How to deal with an HMRC letter September 9, 2010 LETTERS have started to drop onto the doormats of Britons advising them that they did not pay the correct amount of tax through the pay as you earn (PAYE) system during the tax years 2008-10. Those affected are likely to be those with complex streams of income. The government argued that the state of the [...]
Making millions from potatoes September 9, 2010 No one has ever written a book about how to make a million from a potato, but Will Chase could. The founder of Tyrrells crisps – the posh ones that brought the vegetable crisp to the tables of the upper middle class – has now turned his hand to vodka, made from the spuds grown [...]
Let your employees Chatter all day long September 9, 2010 SALESFORCE.COM launched a mobile application for Chatter, their “Facebook for business”, this week. An employer would not be alone if she baulked at the thought of her workers checking their friends’ status updates during the working day. Particularly when a study conducted by Peninsula, the employment law firm, has found that 233m hours are lost [...]
Q&A September 9, 2010 Q.I have a business idea. Do I need market research? A.Ideas are great but good businesses are built on finding a niche – and banks will expect to see why your idea is viable. Travers Clarke-Walker, product and marketing director for Barclays Business, says: “doing market research is a good way for a business to [...]
Volatility can add to an ETF’s tracking error September 8, 2010 GIVEN that investors’ prime reason for buying exchange-traded funds (ETF) is to gain exposure to indices, in an ideal world the performance of an ETF ought to reflect movements in the benchmark index as closely as possible. Unfortunately, ETFs do suffer from tracking error, which is defined as a divergence between the performance of the [...]
Bubble, toil and trouble as investors pour into bonds September 8, 2010 WITH government bond yields dropping through the floor, analysts fear that over-egged double dip fears have inflated a bond bubble. A quarter of year-to-date inflows into exchange-traded funds (ETF) have gone into bond funds, so ETF investors should keep a sharp eye on the debate. Bubble alarmists highlight the pace with which investment has rushed [...]
LISTED PRODUCT NEWS September 8, 2010 WORLD’S FIRST EURO HIGH YIELD BOND ETF BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETF)?platform iShares has launched the world’s first Euro High Yield Bond ETF. The fund tracks the performance of the Markit iBoxx Euro Liquid Corporates Index. The index uses multiple pricing sources for inclusion and is based on an average of the classifications allocated to each [...]
THE TIPSTER September 8, 2010 BELEAGUERED oil and gas giant BP, which yesterday published a report into the Macondo oil well disaster, received a boost after ratings agency Fitch upgraded it to A status. Will the upgrade offer sufficient impetus for the global energy firm to break its August high of 438p? WorldSpreads offers a spread of 414.4-415.4p. Weakness in [...]
BP and energy peers propel the FTSE while banks drag September 8, 2010 EENERGY stocks led by BP pushed Britain’s top shares higher yesterday, outpacing falls in banks that were weighed down by European recovery concerns. The FTSE 100 closed up 21.92 points, or 0.4 per cent, at 5,429.74, after breaking a seven-session winning streak to close down 0.6 per cent on Tuesday at 5,407.82. Meanwhile the FTSE [...]
Wall Street closes up on light trading September 8, 2010 US stocks rose yesterday as investors latched onto positive news out of Europe in the latest in a string of low-volume sessions suggesting little confidence in market direction. Bank stocks recovered from Tuesday’s losses, with JPMorgan up 2.2 per cent and the BKW bank index up 1.7 per cent. A successful Portuguese debt offering as [...]