MoneyWeek

What was he thinking when he called an early election? Macron, that is, not Sunak. The latter had probably lined up a job in the US. The Conservative manifesto this week (see page 10) reinforced the impression of a government longing to be put out of

There will be more than one winner of Euro 2024, the football tournament that kicks off today in Munich, when Scotland takes on the hosts, Germany. Fans in Britain are expected to spend £2.75bn on food, drink, barbecues, TVs, sportswear and merchandi

French president Emmanuel Macron “is going for broke”, says Clea Caulcutt for Politico. Macron’s centrist party received a drubbing at the weekend’s European elections (see also page 11), securing just 14.6% of votes, less than half the figure for Ma

Diamond giant De Beers says it will no longer sell synthetic diamonds. In 2018 it broke one of the industry’s biggest “taboos” by selling lab-grown stones for jewellery, says Thomas Biesheuvel on Bloomberg. Artificial diamonds are chemically identica

“We have never seen concentration in the market like… we’re seeing today,” says Cathie Wood of Ark Investment Management. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) rally is benefiting a tiny number of companies, many of them computer chip makers, including Nv

“The City [of London] is having a busier year than pessimistic observers… might have expected… The £39bn bid by Australian giant BHP Billiton for its London-listed… rival Anglo American has fallen away. But plenty of bankers’ and advisers’ fees have

London is famously expensive, but the stock exchange is an exception. British shares continue to trade at more than a 40% discount to their US peers, and are also persistently cheaper than equities in the eurozone. The UK discount has been driven by

A surge in the share price of Nvidia lifted its market value above $3trn last week, says Martin Strydom in The Times. It briefly overtook Apple to become the world’s second most valuable corporation behind Microsoft. The stock also split ten for one

The British Fashion Council (BFC) has warned that Chinese clothing retailer Shein’s planned £50bn flotation on the London Stock Exchange is a ”’significant concern” to the industry, says Emily Hawkins in the Daily Mail. The BFC argues that “questions

The London Stock Exchange is facing the threat of yet another of its top stocks heading off to list in New York instead, says Alex Ralph in The Times. While industrial equipment-rental group Ashtead had previously dismissed talk of upping sticks,it i

The Telegraph QinetiQ’s shares have doubled since 2017. The defence contractor’s upgraded guidance, rising revenue, stable profit margin and potential for future acquisitions reflect its solid financial position. With Nato members expected to increas

Defence contractor Lockheed Martin’s “stock is poised for takeoff”, says Barron’s. The share price has lagged in recent years and the company has been grappling with supply-chain difficulties, but the outlook is improving as military spending is expe

South Korea’s Yanolja, one of the world’s largest online travel agencies, aims to raise $400m in an initial public offering (IPO) in New York, says Bloomberg. Backed by Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank, Yanolja could list as soon as July at

Reform UK is not, of course, going to be Labour’s main opposition in the next government, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. On the assumption that Nigel Farage wins his seat in Clacton, “he will be one of a tiny number of Reform MPs, and that number ma

Nationalist and right-wing parties won major gains in last week’s European elections, says Bruno Waterfield in The Times. They punished France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz, “badly weakening” and even “humiliating” the two leaders “who

The EU intends to impose tariffs of up to 38% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), says Lisa O’Carroll in the Guardian. The duties, applied provisionally from July, follow a nine-month investigation into unfair state subsidies of Chineseown

The betting markets for the coming UK general election provide little comfort for Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party. With £6.15m matched on Betfair, the odds on Labour getting the most votes have shortened very slightly to 1.02 (98%), with the C

It is certainly a bold move. TXSE Group last week announced it had $120m in backing from a group of giant financial institutions to launch a Texas Stock Exchange to rival New York. It will be based in Dallas, and the firm hopes to have it up and runn

● In his television series on farming, Jeremy Clarkson (pictured) says that since it’s impossible to know what price grain, corn, rapeseed or beef will fetch from one season to the next, financial planning is nearly impossible. But it isn’t, says Sim

Hong Kong has delivered spectacular returns for investors over the long term. In the 50 years or so since the rapid industrialisation began feeding through to rising wealth, the stockmarket has far outstripped both Singapore – which has been a huge s

A stock split happens when a company decides to increase the number of its shares in issue by giving existing investors additional shares for each share they currently hold. The firm’s share price falls to reflect the enlarged share base and its mark

“Hong Kong must reinvent itself and make better use of the strengths it has cultivated over the years,” says Mark Mobius, the veteran emerging-markets investor, who has unveiled plans to launch a new fund just months after retiring from his last firm

Brenda Shaffer Nikkei Asia The transition to renewables is presented as an undisputed fact even though it is not only untrue but contributing to de-industrialisation, “squandering” economic resources and generating “national security hazards”, says

“We made good money, but it was just a headline because it wasn’t anything like what the fashion industry was making out of us… I didn’t feel we had become too spoilt and rich. The industry was still run by men.” Model Naomi Campbell (pictured) on Li

dailysceptic.org The World Health Organisation (WHO) was supposed to be adopting a new pandemic treaty and other amendments that would tie a country’s future responses to the decisions of the WHO’s director-general, says Dr Thi Thuy Van Dinh. In the

spectator.co.uk The anti-car movement is “idiotic”, says Rory Sutherland. From a purely practical point of view, the car or van is the optimal form of transport, or close to optimal, for “almost any journey of 0.5 to 450 miles from anywhere to anywh

tomblomfield.com Talking to students from the UK’s top universities recently I was struck by the world-class quality of their talent, especially in artificial intelligence and the biosciences, says Tom Blomfield, a partner at the Y Combinator start-

The City of London Investment Trust (LSE: CTY) is one of the most popular among British investors. It frequently tops the “most bought” lists published by the country’s low-cost online brokers, and its £2.3bn market capitalisation makes it the larges

Elliott Management has rebuilt a stake in SoftBank worth more than $2bn and is pressing the Japanese technology conglomerate to launch a $15bn share buyback, says the Financial Times. SoftBank’s shares rose by 5.5% on the news. The activist investor

■ Retail investors poured £2.8bn into funds in April, the highest since August 2021, says the Investment Association. This was driven by demand for global equity and fixed-income funds and investors wanting to use up their £20,000 individual savings

If you are planning to hire a car for your summer holiday this year, there is good news. Prices are falling. Research by consumers’ group Which has found that prices have fallen by 47% in a year. But there are still plenty of expensive traps you need

● Labour’s plan to add VAT to private school fees if it wins the election is causing worry among parents. A 20% hike in school fees comes at a time when many parents are already struggling to afford to pay for private education. Some parents are cons

Britain’s pension funds are seriously underperforming, with savers receiving far less income in retirement as a result. Stockbroker AJ Bell reveals that nine in ten UK pension funds have failed to keep pace with funds that simply track the UK stockma

While pledges on personal tax from Labour and the Conservatives are almost identical in this election, one area where they do differ is the taxation of pensioners. The Conservatives say Labour’s refusal to back their “tripe -lock plus” commitment amo

● Women claiming compensation for mistakes made by previous governments with increases to the state pension age are unsure how the political parties might deal with their cases. Last month, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said the way

The UK market is an attractive investment opportunity owing to its extraordinarily cheap valuation. There have been eight mergers or takeovers with a value of more than $1bn in the UK so far this year, compared with just three in 2023. The sheer scal

One of the key trends of the past few decades has been the rise of e-commerce. While it has receded from the highs seen during the pandemic, when the closure of most shops meant that nearly 40% of retail sales in the UK were made online, it still acc

Semiconductor manufacturer Nvidia recently instituted a stock split, whereby shareholders got ten new shares for one old share. Overall market capitalisation isn’t affected. The shareholder’s slice of the overall pie remains the same; it is just divi

It has been a poor month for my nine long tips, with five falling and only four appreciating. Investment and share-trading platform IG Group rose from 745p to 788p and General Motors shifted up a gear from $45.17 to $47.57. Rolls-Royce Holdings incre

“Hollywood loves to see a British villain getting their comeuppance,” says Andrew Orlowski in The Telegraph. So when Mike Lynch, 59, the British tech entrepreneur who was extradited to the US 13 years ago to face fraud charges, stood before a jury la

It is incumbent on us all to moderate our alcohol consumption. So, this week, I have found you a stunning half bottle of white wine so you can gently modify your evening routine from a bottle of white and red to a thoroughly civilised half of white a

Going… There was a time when “carp were considered impossible to catch and were mythical monsters” in the popular imagination, Ben Jones of Telford-based Mullock Jones Auctioneers tells BBC Radio Shropshire. It was thought that the fish could be anyt

A thriving auction market in vintage video games has also sprung up in recent years. Would-be sellers are scouring their attics for games they played decades ago. In 1998, Mark Odorisio, now 62, closed his video-games shop in Nebraska and rather than

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 Writer/editorial assistan