Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1270 från MoneyWeek

“It’s been widely reported that the UK is set to lose a record 16,500 millionaires over the course of 2025… Few would argue that the UK enjoys the same ‘pull factor’ for wealthy individuals as it once did… The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become the preferred option for millionaires looking to resettle… It is possible to invest directly in regional bourses, such as the Dubai Financial Market, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Nasdaq Dubai, but you will need to obtain a national investor number and open a trading account with a broker registered with one of the exchanges. UK citizens can also purchase, lease and sell properties in freehold zones across the UAE… The UAE [is] pursuing a resolutely business-friendly strategy, which presents a compelling alternative… not least because…

Railroad operator Union Pacific is in talks to create the largest rail operator in the US, say Lauren Thomas and Ben Glickman in The Wall Street Journal. The plan is for Union Pacific, valued at around $140bn, to buy Norfolk Southern, worth $60bn. The deal would be the biggest corporate transaction this year, and would also create the first coast-to-coast railroad in the US. However,if it goes ahead, it is likely to face “serious scrutiny” from regulators, many of whom will probably be concerned about “reduced competition, higher shipping rates and the possibility of a worse rail service”. The idea of merging Union Pacific with Norfolk Southern would have been a “long shot” until recently, says Lex in the Financial Times, because “big east-meets-west mergers have largely been forbidden by…

Carl Zeiss Meditec, a medical technology company, is a promising German mid cap, says WirtschaftsWoche. It specialises in medical lasers and tools for eye examinations; it recently acquired a company offering instruments required for surgery on the retina and lenses in the eye. In recent months, a rise in debt (prompted by another purchase), the advent of a new CEO and weak results in the Chinese division have unsettled investors, but the long-term outlook remains compelling. According to medical insurer AOK, 20% of people between 65 and 74 develop cataracts. Sales and margins are set to improve this year, according to management.…

The EU plans to hit the US with 30% tariffs on some €100bn worth of goods if a deal isn’t reached before Donald Trump’s 1 August deadline, says Arne Delfs on Bloomberg. This represents a hardening of the EU position, prompted by the publication of a letter by Trump on Truth Social on 12 July, in which he announced that he was raising the tariff of 20% proposed back in April to 30%. At the time, Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, described the move as a “slap in the face” for negotiations and “no way to deal with a key trading partner”. The first wave of EU retaliatory measures would combine an already approved list of tariffs on €21bn of US goods with an additional €72bn…

When I began contributing to MoneyWeek two decades ago, Britain was in the middle of a property mania. Flipping houses was the path to rapid riches. TV shows were full of people renovating flats to sell – often spending more than they earned back. Financial-advice columns were stuffed with those who wanted to gear up their buy-to-let portfolio to buy more, or had already borrowed too much and were panicking. Today, Britain is still obsessed with property, but the mood is very different. It’s not simply that investing in property is less appealing due to tax changes and new laws. There has finally been some long-overdue realisation that expensive housing is a curse that holds back the economy, not a source of good fortune. Still, I am not as confident…

AI chatbots are killing the internet EditorialThe Economist People are increasingly using chatbots instead of search engines, and as they do so, they are stopping the flow of traffic to web pages, says The Economist. “Lost visitors mean lost money.” There is a danger that the technology that is opening up the web “also threatens to kill it”. News media has been badly hit; science and education sites lost 10% of their visitors in a year; health sites around a third. As the old model “buckles”, with formerly advertising-funded content “hidden from bots, behind paywalls”, the web is becoming less open. Publishers are turning to other avenues, such as email newsletters and live events and “pushing into audio”, which AI finds harder to summarise. Big brands are striking content-licensing deals…

freethinkecon.wordpress.com Britain is living beyond its means and running out of money, says Giles Wilkes. Those in denial of this argue for tweaking the fiscal rules or for taxing the rich. The first is irrelevant. The government’s fiscal position is “objectively” bad and no conceivable change to the fiscal rules could alter that. In the days of Blair and Brown, when growth was 2.4%, you could “do lots of good things” without rocking the boat. Likewise in the days of Osborne: just get spending down a bit and things were soon back under control. But this is not the world we live in now. Interest rates are ticking higher and growth is lower. In this world, ever higher taxes are needed, and what you bring in just gets eaten up…

Gore Street Energy Storage Fund is under attack from one of its largest investors, amid weak results and a sharp cut in its dividend target. The battery storage fund said it had sold tax credits attached to a project in California and would use the proceeds to pay a 3p special dividend for this year as well as reducing debt. However, the ongoing quarterly dividend will be cut from 1p to 0.75p, with the potential for more if cash flow improves. RM Funds, which holds a 6% stake, is calling for shareholders to vote on appointing two new directors to oversee a strategic review. The fund is “subscale, geographically fragmented, overly complex, and illiquid” and should sell non-core assets, return capital to investors and pursue a merger or full sale,…

London’s Aim small-cap market is down 40% since mid 2021, but within that there has been a wide disparity of outcomes. Many 2021-vintage initial public offerings (IPOs) are down 80% or more. Yet one Aim-listed stock looks to have achieved escape velocity, having rocketed 28-fold since May 2021. Interestingly, Filtronic (Aim: FTC) is not a start-up or even a recent IPO. The company’s history goes back to the 1970s, when it specialised in components for the defence industry before quickly adapting to benefit from the 1980s boom in mobile phones. The shares have been listed since the mid 1990s, but were demoted from the main market to Aim in 2015, following a difficult decade when the telecoms, media and technology bubble burst. Between 2000 and 2015 the shares fell from…

Self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) have become popular vehicles for retirement planning. But they are usually regarded as individual arrangements. If you want to save more collectively, as a family, say, or as a group of close business associates, a “family Sipp” could be an option. That is the colloquial name for a family pension trust, a structure you put around a small group of individuals. Each member has their own pension and makes their own investment decisions, but the collective approach brings certain advantages: it can be easier to hold unusual investments, such as direct property holdings, and can also bring cost savings courtesy of economies of scale. Family-run firms often use these structures to invest in commercial property they use for the firm – an office or a warehouse,…

It has been a broadly positive fortnight for my seven long tips, with five rising and only two declining. Shares in soft-drinks company AG Barr, the maker of Irn-Bru, increased from 695p to 704p, while payments firm Corpay went up from $332 to $335. Telecoms and mobile payments firm Airtel Africa advanced from 179p to 185p, while food-packaging specialist Hilton Food progressed from 855p to 870p and home-furnishings retailer Dunelm rose from 1,132p to 1,194p. Video-games company Electronic Arts declined from 155p to 152p, and vending-machine producer ME Group went down from 226p to 217p. Nevertheless, the overall losses on my long tips have still dwindled – from £389 to £226. Sadly, my short tips didn’t do as well, with two out of the remaining three moving against me. Online…

The teenage John “Ozzy” Osbourne did “not seem like someone with a glittering future ahead of them”, says Alexis Petridis in The Guardian. He had a troubled childhood in his native Birmingham and struggled at school. His prospects when he left at 15 “seemed non-existent”. He could not even make it as a burglar – some comically inept escapades ended in jail. But on his release, he wrote “Ozzy Zig needs a gig” on a card in the window of a local music shop, says the BBC. The rest is rock-music history. But no one was more surprised at the success of what became Black Sabbath than Ozzy himself. Ozzy (pictured), who died this week at the age of 76, once said the thing he was most proud of was…

2024 Albore, Nicolas Mariotti Bindi, Cantina di Torra, Corsica, France £35.35, vins-clairs.com I first met Claire Thevenot some 20 years ago, shortly after she was named UK Sommelier of the Year and became the first French female master sommelier. She moved to the wine distribution side and, more recently, set up her own import business specialising in organic and biodynamic wines from first-class, boutique estates across France. She has one of the most finely tuned palates and recently opened a suite of wines that greatly impressed me with their accuracy and perfect balance. My featured Albore is a mesmerising Corsican vermentino, with a silky, pure and luminous flavour born of its blindingly bright chalky soils and ozone-fresh setting. With cleansing oyster-shell minerality and a palate tailor-made for summer entertaining, this…

A fortnight ago, at Sotheby’s in Paris, the bag Hermès executive Jean-Louis Dumas made for Jane Birkin – the original Birkin bag – sold for €8.6m. That is the highest price ever fetched at auction for a handbag. The funny thing is, for such a coveted item, nobody seems to be able to agree on exactly what it is for. “The original Birkin looks as if it might have been found in a shipwreck, with its fraying handles and mottled leather patina and marks from where she had affixed Doctors Without Borders and Unicef stickers,” says Marisa Meltzer in The New York Times. “The nail clippers she had dangled from the bag were still there.” In a video from 1988, the late actress and singer empties the contents onto a…

“Crypto bros are reaching for pricey timepieces once more,” says Andrea Felstead on Bloomberg. Prices for secondhand luxury watches soared during the pandemic when many men couldn’t spend their money on holidays – before collapsing again. The market now looks to have passed its nadir and “there’s still time to get a decent deal on a Rolex”. Supply remains constrained and buyers can either join the growing waiting lists for new releases from Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet, or they can turn to the secondary market. The Bloomberg Subdial Watch index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded models by transaction value, has recovered from its post-pandemic low at the end of January (in US dollars). Bitcoin, which has appreciated by a quarter this year, and rising stocks, which…

English cricket will receive a £500m windfall that could transform the sport, says Josh Noble in the Financial Times. The injection of funds comes from international investors, including India’s Ambani family and Silicon Valley executives, who bought stakes in eight teams for The Hundred, England’s answer to the lucrative Indian Premier League. Around 10% will help grassroots cricket to engage with more children, while the 18 county cricket clubs and the Marylebone Cricket Club will each receive about £25m. The England and Wales Cricket Board plans to use the funding to reduce debts and improve infrastructure, and it will manage the allotment of the funds to avoid the mistakes made in rugby union, which squandered a similar windfall. County clubs have struggled financially, making a combined profit of just £1.3m…

So much for the Middle East risk premium. In the first three weeks of June, Brent crude oil prices surged 22% as Iran and Israel fought a 12-day war, only to fall as a ceasefire held. Trading at $68 a barrel on Tuesday, Brent is down 8% since 1 January 2025. After a sharp spike following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, oil has now “pretty much” returned to its “long-term average in real terms”, say Deutsche Bank analysts. Historically summer is a soft patch for oil, as global fuel demand peaks when the northern hemisphere fires up the heating in winter, says Javier Blas on Bloomberg. That has changed. Economic development closer to the equator means that today “the market is… at its tightest from July to September”. Climate change…

Average US dividend yields have fallen to roughly 1.2%, their lowest level since the dotcom bubble, says Deutsche Bank. By contrast, the UK’s FTSE 100 pays roughly 3.2%. Traditional finance theory says that people shouldn’t worry about dividends, as “any cash a company pays out reduces its value by an equal amount”, says Spencer Jakab in The Wall Street Journal. Yet US data compiled by Ned Davis Research shows that over the past 50 years dividend payers have historically delivered better annualised returns than non-payers, while also being less volatile. Dividend paying can be a helpful way to screen for businesses with the sort of “value and quality characteristics” that mark out “long-term investment success”.…

Netflix’s second-quarter results exceeded expectations, while it also raised its forecasts for future revenue and continues to “trounce” rival media companies, says Lucas Shaw on Bloomberg. Yet the stock slipped on the news. The group’s outperformance had “fallen short of the most bullish expectations”, with much of the gain coming from a weaker dollar rather than from new subscribers. The profit-taking comes as the streaming leader “faces more competition for its customers’ attention than ever before”. It admits that its average member is watching about the same amount of television as they were two years ago. Netflix’s growing earnings, revenue and margins make it look like an “isle of calm” compared with other media companies, says Dan Gallagher in The Wall Street Journal. But its shares are priced for “explosive…

Bullish, a digital-asset exchange operator backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, is planning an initial public offering (IPO) in New York, says Bloomberg. The Cayman Islands-based group joins several cryptocurrency firms aiming for listings this year. The sector is benefiting from support by the US government and an increasingly benign regulatory environment. CEO Tom Farley said Bullish intends to float because it believes that the digital-assets industry is “beginning its next leg of growth”. The firm reported a net loss of $349m for the first quarter, compared with net income of $105m last year. Its exchange provides crypto spot trading, margin trading, and derivatives trading.…

“Farewell, Ofwat,” says Nils Pratley in The Guardian. A landmark review of the water industry by Jon Cunliffe has recommended that the regulator be scrapped and water regulation, currently split between it, the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, be consolidated into one supervisory body. Not only would this tackle the “fragmented, overlapping and inflexible nature” of the system, the “bite” comes in the seemingly “bland” word, “supervisory”. If executed correctly, a switch to this model could make a difference “as it has in financial services from where Cunliffe, one of the clean-up officials at the Bank of England after the great crash, has drawn his analysis”. As Cunliffe acknowledges in his 464-page report with its 88 recommendations, there is no simple “reset”, says The Times. But…

Whatever other problems the British economy may face, you can usually rely on one thing: through good times and bad, the property market remains buoyant. There has not been a really significant crash since the early 1990s, and ever since then a home has been the best investment anyone could make. In 1990, the average house cost £58,000. By this year that had risen to £270,000, a rise of 365%. Even adjusted for inflation, the average price has more than doubled. The UK does not build nearly enough homes, especially given the rapid rise in the total population. So the existing ones keep getting more valuable. Yet signs are starting to emerge that the market is turning. In 2022, prices were rising by 14% a year. That has slowed dramatically…

The simplest way to measure the value of a company is to use its stockmarket capitalisation – the value of all its outstanding shares. However, this may not always provide a useful reflection of all the claims that different groups of investors have on a business. For example, a company may be heavily funded with debt rather than equity. Conversely, it may have a lot of unused cash on its balance sheet offsetting some of that debt. It might also have preferred stock in issue (securities that rank above ordinary shares, but below debt), or some of its subsidiaries may be partly owned by other investors (known as minority interests). These last two factors are usually less significant compared with debt and cash, but could be important in some situations.…

“I was selling fireworks in the newsagents when I was 12 years old. I had a paper round, I worked in a deli. I worked in a million different shops. As soon as I got working I understood the power and the freedom that comes with that. And I really enjoyed it. I liked making my own money.” British Dragons’ Den panellist and clothing-retail entrepreneur Emma Grede (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “[Making] it to what they call ‘the top’ [results in] horrendous financial situations — too much money and spare time and it ends up in egotistical catastrophe. There are a couple of millionaire types around where I am in Malibu... musicians and actors, who try to compete with each other over whose house looks more like a…

theconversation.com Pubs will close at the rate of one a day in 2025. That is just “the latest chapter in a familiar story”, say Thomas Thurnell-Read and Robert Deakin. More than a quarter of British pubs have closed since 2000. Costs have risen dramatically. Even pubs that are economically viable are often more profitable converted into residential or retail space. And these economic challenges accompany cultural ones – drinking habits have changed, and we just don’t go out as much as we used to. This matters. When pubs closed during the Covid pandemic, many people realised that what they missed was not the alcohol so much as the social contact. Pubs have a “clear social value”, providing people with a space to meet and interact, helping them feel connected to…

There are plenty of London-listed mid caps that look attractive at current valuations, but which ones really deserve a place in your portfolio? 4imprint (see main story above) seems to be one of the City’s top picks. Barclays has it as one of its top plays in Europe and it’s one of a handful of businesses with net cash on the balance sheet. Berenberg thinks “4imprint’s highly cash-generative model and low appetite” for mergers and acquisitions suggests there is “scope for increased returns to shareholders through special dividends or buybacks”. It also thinks there’s plenty of scope for the group to expand its profit margins through economies of scale and general growth. Genus is another firm that is universally backed by the City (see main story). Deutsche Bank, Berenberg and…

● Apax Global Alpha (APAX) has received a bid from a vehicle run by Apax Partners (APAX’s own manager), in the first take-private deal for a listed private equity trust. The offer of €1.90 per share, which is recommended by the board, represents an 18.8% premium to APAX’s undisturbed share price, but a 17% discount to the latest net asset value (NAV). APAX’s investments – other funds managed by Apax Partners – had a NAV of €2.29 per share as of 30 June. However, the bid for the whole trust was “substantially in line” with indicative prices received when marketing these holdings to secondaries investors (who buy stakes in unlisted private-equity funds), says the board. Other private equity trusts, including ICG Enterprise and Patria, have sold holdings at discounts of…

Are you looking for new ways to save for the medium to long term beyond obvious options such as individual savings accounts (Isas) and private pensions? If you work for one of the 1,000-plus employers in the UK that offers an employee share scheme, joining it could make sense. These schemes, which must be aimed at all employees (not just top executives), can even be combined with Isas to maximise tax efficiency. There are two options here. The simplest scheme is a save-as-you-earn (SAYE) plan, sometimes known as Sharesave. You save up to £500 each month into the scheme’s nominated savings account, typically for three to five years; the money usually attracts a fixed rate of interest, and some schemes offer a tax-free bonus at the end of the plan.…

Sometimes the best opportunities don’t come from firms in glamorous, fast-growing industries, but from well-run companies that have carved out a niche for themselves in lower-profile, but no less profitable, sectors. An example of this is food distribution, which involves making sure that food from producers, both ingredients and prepared meals, reaches wholesale customers such as restaurants and large institutional consumers, such as supermarkets and hospitals. In this industry Sysco (NYSE: SYY) stands out from all the rest. Since food distribution is a low-margin business, the key to success is keeping costs to an absolute minimum. Sysco’s status as the largest food-distribution company in the US, supplying nearly one in every five restaurants or commercial kitchens in the country, means that it can use economies of scale to do its…

Global financial markets have undergone a seismic change in the last 30 years. The number of public companies has slumped from a peak of 7,300 in 1996 to 4,300 today. Companies are delisting and initial public offerings (IPOs) have slowed to a crawl, with many firms choosing to stay private for longer, or never list at all. This shift has left public-equity investors with a narrower market. Most growth stories are off-exchange: of the 159,000 companies making annual sales of $100m or more, 140,000 are privately owned. To gain exposure to this vast swathe of private companies, investors need to turn to private-equity funds. These funds, which have been around for decades, raise capital to buy companies with the aim of growing the business and eventually selling it at a…

Going… The lightsaber wielded by actor David Prowse as Darth Vader in the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) is heading for auction with the Propstore in September. The lightsaber was originally called the “laser sword” and it was “imagined by [Star Wars’s creator] George Lucas as the perfect defensive weapon for a more sophisticated age,” says Brandon Alinger of the Propstore. So iconic has this item of film memorabilia become in the minds of Star Wars fans that the auction house expects the lightsaber to sell for between $1m and $3m. Gone… In November 2023, a chunk of the planet Mars weighing almost 25kg was found in Niger’s remote Agadez region. NWA 16788 (pictured), as it is called, is around 70%…

“Sire… worse than a crime, you have committed an error,” said Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. A crime is whatever the feds say it is. Often not what you think it ought to be. But an error is different. It is a left turn when you should have turned right. It is forgetting your wife’s birthday. It is a budget deficit, when you should have been running a surplus. In the Big, Bad, Budget Abomination, for example, there are two huge errors. The obvious one: they increased the deficit. They chose more spending, not less – even more money they don’t have on programmes they don’t need. And they are doing it on such a large scale – with $2trn deficits – it is sure to blow up the entire US…

It has been a week of highs and lows for Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba. On Wednesday he secured a coveted US trade deal. US president Donald Trump had threatened Japan with tariffs as high as 25%; Ishiba knocked him down to 15% in return for a vague commitment to invest more than half a trillion dollars in the US. That is a welcome reprieve for Japan’s crucial car manufacturers. Shares in Nissan, Honda and Toyota surged in Tokyo. The local Topix index rose 3% on the news and has gained 6% since 1 January. Rather less positively, Ishiba’s governing coalition lost its upper-house majority in elections at the weekend as a fragmented collection of right-wing and centrist opponents made gains. It is the second electoral disaster for Ishiba in…

Sales of Guinness are “flying” among Britons in their 20s and 30s, says Daniel Woolfson in The Telegraph. So you would imagine that the CEO of Guinness’ owner Diageo, Debra Crew, has been “laughing her way to the bank. Instead, she’s out of a job”. Last week she left the world’s biggest drinks company “abruptly” after only two years in the post. Her exit follows a 45% fall in the share price during her tenure. A boom in the drinks sector during Covid was followed by disappointing results that “dented investors’ faith in the company and its future prospects”. Diageo’s “choppy performance” is unlikely to have been the only reason for Crew’s departure, says Lex in the Financial Times. Despite “declining sales and plunging stock prices”, Diageo actually performed “broadly…

Five to buy Wickes The Telegraph DIY retailer Wickes is “finally in the money”, as recent glorious weather should have prompted more people to spruce up their gardens and homes. Following its post-Covid DIY hangover, Wickes has navigated tougher market conditions and shop refurbishments. It has also made itself more attractive to trade customers with a loyalty scheme. Improving household sentiment and a dip in house prices bode well. The stock’s valuation is “inexpensive”, and analysts expect higher profits and dividends in the coming years. 224p Marshalls The Times Pavement products firm Marshalls received such a hostile reception over its 2022 acquisition of roofing company Marley that investors overlooked a “hidden gem”. Within Marley was Viridian Solar, a manufacturer of roof-integrated solar photovoltaic panels. Housebuilders are embracing solar panels amid…

● Major pub chains say that the government’s decision to raise business rates will lead to closures, says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. Yet “would the world really be a worse place if some of the really big operators had less of a stranglehold over the industry”? Greene King’s beer is ”average and overpriced, ditto the food, the interior drab”; others such as Marston’s, Mitchells & Butlers, and private-equity owned Stonegate and Punch are equally “cynical moneymaking schemes”. That’s why Wetherspoons is a “true national treasure”, with its affordable prices. Yes, pubs are grappling with spiralling costs and staff shortages. Yet when Greene King charges England football fans nearly £2 a pint more on match days, “it’s a bit rich” of its boss to complain about unfair taxes. ● “Who…

Rajiv Jain, chief investment officer, GQG Partners “The bond market seems complacent about the [US] fiscal set-up,” says Rajiv Jain, co-founder of US fund manager GQG Partners, which manages around $161bn in equity portfolios. “It might not be worrisome right now, but it is hard to predict when problems might arise.” Cuts to government expenditure that were supposed to be found by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk didn’t materialise, and Donald Trump’s gigantic spending bill will now add to the fiscal deficit, Jain tells Barron’s. The deficit has been at 6.5% of GDP for five years, which is “unusual historically”. The “TACO trade” – the assumption that Trump Always Chickens Out of following through on threats to impose higher trade tariffs – is “off”, because the…

capx.co The UK’s poor growth has many causes, but a big one is the red tape tying up labour markets, says Len Shackleton. Labour markets should be able to change rapidly, reallocating people from low- to high-productivity jobs as opportunities emerge. Indeed, Britain’s labour market was for a long time one of the most flexible in Europe. No longer. Employers must provide ever more mandated benefits, and the rules about what can go into an employment contract have tightened. The national living wage is one of the highest in the world. Equal pay legislation means women on the tills in Asda must be paid the same as men in the warehouse. Unfair dismissal legislation has employers living in fear of tribunal claims. All this weighs on productivity and growth –…

Income has historically been one of the best-performing investment strategies. The average annualised return of dividend-paying stocks in the S&P 500 between 1973 and 2024 was 9.2%, compared with 4.3% for non-dividend-paying stocks, according to a study by Ned Davis Research. What’s more, dividend payers were less volatile and offered more protection during market downturns. In 2022, when the S&P 500 declined by more than 18%, dividend-paying stocks in the index fell by 11.1%, while non-dividend payers experienced a 38.7% loss. In the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, S&P 500 earnings per share plummeted by 92% while dividends fell by only 6%. A wealth of other studies come to a similar conclusion. One explanation for this is superior financial health. Companies with the best dividend records tend to have robust…

● The row over some expatriates’ frozen state pensions has intensified. For years, Britons retiring abroad have faced a lottery. While all expats are entitled to receive their UK state pension while abroad, in some countries the value of this pension is frozen at the time of their retirement; in others, it is increased each year in line with the rise awarded to pensioners in the UK. Data from Interactive Investor suggests a pensioner who retired in 2010 and lives in a country where rises are not payable is typically set to miss out on more than £25,000. Around 450,000 pensioners living in countries including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and India are affected. ● Are minimum pension contributions about to increase? Under the current auto-enrolment system, under which…

In October voters in the Netherlands go to the polls in their parliamentary election. At present, the far-right PVV, led by Geert Wilders, is the favourite to secure the most votes. Ladbrokes has the PVV at 13/10 (43.4%), ahead of the centre left-green alliance GroenLinks-PvdA (Labour Party) at 9/4 (30.7%) and the right-of-centre VVD and CDA at 7/2 (22.2%) and 6/1 (14.2%) respectively, with all the other minor parties at long odds. Ever since the PVV shocked everyone by winning the most votes at the last election, they have been leading in the polls. At one stage shortly after the election, polls had them gaining around half the votes, a level than no single Dutch political party has even come close to achieving since universal suffrage was introduced; the electoral…