all time.” • The number of remortgages being approved by banks…

• Tax advisers fear that chancellor Rishi Sunak could overhaul the research and development (R&D) tax credits system later this year, partly because too few smaller companies are claiming the support. So the onus is on small businesses to make better use of the scheme to secure valuable tax incentives for innovation while they’re still available, but also to persuade the chancellor it is worth sticking with them. Smaller companies can claim a 230% deduction on qualifying R&D expenses (the definition of which is much wider than is often understood). So £100 worth of R&D expenses will help a business cut £230 from its profit before taxes, reducing its overall tax bill. • Accountants say as many as 500,000 businesses could benefit from an increase in the Employment Allowance, which…

Indian information technology (IT) services companies have benefited hugely from the adoption of digital technology around the world. There are compelling opportunities in this sector, where corporate governance is generally strong and capital efficiency is high. On average, leading IT services companies have a return on capital employed (ROCE) of 50% (excluding cash), and the conversion factor of accounting earnings to free cash flow is around 90%. Indian IT services occupies a dominant position in the technology services sector, providing cost-effective and scalable solutions for enterprises across the world. India’s IT exports are worth over $160bn per year (around 13% of total global IT spend), and have grown at an annual rate of 20% over the last 20 years. Beating the tech-refresh cycle Companies can stay ahead in this highly…

“The time has come to reverse the flow of power and resources, from Washington to the states and communities, and more importantly, to the people all across America.”–Richard Nixon, 1971 The great Potomac of power and resources continues flowing – towards Washington. Joe Biden has just proposed the biggest tax increase in history, a rise of $2.5trn, the largest ever increase in dollar terms, as part of a $5.8trn budget for federal spending. The deficit will top $1.15trn. Who will cover that deficit? The Fed, who else? But the Fed already has its back to the wall. Former treasury secretary Larry Summers warns that the Fed’s current policies are likely to lead to stagflation and that its baby-steps approach to inflation will lead to low growth and higher prices. He…

Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran won a copyright court case over his song Shape of You, says The Times. Sheeran took the “enormous gamble” of pre-emptively suing to assert his rights over the song after grime artist Sami Switch claimed that Shape of You sounded a lot like his single Oh Why. The publishing rights for Shape of You are estimated to be worth over £5m a year. Sheeran has previously paid $5.4m after being accused of copying parts of his song Photograph from another track. Singer Rihanna (pictured) has made it onto the Forbes annual billionaire list for the first time, with a net worth of $1.7bn. The success of her make-up line, Fenty Beauty, which she co-owns with luxury retailer LVMH, accounts for most of her fortune. Her other ventures…

Starbucks’ shares dipped by around 4% – bringing total losses to 22% this year – after founder Howard Schultz marked the start of his third spell as chief executive officer by suspending a share-buyback plan, says John Bowker on Bloomberg. Schulz’s predecessor Kevin Johnson – who stepped down three week ago after five years as CEO – said in October that the coffee chain would spend $20bn on dividends and buybacks over three years. (By February, it had already spent $3.52bn.) However, Schultz argues the money “could be better spent on stores and staff” to create “longterm value for all stakeholders”. The decision to shun buybacks in favour of investing comes as Starbucks faces several challenges, say Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson and Taylor Nicole Rogers in the Financial Times. These include “a…

Unmanned aviation vehicles (UAVs) – commonly known as drones – are used in a wide range of sectors from agriculture to defence, says Elio D’Amato in the Australian Financial Review. The market could be worth $100bn a year in five years, reckons Goldman Sachs. But “the covertness of drones has raised many ethical and security questions”. DroneShield is a small company that offers “technology solutions to protect against drone intrusion” and could profit from “an increased demand for drone defence over the coming years”. The firm is seeing rapid revenue growth and has begun 2022 with a string of contract wins from military services and law enforcement around the world.…

Tensions between China, Australia and the Solomon Islands escalated over a leaked draft of a treaty between the Pacific nation and China, which has fuelled fears that China is planning to establish a military base there, say Tania Miletic and Anouk Ride in The Guardian. Australia has voiced security concerns and implied that the Pacific islands is “its domain of control”. The Solomon Islands’ prime minster, Manasseh Sogavare, has criticised countries for not respecting its sovereignty and branded domestic critics of the treaty “lunatics”. The situation was aggravated by Tuesday’s news that the defence alliance AUKUS, comprising US, Britain and Australia, whose “unstated aim is to provide a bulwark against China’s military ambitions in the Indo-Pacific”, is to expand cooperation on hypersonics and other military technologies, says The Washington Post.…

It now looks as if investors in London will, just as their US counterparts have for a while, be offered the curious privilege of handing over lots of money to management teams who promise to spend it on some great deals, even if what they are actually going to buy is still kept carefully under wraps. Marwyn, a London-based sponsor of acquisition companies, has announced plans for a £500m acquisition vehicle to be listed in London. At the same time, Sky News reported that a £150m acquisition vehicle called Finsac, set up by former executives from KBN and Munich Re, would be listed in London soon. There could be plenty more in the pipeline. Dodging the bullet At the height of the boom in Spacs – special purpose acquisition companies…

There’s a commonly held belief that gold miners represent a leveraged play on gold. When gold goes up, gold miners go up by more. This belief stems partly from the experiences of the 1930s and 1970s. In the US, during the Great Depression, president Franklin D. Roosevelt confiscated his citizens’ gold in order to fund a government stimulus programme. Americans handed their gold over at an official exchange rate of $20 per ounce. Roosevelt then devalued those dollars by 40%, setting the new official price of gold at $35 per ounce. Canny investors realised that while they couldn’t own gold, they could own the miners – and that the miners’ profit margins had just rocketed. Homestake was the biggest US gold miner at the time. It became the investment of…

“After [having children] I became a rather below-stairs actor; you wouldn’t think of me now in the same way as Maggie Smith… It was because I didn’t have the money to shop or time to buy clothes, so I didn’t look smart anymore. If you want a role, you have to dress the part.” Actress June Brown (pictured), aka Dot Cotton, quoted in The Times “They must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.” Victorian polymath John Ruskin on what makes for a worker’s happiness, quoted by Andrew Hill in the Financial Times “Shops are donating potatoes, leeks, cabbages, but I can’t get rid of them. They’re getting handed back to me because people are…

theconversation.com The “Great Resignation” is a buzz phrase that first appeared in May 2021 to describe the unprecedented rise in workers quitting their jobs in the US, say Carlos Carrillo-Tudela and co-authors. Close analysis of the data in the UK confirms that a great resignation happened here too. Resignations rose sharply from the end of 2020. This was not because workers were abandoning the workforce, however, except among the over-50s who have been retiring in larger numbers than usual. Rather, workers have quit their jobs only to take another one, mainly one of the same status in the same occupation. These moves were nevertheless good for wages. Workers moving jobs within the same occupation have historically achieved higher wage gains than those staying at the same employer, and that has…

Italian insurer Generali is under siege, says The Wall Street Journal. The board wants to renew the tenure of CEO Philippe Donnet at this month’s investors’ meeting. It has the backing of Mediobanca, the biggest shareholder with a stake of 13%, but billionaire Francesco Gaetano, the second-largest investor, has put forward a new board of directors. He argues that Generali, one of Europe’s largest insurers, has lost ground and needs a more ambitious strategy. Eyewear billionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio, the third-largest shareholder, this week backed calls for change: he and Gaetano together own 16%. Donnet is still likely to be re-elected, but will face pressure to deliver more than his targets. The shares rose above €20 for the first time since 2008.…

Cyberattacks can strike almost any company. Books and crafts retailer The Works had to close some stores temporarily this week after hackers got into its systems. In February, deliveries of crisps and nuts were disrupted when KP Snacks was hit by a ransomware attack. Smaller businesses certainly aren’t immune. The government’s latest annual Cyber Security Breaches Survey reports that 48% of small businesses have identified a cyberattack over the 12 months. Worse still, 31% say they are now being attacked at least once a week. “The average bill for each attack was £3,080” The impact of these attacks can be considerable. While many breaches are repelled, hackers only need to get lucky once. The government’s data suggests that one in five attacks have direct negative consequences, ranging from financial costs…

The stockmarket can be a very hard taskmaster. Companies that disappoint it after many years of steady improvement often see their shares take a hammering. In addition, if those firms operate in areas where sentiment has soured, the result can prove very messy. For long-term investors, though, this is where opportunities arise. Cue FTSE 100 index member Associated British Foods (ABF). To call it “the biggest company most people have never heard of” may be rather hackneyed, but it wouldn’t be too far off the mark. The group owns several world-class businesses that are individually more familiar than its own name. The firm originated from a bakery founded in 1935 by Garfield Weston. Expansion led to the creation of Allied Bakeries, which became one of the UK’s leaders in industrial…

Bloomsbury Publishing (LSE: BMY) has raised its full-year guidance for revenue and profit for the second time this year. Results are expected to exceed analysts’ consensus estimates of £212.5m and £22.3m respectively for the year to February. The higher guidance reflects “exceptional sales” for the novel House of Sky and Breath by fantasy author Sarah Maas. The firm has also managed to lessen the impact of paper supply chain woes, says the Financial Times, and succeeded in building a digital arm of its academic publishing division. The shares are up 52% over the last year.…

William Seward was born in 1801 in Florida, New York. After studying at Union College, he briefly dropped out due to an argument with his father over money before eventually graduating in 1820. He then practised as a lawyer before becoming involved in New York state politics. He became governor in 1839, serving two terms in office, and was elected as a senator in 1849, only narrowly missing out on the Republican nomination for president in 1860. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln appointed him secretary of state, a post he would hold until 1869. What was the trade? The first Russians arrived in Alaska in 1732, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company was set up. Tsar Alexander I formally declared Alaska Russian territory, which was acknowledged by the US three years…

Going… “We all know Eric Clapton has good taste in guitars, but, apparently, he’s no slouch when it comes to picking a good watch, too,” says Rachel Cormack for the Robb Report. A converted Rolex Daytona, acquired by Clapton in Italy in the 1990s, is set to lead the Phillips watch sale in Geneva, Switzerland, on 7 and 8 May. Christened the “Crazy Doc”, the Rolex is the only known yellow-gold Reference 6239 with a “Pulsations” dial, meaning “the outer track has a scale that can measure a pulse by starting the chronograph and stopping after counting 15 heartbeats in the case of the dial”. Despite its “tenure with rock royalty”, the Crazy Doc has been well-preserved before and since Clapton sold it at auction in 2003, according to the…