MoneyWeek

The total prize money for the Women’s FA Cup will increase to £3m next season, a tenfold rise on the current £428,915 fund, says The Guardian. The UK Football Association said that women’s football was in a growth phase, and that the larger sum will

Porn star Stormy Daniels (pictured) has lost an appeal to avoid paying nearly $300,000 of legal fees in a years-long case against former US president Donald Trump, says CNBC. Daniels had sued Trump with the aim of being released from a non-disclosure

British shares are “back on the map for overseas investors”, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. A rally has brought the FTSE 100 back to “within a whisker” of the level at which it started the year. That resilient performance contrasts favourably with a 6%

Western oil majors are not racing to boost output, says Russ Mould of AJ Bell. Total capital expenditure by BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, ENI, Shell and TotalEnergies is forecast to rise by more than a quarter this year to almost $100bn, b

A group of 77 ex-employees of Buzzfeed are suing the news outlet for $8.7m, claiming its failures of communication cost them the chance to sell their shares at the best price, says The New York Times. In June, Buzzfeed decided to go public by merging

Shares in Inditex, the Spanish owner of fashion chain Zara, fell as it missed its targets for the past year despite a “surge in sales”, says Henry Saker-Clark in The Independent. The final quarter of the year was “weighed down by the rapid spread of

Warren Buffett has drawn upon Berkshire Hathaway’s “vast cash pile” to buy the insurance company Alleghany for $11.6bn, says Callum Jones in The Times. Berkshire has offered a 25% premium to where Alleghany’s shares closed on Friday, in what would be

• Chancellor Rishi Sunak lauded bike-based food-delivery app Deliveroo as “a true British tech success story” when it listed last year, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. The shares have since fallen from 390p to 124p. Latest results show a 75% incr

“The technical definition of a bear market [is] where the index is down 20% or worse… Regardless of some made-up definition, this feels like a bear market already for many investors… [But] staring at prices all day won’t make them stop going down… Pa

Demand for upmarket mixers from pubs, hotels and restaurants “has been decimated by lockdowns over the past two years”. But strong consumption at home drove a 23% increase in sales for Fever-Tree last year. This was helped by new launches and a shift

“Tobacco is a classic defensive sector,” says Affärsvärlden. Swedish Match’s products differ from big tobacco firms – most of its sales come from nicotine pouches, chewing tobacco and snuff – but it “still shows the same kind of economic stability”.

The release of British-Iranian detainees Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori raises hope that recent efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord may get “back on track,” says the Financial Times. Tehran and London have repeatedly denied

The first special purpose acquisition company (Spac) on the Hong Kong stock exchange got off to a slow start, falling 3.2% on its debut day of trading, says Bloomberg. Aquila Acquisition, which raised HK$1bn (£96m) in its initial public offering (IPO

The Smarkets betting exchange is not as popular as Betfair in terms of the amounts matched, but it more than makes up for this in the sheer number of the markets on offer. While many of them are not liquid enough for us to consider, that still leaves

Saudi Arabia has agreed to pump more oil (see page 12) but it is also in “active talks” with Beijing “to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan”, say Summer Said and Stephen Kalin in The Wall Street Journal. Such a move would “dent” the dollar’

The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) has become the first fire brigade in the world to deploy robotic “dogs” in risky rescue missions, says The New York Times. FDNY has spent $150,000 on a pair of the robots, named Spot, developed by robotics fir

P&O Ferries’ decision to sack 800 workers without “warning or consultation” via video call last week has led to condemnation across the political spectrum and protests at ports across the UK, says Matthew Weaver in The Guardian. There is particular a

• The total pay of Bernard Looney (pictured), boss of oil giant BP, more than doubled last year to £4.5m, “as higher oil prices turned the company into a ‘cash machine’”, says the Daily Mail. Looney received £2.9m in bonuses on top of £1.3m in salary

Wall Street bank Citigroup is seeking an edge in the fierce war for talent by building a new hub for investment bankers in the southern Spanish city of Malaga, says the Financial Times. It is hoping to attract 30 junior banking analysts from European

Between war and inflation, markets have a lot to worry about. So fretting over an arcane-sounding bond market phenomenon may not be top of your priority list. But if history is any judge, it should be. We’re talking about the “inverted yield curve”.

It was a plot twist to rival any on its thousands of screens. The cinema chain AMC, which owns the Odeon brand in the UK, last week announced that it was spending $28m on a major stake in Hycroft Mining, a precious metals explorer that may be sitting

“Markets change moods. And the mood has shifted markets now against high-growth companies,” Aswath Damodaran, professor of finance at New York University, tells Indian newspaper The Economic Times. India’s market for new listings (initial public offe

Bonds are IOUs. You lend the issuer money for a set period, in exchange for a regular interest payment (coupon), and get your money back when the bond “matures”. Once issued, bonds trade on the open market, which means the price can rise or fall depe

It’s tempting to blame the awfulness of the Home Office on Priti Patel, but the real reason is that it’s “full of people terrified that the next big f**k-up will be their fault”, says James Ball. The Home Office runs services – security, immigration,

“I literally cannot come up with a single example where I’m like: ‘Let me f**k this person over, and they will never see their money again.’” Anna Sorokin (pictured), the scammer who inspired the TV series Inventing Anna, on why she’s not a con arti

iea.org.uk The British government is consulting on a proposal for an online sales tax, on the basis that high-street shops are at a disadvantage to online retailers because they pay much higher business rates. This is both “wrong in theory” and an

danhitchens.substack.com “A crucial lesson from the last 20 years of Western intervention is that the stupid questions were the right questions. There are five simple questions when deciding what to do in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,”

capx.co Many households across the UK “pay more to keep their homes warm than they need to, only for the heat to escape”, say Cherilyn Mackrory and Derek Thomas. Fuel poverty falls most heavily on those who can’t afford rising expenses and can’t af

■ Stewart Investors, managers of the £48m ScotGems trust, bought a Russian company on the day of its invasion of Ukraine, says Investment Week. Prior to the purchase of the position in a London-listed Russian retailer it had no direct investments in

London-focused estate agent Foxtons has been urged to sell itself to “realise value for shareholders”, having failed to benefit from the ”red-hot property market” in the capital, says the Financial Times. Montreal-based Converium Capital has built a

Wheaton Precious Metals (NYSE: WPM) is one of the largest precious metals streaming companies in the world. It buys all, or part of, the precious metal or cobalt output from high-quality mines for an upfront payment plus an extra sum on delivery of t

Soaring inflation and the rising Bank of England base rate has many of us wondering what the future holds for mortgage rates. If you are on a variable rate or tracker mortgage, then an increase in the base rate is likely to mean an increase in your m

• Savers who hope to see interest rates rise are going to be disappointed. “The Bank of England raised rates again this week, but unfortunately it’s not going to be enough to boost savings rates because it was already priced in,” says Sarah Coles in

• Most people will no longer have access to free Covid-19 tests from 1 April. However employers have the option of stepping into the breach, either by providing staff with tests at home or by contracting an approved provider to run tests for you. Com

While the cost of living crisis is driving calls for the government to backtrack on next month’s national insurance (NI) increase, it is often overlooked that employers, as well as employees, face a hike. From 6 April, employers will have to pay 1.25

One of the biggest trends in finance over the past few years has been the rise of cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and ethereum. When they first arrived on the scene they were seen largely as the playthings of those interested in computers and of ot

This has been a very good week for my open long tips, with all four rising. Construction firm Morgan Sindall rose from 2,145p to 2,431p, supermarket chain J Sainsbury increased from to 248p to 259p and African telecoms firm Airtel Africa advanced fro

In recent years there has been a drive to increase the numbers and powers of independent directors (sometimes referred to a non-executive directors) on corporate boards. The argument for such directors is that because they don’t directly work for the

The Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries – a regional cousin of oil cartel Opec – discovered its tremendous pricing power in oil markets after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. That realisation, among other factors, helped usher in the stagfl

Merchant bank Close Brothers (LSE: CBG) reported profits in line with expectations, but markets weren’t impressed, says The Times. Economic turmoil could lead to rising distress among small firms or at least a pullback in their expansion plans. That

Tritax Big Box Reit (LSE: BBOX), which owns distribution warehouses used by companies such as Amazon and Tesco, has issued another encouraging trading update, says The Motley Fool. Tritax has experienced high demand for its warehouses, with “historic

Andrew Hall was born in 1951 and grew up in the London suburb of Feltham. He won a place at Hampton Grammar School then went on to study chemistry at Oxford. After he graduated with a masters in 1973 he joined oil major BP, working his way up to beco

“The 296 GTB is another highly technical new Ferrari, and risked being a beautiful automotive cyborg. Fortunately it overflows with the one thing no one can engineer: soul,” says Jason Barlow in GQ. As absurd as it is to call it a democratic supercar

£27.99, flagshipwines.co. uk; £26.50, kwmwine.com; £27.99, thornewines.com I first visited Andrew and Rozy Gunn, the custodians of Iona, some two decades ago. A relatively new property back then, Andrew explained that they were planting some of th

A marble sculpture that sold for £5,200 in a 2002 garden statuary auction has been revealed as a lost late work by Italian master Antonio Canova, says the Financial Times. The “lucky sellers”, a British couple, bought the sculpture of an “idealised,

Cars are getting bigger and heavier, but for collectors, small can still be beautiful. Take the Peel P50: at 1.3 metres long, one metre wide and 1.3 metres tall, it is the smallest production car ever made. Peel Engineering built 46 of them on the Is

• Chelsea fans are now seeing the downside of their Faustian pact with dirty money, says Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror. For years, rival football supporters “looked on powerlessly” as the “ill-gotten gains” of Chelsea’s owner, Roman Abramovich (pic

£35 How much, on average, people would expect to be paid to spend a day with a fictional accountant named Phoebe, who spends her free time smoking, birdwatching and going to church, according to a study into which traits we view as most boring. $4m

Editor-in-chief: Merryn Somerset Webb Executive editor: John Stepek Editor:Andrew Van Sickle Acting editor:Cris Sholto Heaton Markets editor: Alexander Rankine Comment editor: Stuart Watkins Politics editor: Emily Hohler Digital editor:Ben Jud