Innehållsförteckning för 1119 från MoneyWeek

Last week I hosted an Adam Smith-themed panel show at Edinburgh’s Fringe to which I invited many of MoneyWeek’s favourite economists, strategists and financial historians. Some of you came (thank you!) and will know that while it was a lot of fun (I include clever comedians in the line-up, just in case we all start to take ourselves too seriously) it was also a little depressing. Almost all our trusted sources reckon that equities have a nasty collapse ahead of them (they recommended we hold cash as a least bad option). They also were almost as one on inflation being both transitory and structural – the point being that even if Covid-induced money printing works its way through the system and even if energy prices stop rising, deglobalisation and the…

“If you’ve ever seen a gain slip through your fingers, you know the feeling of regret can be powerful... Over our investment lives, we all have missteps... I remember, for example, looking at Apple’s stock in 2004, when it was trading around $1... I didn’t buy... Today, it’s trading around $170...But I don’t regret it… Even if I’d bought the stock, I know how unlikely it is that I would have held every single share until today... I might have sold... when it got to $2 or $3, and I probably would’ve been happy, having doubled or tripled my investment... investors should focus on making good decisions with the information they have at the time... Don’t judge yourself harshly. If you’re content with where you are in your financial life,…

Honda and South Korea’s LG Energy have announced that they plan to build a $4.4bn electric-vehicle (EV) battery factory in the US, say River Davis and Dasi Yoon in The Wall Street Journal. Honda is planning a full switch to EVs by 2040. The decision to locate the plant in the US seems to have been prompted by president Joe Biden’s attempt to persuade carmakers to bring more battery manufacturing to North America. Companies are now obligated to have a certain value of the components in their battery assembled in the US if they want to qualify for an EV tax credit. Honda isn’t alone in outlining ambitious plans for battery production, says Andrew Hawkins in The Verge. Its new factory is just one of several new EV facilities likely…

Germany’s Fuchs Petrolub, which makes industrial oils and lubricants, is already a key supplier to the car industry. Its products include cooling fluids for electronic components and high-quality lubricants for electric-vehicle (EV) motors . Now, in conjunction with other companies, it is planning to develop electrolytes for batteries used in EVs, drones and various medical fields. The project is to begin in the summer of 2023. This new growth business should gradually offset the current increase in costs, notably for oil-based raw materials and transport, which reduced profits by 5% in the first half even as sales rose by 16%. The stock also yields 4.4%.…

Politics & economics Rishi Sunak, the Tory leadership contender, has issued a “scathing” criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic, arguing that scientific advisers were given too much power, says Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe in the Financial Times. The former chancellor told The Spectator that there was little discussion at top levels about the negative effects of successive lockdowns. Instead, in order to present lockdowns as “following the science”, Sage, a “sprawling group of scientific advisers”, was elevated into an all-powerful committee that led to the “most draconian policy introduced in peacetime”, says Fraser Nelson in The Spectator. Sunak says he has no interest in naming names and isn’t arguing that lockdown was a mistake; he is simply saying that the “downsides in health, the economy and society in general could…

With the new Conservative leader due to be revealed next week, punters are more convinced than ever that it will be Liz Truss, not Rishi Sunak, who will be visiting the Queen at Balmoral. With £6.08m matched on Betfair on the next Conservative leader and a further £5.62m matched on the next PM, Truss is now at 1.05 (95.2%) in both markets, while Sunak is out at 18 (5.5%). I think Truss is very unlikely to lose, but her odds are far too short to recommend. As a result, I suggest that you take a 7,000-mile detour and look at the market on the upcoming Chilean referendum. In 2021 Chile elected delegates to a constitutional convention, which produced the draft of a new constitution earlier this year. On Sunday Chile…

Hardly a day goes by without one whizzy technology company or another announcing it is trying out new ways of working, or experimenting with staff benefits. Last week Atom Bank, a tech-based challenger to the traditional high-street lenders, said it was pressing ahead with a four-day week, and that it was getting overwhelmed with applications. Other companies are experimenting with unlimited holiday time, or wellness classes. Or with a work-from-anywhere policy, allowing staff not just to work from home, but to travel around the world, logging into their laptops from a beach. Or indeed with sabbaticals, allowing people to regularly take six months or a year off before coming back to the office. The range of perks is expanding all the time. The old four weeks’ holiday and free lunch…

A futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset – such as oil, gold, currency or shares – at a prearranged price on a prearranged date (known as the delivery date). Futures may be physically delivered (which means that the seller must deliver the asset to the buyer) or cash settled (which means they exchange a payment based on the difference between the initial price and the price when the contract expires). Futures contracts for any asset are usually available with a range of delivery dates – this may be monthly, quarterly or less regular (for example, some delivery dates for crops may be aligned with harvest months). Each futures contract trades independently, with the price reflecting expected supply and demand on a given delivery date. For…

“People who have it don’t like to talk about it. We should all talk about money a lot more.” Actor and playwright Ben Norris (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “If you work hard, and you’re nice, then you might get to do really amazing things. Because working hard is probably the most underrated thing. When people talk about ‘How did this person get to do that?’ grafting is not mentioned as much as it should be… And I was brought up to think that you should do something worthwhile with your life.” Former BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, on the work ethic instilled in her by her parents, quoted in The Times “To be able to grow old and not have to worry about money. I don’t hanker after…

theconversation.com There were more than 400,000 discharges of raw sewage into rivers and coastal seas in England and Wales in 2020, say Peter Cruddas and Keiron Roberts. Southern Water was recently fined a record £90m for dumping up to 21 billion litres of untreated sewage over six years in protected seas off England’s southern coast. Why is this happening? In short because Victorian sewage systems were on the brink of being overwhelmed even shortly after they were first built and the situation has only got worse. Privatised water companies seek sufficient profit to attract investment (which was falling under public ownership) while keeping water bills low enough to satisfy the regulator. But the balancing act is getting harder. Water usage is rising and climate change is bringing more rainfall in…

Lynas Rare Earths (Sydney: LYC) boasts the Mt Weld Central Lanthanide Deposit (CLD), one of the highest-grade rare-earth deposits in the world. Mt Weld also encompasses other resources, such as the undeveloped Duncan, Crown and Swan deposits, which contain rare-earth metals, titanium and phosphates. Lynas processes ore at its Mt Weld plant, producing rare-earth concentrate that is sent for further processing at the Lynas Advanced Material Plant near Kuantan, Malaysia. One of the world’s largest and most modern rare-earth separation plants, Lynas Malaysia treats the Mt Weld concentrate and makes rare-earth oxide (REO) products to sell worldwide. The firm is opening a processing facility at Kalgoorlie in Australia and recently won a $120m contract from the US Department of Defence to build a heavy rare earths facility in America. Lynas…

■ “Jupiter Fund Management is in talks to sell its entire stake in Starling Bank months after the digital lender’s valuation passed £2.5bn,” says Sky News. The fund manager, which owns nearly 10% of the bank’s equity across its UK Mid Cap fund and other funds, has instructed bankers to find buyers for a holding likely to be worth more than £200m (though it’s expected Jupiter might have to accept a modest discount to sell). Starling accounted for 7.6% of UK Mid Cap’s total assets at the end July and the fund is subject to a total regulatory limit of 10% in unlisted stocks, so further increases in the bank’s value could put it in danger of breaching the threshold. The sale does not include the near-10% Starling stake owned…

Students across the country have received their A-level results and are now preparing to start university in the autumn. One key consideration is opening a student bank account. Pick wisely and this account will help you manage your finances for the duration of your course and in the years afterwards. Banks roll out the red carpet for teenagers heading off to university because many people stick with the same bank for their current account for decades after they graduate. This means banks often acquire a long-term customer to whom they can cross-sell many of their other products. Prioritise your overdraft The perks offered to students range from cash to railcards, but don’t be swayed by the freebies. This account needs to work well throughout university and beyond, so the main…

Millions of pensioners with supposedly gold-plated private-pension plans are going to take a big hit from inflation. XPS Pensions, a pensions consultant, warns that more than four million pensioners in final-salary schemes and other plans offering guaranteed retirement benefits will not see their incomes rise in line with soaring inflation – now running at 10.1% – even though their schemes ostensibly offer inflation-proofing. The problem is that while final-salary schemes promise inflation-linked annual pension increases to pensioners once they start receiving retirement income, the small print of most schemes imposes a cap on such rises. These caps, known as limited price indexation (LPI), typically restrict annual pension increases to 5%. Many pensioners will be unaware that their schemes feature LPI restrictions. Until inflation began to spike upwards at the end…

The FP Octopus UK Multi Cap Income Fund blends companies from across the entire British stockmarket to construct a portfolio capable of above-market earnings and dividend growth throughout the economic cycle. The fund seeks to generate an attractive and growing dividend yield. It benefits from being able to pick stocks where we see the most attractive opportunities at the most exciting valuations, regardless of a company’s size. Following the recent market turbulence, many companies have seen their share prices disconnect from the underlying business performance, particularly within the small and mid-cap sectors. We are therefore fortunate to have a large number of exciting opportunities on very attractive ratings. “The market’s decline has left many small and mid-caps on attractive ratings” Built on firm foundations One is Brickability (Aim: BRCK), the…

Cryptocurrency adverts starring high-profile celebrities have vanished from US television as the crypto crash deepens, says Bloomberg. Commercials for crypto trading featuring stars such as basketball player LeBron James (pictured) and actor Matt Damon had been in heavy rotation at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. Damon’s campaign for Crypto.com, featuring the tagline “fortune favours the brave”, cost an estimated $65m over four months. But as cryptocurrency prices have plunged, so have marketing budgets. Damon’s ad last aired during the Super Bowl in February. Coinbase, the only crypto exchange publicly listed in the US, said in its second-quarter results last month that it was scaling back paid advertising. Total spending by major crypto firms in the US fell to just $36,000 in July, down from a high of…

Eastern Europe is heading for recession, say Raphael Minder and Marton Dunai in the Financial Times. Poland’s economy shrank by 2.3% during the second quarter. Annual inflation has hit 15.6%, while consumers’ confidence is at its lowest level since the pandemic began. Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary are also heavily exposed to Germany’s economic slowdown. “Investors have... dumped Polish stocks due in part to the proximity of war across the border in Ukraine,” says Konrad Krasuski on Bloomberg. Rare exceptions are firms that make “heating pumps, bulletproof vests and coal”. Local blue-chips have slipped by 27% this year and now trade on a 43% valuation discount to an index covering all emerging markets. So are Polish markets a bargain? Perhaps not, says Craig Mellow in Barron’s. Warsaw has responded…

“The only way to win money from a casino is to own one,” says Jacky Wong in The Wall Street Journal. But even that has proved a losing bet in Macau over the last two years. Long the world’s top gambling hub, the Chinese city saw its revenue plunge by 95% in July compared with a year before. Takings have been languishing for more than two years: tough Chinese restrictions have sent visitor numbers down to less than 20% of pre-pandemic levels. “Largely empty casino floors” are pricey to run, leaving operators “burning cash and pushing debt higher.” The pandemic “has shuffled the deck of the global casino industry”, putting Vegas back on top. Revenue on the Las Vegas strip has enjoyed a very strong post-pandemic bounce.…

Royal Mail is already suffering “the biggest strike of the summer”, says The Telegraph. And it is now facing an enquiry. A billionaire investor known as the “Czech sphinx” is preparing to up his stake in the business. Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has told the company that Daniel Kretinsky’s (pictured) expected decision to increase his shareholding to more than 25% “would trigger an investigation that could ultimately mean the billionaire is forced to sell down his stake”, which isn’t an idle threat. All this drama comes as Royal Mail’s shares have lost 50% this year. The government feels that it has an interest in who owns Royal Mail, especially since the Covid-19 lockdowns reminded us that it is “still a critical piece of national kit”, says Nils Pratley in The…

Thailand’s agricultural conglomerate Betagro, whose activities include selling animal-feed, pet food and producing meat, is seeking to raise about 20bn baht ($554m) in its upcoming initial public offering (IPO), says Bloomberg. It plans to sell 500 million new shares to institutional investors. The listing will be the second-largest in Thailand this year after Thai Life Insurance’s $1bn listing in July. Overseas investors are showing an interest in Thai stocks, which has buoyed confidence; the benchmark index has gained 3.6% in the past month. The firm aims to raise money to expand its farms and animal-feed businesses in Thailand and neighbouring countries.…

Newbury Micro Focus deal: “Another British tech company is to be bought by a rival across the Atlantic,” says Giulia Bottaro in The Telegraph. Canada’s OpenText’s accepted offer of £5.32 a share for Micro Focus values the Berkshire-based IT group at £5.1bn, including debt. It is a 98% premium to the share price last week, which has plummeted 87% over the last three years. The FTSE 250 company sells business software to thousands of firms, including Airbus, Hewlett Packard and Kellogg’s. It “never recovered from significant profit warnings in 2018 and 2019”, following Micro Focus’s acquisition of Hewlett Packard’s software segment for $8.8bn in 2017. Micro Focus has struggled to integrate it ever since. Revenue fell 7% to $1.3bn in the six months to the end of April from a…

● The pandemic didn’t kill cinemas, but “the same can’t quite be said of debt-laden cinema chains”, says Cat Rutter Pooley in the Financial Times. Vue has done a debt-for-equity swap, while Cineworld is mulling a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US. The operators say their problem is a “short-term cash crunch” caused by a shortage of big blockbusters this year and that will normalise, but this isn’t the whole story. The shift to streaming may have a permanent impact on demand. What’s more, chains such as Cineworld and AMC carried excessive debt due to a series of expensive acquisitions. That kind of “empire building” is probably over. Cineworld also faces a $900m legal battle over its abandoned deal to buy Canada’s Cineplex. And it was too slow to acknowledge…

“We’re nowhere near done with this inflation problem,” says investment strategist and long-time gold bull Peter Schiff. “It is going to be for years and years and years. Probably the remainder of this decade, and probably then some.” Inflation in the US seems to have peaked for now, but the lower headline rates are due primarily to petrol prices coming down at the pump. However, core inflation – excluding volatile food and energy prices – has continued to increase by 0.3% month-on-month in July, and it’s going to get a lot higher, Schiff tells Kitco. The US Federal Reserve can’t keep raising interest rates to fight current inflation without killing off swathes of “zombie companies” born during the stockmarket bubble since 2008. And with inflation as high as it is…

slate.com After a year that saw its subscriptions dip and shares plummet, Netflix is moving away from “labour of love” projects – Martin Scorcese’s long rumination on the dying regrets of a hitman in The Irishman, for example – in favour of what the director of new action flick The Gray Man calls “business-focused content”. That makes for “just as transporting an experience as it sounds”, says Sam Adams. Out goes plot, character, wit; in come expensive stars in nonstop action scenes of no interest. The reason is that “the auteurist approach” wasn’t paying dividends. So Netflix has “pivoted from prestige to populism”. The Gray Man “obligingly leapt to the top of Netflix’s rankings” the moment it was released, and people who like movies to “go through them like a…

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the prices of agricultural commodities shot up. Wheat gained 59%, sunflower oil rose 30% and maize rose 23%. Both countries are major exporters of these crops, thanks to the belt of highly fertile chernozem (or “black earth”) that covers much of Ukraine and extends into Russia. Together, they accounted for 28% of globally-traded wheat, more than the US and Canada together, 29% of the barley, 15% of the maize and 75% of the sunflower oil. Their share of global production is smaller, but as major exporters they are crucial in meeting international demand. There were widespread fears about the impact this would have on global food supplies and the risk of widespread shortages, especially when prices of other crops grown elsewhere began to soar…

The average discount to net asset value (NAV) in the investment trust sector has fallen from 10% at the end of June to 6.8%, but there is still no shortage of trusts trading on far higher discounts. Some of these will prove to be bargains, producing compound returns through the combination of strong underlying performance and narrowing discounts. Others will prove to be lame ducks, justifying the high discount. It takes experience, deep knowledge and a great deal of due diligence to sift the gems from the dross, and even then mistakes are inevitable. It’s tempting to buy a selection of high-discount trusts in the expectation that the bargains will counterbalance the lame ducks. But most investors will be wary of having too many holdings and prefer to focus on…

People are living longer across most of the world. The average life expectancy at birth in the 38 countries of the OECD, an association of developed economies, increased from 67 to 80 between 1960 2020. Japan had the highest life expectancy in 2020 – 85 – while the UK’s was 81. Educated professional people tend to live longer than average, with a 25-year-old American graduate surviving a decade longer than a high-school dropout. As people age they experience joint problems that reduce mobility to the point where artificial joints are required, especially hips and knees. Ageing baby-boomers and the obesity crisis (around 40% of Americans are obese) are the key drivers of demand. The leader in the worldwide market for hip and knee joints is Zimmer Biomet (NYSE: ZBH), with…

There is a growing discrepancy between the interest rates available to people who are computer-savvy and those that prefer to bank in branch. “More than three-quarters of the best savings accounts in the last year could not be opened in a branch, leading to accusations that some banks are discriminating against older people” and therefore may be breaking the law, says Alexa Phillips in The Telegraph. Of 28 banks and building societies at the top of the savings-rate tables over the past year, only six gave customers a way to open the account other than online. Research by The Telegraph found that some banks offered far lower rates for branch-based accounts. For instance, on one account Tesco Bank pays online-only customers 1.58%, but just 0.25% for other savers. Interest rates…

● Older savers struggling to pay their bills as the cost of living soars may be tempted to cash in their pension plans early, experts warn, putting their standard of living in retirement at risk. Under the current rules, savers with private pension schemes can begin taking cash out of them from the age of 55 onwards. But while such funds may be tempting targets as costs rise, taking pension cash early not only means there will be less available later in life, but also creates potential problems now. The income-tax bill on a large withdrawal may be significant, and savers who have withdrawn money from pensions usually face restrictions on future contributions, making it difficult to rebuild savings. Withdrawals may also mean you lose eligibility for certain state benefits.…

South African miner Thungela Resources (LSE: TGA) has seen its shares soar following a surge in profits, says the Financial Times. South Africa’s largest exporter of thermal coal says earnings for the six months to 30 June rocketed by almost 3,000% to R9.6bn ($578m) thanks to record coal prices; the war in Ukraine increased demand for cheaper energy. Moreover, a full ban on Russian coal shipments came into effect this month, bolstering demand for alternative sources. Thungela was spun off from mining giant Anglo American in June 2021. The shares have since risen by 1,400% and are up 508% in a year.…

Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded in 1939 by two graduate engineers, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, and later became one of the key companies in the technology cluster now known as Silicon Valley. By the time Léo Apotheker was appointed CEO in November 2010, the PC maker had a market cap of $92bn. What was the investment? Apotheker felt that HP’s future lay in selling software and services, as opposed to computer hardware. As a result, he announced plans to close its mobile phones and tablet computer business and spin out its hardware business into a separate company. His most controversial move, though, was to acquire Autonomy, a British software company founded by Mike Lynch. HP paid $11bn for the firm, a 70% premium to its share price before the bid…

2020 Craggy Range, Aroha, Te Muna, Martinborough, New Zealand (£65) Craggy Range’s owners, Terry and Mary Peabody, have established a 1,000-year trust, meaning this pioneering winery can never be sold. This deed underlines how seriously this family has taken the evolution of Craggy from its origins in 1998 to the stellar wines it makes today. The 2020 releases are the finest to date, making this brand not only one of the most revered estates in New Zealand, but also the world. 2020 Aroha is being sold through La Place de Bordeaux, so keep your eyes peeled for it filtering through to UK merchants any minute now. I tasted the new releases with winemaker Julian Grounds, and it is clear his calm and measured character has brought similar traits to…

Money Men A Hot Startup, A Billion-Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth Dan McCrum Bantam Press, £20 The implosion of German payment-processing company Wirecard was one of the biggest financial scandals of recent times. At its peak, the company was worth $27bn and regarded as one of Europe’s leading “fintechs”. Then, just weeks after it reported that €1.9bn was missing from its balance sheet, it was forced to declare bankruptcy and its CEO Markus Braun was arrested on suspicion of fraud. In this book, Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum, who played a lead role in exposing the scam, tells the story of what happened. Wirecard specialised in processing payments for companies, a large number of which were involved in gambling or pornography. Payments to such firms were likely to…

US president Joe Biden has cancelled $10,000 in federal student-loan debt for most borrowers, reports CNBC. “Nearly 45% of borrowers, or almost 20 million people, would have their debt fully cancelled, according to the White House.” (See also page 10.) Isn’t that nice of him, dear reader? Of course, it wasn’t his money. And cancelling the debt won’t cost him a penny. But Biden’s generosity is a big step forward in financial history. For thousands of years, we humans have been plagued by debt. Now we have the answer – just “cancel” it! Why stop there? Biden should go further and cancel our car loans, mortgages, payday loans, government debt, bank loans, credit-card debt, loans for solar panels and electric vehicles, gambling debts… and why not bar tabs too? Only…

European energy prices are reaching astounding heights. Wholesale gas prices, as measured by the Dutch TTF benchmark, hit €337 per megawatt hour (MWh) last week, a more than sixfold increase on the price a year ago. That is as if oil cost $500 a barrel. Electricity, whose price is closely linked to gas, has also surged. German and French power prices for delivery next year have topped €1,000 per MWh, says Bloomberg. “UK day-ahead electricity is trading at ten times its two-decade average.” The price spike is being driven by pressure to fill gas storage before winter, says Stanley Reed in The New York Times. The prospect of a Russian embargo means energy firms want to buy up gas at virtually any price. The Nord Stream 1 pipeline between Russia…

A period of “unusual comity” among big drugmakers, who “looked past traditional rivalries” to find medicines that could fight Covid-19 is coming to an end, says Joseph Walker in The Wall Street Journal: Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech. Moderna claims that the companies’ Covid-19 vaccine “infringes key intellectual property owned by Moderna” because it uses messenger RNA technology “that Moderna had developed and patented years ago”. Pfizer and BioNTech have responded by saying that their vaccine “is based on original and proprietary technology created by BioNTech” and that they would “vigorously” contest Moderna’s allegations. Moderna alleges that the Pfizer vaccine copies two key elements of its own, says Nicole Westman in The Verge. One is a chemical tweak that “prevents the body from attacking the vaccine” before it can…

Three to buy IP Group The Mail on Sunday IP Group specialises in finding promising early stage businesses and helping them flourish. Its biggest success to date has been Oxford Nanopore Technologies, a DNA-sequencing company known for identifying Covid-19 variants. But IP Group has “many more strings to its bow”. Its portfolio features Cambridge-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm Featurespace and self-driving software creator Oxbotica. The dip in the share price over the past year is a buying opportunity. 69p Taylor Maritime Investments The Telegraph The prospect of a global economic downturn has fuelled pessimism about the shipping sector. This explains why Taylor Maritime Investments, an investment trust, is trading at a 17% discount to net asset value (NAV), which looks “far too wide”. The market is ignoring “positive dynamics associated…

China is in the midst of a “perfect storm”, says the Financial Times. It is suffering a heatwave that “has no precedent in world climatic history” – temperatures in some regions “are now 7˚C higher than the average level over the past decade. That has caused widespread droughts – the Yangtze river has dropped to its lowest level on record. This has disrupted trade and slashed the amount of power generated by hydroelectricity. At the same time, demand is up as people seek power-hungry air conditioners to cope. The combined increase in demand for power and depressed supply has led to rolling blackouts and the authorities have ordered manufacturers to shut down for more than two weeks. The disruption comes at a bad time for the world’s second-largest economy, which…

Commodities markets have been going wild this year, especially in energy. Supply shortages and huge swings in prices have been wrong-footing even traders who should know exactly what to expect. Take European power (electricity) markets. On Monday, German futures for power delivery in 2023 – the European benchmark contract – hit a record €1,050 per MWh. As prices soared, Austria’s Wien Energie – the power utility for Vienna – was in trouble: it was said to be seeking a €6bn bail-out to meet margin requirements on its trading positions. By Wednesday, power futures had collapsed to €635, and Wien Energie’s crisis had passed. It no longer need any funding, it said – although it admitted that situation could change within days or weeks. If you’re confused about how a firm…

Sacrificing growth to ideology Stephen Roach Australian Financial Review China’s economic slowdown isn’t just a “natural plateau”, there are “three powerful forces at work”, says Stephen Roach: “a structural transformation of the economy, payback for past excesses, and a profound shift in the ideological underpinnings of Chinese governance”. The first explanation frames the slowdown (optimistically) as the by-product of a strategy aimed at a “greener, consumer-led and services-intensive growth” that addresses the “twin goals of balance and sustainability”. The slowdown is also the unavoidable price paid of the previous “hyper-growth era”. An “overly leveraged” property sector and the “debt-fuelled expansion of state-owned” firms fit this script. Finally, there are the “ideological underpinnings”, or “Xi Jinping Thought”, which has led to a clampdown on “once-dynamic” internet platform firms and associated restrictions…

conservativehome.com Neil O’Brien MP has criticised his own government’s policy on immigration, worrying about the political cost of not getting immigration levels down, but the reality is that things are working pretty well, says Jonathan Portes. The government has delivered on its key Brexit promises of taking back control of immigration and creating a “Global Britain” that has not only not damaged the economy, but over time will also deliver economic benefits. The polling evidence suggests all this is popular too. “Brexit naysayers (including me) who variously predicted that the policy would be unpopular, undeliverable or economically damaging have, broadly, been proved wrong.” O’Brien worries about the overall level of immigration. But getting that down was not promised in the Leave campaign, and polls show the public is relaxed about…

Supermarkets offer consumers the illusion of choice. However, the food industry is highly concentrated, with most sectors being dominated by a handful of companies. For example, in the dairy sector Danone generates €24bn in annual revenues, Lactalis generates €22bn and Kerry €7bn. Many companies are private and owned by powerful but discreet families, such as Mars, Cargill (the largest privately-held company in the US in terms of revenues, with $134bn last year), or Besnier (owners of Lactalis and relatively obscure until they acquired the bankrupt Italian group Parmalat in 2011). In terms of finished products, I favour companies that have a wide range of products and are able to transfer costs to consumers. Brands are important because consumers stick to them – the high costs of marketing and advertising demonstrate…

Fast-food chain McDonald’s is shaking up its board following pressure from activist investor Carl Icahn, says The Times. Anthony Capuano, the CEO of hotels group Marriott, will become a non-executive director, while Sheila Penrose, who led McDonald’s sustainability and corporate responsibility committee, will step down after 15 years. Earlier this year, Icahn criticised the company’s record on animal welfare and urged it to stop buying pork from suppliers that house animals in crates. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to win two seats on the board, but McDonald’s has since said that by the end of 2022, 85-90% of its American pork supply will come from pigs that are not kept in gestation crates while pregnant.…

● Soaring inflation means your home contents or buildings insurance may no longer cover you, says The Times. Policyholders have been advised to check the value of their items as well as re-examine their building costs. The price of household furniture is up 15.1% for the year to July, chinaware 12.8% and kitchen utensils 12.3%. This has raised the cost of home contents insurance by 23.7% in a year. ● Lifetime Isas are meant to help first-time buyers save up a deposit. You can pay up to £4,000 a year into them and your money is protected from tax, while you also get a 25% bonus from the government. The trouble is they can only be used to buy property that costs up to £450,000. “House prices have risen by…

■ Doctors and senior nurses may be given access to a new system of pension tax and benefit rules as the state seeks to stem the number of staff leaving the NHS. Ministers are reportedly considering a raft of changes to the NHS Pension Scheme to counteract the effect of the annual-allowance and lifetime-allowance restrictions on pension contributions and savings. These have been blamed for prompting a significant exodus of senior NHS staff because, for higher earners, small increases in salaries or changing shift patterns can result in major tax charges as the allowances are breached. The changes are expected to be announced later this month and could include new rules that allow NHS Pension Scheme members to opt to receive additional pay rather than pension contributions that incur tax…

The stock of video-conferencing group Zoom Video Communications (Nasdaq: ZM) has slipped again following disappointing results, says CNBC. Zoom notched up $1.10bn in revenue for the quarter to 31 July, short of the $1.12bn expected, and also lowered its forecasts for the year to 31 January 2023. It was one of the main beneficiaries of the pandemic, but has struggled as economies have opened up and people are meeting in person again. A strong dollar and a shaky US economic backdrop are further headwinds. The shares have slumped by 75% this year and returned to their pre-pandemic level.…

Freezing Order A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath Bill Browder Simon & Schuster, £20 The invasion of Ukraine has prompted many countries to examine their complicity in Russian money-laundering, says Timothy Frye in The Washington Post. Financier Bill Browder was ahead of the game. Long before the invasion, he consistently raised the alarm about “just how far corrupt Russian officials and businesspeople will go to defend their ill-gotten wealth”. After Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in prison in 2012, following his arrest on trumped-up charges, the financier worked to “create a new legal instrument to go after the wealth and mobility of individual perpetrators of human-rights violations”. Browder’s latest book focuses on attempts by Russian officials “to impede and unwind…

£25 The wholesale price of a pint of beer if prices had risen as fast as energy prices, Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of supplier Octopus Energy, told BBC Radio 4’s Today. Jackson is calling for government intervention ahead of the rise in the price cap in October. $29.5bn The cost to US taxpayers by 2025 of funding Nasa’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which was scheduled to make its debut launch this week. Each launch will cost $2.2bn. It is likely to be the space agency’s last rocket before commercial firms take over. £2,184 The record-high “Union dividend” this year – or how much better off Scots are per person in the UK than if the country left the union. The value of Scotland’s higher spending and lower tax…