MoneyWeek

Plenty of fund managers will have had some sleepless nights recently, but not Fundsmith’s Terry Smith. “I never invest in bank shares,” he says in the Financial Times. Banks need too much leverage to make an “adequate return”. NatWest, for instance,

“Here we go again,” says Jeremy Warner in The Telegraph. “Little more than a decade after the financial system last went belly up,” we are once again “peering over the cliff edge into the abyss” of another banking crisis. As the rescues of Credit Sui

“The end of the ‘everything bubble’ has finally hit the banking system,” says Satyajit Das on MarketWatch. Over the past year, central banks’ attempts to unwind “an economic and financial structure built upon an artificially low cost of money” have s

Credit Suisse bondholders are discovering that “life is unfair”, says Shuli Ren on Bloomberg. Investors in the CHF16bn-worth (£14bn) of the bank’s Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds were wiped out as part of the Swiss rescue deal over the weekend. AT1 bon

On Wednesday, MPs voted 515 to 29 to back Rishi Sunak’s Stormont brake section of the Windsor Framework for Northern Ireland, despite opposition by hardline, Brexit-supporting Tory MPs in the European Research Group (ERG), a number of prominent Torie

Inflation rises again: Consumer prices rose unexpectedly in February from a year earlier, by 10.4%. That is below the 11.1% recent peak in October, but higher than January’s 10.1%. Food and alcohol were the main drivers, with those prices rising by 1

dezernatzukunft.org In the 1980s, Italy’s productivity was among the highest in the world, says Max Krahé. Today, the country is mired in stagnation, with high unemployment and low investment. Both nominal and real GDP growth have been flatlining si

The revival of nuclear power is increasingly evident. I’ve written before about this theme and how to invest in MoneyWeek (see issue 1088 last year), but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, long-term security of supply for fuel is emerging as a compl

Just because the chancellor calls it a “Budget for growth” doesn’t mean it actually is one. As with most Budgets, the greater the spin, the less the substance. The announcement that following January’s unexpected fiscal surplus, the Office for Budget

One of the ironies of the fintech world is that the most exciting business models have avoided lending money. That’s not to say that innovative approaches to lending haven’t been tried. But shares in Funding Circle, which lends to small businesses an

Financial advisers believe that more than one million savers will benefit from Jeremy Hunt’s Budget reforms to the rules on pension savings. While last week’s changes have been criticised as a handout to the rich, savers on more modest incomes will a

Time for a paper chase? UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt may believe that the country will avoid a recession, but indicators such as the shrinking money supply and the overall consumer confidence downtrend are less bullish. Add in some bank failures that ha

IBM’s former CEO and chair is a controversial figure, says the Financial Times. Some credit her with “transforming the century-old US company” – reinventing half its portfolio of businesses, and steaming into the modern worlds of AI and cloud and qua

Thatchers, Whiteleaf, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. A Grade II-listed house set in landscaped gardens that include a kitchen garden with raised beds and a greenhouse. It has beamed ceilings, open fireplaces and a garden room that stretches the

The moral of this week’s deal is: don’t make a tight double unless you are going to defend accurately. On today’s deal from the European Open Championships, East fell from grace. West led out Ace-King-then-Queen of Clubs, East overruffing dummy’s nin

When the going gets tough, the Fed takes a dive. After the crisis of 2008, the feds insisted that the banks hold more reserves. They were told to buy safe, government debt – T-bonds. The Treasuries were supposed to be financial ballast, designed to k

After years of scandal, months of customers jumping ship, and weeks of rumours, Credit Suisse, founded in 1857, is no more. Last weekend, in an emergency deal brokered by the Swiss government, the bank’s rival UBS agreed to buy it in an all-share dea