WH Smith ups profit guidance after strong Christmas sales – and yes, we’re still buying colouring-in books January 20, 2016 NULL
Better on stormy seas than calmer water: Lessons from family-owned firms January 20, 2016 Western business has long criticised the family-run firm. From succession disputes to their reliance on dual-class shares and pyramid structures to clip the wings of external investors, they’re not often held up as models of corporate achievement. But research by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found that 40 per cent of French and German companies with [...]
Is this the cheapest house in Belgravia? Six-bed house goes under the hammer for £900,000 January 19, 2016 NULL
What would encourage fathers to provide more childcare? Parliament select committee takes evidence at 10:30 – Drop in favour of opinion piece January 19, 2016 NULL
Oil prices: End of Iran sanctions sends prices lower – but Opec says this year the US shale oil industry will finally feel the burn and cut production January 19, 2016 There seems no end in sight for sliding oil prices, as black gold fell to $28 a barrel for the first time in 12 years. It’s now priced 70 per cent lower than its $120 peak in June 2014. Forecasts of $20 a barrel made by Goldman Sachs last summer seemed outlandish at the time. But [...]
UK pensions changes: Osborne prepares to raid retirement savings again by changing the tax system – and higher rate payers will lose out from the new single rate of relief January 19, 2016 Pension savers should brace themselves for another round of changes to the system, as George Osborne gears up to announce the biggest shake-up to pensions tax in a generation. The tiered system of tax relief which depends on a person’s income is expected to be abolished, and a single flat-rate introduced instead – a policy which [...]
How to make better decisions, faster: Follow Obama’s example and make certain choices routine January 19, 2016 "Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable. Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities,” Barack Obama told Vanity Fair in 2012. “Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 per cent chance that it isn’t going to work.” Yet decision paralysis [...]
China: Why international investors are right to be nervous January 19, 2016 A quote I saw a few days ago has stuck in my mind: “what happens in Beijing won’t stay in Beijing”. We should be pretty acclimatised by now to Chinese market sell-offs, a super volatile oil price, geopolitical instability, and to a marked slowdown in global growth. And yet the Dow shed more than 1,000 [...]