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In a real-life story reminiscent of the animated film Up (pictured), a Florida homeowner is staging a “one-man battle” against the city of Coral Gables, which did not bargain on his strong will when it decided “to build the biggest commercial develop

Young Greeks are being offered a “freedom pass” worth €150 as an incentive to get vaccinated, says Eleni Chrepa on Bloomberg. Any 18- to 25-year-olds who get their first dose will be able to use the gift card to pay for travel, accommodation, theatre

Hundreds of visitors to Brighton Palace Pier were charged more than £2,100 for tickets by mistake after payment company Worldpay removed the equivalent of the transaction date, rather than the ticket price, from their accounts, says The Guardian. The

Fears that the US is being overrun by corporate zombies may be exaggerated, says Alexandra Scaggs in Barron’s. Many analysts have argued that the US Federal Reserve’s decision to buy junk bonds (debt with a higher risk of default) during the crisis l

“I have been writing about the benefits of a regional equity overweight to the US and emerging markets (and an underweight to Europe and Japan) for a long, long time. Every year, a few intrepid souls in the industry position against this, usually to

Transporting goods around the world is becoming far more expensive. The price for shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Rotterdam – a benchmark trade route from China to Europe – hit $11,975 last week, a 626% rise since the same time last yea

Hipgnosis’s shares have gained just 6% in the year since we first recommended them. But in that time the firm’s market capitalisation has increased from £700m to £1.33bn, thanks to a series of capital-raises to fund song-catalogue acquisitions. The i

Shareholders stand to gain as Hertz emerges from bankruptcy. The car-rental sector is booming thanks to asurge in domestic travel and a shortage of vehicles. “The way to play” the sector’s rally is through Hertz, whose stock has nearly doubled to $7.

Nvidia’s proposed $40bn takeover of British semiconductor group Arm Holdings, which is being sold by Japan’s SoftBank Group, received a boost after three of the world’s largest chipmakers “expressed support” for the “controversial” deal, says Priscil

• Facebook’s market capitalisation “temporarily breached $1trn” after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lost an antitrust case this week, says Gina Chon on Breakingviews. The FTC claimed that the social-media giant has used its acquisitions of pi

Media and news group BuzzFeed is going public after agreeing a deal with a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), says Benjamin Mullin in The Wall Street Journal. BuzzFeed will be acquiring digital publisher Complex Networks for $300m as part of

Emma Walmsley (pictured), CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has launched “the most radical shake-up” of the group in 20 years, says Hannah Boland in The Daily Telegraph. The plan is to spin off GSK’s consumer-healthcare arm, “which makes toothpaste and..

On Wednesday, the government set out its “agile and flexible” post-Brexit state-aid system. The Subsidy Control Bill is one of the “most important pieces of post-Brexit legislation” to date, says Richard Partington in The Guardian. State subsidies we

One hundred years ago, 13 young Chinese men and two Comintern representatives met secretly in Shanghai’s French Concession, says The Guardian. From these “unpromising beginnings”, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became a 92-million strong “behemoth

An “extraordinary heatwave” has hit large parts of the northwest coast of America and Canada, affecting millions and smashing records with temperatures at “levels normally seen in the Middle East”, says Charlie Mitchell in The Times. Some mountain to

Brazil, like much of Latin America, has a long history of controversial leaders. Its current president, Jair Bolsonaro, is particularly contentious. Often compared to former US president Donald Trump, he was elected in late 2018, benefiting from a wa

Hollywood A-Listers, supermodels and royals who don’t want to worry about packing hospital bags or decorating their delivery room need struggle no more. Tiffany Norris, a “mummy concierge”, is now available for hire. She set her business up after hav

Sajid Javid was not the obvious choice as a replacement for disgraced health secretary Matt Hancock. He has no experience in healthcare for one thing. But against that, he is both an experienced minister and, more importantly, he knows about the econ

• A little over half of shareholders in video games-maker Activision Blizzard have backed the $155m pay deal for chief executive (pictured), says the Financial Times. The vote had been delayed in an effort to avoid “an embarrassing rebuke” from inve

Alex Mahon, chief executive of Channel 4, has seen her salary rise by around £50,000 to almost £1m – more than double what Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, receives, says David Sanderson in The Times. Together, the three most senior figure

Last week, Eiji Hirano, former chair of the board of governors at Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) – the world’s largest such fund – told Bloomberg that he sees signs of a “bubble” in ESG investing (that is, investing with environmen

The boom in US companies being taken public via special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) will end in tears for many, warns short seller Jim Chanos in the Financial Times. Chanos, best known for profiting from the collapse of energy group Enron i

When most of us put money in the stockmarket, we go “long” – we buy shares in the belief that they will go up. Short sellers do the opposite – they aim to profit from a share-price falling. Here’s how it works. A short seller borrows the shares from

Engine No. 1, a small activist investor, recently “scored one of the biggest proxy battle wins” ever seen in the US, says Antoine Gara in Forbes, winning three seats on ExxonMobil’s board. It is now launching an exchange traded fund (ETF) that aims t

American colleges and universities are “facing a reckoning”, says Spencer Jakab. In the last academic year, they recorded the “largest drop in cash inflows in decades” as a result of the drop in enrolment and a fall in boarding revenue from enrolled

“I find what I like most about money is the pride of making it. It’s not about how much, it’s about the dignity that comes from being productive in society. That’s my high.” Actress Salma Hayek (pictured), quoted in The Sunday Times “I hope it wasn

conversableeconomist.blogspot.com The pandemic saw the widespread adoption of digital technologies, as people worked from home and ordered shopping online, says Timothy Taylor. It seems likely that this provided incentives for investments in physic

econlib.org What should someone who hates their job do? That was the question put to me and a couple of socialists on a radio panel show, says Bryan Caplan. “Literalist that I am, I tried to offer helpful, relevant advice”: keep your current job fo

conservativehome.com Why is it that businesses seem to have gone “woke”, pulling advertising from mainstream news outlets for infringements against political correctness and trashing conservative attitudes online? After all, probably most of their

When the Brexit transition period ended in January, all the UK’s major mobile-phone networks – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – promised us that they wouldn’t be reintroducing fees for using our phones in Europe. Roaming charges had been banned within th

• Thousands of doctors are continuing to opt out of the NHS Pension Scheme, despite government reforms intended to ameliorate the tax problems that had previously hit high earners in the profession. More than 50,000 doctors left the scheme in the 201

For decades Mark Mobius and I have managed various emerging and frontier-markets funds, including Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust, the largest London-listed emerging-market trust. Just over three years ago we founded Mobius Capital Partne

Argo Blockchain’s (LSE: ARB) share price reached an all-time high of 284p in February, but by May it had dipped back to 100p, says Liam Roche on UK Investor Magazine. The UK-based bitcoin miner has had a volatile 2021 due to the “tumultuous period” b

Manolete Partners (Aim: MANO) specialises in insolvency litigation financing. Shares in the company have halved over the past year as the UK’s strong economic recovery and the government’s support for struggling businesses have reduced demand for its

Russell Wasendorf Sr., the “Madoff of the Midwest”, was born in Iowa in 1948, and went on to study filmmaking at the University of North Iowa. After shooting a short publicity film for the American Soybean Association, he moved into commodities tradi

Wine samples arrive thick and fast every day and they usually come from importers, distributors, wineries and merchants I already know. Occasionally, bottles appear from new discoveries and, because of the short lead times at MoneyWeek, I can get the

In April, a pair of rapper Kanye West’s “Grammy Worn” Nike Air Yeezy 1 Prototypes sold for $1.8m in a private sale with Sotheby’s. That was almost three times the previous record for the most expensive pair of trainers, set last year when a pair of M

• Former BBC presenter Andrew Neil (pictured) has rightly slammed big businesses who pulled adverts from his new TV channel, GB News, says Karren Brady in The Sun on Sunday. So far around 14 companies have pulled out from funding the fledgling statio

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In a further sign of cryptocurrencies’ entry into the mainstream, Sotheby’s has said it will accept bitcoin or ether, not for some abstract piece of digital art, but “for one of the earth’s rarest and greatest treasures”. The 101.38-carat pear-shaped

€14.9bn The total value of the European Union’s new space budget, covering the period up to 2027. The 27-member bloc also created a new body last week, called the EU Agency for the Space Programme. It will oversee the EU’s activities and investments