MoneyWeek

Rowan Atkinson (pictured), a keen car collector with a degree in electrical and electronic engineering, advises drivers to refrain from buying electric vehicles [EVs] until better fuels and technology come along. Greenhouse gas emissions are nearly 7

“China’s post-Covid recovery was supposed to be world-shaking. Instead, it looks merely shaky,” says The Economist. While headline growth remains respectable – the comparator is last year’s locked-down economy, after all – “growth from one quarter to

“Alibaba Group Holding’s restructuring into six separate companies was [deemed] a sign of easing tensions with the [Chinese] government... Yet the... very existence... of Chinese private [tech] companies... depends on the mercy of the Communist Party

“Inflation is becoming the ultimate stealth tax,” says David Smith in The Sunday Times. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have frozen UK tax thresholds until 2027-2028. The measure will net the Treasury an extra £27bn annually by 2025-2026 and amounts to “

Shares in Dr. Martens (DM) fell by 12% after it revealed that pre-tax profits had slid by 25% in the year to 31 March 2023, say Laura Onita and Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu in the Financial Times. This was due to marketing and distribution problems in A

WE Soda is set to launch the FTSE’s first major initial public offering (IPO) this year, “raising hopes a dearth in public listings could be coming to an end”, says Simon Hunt in the Evening Standard. The company, controlled by the billionaire Ciner

Shares in Asos surged by 7% on Monday on the news that it had received a £1bn takeover offer last year, says John Abiona on This is Money. While the online fast-fashion group, which owns Topshop and Miss Selfridge, recently fell out of the FTSE 250,

The Mail on Sunday Farmers spend £45bn a year worldwide fighting pests and disease. Most of these treatments “are made from synthetic chemicals” and there is thus growing pressure from consumers and regulators to find greener alternatives. This firm

Medical-equipment group Steris is in rude health, says Teresa Rivas in Barron’s. It specialises in sterilisation chemicals and disinfectants, products always in demand in hospitals – especially as they resume normal operations following the pandemic.

Rubrik, an American cybersecurity software start-up, is reportedly preparing an initial public offering (IPO), says Reuters. The group sells cloud-based ransomware protection and data-backup software to more than 5,000 companies, including chipmaker

Russia has been accused of destroying the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro river in occupied Ukraine in what is already being termed the “largest man-made disaster in Europe for decades”, say Joe Barnes and Roland Oliphant in The Telegraph. The destru

For thirty years, Hong Kong was the only place in China where the victims of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in Beijing could be publicly mourned, says Tiffany May in The New York Times. Then, in 2020, Hong Kong’s go

A few weeks ago, Greece went to the polls to choose a new government. The results gave the incumbent New Democracy 40.8% of the vote, more than even pre-election surveys had been suggesting. While this was an emphatic victory, it wasn’t quite enough

After “12 weeks of crisis”, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) – until now the main trade association for British companies – won a “crunch vote of confidence” with 93% support from members on Tuesday, says the Financial Times. The vote come

The SEC takes on crypto: Changpeng Zhao (pictured), the founder of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is facing some hard times, says Anita Ramaswamy on Breakingviews. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the markets re

Ever since taking over as shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves has been restoring her party’s reputation for economic competence. With the party far ahead in the polls, she has launched one of the big themes of her likely chancellorship. She wants pensio

Oil rallied a bit this week after Saudi Arabia announced that it would cut production (see page 4), yet the idea that these cuts are bullish for oil in the short term seems rather optimistic. Instead, this looks rather like a classic example of tradi

● ”Sales up, profits up and a scorching 13% share price bounce, not to mention the restoration of a dividend axed during the dark days of the pandemic,” says Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. “Can this be the same Marks and Spencer that has seemingly spen

Market timing refers to any strategy that involves trying to predict future price movements and shifting between different investments to take advantage of them. To take a simple example, if you believe that shares are likely to fall and bonds to ris

High-flying chipmaker Nvidia is “priced ahead of the curve”, said high-profile technology investor Cathie Wood, defending her much-mocked decision to drop the stock from her flagship Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund (ETF) between November and Janu

Felix Martin Breakingviews Globalisation is dead, says Felix Martin. And under its replacement, “securonomics”, national security takes precedence over economic efficiency. To say this “volte-face” matters to investors is a “colossal understatement”

“I still trade, I’m still actively involved and I have a small pension through which I invest in one or two relatively volatile stocks. I don’t let anyone else hold my pension fund, in case they lose it!” Rogue Trader Nick Leeson (pictured), who brok

An overlooked but highly significant aspect of the recent Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protests is that the people taking part, and their sympathisers, are “exactly the sorts of people one would expect to vote Tory,” says William Atkinson.

When I see a pineapple, “I can’t help but wonder at the progress of humanity”, says Laura Williams. For its story is, in microcosm, the tale of how enterprise-driven innovation and global trade have changed the world for the better. Pineapples origin

Online shopping should be a boon for people who can’t easily get to a supermarket, especially in rural areas. But in practice, the uneven availability of online groceries is worsening Britain’s “urban-rural inequality”, says Andy Newing. When househo

The main multi-cancer early detection (MCED) test at present is the highly promising Galleri test developed by Grail, which was bought by Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN) in 2020. While the deal may need to be unwound owing to pressure from competition regula

The UK is in a little financial trouble. Public-sector spending has already reached £1.2trn, or 48% of GDP. That’s another peacetime record. Total government debt is now more than 100% of GDP (up from below 30% before the global financial crisis). Th

Activist investor Cevian Capital has dumped its stake in Aviva after successfully pushing the insurer to return more capital to shareholders, says The Times. Since Cevian first revealed it was building a stake in the FTSE 100 company in the autumn of

■ Terry Smith has dumped Amazon from his flagship Fundsmith Equity fund only a year and a half after buying into the tech giant, says Citywire. “We exited our position in Amazon during the month,” notes Fundsmith in its end-May investor factsheet, bu

● Travellers coming to London by train to catch the Eurostar can protect themselves from delays and cancellations by buying a little-known type of ticket, says The Guardian. If you buy a special London International CIV ticket and miss your Eurostar

One way to get around the low rates on cash balances is to buy money market funds. These funds own short-term debt from governments and companies. Their holdings normally have a maturity of less than a year and typically much less: a large part of th

Start-up businesses secured investments worth £205m using the seed enterprise investment scheme (SEIS) in the 2021-2022 financial year, a 16% increase on 2020-2021, according to new data from HM Revenue & Customs. HMRC’s figures provide the most rece

● Leading energy suppliers have responded to criticisms of high prices by introducing new tariffs for some small business customers. Groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses have attacked the energy sector for locking firms into long-term de

In my conversations with executives, analysts and fund managers over the past few months, one topic has come up again and again: Britain’s desperate lack of high-quality commercial property. The situation is particularly acute in certain niche market

The Close Portfolio Conservative, Balanced and Growth fund range seeks to achieve resilient returns over the long term through a company-led approach to investing in a multi-asset context. It acquires “cheap durables”: direct interests in predictable

Harry Nimmo was born in 1957 and studied geography at the University of Dundee before working as a geologist in Saudi Arabia. Believing that the growth of the Saudi economy was unsustainable, and fed up with the lifestyle, he decided to use the money

£14.65, per bottle, reduced to £13 each by the case; £34.65, per magnum, reduced to £30.80 each by the case; £91.50 per double magnum, Haynes Hanson & Clark, hhandc.co.uk; 020-7584 7927 I have been buying this wine every year since it first landed on

How 30 People Found Financial Freedom – and You Can Too Edited by Jonathan Clements Harriman House (£17.99) Given the ongoing cost of living crisis, working out how to optimise your personal finances has never been more important. Doing this through

A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Malcolm Harris Riverrun (£30) The Californian city of Palo Alto has seen its international influence mushroom in recent years, thanks to its role as one of the “hubs of the global tech economy”, with

Editor: Andrew Van Sickle Markets editor: Alexander Rankine Comment editor: Stuart Watkins Politics editor: Emily Hohler Wealth editor: Chris Carter Shares editor: Matthew Partridge Senior digital editor:Kalpana Fitzpatrick Deputy digital editor:Rupe