Alliance Trust investors clash over proposed buyback February 26, 2017 Investment fund Alliance Trust is convening a general meeting for shareholders this Tuesday to approve its plan for a £620m buyback deal with Elliott Management, the activist investor. It proposes that the buyback will take place in five tranches to enable the American hedge fund to cash in its investment. UK private investors’ association ShareSoc [...]
Hoover looks to offload pension scheme, including a possible push into the pensions lifeboat February 26, 2017 Hoover is mulling plans to hand its pension scheme over to the pensions lifeboat in an attempt to save its ailing finances. There are almost 5,800 defined benefit pension schemes in operation across the UK, but around 4,200 of them are in deficit, dragging on many companies' finances. Now, The Sunday Times has reported electronics firm [...]
Warren Buffett’s annual letter: Star-spangled banners, Gekko, buybacks and insurers February 25, 2017 It's great being right. It's even better when being right makes you bucket loads of money. And for around half a century, Warren Buffett – the world's second wealthiest man – has made a name for himself in being both. Today he sent his annual letter to investors of his behemoth Berkshire Hathaway fund, offering a [...]
Why is private equity surviving the storm? February 24, 2017 First came Brexit, then came Trump and with several other European elections in the pipeline, who knows what’s next? For institutional investors looking to ply their trade in the face of such volatility and uncertainty, sentiment towards various asset classes is likely to chop and change. However, private equity is one asset class about which [...]
Trump and the markets: the good news and the bad news February 23, 2017 | City Talk The equity rally since Clinton was “Trump-ed” on 8 November has been the biggest for any new president since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1929. While some believe it marks the early stages of a paradigm shift, others have rationalised the move as “Trump without the bad stuff”. As hedge fund manager Seth Klarman recently [...]
Prices on the rise: What next for inflation? February 23, 2017 | City Talk Inflation is waking up Most of the major central banks are predicting rises in inflation. Price pressure was already beginning to build in 2016 as the world economy showed signs of improvement. Now the policies of a new Trump administration – lower taxes and increased government spending – could increase that pressure. The expectation among [...]
Trump and the markets: the good news and the bad news February 23, 2017 | City Talk The equity rally since Clinton was “Trump-ed” on 8 November has been the biggest for any new president since Herbert Hoover was elected in 1929. While some believe it marks the early stages of a paradigm shift, others have rationalised the move as “Trump without the bad stuff”. As hedge fund manager Seth Klarman [...]
Northern allure: What Stockport offers investors that London never could February 23, 2017 London property has long been the pinnacle of investment portfolios worldwide, but a slowdown in the capital’s market is prompting a shift in attitudes. For areas of the UK which have failed to grab investors’ attention in the past, large cash injections and a shift in government policy have helped fuel immense residential and commercial [...]
Has the P2P halo slipped? February 23, 2017 For the past few years it has seemed like P2P lenders could do no wrong. Seen as the feisty challengers to the allegedly ineffective and self-serving banking giants, these champions of the honest and hardworking SME were going to revolutionise the way businesses were funded. Yet revolutions seldom work out the way idealists hope. So [...]
With possible changes to the way that some defined benefit pensions are indexed against inflation, there may never be a better time to cash yours in February 22, 2017 Your gold-plated final salary pension may lose some of its shine, if the ideas put forward in a new government consultation come to fruition. In a green paper on the future of defined benefit (DB) pensions, published on Monday, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) discusses the option of allowing pension scheme trustees the freedom [...]