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“Companies should be prioritising slack, not efficiency and optimisation” There are many reasons why US stocks have massively outperformed over the last few decades – low interest rates have helped, as has the stunning success of America’s tech giants. But the huge gains have also been about America’s embrace of “optimisation”, says Edward Chancellor on Breakingviews. In the name of efficiency, US companies have run down inventories and contracted out their manufacturing to the other side of the world (mostly to China) and replaced as much equity as possible with debt. This has worked absolute wonders for their return on equity (ROE). Last year listed US companies produced an ROE of 17% – against a mere 9% in Japan. No wonder investors have been keener on paying more for the…

Superhero movie Morbius – which stars Jared Leto as the eponymous vampire anti-hero – suffered a record 74% drop in box-office sales following its opening weekend, says Forbes. The film made $39m in US cinemas in its first weekend, but slumped to $10.2m in its second weekend, the largest drop for any major superhero release. Software firm Sky Mavis says that it will refund $400m stolen from its Ronin Network platform by hackers, says the FT. The money was owned by users of its Axie Infinity game, in which players battle to win cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The firm has received $150m in new investment to help pay for the refund, with the rest coming from its cash reserves.…

A “chill” has descended upon Hong Kong’s capital markets, say Hudson Lockett and Tabby Kinder in the Financial Times. Total fundraising from initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on share sales and convertible bonds in Hong Kong fell to $4.9bn in the first quarter of 2022. That is 87% lower than the same period last year and the city’s most sluggish quarter since the 2008 global financial crisis. The local Hang Seng index has tumbled 30% since a recent peak in February 2021. Hong Kong had just 12 IPO deals in the first quarter, a 60% year-on-year drop, according to consultancy EY. Beijing’s tech crackdown has sent the Hang Seng tech index down 44% over the past year, says Weizhen Tan for CNBC. Local stocks are also feeling the effect of a…

“In Japan, the price of housing hasn’t increased in 25 years,” says Alec Stapp of the Institute for Progress, a thinktank. Japan’s consumer price index measure of housing costs – derived from private-sector and public-sector rents and imputed rent from owner-occupied housing – has flatlined since the 1990s, even as costs soar in other developed countries. That partly reflects a stagnating population, but the more significant factor is liberal planning rules. Flexibility about the height and location of new residential units has helped housing construction keep pace with demand, even though houses in Japan are routinely demolished after just 20 or 30 years, meaning that far more must constantly be built to replace them.…

• ”Finally, some sense from Sensyne Health,” says Alistair Osborne in The Times. The AI health-tech firm has got shot of former health minister Paul Drayson, its founder. Drayson “had spotted a potential win-win” with his plan to use AI algorithms to crunch NHS patient records and let pharma firms use the anonymised data to hunt for new drugs. But he “blew cash on trite health apps barely better than a Fitbit”. The firm floated in August 2018 at 175p, but the shares are now at 2.15p. The latest update suggests that even the £6.35m emergency funds raised in January are mostly gone. Drayson’s exit is “about three years too late”. • “Elon Musk’s work on Twitter’s board is done,” says Matt Levine on Bloomberg. Last week, after buying a…

Taiwanese electric-scooter maker Gogoro floated in New York last week in a rare US listing from a country better known for its dominance in semiconductors, says Al Jazeera. The deal – a $2.3bn merger with a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) – is just the third US float by a Taiwanese company in five years. Gogoro, which was founded in 2011, has developed a battery-swap system that makes it possible to exchange empty batteries at charging stations. As well as selling scooters, it also rents them via a ride-share programme called GoShare. The firm claims to power 97% of electric scooters in Taiwan and has signed deals to expand into China, India and Indonesia.…

The deal may still fall apart at the last minute. The government may step in to block it. Shareholders may get cold feet. But the takeover of the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba by the buyout giant Bain Capital looks close to completion. If it happens, it will be among the largest buyouts of a listed company ever staged. It could also pave the way for a series of buyouts of Japan’s ageing, uncompetitive conglomerates, opening up a huge range of opportunities for their global competitors and for investors as well. Toshiba has a long and distinguished history stretching back to the 1870s, but it has been in trouble for years. It has been beset by a series of accounting scandals, management upheavals and troubled takeovers, while competition in many of its…

Concerns that Britain is far too easy-going when it comes to allowing foreign bidders to buy UK-listed companies have a long history. From contentious takeovers of beloved British brands (such as 2009’s takeover of Cadbury by US food giant Kraft) to small but promising tech stocks being swallowed before they can become the UK’s answer to Amazon (US firms bought a record 130 UK tech firms in 2021, says start-up monitor Beauhurst), the subject inspires strong feelings. “About a third of big UK companies have vanished in ten years” A new study by Duncan Lamont at asset manager Schroders suggests there is something to these concerns. Britain really is more prone to overseas takeovers than similar markets. A third of the major companies listed in the UK ten years ago…

Xi shouldn’t cosy up with Putin Odd Arne Westad Foreign Affairs Irrespective of how the war in Ukraine ends, the “relationship between Russia and China will determine whether the world can avoid great-power war”, says Odd Arne Westad. At present, by “saying very little and blaming the West”, Beijing is hoping that the outcome will be a Russia – with its “tempting” energy and mineral riches – that is “ever more dependent on China”. However, the dependency of a “weak regime, locked in forever quarrels with its neighbours”, may not serve China well. The truth is, China’s relationship with the US and Europe will always take precedence. Unlike Russia, China is a powerful global economic player. Despite China’s lending power, there are no guarantees it will lend to a…

aier.org Economists Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman “unleash utter carnage” upon the assumptions and studies that support the field of behavioural economics in their book Escaping Paternalism, says Robert Wright. That field is largely to blame for the “crazy policy environment” of the last two years, based as it is on the idea that states have a role in “nudging” people into government-approved behaviours for their own good. But as the most brilliant chapter in the book asks, if behavioural economists are correct in their view that all individuals suffer from “sundry irrationalities”, why should we expect “paternalistic policymakers” to be any wiser? Behaviourists believe that individuals suffer from a “swath of biases”, which trick us into believing “the most ridiculous things”. Policymakers are no exception. They tend to assume…

Fund managers have always found it harder to outperform in the US than in any other market, which is why so many have chosen to invest via passive funds and exchange-traded funds. The US market accounts for well over half of the MSCI World index, but the intensity of competition makes it hard for anyone consistently to gain an edge. In addition, the largest companies have outperformed in recent years, yet fund managers nearly always tilt their portfolios away from the giants to allow them to invest more in companies that have only a tiny weight in the S&P 500. An exception to the rule Still, one fund stands out. Since Tim Parton and Jonathan Simon were appointed co-managers of the £1.5bn JPMorgan American Investment Trust (LSE: JAM) in 2019,…

When shareholder activists target financial firms, history is not encouraging. In 2005, there was an activist campaign to prevent Deutsche Boerse from buying the London Stock Exchange. Werner Seifert, the chief executive of the German exchange, lost his job and Rolf Breuer, chairman of the supervisory board, later resigned. Yet the Deutsche Boerse management could see value where the activists who disliked the deal could not. London Stock Exchange has increased in value by 16 times since the public spat. Then there was Knight Vinke’s activist campaign against HSBC during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, encouraging the bank to take more risk at precisely the wrong point in the credit cycle. More recently, hedge fund Elliott Management’s six-year fight with Bank of East Asia in Hong Kong and Edward Bramson’s three-year…

Byggfakta (Stockholm: BFG) is one of the leading providers of software to the construction industry, covering everything from tendering to design and project management. It has around 47,000 customers managing 1.2 million projects via its various subsidiaries. These divisions include NBS, which is its largest part by revenue. Over the last few years it has experienced rapid growth. Much of this is down to acquisitions, but the organic growth of its various businesses is also strong at over 10% a year. It trades on 24 times the analysts’ consensus forecasts for 2023 earnings. Trimble (Nasdaq: TRMB) provides project-management software that allows people to collaborate in the design, building and operation of projects. The software has over one million users and is employed in a range of industries, including agriculture and…

• You can now get a ten-year fixed rate mortgage that is cheaper than a two-year deal. Halifax has raised its mortgage rates by up to half a percentage point, but the two-year has risen by twice as much as some longer-dated deals. The lender’s cheapest two-year fix is now 2.54% whereas it is 2.48% for a five- or ten-year deal. Nationwide is charging the same rate on its five-year fix as on its two-year deal. “This topsy-turvy pricing is largely being driven by the rate at which banks lend to each other, called the swap rate, which is based on predictions of what the Bank of England base rate will be in the future,” says George Nixon in The Sunday Times. Banks expect the base rate to be higher…

• Ministers have confirmed changes to the law that will enable the launch of collective defined contribution (CDC) plans from August onwards. The government hopes the schemes, which are widely used in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands, will be popular with employers who no longer want to take the risk of funding guaranteed final salary pensions. CDCs work more like money purchase (ie, defined contribution) schemes, where your benefits in retirement depend solely on the returns generated by your savings. Crucially, however, your money (and risk) is pooled with that of other savers, which enables the scheme provider to target a set level of pension more readily. • No-fault divorces could mean even fewer couples consider pension rights when splitting up. Reforms to divorce laws that came into…

Royal Mail’s (LSE: RMG) share price has been on a downward spiral ever since it rose above the £6-mark in mid-2021, says the Motley Fool. It now sits at a 52-week low. The company was boosted throughout the pandemic due to the rise of online shopping, but demand has slowed now that restrictions have been removed. It’s now also grappling with rising costs and having to pay higher wages to its workers. The shares “look exceptionally cheap” and it has plans for international expansion. However, its “fairly foggy outlook” will continue to weigh on its share price, which is down 31% over the past year.…

Pizza in under a minute “For true pizza aficionados, an outdoor pizza oven can elevate your pizza-making from good to great,” says Sally FitzGerald in Food and Living Vegan magazine. The Ooni Karu 12 multi-fuel pizza oven is easy to use and (with a bit of practice and a good cheese) “delivers delicious, restaurant-quality results”. It is “highly recommended”. The stainless steel pizza-baking oven roars comfortably at a “cheese-bubbling” temperature of 500°C,and is portable, sleek and eye-catching with its minimalist design. Unlike conventional fan-ovens, which can take ten to 12 minutes to cook pizzas, the Ooni Karu 12 will bake a pizza in just under 60 seconds. Although it specialises in torching 12-inch pizza bases, outdoor eating enthusiasts will be pleased with its added versatility options, too. With the chimney…

• The new register of external interests is “deeply unpopular” with the BBC’s “news-reading stars”, who regard it as a “gross invasion of privacy”, says Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. It is causing a “brain drain” of presenters defecting, with “twinkle-toed” Dan Walker (pictured) the latest to walk out the door. “All will no doubt be relieved that they no longer have to confess how much they have earned, and from whom.” Walker has shown a keen interest in “’moonlighting’ – adding to his BBC riches with lucrative corporate gigs”. The register shows that, since records started in 2020, Walker has undertaken six “corporates”, each worth more than £5,000. Walker, who took part in Strictly Come Dancing last year, is thought to be adding at least £50,000 to his…

£51,700 How much the Bank of England has spent on rebranding, including £22,300 on a new font, £7,700 on animation and film, £15,000 on photography and £6,700 on a new logo with the Union Jack, says The Times. The Bank is funded by banks and building societies. $1bn The value of art-market trade that Britain has lost in two years due to VAT, import fees and red tape stemming from Brexit, according to “The Art Market 2022” report by art fairs organiser Art Basel and bank UBS. China is now the second-biggest art market after the US. C$869,300 The benchmark price (£530,000) of a house in Canada, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. The Canadian government is banning most foreigners from buying property for two years after prices rose…

Anybody who fancies spending five months “counting penguins” and “running the world’s most remote post office” should get their application ready, says BBC News. The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is looking for staff to run its Port Lockroy base on Goudier Island in the Antarctic Peninsula. The base was originally set up in 1944, but since 2006 it has served as a post office, gift shop and museum. In a normal year, there are around 18,000 tourists between March and November, although the site has been closed since the pandemic began and the incoming team will be the first to work there since 2019. Salaries range from £1,250 per month for an assistant role to £1,800 per month for the base leader.…

“The world’s central bankers… are starting to see sense,” says Hamish McRae in The Mail on Sunday. Minutes from the March meeting of America’s Federal Reserve show that policymakers plan to shrink the Fed’s $9trn balance sheet faster than anticipated in response to soaring inflation. The balance sheet is made up of assets, principally US government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, which the Fed has bought during multiple rounds of quantitative easing (QE). Now QE is to be replaced by quantitative tightening (QT). “Officials broadly agree the Fed should shed up to $95bn of assets a month,” with the reductions to begin gradually next month, say Colby Smith and Kate Duguid in the Financial Times. The Fed can reduce its bond holdings by not reinvesting the proceeds of bonds as they…

“Often, we can be right for the wrong reasons… We’re not seeing high inflation because of excess money growth. We’re seeing it because of soaring oil and gas prices… Many who feared inflation were therefore right, but for the wrong reason… [Similarly] of the few people who foresaw the 2007-2008 financial crisis most talked of the danger of global imbalances rather than the fragility of the banking system… But what’s so bad about being right for the wrong reasons? Telling a story gives an illusion of knowledge and encourages us to believe that the world is more predictable than it actually is… if we don’t acknowledge that our reasons were wrong, we are likely to persist in this illusion and become overconfident... We must be humble about our predictive abilities……

Shares in HP reached record highs last week, rallying by as much as 17%, after news that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had bought an 11.4% stake for around $4.2bn, says Callum Jones in The Times. Berkshire is now the largest shareholder in the computing and printing group. The purchase is Berkshire’s “third significant transaction since the end of February”, coming after it bought Alleghany, an insurer, for $11.6bn in cash, as well as building a 14.6% stake in Occidental Petroleum, now worth roughly $8bn. The flurry of activity may seem like a very sudden change of view: until recently Buffett had been complaining about a “shortage of appealing investment opportunities”, says Katherine Chiglinsky on Bloomberg. Berkshire has been forced to “increasingly turn to share buybacks”, as a means of deploying…

Three to buy Gore Street Energy Storage The Mail on Sunday The UK is a pioneer in battery storage systems, which allow energy from renewable power sources to be stored and released when needed. Gore Street Energy Storage Fund “is one of the industry’s leading players”. When the company listed in 2018 it had only one site, but today it has 25 facilities with storage capacity of 700MW. Battery storage “is a key component of a secure and renewable energy mix, but it is good business too”: contracts are lengthy and Gore Street’s customers, which include National Grid in the UK and EirGrid in Ireland, are “robust and reliable”. It’s targeting a 7% annual dividend yield and has ample opportunity for growth: the pipeline has a combined capacity of 1,300MW.…

Chinese officials, under “mounting pressure” to help the 25 million people in Shanghai “struggling with food shortages and poor medical care”, have started to lift parts of their strict Covid lockdown, says Didi Tang in The Times. Those living in areas that have been free of infection for 14 days will now be allowed to leave their homes. Other parts of the city remain under “draconian restrictions”. Some people have even been padlocked into their flats or compounds. The restrictions brought China’s largest onshore financial hub and biggest city to a “grinding halt”, says the Financial Times. Shanghai’s importance to the wider Chinese economy is such that this has disrupted supply lines, both domestically and to other countries in Asia, exacerbating strains on transport and logistics. The waiting times for…

• David Baszucki (pictured), the co-founder and CEO of video-game company Roblox, received a $233m pay package last year, putting him in the ranks of the country’s top-paid CEOs, says The Wall Street Journal. For 2020, he was paid “just” $6.8m. Most of his pay for 2021 is made up of restricted stock that will vest over seven years depending on whether the shares remain over certain thresholds, beginning with $165 from March 2023. They currently trade at $43. • The highest-paid director at Manchester Airports Group (MAG), understood to be CEO Charlie Cornish, received an extra £500,000 – a rise of 25%, taking his total remuneration to £2.5m, for the year ending 31 March 2021, says The Guardian. Directors’ pay overall at MAG, which also owns London Stansted and…

Private equity simply refers to an ownership stake in a company that is not publicly listed. Private-equity investors (usually backed by big institutions, although there are also listed private-equity funds that small investors can buy easily) either invest in unlisted companies, or buy listed companies – typically ones that are seen to be underperforming – and take them private. Private-equity managers aim to be very hands-on owners, unlike traditional shareholders in listed companies. By working with unlisted (or de-listed) companies, the private-equity owner escapes the short-term focus of the equity markets. In theory, this gives them the space and time needed to make the companies more efficient (if the firm is a “turnaround” play) or to “unlock its true value” by pursuing a longer-term or more radical strategy than public…

“When I first set up the business I took a big financial hit, and didn’t pay myself anything for the first six months. I didn’t even have the money for a coffee or odd meal out. I relied on the support of my parents who were thankfully there for me”. Harpreet Kaur (pictured), winner of The Apprentice, on starting her dessert business, quoted in The Sunday Times “There is nothing I should like better than to be able to write altogether gratis, but in the present state of things such a thing would be difficult for a German, or much more an Austrian artist! Only London could make one so fat, that one would be able afterwards to resist in Germany, or rather here, the leanest bits.” Ludwig van Beethoven…

theatlantic.com For home workers, the nine-to five has become a thing of the past, says Derek Thompson. A new study by Microsoft shows that work patterns follow a “triple peak” pattern, with productivity hitting highs just before and after lunch – which was normal pre-pandemic – with a new peak after 9pm. The flexibility of home working means people are interrupting their work day to deal with family life, then picking up what they’ve missed later on. That’s the positive side at least. But the study also shows that we are working longer hours in total, partly as a result of work and leisure time bleeding into each other, but also due to a “bonanza of meetings”. People seem to be having more than two times as many meetings as…

Activist investor Enkraft is pressuring German power producer RWE to spin off its lignite (low-grade brown coal) mining arm, says Bloomberg. Enkraft, which holds over 600,000 shares worth around €24m in the firm, argues RWE can boost its valuation by separating lignite from its clean-energy operations. RWE’s executive and supervisory boards oppose the plan, saying that a spin-off would be seen as an attempt to “absolve” the company of the duty to pay for plant decommissioning and taking care of employees after the coal business is phased out. The proposal will go to a shareholder vote at the annual general meeting (AGM) on 28 April, as under German law any investor with more than €500,000 in share capital can put items on the AGM agenda.…

Growing numbers of cash-strapped homeowners are turning to the value locked up in their properties to bolster their finances, new research suggests. Data from debt advice specialist Henry Dannell reveals that homeowners raised £4.8bn via equity release plans in 2021, a 24% increase on the previous year. The average homeowner raised £63,000 through equity release, 19% up on 2020. Equity release plans allow homeowners in need of cash later in life to take money out of their property without having to move home. Typically available to the over-55s, the plans come in two forms. Lifetime mortgages enable homeowners to borrow against the value of their property, with no repayments to make until after their death when the property is sold. In a home reversion plan, homeowners sell a portion of…

In response to the war in Ukraine, many people have pointed out that Europe must restart using coal-fired power plants and buy more liquified natural gas (LNG) from shale gas sources in the US to replace fossil fuels supplied by Russia. In our view, this narrative is misleading. Doing so would mean climate change mitigation is no longer a priority. Coal, crude and natural gas did not become any more investible, cleaner, cheaper or less volatile since the invasion of Ukraine. Security of supply is a top priority for all countries – the EU in particular due to its reliance on Russia – and the need to accelerate the transition to clean energy remains undeniable. Our global power industry was built around large, centralised power stations, mostly powered by coal…

2020 Canava Chrissou, Tselepos, Santorini, Greece £33.00, cavaspiliadis.uk I arrived at Le Comptoir Robuchon (6 Clarges St, London, W1) at 11.45 to introduce the sommelier to my range of alcohol-free Jukes Cordialities. My introduction was made by a mutual friend who sells the elite rosés from Château d’Esclans. My friend was delayed by an hour, and I found myself talking to a delightful lady at the bar, who turned out to be an old wine trade contact who was now selling fantastic Greek and Cypriot wines. The three of us ended up enjoying the most remarkable lunch I can remember while tasting her wines. My featured assyrtiko is the finest example of this crystalline, spellbindingly floral grape I have tasted. It was such a shock I’m still reeling. And 2017…

A smart water sprinkler The ST8O-2.0 eight-zone Smart Irrigation WiFi Sprinkler Timer from US brand Rain Bird allows you to water the garden from anywhere. The sprinkler system connects your hose to the internet and adjusts watering automatically to the changing seasons, local weather, temperature and humidity, saving you time and money. The smart timer will even send you alerts while you’re away. £194 (imported from the US), see desertcart.co.uk Weeding made easy The Tertill Weeding Robot is perfect for plucking out weeds from your garden. “It’s effortless to set up, simple to use, and effective in keeping weeds away,” says Essential Home and Garden. The Tertill utilises a small weed whacker to decapitate any upstart sprouts, in conjunction with wheels shaped specially to eliminate weeds in the cotyledon stage…

The Covid-19 story has disappeared from the headlines. Thank God. We were getting tired of it. Now we have a new crisis, a new betê noire – Russia. Once again the influencers have decided who’s on the side of the angels and urge us to do battle against the devilish Russkies. But there’s more to this story too, just as there was to the pandemic narrative. Two full years have passed since Covid-19 first made landfall in the US. As more of the story comes out, we see that the effect was largely to transfer from the poor to the rich. Wasn’t it strange that some countries – even those with very low standards of public health, in Asia and Africa, for example – had very low rates of Covid-19?…

Sam Waley-Cohen (pictured) has become the first amateur jockey to win the Grand National since 1990, says the Daily Mail. Waley-Cohen, riding in his last race before retirement, won on 50/1 long-shot Noble Yeats, owned by his father. As an amateur, Waley-Cohen does not officially get a share of the £561,300 first-prize money, most of which goes to the owner. Instead, 10% will be donated to the Amateur Jockeys Association. Walmart truckers will now earn between $95,000 and $110,000 in their first year as the giant US retailer ramps up pay amid a chronic shortage of drivers, says Bloomberg. The top rate is 26% more than the previous average for its new drivers and more than twice the median $47,130 for US truck drivers in 2020. The firm employs 12,000…

Two of the world’s largest alternative asset managers are “duking it out” for control of the Italian airports and motorways group Atlantia, says Lex in the Financial Times. In one corner, Brookfield Asset Management is working on a deal with Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and Spanish construction tycoon Florentino Pérez. Their proposal would see Brookfield and GIP buy Atlantia and sell its controlling stake in Spanish toll-road operator Abertis to Pérez’s engineering company ACS, which already owns just under half the venture. That and other asset sales – most significantly the already scheduled sale of its Italian motorway unit next month –would reduce the cost from around €50bn including debt to around €20bn, says Lisa Jucca on Breakingviews. But the Benetton family – who own a third of Atlantia and…

Aluminium and zinc prices have gone up by 50% over the past year, but shares of recycling specialist Befesa rose even more, says WirtschaftWoche. The firm recycles hazardous waste from aluminium smelters and steelworks, and sells the recovered raw materials to traders and processors. It has a market-leading position in both niches. Revenues rose 36% last year to €822m, while profits more than doubled to almost €100m. In the longterm, business should continue to improve. The firm bought US rival AZR for $450m last year and two new plants go into operation in China this year. A recent minor setback in the share price is an opportunity to buy.…

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has “yielded to the inevitable in stages”, says Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. First, he announced that his wealthy wife, Akshata Murthy, who is an Indian citizen, will pay UK tax on her overseas income after all. Then he referred himself to Christopher Geidt, the independent ethics chief, who will investigate whether Sunak declared all his interests – including the fact that he has a green card that puts him on a potential path to US citizenship – in line with the rules. But the political damage may already be done. Sunak has been “tarnished” by the revelations and he seems now a less likely successor to Boris Johnson than he did just weeks ago. This puts the party’s prospects of a fifth term in power in…

Sunday’s first-round vote in the French presidential election has narrowed the race down to a simple contest between the incumbent Emmanuel Macron and the far-right Marine Le Pen (pictured below). The polls show the head-to-head gap between the two candidates narrowing over the last month, but punters still seem sure that Macron will be celebrating come the evening of 24 April. With £5.4m matched on Betfair, Macron is at 1.17 (85.4%) and Le Pen is at 6.8 (14.7%). It’s true that the first round saw a surge in support for the extremes, with Le Pen, Éric Zemmour and the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon getting around half of the vote between them. However, with all the candidates (apart from Zemmour) urging their supporters to vote against Le Pen,  my guess is that…

Albert Bourla, Ugur Sahin and Stéphane Bancel, the respective CEOs of mRNA Covid-19 vaccine developers Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna, took home $107.2m in combined pay for 2020-2021, during the first year of the pandemic, say Jamie Smyth and Patrick Temple-West in the Financial Times. That was up from $103.7m for the previous two years, and reflects the “huge commercial success” of their vaccines. Pfizer’s stock price is up by 60% over the past 24 months, while that of BioNTech has tripled and Moderna’s has risen by five times. That has made paper billionaires of Bancel and Sahin, whose shareholdings are worth $5.4bn and $7.8bn respectively. Bourla was the highest paid, receiving $45.3m for the year, while Bancel took home $31.1m and Sahin $30.8m. Pay for bosses of big pharma is…

“All key commodities required by the modern economy are finite in supply, and the cheapest and best have gone first,”, says Jeremy Grantham in his latest piece for GMO, the US asset manager he co-founded. Yet this simple fact is only now becoming plain as “we are approaching our limits to physical growth”. Grantham, who is devoting the vast majority of his wealth to fighting climate change, says that oil is the best illustration. “Simple gushers were once common.” But now we need to drill deep offshore or rely on shale to find new sources. “As a result, the real price trend of oil has reached three or four times its 1965 level in spite of incredible innovation by the energy industry.” The oil price first broke its “long flat…

newstatesman.com For decades, Britons have enjoyed a romance with the housing market, believing that rising prices translate into greater wealth, says Polly Bindman. They may be falling out of love. Confronted by low levels of home ownership and an affordability crisis, polls by YouGov and Positive Money show that most Britons, including older ones and Conservative voters, are in favour of bold reforms that would put a lid on prices, even at the expense of their own properties falling in price. A majority of Tory voters would support the Bank of England being given a target, for example; 44% (against 51% overall) would support a rise in council tax for those seeing above-average price rises. Since 2000, average wages have grown by 94% while house prices have grown by 224%.…

■ “Market turmoil driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and rising inflation has sharply divided the hedge-fund industry,” says the Financial Times. Macro hedge funds – those that try to profit from big political or economic events – have done very well, while technology and growth focused funds have struggled. The top-performing 10% of hedge funds gained an average of 24.3% in the first quarter of 2022, while the weakest 10% lost 15.4%. Meanwhile, mainstream fund managers running traditional balanced portfolios (60% stocks/40% bonds) have struggled as stocks and bonds fell in tandem. And emerging-market fund managers have seen worsening outflows, especially from debt funds. Ashmore – which made big bets on Russian assets before the invasion and also has sizeable exposure to struggling Chinese property firm Evergrande – is…

The construction industry is booming. From houses to motorways, demand has never been higher. But while demand has increased, productivity hasn’t. The productivity of workers in the two decades up until 2017 increased by just 1% per year, compared with 2.8% for the global economy and 3.6% for manufacturing, according to consultancy McKinsey. With long-term labour shortages looming, there are big opportunities to improve the way the industry works. Construction is facing four major challenges, says Russell Haworth, chief executive of construction technology platform NBS. First, there is an increased emphasis on safety. Second, there has been a big jump in the quality of building that people expect. Environmental sustainability is also a hot topic as governments talk of trying to cut net carbon emissions to zero. Finally, the industry…

Soaring energy bills are leading us all to think about how we can reduce our bills. But how far are you willing to go to keep your costs down? “Some people are even moving house to cut their energy bills” This month the energy price cap was raised by £693 to £1,971 (this represents the annual cost per household assuming average usage – your bill could be more or less depending on energy consumption) due to rocketing gas and electricity prices. It is expected to rise again in October, possibly to as much as £2,500. Faced with the prospect of average energy bills rising by more than £1,000 in just 12 months, many of us are now looking at how to cut the amount of energy we use. It is…

Ever since the pension freedom reforms of 2015, the idea that people could start making withdrawals from their private pension plans at age 55 has been a basic principle of financial planning. Last week, however, that principle changed, as a planned rise in the “normal minimum pension age” to 57 passed into law. Now, from 6 April 2028, 57 will be the earliest age at which you can access your pension savings. There is, however, an important exception. If you belong to a pension scheme – an individual arrangement or a scheme at work – where the rules give you the right to begin making withdrawals at age 55, you’ll retain this right whatever happens with the normal minimum pension age. That could prove crucial if you’re hoping to get…

Atlantic Lithium (Aim: ALL) is an Australia-based lithium miner with operations in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. It is one of the companies benefiting from the boom in the price of the metal as the ongoing conflict in Ukraine disrupts supply. Lithium is key to developing low-carbon technologies, such as batteries for electric vehicles, so demand is expected to remain high for at least the next decade. Last month, Atlantic Lithium announced a 42% increase in the mineral resource estimate at its Ewoyaa project in Ghana, as well as the start of its drilling activity for 2022. The stock’s price is up 168% over the last 12 months.…

Review Short Memory Written and directed by Richard Roques Running at the Golden Goose Theatre, London, to 23 April Short-selling – borrowing shares then selling them in the hope that you can buy them back at a lower price and profit from their fall – is contentious, writes Matthew Partridge. Many defend it as a legitimate investment strategy that helps expose fraud and make markets more efficient by acting as a check on the optimistic bias of analysts and promoters. Others argue that there is something distasteful, even morally wrong, about betting on other people’s misfortune, especially when the misfortune could have serious implications for large numbers of people. Short Memory, written and directed by Richard Roques and running at the Golden Goose theatre in Camberwell in south London, explores…