By: Will Railton

I'm deputy money editor at City A.M. I focus on personal finance and investing. I'm particularly interested in macroeconomics, pensions and politics. Contact me at william.railton@cityam.com.

Budget 2017: Philip Hammond could raise the pensions Lifetime Allowance to fund social care and end inheritance tax discrimination to improve the nation’s finances

The weeks leading up to George Osborne’s Budget statements were filled with frenzied speculation. Famed for his tinkering, the former chancellor’s Budgets enshrined a number of eye-catching and popular reforms, including landmark pension freedoms, and some not so popular ones, such as a reduction in the amount an individual can put into their pension and [...]
Political risk is about more than populist election victories, as UK insurers know

As the anti-globalisation stone gathers moss, political risk has been weighing on the minds of investors. Many worry that the tide of public opinion in the developed world is flowing towards tougher immigration restrictions and higher tariffs on imported goods, scrambling any chances of energising this feeble and joyless economic recovery. In the last week, [...]
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

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 [...]

Coup de grace: Are investors misjudging Marine Le Pen’s chances of victory in France’s presidential election?

February 21, 2017

"Fool me twice, shame on me,” goes the idiom. Caught out by shock victories for the Leave and Trump campaigns in 2016, investors are determined not to let political risk get the better of them a third time as the French presidential election approaches this spring. Since the beginning of the year, French government bonds [...]
OAP (Old And Partying): UK pensioners have higher average incomes than their working age children, and spend more on having fun

February 15, 2017

For the silver generation, this truly is a golden age. Two reports released in the last week indicate that pensioners have never had it better. The first, Tilney’s “The Cost of Tomorrow”, debunks the myth that supposedly frivolous twenty-somethings spend more on having fun than retirees, either in absolute terms or as a percentage of their [...]
As the Co-Op Bank goes on sale, is now the time to buy UK banks?

February 14, 2017

It wasn't hard to spot the irony when Paul Flowers, chairman of the avowedly ethical Co-Operative Bank and a methodist minister, was arrested for drug possession in 2013. In the same year, the mutual Co-operative Group ceded control of the ailing lender to its bondholders, after a massive £1.5bn hole was discovered in its balance [...]
The rising tide of inflation: Investment ideas to protect your portfolio

February 8, 2017

Inflation is a real bogeyman for investors, and it rankles most when you don’t see it coming. Few predicted the oil price rebound at the end of last year – a big influence on prices – or the optimism which caused yields to rise after Donald Trump’s election. The threat that rising prices will erode wealth [...]
Investing in automation: If robots are coming for your job, how can you make money out of it?

February 7, 2017

"Robots are coming to take our jobs,” scream the headlines. The debate around automation has become alarmingly dichotomous – either your job requires skills which are resistant to computers and machines, or you’re destined for the scrap heap. The reality is probably more nuanced. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, it is unlikely that specific jobs [...]
How can we get ourselves to save more? Use behavioural economics

February 1, 2017

It's a convenient excuse – we all vow to save more when we earn more. A new survey by YouGov for Zurich UK of British adults in work found that more than two fifths (42 per cent) said that earning more would encourage them to save more into a pension. Unfortunately, they rarely actually do [...]
China, Mexico, Japan: Who’s afraid of Trump’s protectionism?

January 31, 2017

Anyone hoping that Donald Trump’s campaign promises were just talk can’t have been encouraged by this weekend’s events. Stock markets fell and the dollar was volatile yesterday on the news that the President had signed an executive order banning the entry of people from seven countries. Assumptions that he would row back from his more protectionist [...]

Subscribe