Innehållsförteckning för 1228 från MoneyWeek

“[In football]... when a player [is] outside of the opposition penalty area the crowd will inevitably encourage an effort on goal with the dull roar of ‘shooot’. This is a mistake... Shots from distance in football are like short-term investing – it feels right, but the odds of success are terrible... Trying to predict how markets might move over any brief time period... is another activity that we seem inescapably drawn towards despite it having little chance of success... Our judgement of probability is inextricably linked to how available something is in our mind... It is far easier to remember those short-term market calls that we got right, than the many we got wrong... We prefer things that... give us a reward as soon as possible. Long-range shots and short-term…

British handbag maker Mulberry has rejected an £83m takeover proposal from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, which already owns 36.8% of the company, as “too low”, says Julia Kollewe in The Guardian. Mulberry says new CEO Andrea Baldo, along with an emergency £10.75m share placing, “provides the company with a solid platform to execute a turnaround”. Mulberry has struggled to carve out a place in the luxury market amid intense competition and the “post-Brexit ending of shopping-tax breaks for tourists to the UK”. Frasers claims its move was prompted by concerns over what it sees as the “total lack of engagement” between Mulberry and its minority shareholders, says Isabella Fish in the Times. It also is “exceptionally concerned” that Mulberry’s auditor has noted there is a “material uncertainty related to going…

Politics & economics Chancellor Rachel Reeves is “working on plans to change the government’s definition of debt to allow her to borrow billions more to spend on capital projects while sticking to her pledge of having debt begin to fall in five years’ time”, says Kiran Stacey in The Guardian. Since this won’t help alleviate the “immediate pressures that have to be handled in this year’s spending review”, at the same time ministers are being asked to come up with billions of pounds’ worth of cuts to infrastructure projects (eg, roads and hospitals). “We certainly shouldn’t be chopping investment spending” due to a “quirk” of how we measure debt, says Paul Johnson in The Times. Excluding the losses the Bank of England is going to make through its “quantitative…

Events in the Middle East pushed the televised debate between vice-presidential candidates J.D. Vance and Tim Walz that took place on Tuesday night out of the headlines. The fact that Vance was generally seen as the winner (or at least as having beaten expectations) seems to have shifted the presidential election betting market in favour of Donald Trump. But with £75.9m matched on Betfair, the two are essentially neck and neck, with Trump the slight favourite at 1.98 (50.5%), and Harris close behind at 2.04 (49%). Regardless of who won the debate, I still believe Harris should be considered the favourite, owing to Trump’s age, propensity for gaffes and the fact that Harris has a bigger war chest to spend on last-minute advertisements in swing states. Having already tipped her,…

Two decades ago, I was covering energy when oil moved above the $20-$30 a barrel range where it had trodden water for years and headed above $40. At the time, few analysts thought it would stay there and I don’t remember any believing it could top $50. As we now know, oil kept rising – with some volatility – to trade consistently in the $90-$110 range from 2011 to 2014. In hindsight, nobody fully predicted the impact of rising demand in emerging markets, especially China where it went from 4.6 million barrels a day (mb/d) in 2000 to 9.3mb/d by 2010. An oversight like that should make us wary about predicting too confidently what recent events – from Saudi Arabia saying it will raise output and drop its $100 target…

US needs a power upgrade Daniela Rus and Nico Enriquez The Washington Post Artificial intelligence (AI) is “vital for holding our own against China and other rivals”, but AI uses a lot of electricity and America’s “ageing power grid” can’t cope, say Daniela Rus and Nico Enriquez. “Before we can use the most advanced microchips and run our state-of-the-art AI models, we need interstate-type corridors to transmit sufficient, reliable power to our data centres”. Without it, the robotics assisting your surgery will “pause to compute”. Even “critical cybersecurity and infrastructure systems could be affected”. It takes up to 20 years to get transmission lines approved in the US while China has been building grid capacity and energy generation at lightning pace, adding more solar capacity in 2022-2023 than the rest…

ft.com/unhedged Did the US Federal Reserve’s policies cause the fall in inflation of the past two years, or did the two things merely coincide? Plenty of economists think it’s the latter, says Robert Armstrong. Some take the scepticism even further and say the Fed is “a meaningless or near meaningless sideshow in economies and markets”. Aswath Damodaran of New York University, for example, denies that the Fed policy rate determines other important interest rates in any significant way (and has the charts to prove it) and that the Fed reacts to changes in the markets rather than the other way about. Rates were not low in the pre-pandemic decade because the Fed suppressed them, he says, but because growth was weak and there was no inflation in sight. Nor, contrary…

“China’s real-estate collapse may be morphing into something much larger: a deflationary economic bust,” writes investment strategist Ed Yardeni. “Buying a home was one of the primary ways that Chinese citizens used to invest and build wealth but new home prices have fallen by 5% year on year, marking the 13th month of consecutive declines. So the housing bust has taken a toll on Chinese consumers’ confidence, now at near-record low.” According to the People’s Bank of China, 96% of residents own a home and 20% own more than one, yet the population is ageing rapidly, reducing demand and hence construction activity. Average house prices soared from £321 per square metre in 2005 to £737 in 2020, leading to a housing price-to-income ratio of 29. As a result, household consumption…

November’s presidential election in the US is nearly upon us and the contest between current vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump is heating up. Election outcomes “tend to have limited long-term impact on the broader economic cycle or overarching market trends”, as Gabriella Macari of Arbuthnot Latham points out, but the result can “heavily influence specific sectors, depending on the victor and their policy stances”. Here we take a look at how the sectors of the US economy will – or won’t – be affected by the election result. Too close to call? What is the result likely to be? Picking the winner is difficult because the outcome is not based solely on who wins the national popular vote, but rather on who wins the Electoral College, with…

Could research and development (R&D) tax credits be a target for Rachel Reeves in her first Budget? The annual cost of the credits, paid to businesses investing in innovation, has increased to around £7.5bn a year. And amid warnings that not all claims are bona fide, that pot of cash could make a tempting target. More than 55,000 small businesses received R&D tax credits last year, the latest figures from HM Revenue & Customs show, underlining the value of this scheme to large numbers of companies. However, the scheme has already undergone substantial changes, with reforms introduced in April aimed at simplifying the system and cracking down on ineligible claims. Recent reform The new arrangements have merged the two separate schemes that discriminated between claims made by small and larger…

Property is a national obsession for the British. There are no fewer than seven house-price indices providing a month-to-month update on house prices and the reports make headline news. The total value of UK residential property stood at nearly £9trn at the end of 2022, according to the global real-estate group Savills – several times higher than the collective worth of all equities listed on the London Stock Exchange (£2trn). The value of all residential property in the UK is around 4.5 times higher than the total value of the equity market. In the US, the ratio is closer to one-to-one. There are 900,000 residential property market transactions every month, with £10bn of transaction volume, according to HMRC. This makes the residential property market far more important and liquid than…

It was a mixed fortnight for my eight long positions, with four rising, three falling and one unchanged since then. Engineering group Rolls-Royce accelerated from 499p to 523p. Cruise-ship operator Royal Caribbean sailed on from $170 to $177. Payments firm PayPal rose from $71 to $78 and retailer Marks & Spencer increased from 362p to 375p. However, investment and share-trading platform IG fell from 961p to 917p. Highstreet clothing retailer Next went down from 10,390p to 9,766p and housebuilder Vistry slipped from 1,374p to 1,318p. Foreign-exchange broker Alpha remained unchanged at 2,220p. All told, the profit on my long tips have increased from £3,093 to £3,276 over the last fortnight. It was a similar story for my five short positions, with three moving in my favour, but two rising. Air-taxi…

Given that he “hates publicity”, Labour peer Waheed Alli might have been expected to dodge last week’s party conference, says James Heale in The Spectator. “Yet there he was”, nonchalantly strolling around, pursued by reporters quizzing him about his role in Labour’s first big sleaze scandal. Alli (pictured) is thought to be worth £200m and his gifts to members of the cabinet have made him the “unwelcome centre of attention”. But Alli’s long “love affair” with the party – he has bankrolled it for 25 years – won’t be marred by “brushes with the press”. His donations to the party have totalled more than £700,000 to date. But that is just a part of his contribution. Alli’s bulging contacts book enables him to tap others for cash and keep business…

The Cape Winemakers Guild Auction 2024 Register online at straussart.co.za and see the entire auction catalogue. Usually, I write this column a fortnight before it is published, but for the very first time, I come to you live and direct from The Lord Charles Hotel in Somerset West, not far from Cape Town, in South Africa, where the annual Cape Winemakers Guild Auction takes place today (13.30 – 19.30 local time, 4 October) and tomorrow (10.00 – 17.00, 5 October). I urge you to register to bid to get well and truly stuck into this incredible wine auction featuring some of the most remarkable bottles ever featured for sale in the 40-year history of this event. I have tasted all 49 wines that will be offered for sale over the…

Going… Albrecht Dürer’s most famous engraving, Melencolia I, has an unambiguous title, and yet it has become “the most extensively interpreted work in the history of Western art”, says Christie’s. The auction house is selling one of the artist’s three master engravings, created between 1513 and 1514. It is thought Melencolia I sits alongside Death, Knight and the Devil and Saint Jerome in his Study as depictions of the three forms of virtuous living – intellectual, moral and theological – as outlined in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, written around 1270. Melencolia I is expected to fetch at least $300,000 on 23 October. Gone… A less virtuous act, but one that worked out well for Mat Winter of Cranbrook, Kent, was the throwing away of Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil.…

Champagne house Taittinger has opened the first bottle of sparkling wine produced at its 380-acre vineyard in Kent. It bought the estate in Chilham, near Canterbury, in 2015 and planted the first vines two years later. Our winemakers didn’t need the endorsement from “a highly respected Champagne house”, but its “planting and nurturing of vines on British soils… still marks an exciting ‘thumbs up’ from the Champenois for our bubbly”, says Andrew Catchpole in The Times. English fizz has impressed for a number of years, its quality rivalling that from across the Channel. A “first nosing” of Domaine Evremond’s Classic Cuvée, available next spring at £50 a bottle, “suggests a beautifully balanced wine, subtle but persistent, backed by a palate that delivers a similarly refined and elegant feel in the…

The “nuclear renaissance” marches on. Prices topped $100 a pound in January, but are now at $80. That still marks a 230% jump in five years. Recent price hikes have been concentrated not in raw uranium, but in the processed kind used in nuclear-power stations, says Harry Dempsey in the Financial Times. Enriched uranium prices have tripled since 2022 because Russia controls 44% of global enrichment capacity, straining the supply available to Western power plants. Rising fuel costs won’t kill the nuclear renaissance, says a note from Marten & Co. Unlike with fossil fuels, uranium only makes up 6% of the overall cost in the production of electricity at a nuclear-power station, so utility buyers can swallow large price hikes. Worldwide, “there are 64 nuclear reactors currently under construction… with…

Silver prices have rallied to a 12-year high of $32.71 per ounce (oz). The precious metal has caught the same favourable wind propelling gold prices to new highs as US interest rates fall. Silver has climbed 35% in 2024 in dollar terms, beating gold’s 30% run, says Ian Salisbury in Barron’s. A big chunk of global demand for silver comes from industrial uses, notably booming Chinese production of solar panels. Citi Research says the silver market has been in a deficit for five years running (meaning demand outstrips supply), says Jinjoo Lee in The Wall Street Journal. It still looks cheap on a relative basis: it would take 83 troy ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold at current prices, a “bargain” compared with the two-decade average of…

LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury group, has decided to drape its silk scarf “over another’s outfit”, says Lex in the Financial Times. It has taken a minority position in Italy’s Moncler through an investment in founder Remo Ruffini’s “Double R” holding company. While the move only gives LVMH a 4% stake, it boosted Moncler’s share price by 10%. That follows a 30% drop over six months. The purchase will also allow Ruffini to compensate for the “outflow of co-controlling partners, including Singapore’s Temasek and Italy’s Rivetti family”, allowing him “to tighten his grip to a level that will further dissuade any potential hostile suitors”. LVMH’s move “allows Moncler to fend off any unwanted overtures”, says Aimee Donnellan on Breakingviews. However, it also helps LVMH prepare to “pounce when the time…

We have not yet seen very much evidence of what the Keir Starmer government, despite its massive majority, and its constant campaigning for the last five years, would actually like to do. Its economic policies, which apparently are going to make the UK the fastest-growing country in the G7, won’t be unveiled until next month. It has promised an “industrial strategy”, but we’ll have to wait until next year to hear about it. A “border command” will crack down on asylum seekers, but it is not operational yet. And the extension of workers’ rights it promised has still to be negotiated with trade unions and employers. It has, however, succeeded in one narrow sphere. It has started massively to extend the scope of the nanny state. Plans have already been…

In finance, a tail risk is an event that might cause an asset to perform far below or far above its typical past performance. In practice, tail risk is almost always used to refer to the chances of suffering a very large unexpected loss. While the same principles may apply to the chances of receiving an unexpected gain, nobody worries about that kind of risk in quite the same way. The term arises from the theory that returns on most asset follow some kind of mathematical probability distribution. The model that is typically used is called the normal distribution, which is essentially a bell-shaped curve. The most frequent outcomes are small gains or losses and these cluster tightly around the average return when plotted on a chart, creating the bell…

“I did start disliking my parents… for very horrible reasons. I didn’t think they were grand enough… My world view was spend, spend, spend and theirs was much more careful and I thought they were very dull.” Actor Rupert Everett (pictured) on his attitudes as a youth, quoted in The Times “Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.” Quentin Crisp, quoted in The Knowledge “Why do we need to make the rich richer to make them work harder, but make the poor poorer for the same purpose?” South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang, quoted in The New York Times “I have three children in college. I will whore myself because I have to pay for their college. You have to understand, I’m a character…

spectator.co.uk Our country is now run by a lawyer (the PM) advised by an economist (the chancellor). The basic pattern has long been thus, says Rory Sutherland. It means we get governments devoted to the two things large institutions always resort to when they’re out of ideas: “arse-covering (law) and penny-pinching (economics)”. This “unholy alliance” gave rise to populism. This situation has come about because our leaders are selected for their ability to win arguments, which is not at all the same as the ability to solve problems. Anyone who has met a senior police officer, soldier or doctor, or successful entrepreneur, will know the difference. “Fascinatingly,” there is a “partial solution” to this problem that is more than 2,000 years old. “According to Herodotus, when the Persians debated anything,…

Southwest Airlines has unveiled its “most transformational plan” yet to fend off activist investor Elliott Investment Management’s calls for new leadership and a strategy overhaul, says The New York Times. The US budget carrier plans to add premium seats; introduce red-eye flights; transition to assigned seating by 2026; sell holiday packages; partner with international airlines like Icelandair next year; look for ways to speed up how long it takes to get planes back in the air; and search for other cost-cutting measures. It also announced a $2.5bn share-buyback programme and the appointment of former Spirit Airlines boss Robert Fornaro to the board. Chairman Gary Kelly and about half of Southwest’s board are to step down.…

One investment trust that should do well from either Kamala Harris’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions or Donald Trump’s desire for cheaper energy is VH Global Sustainable Energy Opportunities Plc (LSE: GSEO). This investment trust is exposed to a range of sustainable energy infrastructure and projects – from hydro projects to battery storage and carbon capture – mostly in countries that are members of the EU and OECD club of developed nations. The company trades at a discount of around a third to net assets, has a dividend of around 7.5%, and an annual ongoing charge of 1.5%. Another energy technology that falls into the “sweet spot” between renewables and fossil fuels is nuclear power. One way to benefit from a resurgence in the industry under either Harris or Trump…

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) credit products have become important to many businesses, enabling them to target a broader range of customers. Smaller firms haven’t always had access to BNPL facilities. But a new tie up between Klarna, one of the biggest BNPL providers, and Xero, whose accounting software is used by many small businesses, could help. Xero’s users will soon be able to use the software to access Klarna. BNPL is a simple idea. When a consumer is considering buying a product or service from your business, they get the chance to spread the cost of the purchase through instalments paid over several months. That can make consumers more likely to spend with you. Importantly, you get the full purchase price upfront – it’s the BNPL provider that takes…

One of the big long-term issues facing the UK is the relatively high cost of housing. Over the last 30 years, the ratio of house prices to average incomes has steadily risen (with a brief fall during the financial crisis) from around four to around eight, according to a study by Schroders. This is the highest level since Victorian times and mostly reflects a longstanding failure to build enough homes to keep place with Britain’s growing population. However, the problem is that building more homes is controversial, especially among people who live in small towns and villages, who are worried about urban sprawl. This is where a company like Harworth (LSE: HWG) comes in. Haworth specialises in developing what are known as “brownfield” sites. This is land that has been…

At Odyssean Investment Trust we invest in high-quality businesses trading below their fundamental value where management can drive an improvement in underlying performance. We focus on UK smaller companies. We believe that this part of the market commonly fails to appreciate the medium-term potential of a business going through transformation, instead being more focused on near-term momentum. This leaves an opportunity for our detailed diligence process to identify investments where management self-help actions can drive operational improvement; we aim to invest before this is priced in by the wider market. As this change is delivered, we hope to then see a double benefit with earnings improving, but also increased interest as more investors buy into the story. Our portfolio today contains a number of these exciting self-help special-situation opportunities. Securing…

Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is a foundational text in economics. And it is, as Texas-based Heritage Auctions puts it, “no less resonant nearly 250 years on”. But, due to its age, early copies are somewhat scarce. It is no small wonder, then, that Heritage has managed to put its hands on not one but three early copies for its rare-book two-day sale, starting next Thursday. But collectable tomes on economics have apparently “never been hotter”. “Perhaps [that’s] because [economics is] something we’re all so attuned to these days,” says Francis Wahlgren, the auction house’s international director of rare books and manuscripts. The first of the three copies in the sale is the first edition in three volumes…

All the evidence shows that regular investors as a whole underperform the market, as Todd Tresidder of FinancialMentor has pointed out. “As long as they try to ‘beat the market’ they actually underperform.” The way to get where you are going is not to go somewhere else. And the way to make the big gains in investing is not to take the big loss. Investors now face the biggest big loss ever. By our reading of Warren Buffett’s yardstick – stocks compared to GDP – Wall Street’s prices are about twice what they ought to be. That means investors are set to lose between $25trn and $30trn if stocks go back to more “normal” levels. In the long run, you don’t really make big investment gains by trying to make…

The world’s capitalists are feeling cheerful, says John Authers on Bloomberg. Why? Because the “politburo of the world’s largest communist state” is warming to the idea of more welfare spending. There are “enough ironies… to sink the Titanic”. Chinese stocks leapt 8.5% on Monday for their best day since 2008. Over five sessions the CSI 300 index has risen an astounding 24%. In Europe, luxury shares, which are highly exposed to Chinese consumption, also rallied strongly. Whatever it takes The excitement came after a statement by the politburo suggesting Beijing is open to using fiscal stimulus to “prod consumers to start buying stuff again”, something economists have been advising for years to little effect. Stronger social-support policies are also on the table. There are as yet “no numbers”, but the…

Shares in luxury carmaker Aston Martin crashed by 20% after new CEO Adrian Hallmark admitted the company will have to cut targets for car production by a further 14%, say Robert Lea and Martin Strydom in The Times. These cuts, which mean production will now be down 40% from earlier predictions, are due to disruption in the supply chain, with “a number of its suppliers going bankrupt as well as continued macroeconomic weakness in China”. As a result, the company “will not be cash-flow positive in the second half of 2024”. No wonder the stock slipped, says Hargreaves Lansdown’s Aarin Chiekrie. It’s impossible to rule out “further disappointments down the road”. The high debt level is a “real problem” and “makes it difficult to obtain additional debt financing should demand…

The general election in Austria has delivered a “sensational result”, with the hard right Freedom Party (FPÖ) “coming out on top for the first time in the Alpine republic’s post-Second World War history”, says Nigel Jones in The Spectator. The FPÖ ended up nearly three points ahead of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP). The FPÖ will not necessarily form the new government as it lacks an absolute majority, and all the other parties have vowed not to form a coalition with its “controversial” leader, Herbert Kickl (pictured). But it is hard to see how the Austrian establishment can continue to “hold the line” against the populist right. The ÖVP could end up going into coalition with the FPÖ under a “compromise chancellor”, says The Economist. If so, Kickl might not…

News When director Frederico Fellini made Anita Ekberg plunge into the waters of the Trevi Fountain in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita, everything changed for the Roman monument, says Tom Kington in The Times. Its popularity led to a surge in tourists throwing coins into it, according to the tradition that they would return to the eternal city. City officials may privately wish they didn’t. Next year, a €2 ticketing system will be introduced to better control the crowds, who accidentally drop mobile phones and sandwiches into the water. About €1.4m in change is collected annually, with the proceeds benefiting the Catholic charity Caritas. It’s hoped ticketing will reduce disruptive behaviour, while local shop owners hope some of the money will go towards the fountain’s upkeep. Some visitors are…

● Rentokil’s chair Richard Solomons claims that he is “delighted to welcome” a representative of activist investor Nelson Peltz onto his firm’s board, says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. But “one suspects ... that Rentokil’s standing is so low after a thumping profits warning... that it would be pointless to resist”. Peltz “operates at the aggressive end” of the activist spectrum, but “better to have a shareholder pest on the inside”. His usual tactic is to agitate for “disposals, break-ups, relisting, or better operational performance” and all of these may apply at the pest-control and cleaning group. Rentokil’s French unit, which launders work garments, is an odd fit. Relisting in the US – where most of Rentokil’s sales comes from – is “under review”. Yet an “operational kick” is the…

Mark Spitznagel, founder, Universa Investments “The clock is ticking and we are in black swan territory,” says Mark Spitznagel, founder of Universa Investments, a hedge fund that specialises in hedging against tail risks, often referred to as “black swans” (see below). The US Federal Reserve recently cut its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points, but this is likely to be just the start of a series of aggressive cuts as the outlook becomes bleaker, he tells Reuters. While the US economy still appears strong and expectations of a soft landing are widespread, Spitznagel thinks that high levels of debt will soon lead to an economic downturn and potential market turmoil. The recent “disinversion” of the US Treasury yield curve – meaning that the curve has gone from inverted (short-term…

capx.co Plastic is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and it’s now hard to imagine life without it, says Neil Record. Yet the material is also now a “byword for pollution and moral and political delinquency” and plastic waste has morphed into an environmental catastrophe. Yet unlike climate change, which is a hard problem to solve, dealing with plastic is “easy”. We should simply follow Sweden’s example and incinerate all of our plastic waste. This is ”technologically straightforward” and modern techniques can “scrub” any toxic gases that result. The resulting heat can be used in heating systems or power generation. And the additional carbon dioxide generated is tiny. At the moment, about half of UK plastic is incinerated, the rest landfilled, recycled or exported. None of those…

■ European Opportunities has placed manager Alexander Darwall under “close review” after the £561m trust returned 15.5% in the past year, lagging behind the MSCI Europe index’s 17.3% gain, says CityWire. Over the past five years, the net asset value (NAV) delivered a 14.3% total return, while MSCI Europe ex-UK rose 41.2%.The trust was hit by Wirecard’s collapse in 2020, having had high exposure to the German payment processor, whose accounts were discovered to be fraudulent. Darwall faced pressure from activist investors, prompting a tender offer this year, and failed to outperform the benchmark, even with a large stake in Novo Nordisk, whose shares have boomed thanks to its weight-loss drug. Darwell blamed the underperformance on underweighting banks and a focus on small and mid-cap companies. Another tender offer may…

The UK stockmarket suffers from a paucity of exciting, growth-orientated companies. It’s one of the reasons why UK equities lag behind US equities, but there is hope. If there is one growth sector where the UK does brilliantly, it is financial technology (fintech). We have some real champions. Consider Revolut. This digital bank has had its challenges in recent years, but August brought some very positive news: it announced that investors had valued the business at $45bn in a secondary share sale. That was excellent news for long-term investors in the firm, such as listed venture-capital group Molten Ventures (LSE: GROW), which promptly announced that it had written the gross value of its Revolut stake up to £160m, from £65m in March. Revolut is growing at a phenomenal pace. Its…

● Tax evasion by small firms reached £4.4bn in the 2022-2023 tax year, comprising more than 80% of all tax evasion, new data from the National Audit Office (NAO) reveals. The NAO also warned that HM Revenue & Customs has failed to crack down on smaller firms, prompting concern that the tax authority may soon launch much tougher action, particularly in high-risk sectors such as retail. ● Is your business aiming to increase its export sales or begin selling overseas for the first time? If so, UK Export Finance, the government agency with a brief to support British retailers, could help. It has received a big budget increase in recent months. The agency provides support and advice to exporters, and also offers financial products, such as loan guarantees and insurance,…

Private-equity funds can be very controversial. Critics claim they make money by buying up stable businesses, loading them with debt, selling off assets and focusing on maximising profits in the short-term. This may enable them to eke out every last penny of profit by selling their companies for a higher price or extracting large dividends, but it also means that some either go under or end up a shadow of their former selves. In contrast, supporters argue that private equity has saved many poorly performing firms, by giving them a clearer direction that they lacked under their former owners. There is evidence to support both sides of the debate. But from the point of view of traders, the big question is what happens when private equity firms cash out as…

The autumn season is an important time for auction houses in the sales calendar. But for Sotheby’s, this autumn is more important than for most. “The art market is grinding through a rough patch… driven in part by China’s economic slowdown, wars and volatile US elections,” says The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). To that list can be added the normalisation of interest rates that makes inherently risky assets, such as collectables, less attractive to investors/collectors when you could earn a decent rate of return by simply sticking your money in the bank. As the WSJ points out, the “sales downturn” could not have come at a worse time for “the auction house’s highly leveraged billionaire owner, Patrick Drahi, who is fighting fires amid restructuring in his broader telecom empire, Altice”.…