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Image caption, Sarah Atkinson stores hundreds of packs of pet food ready to hand out to ownersA former chip shop is being used to feed pets whose owners are feeling the squeeze from soaring prices.Sarah Atkinson has run a pet food bank from the premises of Big Lamp Chippy in Chorley, Lancashire, since September.The 44-year-old said the facility was going from "strength to strength" - but should not be needed at all.Many of its users said they would choose to feed their pets first, even if this meant going without food themselves.The cost of pet food and related products went up by more than 17% in the year to November, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).An increasing number of pet food banks have been set up across the country to try to help people get by, including by charities like the RSPCA and Blue Cross.Ms Atkinson, who opens her pet food bank on Wednesday evenings, also owns a pet shop in the town so said she could see the need first-hand."I'd seen the change in buying patterns in my shop - people going for a cheaper range of foods, not coming in as often - prices were just fluctuating so much and I thought we need to do this and get it ready for winter, because this is when it's going to hit hardest."We set up in September, and it's just gone from strength to strength. It's been amazing." Image caption, Donna Allsopp says having access to a pet food bank is "like a dream" for dog-ownersDonna Allsopp, who works as a phlebotomist at Chorley hospital, has a pocket bulldog and a bearded dragon and said the current situation was "atrocious"."You can't afford anything anywhere," she said."Everything's gone up massively by pounds, it's not even pence any more, obviously dogs are growing dogs - they like to eat."But this is like a dream for people like us with dogs. At least you know the dog's not going hungry as well."Another Chorley resident, Paul Cookson, who was collecting for his seven cats, said he was struggling financially at the moment but planned to donate back to the food bank when possible.Dean Evans, picking up food for his elderly Staffy, said: "We have to cut back on everything - and usually, the last thing we do cut back on is the dog."But it gets harder and harder, so something like this is absolutely fantastic. Makes everything just that little bit easier."Image caption, Dean Evans says his dog is the last thing he would cut back onLocal businesses, vets and dog walkers have got involved to help the Chorley pet food bank. Donation points have been set up across the area."It's amazing to see who's getting involved," Ms Atkinson said, adding that people who were "desperately stuck" took the bare minimum "because they don't want to take off somebody else - and you don't see them again and you wonder 'I hope they're OK'"."It's hard, because it shouldn't be here - we shouldn't need it - but to know we're helping is just what it's all about."According to the ONS, the increase in the price of "products for pets" - which includes food but also items like collars and cages - in the three months to November was even higher than that of general food.The RSPCA has said switching pet food could save people money, but owners should check with a vet before making changes to their pet's diet.UK Pet Food said it was "all too aware" of the pressures households were under and was "working hard behind the scenes" to support pets and their owners.Volatility brought on by the war in Ukraine had left the industry "grappling with the rising costs of ingredients, energy, transport, and packaging", it added.Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to [email protected] | Inflation |
Tory loudmouth Lee Anderson has been found to have broken Commons rules after he used the rooftop of his taxpayer-funded Commons office to film a promo for his £100,000-a-year TV show.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards announced today that Mr Anderson had broken the Code of Conduct for MPs. In findings published on the Commons website, he said the MP had apologised and given an undertaking not to do the same again.
Mr Anderson agreed to pay the House of Parliament for having used the estate for filming. He was also found to have broken the rules by using his parliamentary email address for a message to constituents plugging the programme.
The senior Tory used a location overlooking Whitehall and Parliament Square for the clip in which he pleaded for viewers to get in contact with questions for him. “Have you got a problem and got nobody to turn to? Well look no further. Agony Anderson will solve all your problems,” he said. "Contact me if you’ve got any problems, whether they are social or personal.”
The Code of Conduct for MPs states: “Excepting modest and reasonable personal use, Members must ensure that the use of facilities and services provided to them by Parliament, including an office, is in support of their parliamentary activities.”
Mr Anderson, who already earns £86,584 as an MP, has started moonlighting as a TV presenter even though he used to rail against those who split their time between the Commons and other work. “I don’t have a second job, I love the job I have already,” he previously posted on Facebook. Mr Anderson also publicly denounced ex-Cabinet minister Owen Paterson as he faced a row over outside work. “We are paid handsomely for the job we do and if you need an extra £100,000 a year on top then you should really be looking for another job,” he posted.
In the first episode of his GB News show, Mr Anderson was recorded feeding cold baked beans to fellow Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith. On the second programme, he attempted to persuade fellow presenter Michelle Dewberry to eat cat food, but she refused.
Rishi Sunak appointed Mr Anderson as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party in February despite his history of saying controversial things. He has repeatedly ranted about struggling Brits relying on foodbanks - and earned the nickname '30p Lee' for his claims about the cost of meals. The Ashfield MP sparked fury in January by claiming foodbank users squander their cash on cigarettes, alcohol, expensive TV subscriptions and holidays. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
The government is expected to announce changes to help parents pay for childcare, in Wednesday's Budget. But many parents have lost out, and even ended up owing the government money, because a rule introduced a decade ago hasn't changed since.
In 2013, the government changed the rules so people who get child benefit start losing it once they earn £50,000 a year.
Over that decade, rising prices mean the amount you can buy with a £50,000 salary has fallen. This means people are being affected by the policy today who are less well-off than when it was introduced.
Like Geoff, from Whitley Bay, who says he turned down a better-paying job because of this.
"I had an opportunity to take on a new job but basically the extra income that I was going to get from that new job took me over the £50,000 mark," he told BBC Money Box.
He said the combination of losing some child benefit and having to pay some extra childcare costs meant "it just didn't work".
When do you lose child benefit?
Child benefit is paid to families in the UK with children under the age of 16, or under 20 if they are still in types of full-time education or training such as studying for A-levels or Scottish Highers.
You receive £21.80 a week for one child and £14.45 for each additional child. Those amounts are due to rise by 10% in April.
If you earn more than £50,000, your child benefit starts being gradually withdrawn, such that if you earn £60,000, you don't receive any child benefit at all.
It means you lose 1% of your child benefit for every extra £100 you earn.
It's only based on the income of one partner. So if two parents earn £50,000 each they still get full child benefit, but if one earns £60,000 and the other isn't working (or they are a single parent) they don't get any child benefit.
And it's up to parents to inform the taxman when they start earning more than £50,000.
If they don't, they can be fined:
- In 2017-18, 20,281 fines were issued
- In 2018-19, 4,742 fines were issued
- In 2019-20, 1,217 fines were issued
You can work out how much of it you may need to pay back via a tax return using this government calculator. You can also opt not to receive it in the first place.
What about rising prices?
The £50,000 to £60,000 threshold has not changed since the policy - known as the High Income Child Benefit Charge - was introduced by the then Conservative Chancellor George Osborne in 2013.
If the thresholds had been adjusted in line with rising prices since 2013, you would now start losing child benefit when you earn more than about £65,000 and lose it completely from about £78,000.
Not adjusting the thresholds for inflation means that a lot more taxpayers are now being affected, compared with when the policy was introduced. And it means the government is raising a lot more money.
An estimated 26% of families with children in the UK (around two million households) are now losing some or all of their child benefit, according to the economic think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
This is double the proportion when the policy was introduced a decade ago,
We asked the government if it thought the level of the threshold was too low. Its response did not address the question but talked about how progressive the tax system is.
Another frozen threshold
You usually expect thresholds in the tax system to go up each year. When the thresholds at which people start paying income tax, for example, are not altered it means a considerable tax rise, especially when prices are rising.
And there is a threshold at a big, round number in the tax system, which has been frozen for even longer than the child benefit one.
People don't have to start paying income tax until they are earning more than £12,570 a year, which is called the personal allowance.
The personal allowance itself has risen considerably since 2010-11, when it was only £6,475.
But since 2010, it has started to be withdrawn at a rate of £1 of allowance for every extra £2 earned above £100,000.
It means those earning more than £100,000 a year start paying tax on part of their earnings they did not previously have to pay tax on.
And that £100,000 threshold has not changed since it was introduced by the then Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling.
If the £100,000 threshold had been increased in line with rising prices since 2010, it would be almost £142,000 today.
The IFS says that 530,000 adults (about 1%) had some of their personal allowance withdrawn in the first year of the policy, which has increased to about 1.3 million (2.4% of adults) this year.
We asked the government if it was considering changing the threshold given the number of extra taxpayers and were told that it keeps all taxes under review. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
The Bank of England's top economist has said people in the UK need to accept that they are poorer otherwise prices will continue to rise.
Huw Pill told a podcast in the US that there was a "reluctance to accept that, yes, we're all worse off".
He said in response to higher bills and other costs rising, workers had responded by asking for wage increases and businesses were charging more.
UK inflation, the rate of which prices rises, was 10.1% in the year to March.
The rate dipped last month from 10.4% but that does not mean prices are falling. It means they are rising at a slightly slower pace.
Inflation in the UK has been higher than the Bank of England's target of 2% for some time.
Part of the Bank's job is to keep inflation at its target rate. In response to rising prices it has increased interest rates, which make the cost of borrowing money more expensive.
This move, in theory, is suppose make people reduce spending, so that demand for goods cools down and price rises slow down.
With households being hit by soaring energy bills and food costs, many workers have been asking for pay rises to help ease the pressure on budgets.
Job vacancies have been falling, but are still higher than they have been for decades, strengthening people's hands as they ask for pay rises.
Although pay has been going up, it has not matched inflation, meaning people are worse off.
'Someone needs to accept they're worse off'
Mr Pill said people demanding pay increases and businesses putting prices up added to inflation and caused prices to rise even further across the economy.
"Somehow in the UK, someone needs to accept that they're worse off and stop trying to maintain their real spending power by bidding up prices, whether through higher wages or passing energy costs on to customers etc," he told the Beyond Unprecedented podcast from Columbia Law School.
"What we're facing now is that reluctance to accept that, yes, we're all worse off and we all have to take our share; to try and pass that cost onto one of our compatriots and saying: 'We'll be alright, but they will have to take our share too'.
"That pass-the-parcel game that's going on here, that game is one that's generating inflation, and that part of inflation can persist."
Mr Pill is not the first Bank of England official to warn about wage rises contributing to inflation.
Last year, the Bank's governor Andrew Bailey urged people not to ask for big pay rises, to try and stop prices rising out of control.
His comments were immediately met with backlash, with unions saying they were "ill-founded". At the time, Downing Street and the Treasury distanced themselves from Mr Bailey's comments.
Mr Bailey later urged moderation in price rises from businesses.
Inflation was expected to fall below 10% last month but soaring food prices meant it fell by less than expected.
The British Retail Consortium said it expected food prices to start falling "over the next few months".
But the retail industry body said there was a three to nine-month lag to see price falls reflected in shops. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson have overseen the largest set of tax rises since the Second World War, according to economic analysis.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that - by the time of the next general election - the tax burden will have risen to around 37% of national income.
This equates to roughly £3,500 extra per household - although the increase is not shared evenly.
Records began in 1950 for the figures, and no parliament has seen a larger hike.
The size of the tax burden and the lack of cuts to tariffs have been the subject of the ire of many Conservatives.
The headroom for tax cuts has suffered as interest rates rose and the cost to service debt has risen. High inflation has led the government to be cautious of cutting taxes and leaving people with more cash to spend.
Last week, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said it would be "virtually impossible" to cut taxes at the moment.
"I really, really wish it was true but unfortunately, it just isn't," he told LBC.
"If you look at what we are having to pay for our long-term debt, it is higher now than it was at the spring budget.
"I wish it wasn't, it makes life extremely difficult, it makes tax cuts virtually impossible, and it means that I will have another set of frankly very difficult decisions.
"All I would say is, if we do want those long-term debt costs to come down, then we need to really stick to this plan to get inflation down, get interest rates down.
"I don't know when that's going to happen. But I don't think it's going to happen before the autumn statement on November 22, alas."
Read more:
Inheritance tax 'punitive and unfair'
Truss to urge government to cut taxes
Sunak refuses to answer questions on HS2's future
There will likely be pressure for Mr Hunt and Mr Sunak to cut taxes - with some eyeing up cuts to sizeable projects like HS2 as a way to free up cash, and others calling for a relaxation of inheritance tax.
The economy is an area that Mr Sunak wants to make his strength - with three of his five pledges made at the start of this year relating to them.
Ben Zaranko, senior research economist at the IFS, said the pandemic could not be blamed for rising tax levels and predicted a high-tax approach was here to stay regardless of who wins the next general election.
"It is inconceivable that this parliament will turn out to be anything other than a tax-raising one - and it looks nailed on to be the biggest tax-raising parliament since at least the Second World War," he said.
"This is not, for the most part, a direct consequence of the pandemic. Rather, it reflects decisions to increase government spending, in part driven by demographic change, pressures on the health service, and some unwinding of austerity.
"It is likely that this parliament will mark a decisive and permanent shift to a higher-tax economy."
This was echoed by Mark Franks, the director of welfare at the Nuffield Foundation.
He said: "There will be strong pressure in coming parliaments to raise taxes further to meet growing demand for public services such as healthcare.
"Future governments must not only have a credible and robust strategy for the economy and the public finances, but should also be forthright and transparent about the difficult trade-offs they will face."
Opposition parties seized on the findings, as Labour said that the Tories had "clobbered" the public.
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said: "Successive Tory governments have overseen 13 years of low growth and stagnant wages. Their response in the face of this bankrupt legacy is always to load their failure onto working people. And what are we getting back? Crumbling public services.
"Brits are working hard but getting clobbered with 25 Tory tax rises and a continuing Conservative premium on their household budgets."
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A Treasury spokesperson said: "Despite needing to take the difficult decisions to restore public finances in the face of the dual shocks of the pandemic and Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the latest data shows our tax burden will remain lower than any major European economy.
"Driving down inflation is the most effective tax cut we can deliver right now, which is why we are sticking to our plan to halve it, rather than making it worse by borrowing money to fund tax cuts.
"We have also taken 3 million people out of paying tax altogether since 2010 through raising personal thresholds, and the chancellor has said he wants to lower the tax burden further - but has been clear that sound money must come first." | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Institutional real estate investors have historically struggled to buy up tonnes of family homes (the so-called ‘Single Family rental sector’) so they can turn us all into rental slaves and lock millions to a rentier economy. A few startups are trying to ease the ‘pain’ of these rapacious harbingers of hyper capitalism.
Immo Capital, a platform for managing residential real estate portfolios has raised $90.7 million. Bricklane is another platform for rental housing (raised £6 million out of London). And Casafari in Spain/Portugal has raised $20.5 million.
Into this market has launched DoorFeed, founded by James Kirimy, an early Uber UK employee. It’s secured a new funding round of €7 million Seed extension round led by Motive Ventures (backed by Private Equity firm Apollo, owners of Yahoo! and thus TechCrunch), with participation of Stride VC and Seedcamp. The firm previously raised a €3.5 million seed led by Stride and Seedcamp in 2021, and a €1.5 million debt financing by BPI France in 2022.
In simple terms, DoorFeed provides the data platform and operations for investment funds to assemble and manage large scale portfolios of apartments and houses. It also allows them to figure out which houses have a bad energy performance, and then renovate them, possibly unlocking ESG credits from governments, it claims.
It makes money via a sourcing fee and renovation management fee, as well as an annual property and asset management fee.
Looking at the market independently, these companies are clearly onto something that would make a hedge fund manager blush.
Investment in European living assets exceeded all other real estate assets classes in the second quarter at €10.6 billion, according to JLL, and 20% of the market is buy-to-let investors. | Real Estate & Housing |
Nordstrom CEO Erik Nordstrom said the upscale department store has been experiencing “historical highs” in losses from shoplifting incidents — a trend that he finds “unacceptable” and which “needs to be addressed” by local authorities.
“Losses from theft are at historical highs,” Nordstrom told investors on an earnings call on Thursday shortly after the retailer reported an 8.3% drop in sales in the second quarter which ended July 29.
“And I’d say we find it unacceptable and needs to be addressed.”
The chief executive was particularly incensed over the brazen Aug. 12 incident in which a mob of shoplifters ransacked a Nordstrom in the Topanga section of Los Angeles — making off with thousands of dollars worth of goods.
Dozens of shoplifters were wearing hoodies and masks, according to surveillance video. The thieves are seen attacking security guards with bear spray.
“Certainly, what happened in our Topanga store is disturbing to all of us,” the company boss said, adding: “The safety of employees and customers is always a top priority.”
“But the loss is a concern,” Nordstrom said.
Nordstrom joins Dick’s Sporting Goods, Ulta Beauty, and Target in attributing theft to a drop in sales.
“That being said, while it’s unacceptable, it is within our plans,” Nordstrom said. “We have not seen continuing rising of shrinkage that has exceeded what we planned.”
Shrinkage is an industry term used to describe stolen or lost merchandise.
Since last Friday, shares of Nordstrom were down by more than 10%. The stock was trading flat in premarket activity on Friday.
Dick’s Sporting Goods this week reported a 23% drop in profits in the second quarter even as sales rose 3.6%.
The company attributed the losses to “organized retail crime and our ability to effectively manage inventory shrink.”
Target CEO Brian Cornell told investors earlier this month that shoplifting incidents that included “violence or threats of violence” surged 120% during the first five months of the year.
“Our team continues to face an unacceptable amount of retail theft and organized retail crime,” Cornell said during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.
“Unfortunately, safety incidents associated with theft are moving in the wrong direction.”
Target CFO Michael Fiddelke added that boycotts of the retailer’s controversial “Pride” collection also contributed to the quarter’s results.
The National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, said its latest security survey of roughly 60 retailers found shrink clocked in at an average rate of 1.4% last year, representing $94.5 billion in losses.
The greatest portion of shrink — 37% — came from external theft, including products taken during organized shoplifting incidents, the trade group said.
Other retailers have also reported sagging sales figures in recent days.
Foot Locker’s stock plunged by nearly a third after the company reported dismal second-quarter earnings, which it attributes to “ongoing consumer softness.”
Macy’s stock price also fell after it announced declining sales in its second-quarter earnings, which it blamed on a reduction in consumer spending and an uptick in credit card delinquencies.
“We continue to see a cautious consumer,” said Nordstrom finance chief Catherine Smith, adding sales slowed at both its eponymous stores and off-price Nordstrom Rack banner during the third quarter.
The company warned of delinquencies increasing gradually, echoing Macy’s which saw a 41% slump in credit card revenue, even as Nordstrom said revenues from that business rose 5.8% in the quarter.
“(Delinquencies) are now above pre-pandemic levels, which could result in higher credit losses in the second half and into 2024,” Smith said.
Additional Reporting by Shannon Thaler | Consumer & Retail |
Conservative councillor makes shock switch to Labour, saying he 'can no longer look constituents in the eye' in Milton Keynes Keynes
The about-face move has come from Cllr Joe Hearnshaw, who was elected in 2021 as a councillor for Stony Stratford ward.
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Today (Thursday) he’s announced he is leaving the Tories and has joined the Labour Party, blaming the Conservative government for “abandoning the core values” of the British people.
He said: “Two years ago I stood for election to Milton Keynes council because I wanted to help my local community and deliver for the people of Stony Stratford. I stood as a Conservative candidate, because I thought at the time they were the party who represented British values, were serious about protecting our environment, and crucially could be trusted to manage the economy.
“But in recent months, it has become clear to me that the Conservative Party is unable to deliver on any of these priorities. The Conservative government has engulfed the country into chaos. Liz Truss’ disastrous premiership crashed the economy and worsened the cost of living crisis.
"And now Conservative MPs at Westminster are feuding about who gets a peerage whilst people’s mortgage payments are going through the roof. They have abandoned the British people’s core values, and I am no longer able to look my constituents in the eye and defend the record of the Conservative government.”
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Joe added: “That is why I have decided to join the Labour Party. Whilst the Conservatives are in chaos, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have been putting forward serious, sensible policies that will build a better Britain. Whether it’s the Green Prosperity Plan that will invest in green jobs, or the sensible approach to the economy that will finally deliver economic growth – Labour can be trusted to deliver for the British people.
“I look forward to supporting the Labour-led administration here in Milton Keynes and continuing to stand up for the residents of Stony Stratford ward, whose interests remain my absolute priority.”
Councillor Peter Marland, the Labour leader of Milton Keynes Council has given his consent for the move and is thrilled at the political switch.
He said: “I am delighted that Joe has today joined the Labour Party and become a Labour councillor. He is very welcome in the Labour Group, and we look forward to working with him to continue delivering for the people of Milton Keynes.
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“Joe’s decision today is further evidence that the Labour Party is the only serious party of government, and the only one that can be trusted to deliver on the priorities of the British people.”
Cllr Hearnshaw has informed the Chief Executive of Milton Keynes City Council of his decision in an official letter today.
MK Council is run by a Labour/Lib Dem Alliance as no party has a big enough majority to take control on its own. They call themselves the Progressive Alliance.
After the elections in May, Labour had 25 seats, Tories had 17 and the Liberal Democrats have 15. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Buffett’s Cash Pile Hits Record $157 Billion Amid Scarce Deals
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s cash pile scaled a fresh record at $157.2 billion, bolstered both by elevated interest rates and a dearth of meaningful deals where billionaire investor Warren Buffett could put his money to work.
(Bloomberg) -- Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s cash pile scaled a fresh record at $157.2 billion, bolstered both by elevated interest rates and a dearth of meaningful deals where billionaire investor Warren Buffett could put his money to work.
The hoard — which Berkshire has largely parked in short-term Treasuries — hit its highest since level since the third quarter of 2021, the Omaha, Nebraska-based firm said on Saturday. The conglomerate also reported operating earnings of $10.76 billion, a jump on the prior year, as it benefited from the impact of elevated interest rates on the cash pile.
Despite ramping up Berkshire’s acquisition machine in recent years, the company has still struggled to find many of the big-ticket deals that galvanized Buffett’s renown, leaving him with more cash than he and his investing deputies could quickly deploy. After hanging back during the pandemic, he’s since snapped up shares in Occidental Petroleum Corp. and struck a $11.6 billion deal to buy Alleghany Corp. Buffett has also leaned heavily on share repurchases amid the dearth of appealing alternatives, saying the measures benefit shareholders.
The deal drought hasn’t damped investor enthusiasm for the company. Its Class B shares crested a record high in September as investors sought out its diversified range of businesses as a hedge against deteriorating economic conditions. And while the shares pared some of those gains, the stock is still up almost 14% for the full year.
Read More: Buffett’s Berkshire Rallies to Record High on Earnings Beat
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Banking & Finance |
By JUNKI WATANABE/ Staff Writer
November 9, 2023 at 17:40 JST
The message on the left asks for agreement to LY's privacy policy. (Captured from the LY website)
One of the largest internet providers in Japan will no longer allow users to delay agreeing to its new privacy policy and will instead cut off services as early as December to those who have not replied.
LY Corp. officials said that the company will begin a new policy of suspending use of the Line messaging app for those who have not consented to the company’s privacy policy.
At a Nov. 7 news conference, LY President Takeshi Idezawa said the new policy would begin sometime “between late November and December.”
LY was established on Oct. 1 through the merger of Yahoo Japan Corp. and Line Corp.
The two companies were already members of Z Holdings Corp., created in March 2021 through the integration of Line and Softbank Corp., the previous parent company of Yahoo Japan.
The new privacy policy will now be in place for LY users in line with the merger.
Line app users have received messages asking them to agree to the privacy policy. Until now, users had the option to decide on the privacy policy at a later date.
Individuals who previously joined Line and Yahoo Japan separately and registered their phone numbers, email addresses or device information will be assumed to be the same person if the information from the separate accounts matches.
The data previously collected by either company about interests of the user will also be integrated to allow for more efficiently targeted ads.
Before the merger, Line had about 95 million users while Yahoo Japan numbered about 54.98 million.
While LY officials have not revealed how many users have agreed to the privacy policy, about 19.48 million have already agreed to the linking of the accounts they held separately with the two companies.
Visit this page for the latest news on Japan’s battle with the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Cooking experts, chefs and others involved in the field of food introduce their special recipes intertwined with their paths in life.
Here is a collection of first-hand accounts by “hibakusha” atomic bomb survivors.
The Asahi Shimbun aims “to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” through its Gender Equality Declaration.
Let’s explore the Japanese capital from the viewpoint of wheelchair users and people with disabilities with Barry Joshua Grisdale. | Asia Business & Economics |
Customers of Bed Bath & Beyond still have a few more weeks to shop and use coupons despite the struggling home goods retailer.
The company plans to shut all of its 360 Bed Bath & Beyond and 120 Buy Buy Baby locations by the end of June. Here's what to know about using reward points and in-store credit before stores close for good.
How long can I shop in stores?
Customers can still shop at Bed Bath & Beyond stores, but locations will start to close as soon as Wednesday April 26. The online store and mobile app is still operational, although the company hasn't said if those shopping options will remain open during the bankruptcy proceedings. Anyone who bought something online but hasn't received it will still have their order fulfilled.
Can I still use rewards, store credits, coupons and gift cards?
Welcome Rewards (which is Bed Bath & Beyond's frequent shopper points program) and in-store credits will be accepted until May 15. Gift cards will be good until May 8, and coupons will be accepted until Wednesday. Customers with a Bed Bath & Beyond Rewards+ credit card can still use it until stores close. But those with a Rewards+ Loyalty membership, which cost $29 annually, cannot cancel it for a refund.
When is the last day I can return items?
Returns are welcome until May 24, Bed Bath & Beyond said. Purchases made at a store on its closing day are final.
Will I receive items that were purchased on my baby registry?
Bed Bath & Beyond said it plans to work with an outside company to transfer registry data and fulfill those orders. The company hasn't released specifics on that move yet.
Who do I contact if I have more questions?
The Bed Bath and Beyond bankruptcy case can be found here. Customers with questions can email [email protected] or call at (833) 570-5355; call (646) 440-4806 if you're calling from outside the U.S. or Canada.
for more features. | Consumer & Retail |
Beacon, an early stage web3 accelerator program, held its second cohort graduation on Wednesday. The demo day launched in tandem with its VC database, which opened up to the public amid ongoing capital restraints in a bear market.
The teams in the second cohort, its Summer 2023 group (Cohort S23), presented their startups during the demo day, exclusively covered by TechCrunch+. We also covered its first Cohort demo day in January, which it styled as “Cohort 0.” That one featured 13 startups.
Cohort S23 consists of 10 companies, built by 25 founders across three countries and 12 cities. Unlike Y Combinator, Beacon doesn’t only select companies that are the most nascent. “The accelerator focuses on web3 but looks at everything within the industry from pre-seed and Series A,” said Sam Lehman, core contributor at Beacon.
The three-month program runs twice a year and accepts about 15 to 20 applicants for its fall and spring cohorts.
Kenzi Wang, another core contributor for Beacon, shared that the cohort had about 40 mentors including: Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden; Neil Cunha-Gomes, head of EMEA fintech at SoftBank Vision Fund; and Dan Kim, VP of business development at Coinbase. Venture capitalists from CoinFund, Variant, Electric Capital, Pantera, Lightspeed and Galaxy Interaction and others also served as mentors.
Prospective startups are not tied to any particular blockchain, making Beacon’s program open to anyone in the crypto market. “We definitely take a multi-chain future view at Beacon, so most of our projects are building multi-chain or chain-agnostic products,” Lehman said in an email to TechCrunch+. “That said, stuff in the EVM world is definitely still the hottest.”
The startups focused on a range of crypto subsectors like infrastructure, gaming, decentralized social media and DeFi, to name a few. The majority of the startups in the cohort are seed stage, with two at pre-seed and one company, Phaver, at Series A.
But the new startup group (notes below) was not all that Beacon had on offer this week.
Sharing fund data
Beacon VC Database is a tool initially used internally by the group to help founders in its accelerator program find funds actively deploying capital into web3 startups. As of today, the platform features over 200 funds, including generalist funds with a crypto arm like a16z and Lightspeed, along with pure crypto-focused funds invested in the space like Dragonfly and Blockchain Capital. It also includes micro funds around $10 million to mega funds with over $1 billion in assets under management, Lehman noted.
“We built it because we kept hearing the same questions: ‘Which funds are deploying into game content right now’ or ‘Do you know any funds that would lead a round for a security focused company at a seed stage,’” Lehman said. While venture databases are not rare — PitchBook, Crunchbase, Dealroom, etc. — they are often generalized and thus less precise for sub-niche categories of startup.
Beacon plans to progressively decentralize the database over time to allow investors to “claim” their records to update it in realtime, the accelerator said in a statement.
Beacon’s S23 Cohort
Company name: Cube3.AI
- What it does: Real-time web3 security platform
- Founders: Einaras Gravrock, Chris Griffiths
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Cube3.AI is building a real-time web3 transaction security solution. It uses AI to inspect contracts deployed onchain for risks and exploits, Einaras Gravrock, co-founder of Cube3.AI said during demo day. Attacks will continue to happen, Gravrock said, but Cube3.AI aims to be a “mousetrap to save DeFi and web3” from attackers. It focused on sectors like marketplaces, bridges, gaming and NFTs and working to identify threats with smart contracts before attacks happen, so other entities can better protect themselves. It also provides applications with services to block exploits, instead of pausing the app itself, so users are not impeded during security-related issues. Its software requires no coding skills and users can get it up and running within 60 seconds, according to its website. It’s looking for $2 million in additional capital and has a “good chunk” already committed, Gravrock said.
Company name: Ryu Games
- What it does: Building “Steam” for web3
- Founders: Rick Ellis, Wyatt Mufson, Ross Krasner
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Ryu Games is building a protocol to decentralize everything that makes up a game and become the “Steam of web3.” The startup’s chief product officer Rick Ellis is an original inventor and founder of Steam. “The way people find and play games hasn’t changed much since digital distribution has started,” Ross Krasner, co-founder and CEO of Ryu Games, said during demo day. But now, Web3 platforms like Ryu are attempting to disrupt gaming distribution. The startup is building a network of interconnected game stores and launchers with low fees and plans to decentralize user-generated content in the future. Its public beta is currently open and the protocol’s first store and launcher is live. The startup is looking for investors for a strategic round.
Company name: Wasabi
- What it does: Derivative infra for NFTs
- Founders: Can Eren Derman, Hasan Atay
- Stage: Seed
- The pitch: Wasabi is an audited NFT options protocol that wants to create more liquid NFT economies by leveraging market volatility, hedging against price declines and helping users earn premiums on NFTs (but did not disclose how). The protocol is live on Ethereum’s mainnet and currently has about $750,000 in liquidity locked into its pools and a total of 18,598 options available, according to its website. The startup is interoperable, meaning it can support decentralized applications that work with options, derivatives and metamarkets. It has over $1 million in trade volume and is currently raising $2 million for its seed round. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Plans to spend up to £40m on a contract for helicopters to transport Rishi Sunak and ministers have been shelved after sustained criticism of the prime minister’s fondness for regularly flying short distances.
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the current contract will come to a close at the end of September and will not be renewed. Official helicopter travel for ministers, also used by senior defence officials, “will be fulfilled by other means, including other assets available to HMG”, it said, giving no other details.
In December, the MoD advertised a tender for a new contract for what is officially known as the Rotary Wing Command Support Air Transport Helicopter Service, worth between £30m and £40m, and running to the end of 2027.
With provision for up to 500 hours of use a year, the contractor would provide helicopters, crewed by RAF personnel and based at the Northolt airbase in west London, to take them any distance up to 250 miles.
However, this tender has now been withdrawn. The longstanding contract, provided by Northamptonshire-based Sloane Helicopters, will finish this month. The company has already put the craft regularly used by Sunak up for sale.
The MoD and Downing Street declined to say why the plans have changed. However, Sunak has been criticised for helicopter trips of little more than 100 miles (160km), easily reachable by train, and it is possible that ministers were fearful of a backlash if they signed a contract costing £30m or more.
A Labour party source said: “This would have been Sunak’s equivalent of Boris Johnson’s yacht, and it is no surprise he’s been forced to scrap them both. The PM’s helicopter addiction has cut through with the public as proof not just that he is totally out of touch, but that he doesn’t think he should have to use the same roads and railways as the rest of us.”
“No 10 have bowed to the inevitable by cancelling this contract, but the question now is whether Sunak will also change his behaviour, or whether he will carry on chartering individual helicopters to travel round Britain at the taxpayers’ expense, or use a rota of private planes and helicopters lent to him by Tory donors.”
On Tuesday, Sunak used a helicopter for an engagement in Norwich, a trip of little more than 100 miles. In May, Sunak flew to and from Southampton to visit a pharmacy for an NHS-related announcement, a 160-mile round trip where the train takes an hour and 15 minutes.
For personal use, the prime minister previously used private helicopters to travel from London to his North Yorkshire constituency, and visit the billionaire Arora family, who live 2 miles from Manchester airport.
Downing Street says that Sunak’s means of travel vary, and “are always decided with consideration to the most efficient and best use of his time, in the interests of the taxpayer”. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Costco executives signaled that the warehouse club plans to raise the price of its yearly memberships — and that the only remaining question is about the timing.
On a call with investors following its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Tuesday — where revenue came in at $77.43 billion, just short of Wall Street’s forecasts of $77.72 billion — Costco’s Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said it’s a “question of when, not if” when asked about the prospect of hiking the membership price.
“We’ll let you know when we know,” Galanti added. “So, you know, stay tuned. We’ll keep you posted.”
Costco’s basic membership, known as Gold Star, has been $60 per year since 2017 — when it raised the price by $5 for the first time since 2011.
Its Executive Membership runs customers $120 per year, plus gives members additional discounts and a 2% return on qualifying purchases.
Should Costco raise its membership fees, it would impact the nearly 130 million Americans who shop at the retailer’s 591 locations.
Galanti attributed the soft sales to a decrease in spending on discretionary and big-ticket items as consumers feel the squeeze of high inflation.
The average transaction at Costco was down 4.5% among US shoppers, “impacted in large part from weakness in bigger ticket nonfood discretionary items, as well as the gas price deflation,” Galanti said.
According to the American Automobile Association, the average price for a gallon of unleaded gas currently sits at $3.83 — a decrease from June 2022’s peak, when the average coast was $5.01.
However, sales were saved by Costco members’ “relatively strong” spending in the grocery category.
Galanti noted during the company’s latest earnings call that membership was up in the fourth quarter.
The number of cardholders was up 7.6% from last year’s period, to 127.9 million, while household members — where people who live at the same address as the primary accountholder is gifted a free membership card — was up 7.9% from last year’s period, to 71 million paid households.
Despite the increase in shoppers, same-store sales, including gas and foreign exchange, rose just 1.1% in the fourth quarter, missing expectations of 1.87%. Excluding gas and foreign exchange, sales were up 3.8%, below the 3.92% Wall Street anticipated.
Galanti said the retailer added as many as 50 so-called “smaller ticket indulgent items” like snacks that he said increased the number of items shoppers are putting in their baskets.
Investors seemingly took cues from Costco’s losses in the quarter, and shares fell over 1%, to $552.96, in premarket trading on Wednesday. | Consumer & Retail |
If you’re already retired, it may be time to rethink the role that stocks and bonds play in your portfolio. While conventional wisdom suggests that investors should shift more assets to bonds as they approach retirement, at least one expert says investing heavily in equities is the best asset allocation for retirement.
John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar, examined market data from the last 80-plus years and determined that portfolios heavily weighted in equities allow retirees to safely withdraw more money each year than those with large bond allocations. Stock-heavy portfolios, meanwhile, led to more capital appreciation than moderate and conservative portfolios reliant on bonds.
“History’s lesson is straightforward: the more stocks, the merrier. Investing entirely in equities consistently generated either the highest safe spending rate for a given 30-year period, or a rate that wasn’t far off the mark,” Rekenthaler wrote in a recent column. “What’s more, all-equity portfolios were much likelier to deliver a happy surprise than to disappoint.” Need advice for how to best allocate your assets? A financial advisor can help. Find an advisor today.
Why Conventional Wisdom Points to Bonds
For example, the 60/40 rule suggests a retiree’s portfolio should be 60% equities and 40% fixed-income securities. According to the rule of 110, another popular asset allocation guideline, a person’s equity exposure can be calculated by subtracting their age from 110. The resulting figure dictates how much of a portfolio is invested in stocks versus bonds. For instance, a 65-year-old following the rule of 110 would invest 45% of their portfolio in equities and keep the remaining 55% in bonds.
Because preserving spending power is often more important for retirees than actively growing their portfolios, bonds tend to play a significant role in many retirement strategies. Stocks, on the other hand, can carry more risk and be less attractive to retirees.
Why Stocks Are Preferred
Rekenthaler eschews the conventional wisdom and argues that equity-dominated portfolios are better options than conservative portfolios heavily weighted in bonds.
Using historical data, Rekenthaler calculated the safe withdrawal rates of three different asset allocations – a conservative portfolio, a moderate portfolio and an aggressive portfolio – across 30-year rolling periods between 1930 and 2019.
While the conservative option comprised 90% bonds and 10% cash, the aggressive portfolio was invested entirely in stocks. The moderate portfolio, meanwhile, held 50% stocks, 40% bonds, and 10% cash.
By conducting 1,000 simulations for each asset allocation, Rekenthaler found the aggressive and moderate options supported higher safe withdrawal rates than the conservative portfolio. He defined a safe withdrawal rate as “the highest amount that can be removed for all 30 years of the simulations without depleting the portfolio in at least 90% of the simulations.”
In other words, despite containing more risk associated with equities, the aggressive and moderate portfolios would have given retirees more safe spending power during the 30-year periods examined.
Additionally, Rekenthaler found the equity-weighted portfolio would have resulted in leftover assets after 30 years of withdrawals in each time period. On the other hand, retirees using the most conservative allocation would have run out of money during three different 30-year periods in the 20th century, according to the simulations.
Bottom Line
Retirement doesn’t mean investors should rid themselves of stocks, according to Morningstar’s John Rekenthaler. Portfolios that contain equities can support higher safe withdrawal rates than those dominated by bonds, and result in significant surpluses even after 30 years of retirement spending. While past results don’t guarantee future performance, equities should play an even larger role in the investment portfolios of retirees.
“Should the future resemble the past, the lesson will remain valid. Retirees should invest heavily in equities, most likely more than they currently do,” he wrote. “But the advice rests upon that initial assumption.”
Retirement Planning Tips
A financial advisor can help you with more than just asset allocation. Some advisors can provide financial planning advice and help you develop retirement income strategies. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors in your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Do you know much you’ll need to retire comfortably? SmartAsset’s Retirement Calculator can help answer that question based on your age, salary and when you plan to claim Social Security.
Photo credit: ©iStock.com/skynesher, ©iStock.com/Fly View Productions, ©iStock.com/JohnnyGreig
The post Retired? Here’s Why Stocks, Not Bonds, Should Still Power Your Portfolio appeared first on SmartAsset Blog. | Personal Finance & Financial Education |
Paradise beaches, trendy cocktail bars, luxury yachts... And porn sites by the dozen. In the space of a decade, Cyprus has established itself as a central player in the global porn industry, as detailed in the documents of the Cyprus Confidential project, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, of which Le Monde is a member.
Unlike the Czech Republic in the United States, Cyprus has no studios. However, some of the world's biggest "adult site" companies have made it their base in Europe, including Aylo (formerly MindGeek, which owns Pornhub, YouPorn and several studios in the US) and Wisebits, the parent company of Stripchat and xHamster, one of the world's most visited free video sites. The Cyprus Confidential documents show that dozens of other companies in the sector have set up their headquarters or subsidiaries here, as have marketing and advertising companies that agree to work with porn sites, like CrakRevenue.
But why? In the aisles of the Webmaster Access Affiliate Conference marketing trade show, held in Limassol in the south of the island in mid-September and attended by numerous companies linked to the world of porn, everyone agreed on one answer: taxes. "There are a lot of special provisions that make it very attractive to set up," explained an employee of Stripchat, a "cam" website headquartered in Limassol but whose "models" − in fact, sex workers − operate as freelancers all over the world. In addition to an effective tax rate that can be as low as 2.5% through a few arrangements, Cyprus imposes virtually no tax on dividends and royalties.
A group of branches
These features make it an ideal location for an industry in which large groups generally move money between several companies. Their underlying aim is to achieve low profits in order to pay as little tax as possible. The parent company therefore invoices its subsidiaries for copyright royalties (which aren't heavily taxed in Cyprus), for content, or for the use of its IT platforms. In the jargon of tax optimization, this is known as an "IP box."
The documents that Le Monde and its partners have been able to consult show how MG Freesites, an Aylo branch concentrating a large proportion of the group's revenues, paid just €2 million in taxes in 2019, on sales of €248 million. And for good reason: By paying out over €220 million to other group subsidiaries for various services, including €84 million in royalties, the company ultimately posted a modest profit. The documents suggest that the bulk of the group's profits pass through Cyprus before being transferred to other subsidiaries in Ireland and Luxembourg.
You have 70% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only. | Europe Business & Economics |
“The most important advice about saving for retirement is this,” the New York Times’ retirement savings guide begins: “Start now.”
If young Americans had a nickel for every time they got that advice, well… they wouldn’t have to worry about retirement. But many young workers are finding it impossible to put aside even a fraction of their paychecks.
Americans aged 18 to 29 are also twice as likely as any other adults to shoulder student debt, according to the Education Data Initiative. The end of the pandemic moratorium on student debt payments this fall will be crushing, leaving young people with even less disposable income to set aside for their retirement.
Younger workers are also heavily represented in low-wage jobs. In 2020, those under age 25 made up less than 20% of hourly paid workers but 48% of those earning the federal minimum wage or less.
Even if low-wage workers have a 401(k) retirement plan, they often cannot afford to take advantage of this benefit.
A joint report by the Institute for Policy Studies and Jobs with Justice examined the retirement divide within some of the country’s leading low-wage employers. At Walmart, for example, 46% of employees in the retailer’s 401(k) plan have zero balances. By contrast, the CEO has $169 million in a special retirement account set up just for top executives.
The report found similar divides at Chipotle, Hyatt, Home Depot, McDonald’s, Tyson Foods, Target, Petco, and other companies. These firms’ CEOs are all set to receive more in monthly retirement checks than their typical workers make in a year. Meanwhile, at least a third of their employees haven’t been able to put any money into their 401(k) plans.
Young Americans also appear to be less likely to save for their “golden years” because more and more of them are having a hard time envisioning a livable future.
According to Intuit, almost three in four young people say the current economic climate makes them hesitant to set up long-term goals. And climate change, of course, has contributed to the pessimism.
To give young Americans a chance of living to see dignified retirements, we need to tackle the short and long-term obstacles to saving: Let’s raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor rights, guarantee housing and health care, and fight climate change.
We also need to strengthen Social Security. Protecting and expanding this public pillar of our national retirement system will be critical for those unable to build big enough nest eggs on their own.
How can we pay for that? Right now, CEOs and other rich Americans stop contributing to the Social Security fund early in the year after they hit the wage cap on payroll taxes—which is just $160,200. Even if they make billions, they pay nothing into Social Security on income past that amount.
Most working people, on the other hand, pay into this fund all year—on every penny they earn.
We could shore up Social Security simply by requiring high earners to pay the same share of their total income into the system as ordinary workers. And we should end those special tax privileges for CEO retirement accounts to support a secure retirement system for everyone.
Several organizations are lobbying to expand Social Security and pushing back against Republican efforts to shrink these vital benefits. But they are mostly groups representing older Americans—not the young people with the biggest long-term stake in a retirement security system for all.
That should change.
Institute for Policy Studies
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Nuvoco Vistas Q2 Results Review - Improvement In Profitability To Support Net Debt Reduction: Dolat Capital
We maintain our Ebitda estimates for FY24E/ FY25E and introduce FY26E.
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
Dolat Capital Report
Nuvoco Vistas Corporation Ltd. reported revenue, volume in line, however Ebitda, Ebitda/tonne and adjusted profit after tax below estimates, whereas realisation above estimates.
Nuvoco posted + 7.2% YoY (-8.3% QoQ) growth in revenue to Rs 25.7 billion led by + 5.6% YoY (+2.4% QoQ) in realisation/tonne to Rs 5,208 coupled with + 1.2% YoY (-10.6% QoQ) in volume to 4.5 million tonne.
Ebitda +71.8% YoY to Rs 3.3 billion. Net loss of Rs 182 million versus Rs 1.3 billion net loss YoY.
We expect 7.4%/ 22.2% revenue/ Ebitda compound annual growth rate over FY23-26E led by 4.6%/ 9.2%/ 4.8% volume growth and 2.5%/ 0.6%/ 0% cement realisation growth in FY24E/ FY25E/ FY26E.
However, we expect significant improvement in adjusted profit after tax to Rs 6.4 billion in FY26E versus 479 million net loss in FY23.
We maintain our Ebitda estimates for FY24E/ FY25E and introduce FY26E. As we roll over to FY26E, we upgrade from 'Accumulate' to 'Buy' with a revised target price of Rs 437 based on eight times consolidated FY26E enterprise value/Ebitda.
Key Risk: Lower profitability/ higher net debt versus estimated.
Click on the attachment to read the full report:
DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner. | India Business & Economics |
Bereaved families are being charged thousands of pounds in care home fees after the death of a relative in residential care, despite the competition watchdog saying such arrangements are likely to be unlawful.Some providers are billing next of kin sums equivalent to up to a month’s worth of care after the death of a resident, four years after the Competition and Markets Authority declared such charges illegal.Michael Moore received a demand for a £2,100 “adjustment” fee after the death of his aunt June Blackman in a Norfolk care home last April. He had expected a rebate from Lydia Eva Court in Gorleston-on-Sea, near Great Yarmouth, since he had prepaid her care fees for the month in which she died.“When I queried it, I was told that the terms and conditions allowed the home to charge fees for 14 days after the death of a resident,” he said. “This ‘adjustment’ fee was in addition to the £5,100 fee I’d already paid for what turned out to be the last month of her life.”In 2018, an investigation into unfair fees by the CMA concluded that care homes that charged for extended periods after a resident’s death were in breach of consumer protection laws. The regulator stated that families should not be charged more than three days’ fees pro rata after a death.Up to 10 days may be chargeable if there is a delay in removing the deceased’s belongings from their room. Care providers were required to amend their terms and conditions with immediate effect or face enforcement action under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.However, some care providers are continuing to charge excessive sums. NorseCare, which runs Lydia Eva Court along with 20 other care homes across East Anglia, has retained a clause buried in its terms and conditions that allows it to charge full care fees for two weeks after a resident’s death.A spokesperson for the company said: “Unlike many care providers in the UK, NorseCare does not take a maintenance deposit upfront. Instead, NorseCare has a final charge following the death of a resident, which enables us to undertake the maintenance and refurbishment to bring the room back into service.”However, unlike upfront deposits, NorseCare’s fee is non-refundable. According to the CMA guidance, deductions for maintenance and refurbishment must be clearly set out in the terms and conditions and the invoice and supported by evidence.Normal wear and tear cannot be charged for. Neither the NorseCare terms and conditions seen by the Guardian, nor the invoice sent to Moore, mention what the 14-day fee covers.NorseCare, which supports 1,500 residents, is part of Norse Group, owned by Norfolk county council. The company declined to comment on how it justifies mandatory and uncosted charges for maintenance, and has refused to rescind Moore’s bill.“In light of Mr Moore’s concerns, NorseCare will look to review how we communicate our contracts and how can we improve the customer experience for all future residents,” said a spokesperson.Norfolk county council said it did not set out or control “the detailed trading arrangements for NorseCare”, but that it had asked the Norse board to review its current charging policy.Many families are likely to have paid surcharges after a death without realising that they can be contested.Last year, the local government and social care ombudsman ordered a Surrey care home to refund a complainant who had been charged four weeks’ worth of care fees after a relative had died.Given that the fee tends to be buried in the contractual small print, which is not usually published on care home websites, it is impossible to gauge how many others are still charging fees likely to be considered unlawful by the CMA.The Care Quality Commission, which regulates the care sector, said that it did not collect data on unfair fees and was unable to comment. The CMA also declined to comment. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Cryptocurrency influencer Richard Heart defrauded investors of millions he obtained through the illegal sale of unregistered crypto asset securities, which he then used to make extravagant purchases, the Securities and Exchange Commission claims.
The YouTuber misappropriated at least $12 million in investor funds, according to the lawsuit filed Monday, funds that he raised through his crypto ventures Hex, PulseChain and PulseX — all three of which he controls. He then spent the money on "exorbitant luxury goods," including a 555-karat black diamond called The Enigma, worth roughly $4.3 million, the suit claims. His other alleged splurges included a $1.38 million Rolex watch, a $534,916 McLaren sports car and a $314,125 Ferrari Roma, according to the complaint.
"I want to be the best crypto founder that's ever existed. I like doing – I like owning the world's largest diamond," Heart stated in a January 2023 Hex Conference (available on YouTube) cited by the SEC.
On one occasion, Heart "immediately transferred" $217 million of investor assets from PulseChain's crypto assets account of $354 million, into "a private held wallet," the complaint states.
One man, three crypto entities
Heart launched Hex, an Etherium-based token, in 2019, aggressively promoting its potential on his Youtube channel as, "the highest appreciating asset that has ever existed in the history of man," the complaint states.
He began raising funds, between July 2021 and April 2022, for PulseChain and PulseX, two crypto platforms that he
"designed, created, and maintained," and which have their own native tokens.
"Beginning in December 2019, and continuing for at least the next three years, Heart raised more than $1 billion," operating through the three entities of Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, according to the SEC.
"Although Heart claimed these investments were for the vague purpose of supporting free speech, he did not disclose that he used millions of dollars of PulseChain investor funds to buy luxury goods for himself," the SEC's lawyers said in the lawsuit.
Heart also accepted more than 2.3 million ether tokens from December 2019 to November 2020, worth more than $678 million at the time, as noted in the lawsuit. However, 94% to 97% of those tokens were "directed by Heart or other insiders," enabling them to gain control of a large number of Hex tokens while "creating the false impression of significant trading volume and organic demand" for the tokens.
"Heart pumped Hex's capacity for investment gain," the lawsuit states.
**[Comment from Heart?]
Crackdown on unregistered securities
The SEC is also suing Heart for securities registration violations. All three of his crypto projects are considered unregistered securities.
Each of the three tokens is "was, and is, a crypto-asset security," the SEC's lawyers allege in the lawsuit, that should have been registered according to the suit, and therefore "violated the federal securities laws through the unregistered offer and sale of securities."
Regulators from the SEC are cracking down on cryptocurrencies following the high-profile implosions of crypto exchange FTX and the crash of so-called said at the time that he believes "the vast majority" of the nearly 10,000 tokens in the crypto market at that time were securities., last year. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler
for more features. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
PRS Oberoi, Patriarch Of Oberoi Hotels, Dies At 94
PRS Oberoi revolutionised the Indian hotel business and established luxury hotels worldwide.
PRS Oberoi, chairman emeritus of the Oberoi Group, died on Tuesday morning, a spokeswoman of the company said. He was 94.
In an official statement, the company said, “It is with profound grief and sorrow that we wish to inform you of the peaceful passing of our beloved leader, PRS. Oberoi, Chairman Emeritus earlier today. His passing is a significant loss for The Oberoi Group and the hospitality industry in India and overseas."
Often referred to as the man who changed the face of hotel business in India, PRS Oberoi is credited with placing Oberoi Hotels on the international luxury travelers map with the opening of several luxury hotels in important cities.
Born on Feb 3, 1929, PRS Oberoi is the son of the late Rai Bahadur MS Oberoi, the founder of The Oberoi Group. He was educated in India, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.
Popularly known as "Biki", PRS Oberoi has also contributed to the hospitality industry by setting up the Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development, from which has emerged several leaders of the industry as well as other achievers.
In January 2008, the doyen in the hospitality sector was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honour, in recognition of his exceptional service to the country.
He was also conferred the lifetime achievement award at ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) held in Cannes in December 2012.
PRS Oberoi stepped down as chairman and director of EIH Limited on May 3, 2022. | India Business & Economics |
Net migration reached 672,000, an increase of 65,000. This exceeds last year's figures, which reached a record level of 606,000.
The Conservative Party under David Cameron was elected in 2010 on a manifesto pledge to bring net migration down to below 100,000.
WATCH: Richard Tice takes aim at legal migration numbers
In a statement published after the figures were released, the New Conservative Group of MPs - led by MPs Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger - said: "At the last election, every Conservative MP was elected on a solemn promise to reduce net migration, which in 2019 stood at 229,000 per year.
"Since then, in poll after poll, the public has made clear that they are prepared to support tough measures to clamp down on overall migration numbers: legal and illegal".
The group accused the Government of "largely ignoring" measures they have proposed, saying: "Many on our benches have warned that we were failing to make adequate progress on our promise".
Taking a direct swipe at Sunak, the group said: "Today, we see the result of these conscious decisions by Government. Net migration has not only failed to fall since 2019, it has trebled. A million new people from abroad were added to the UK population last year. Across every single category of immigration, numbers are on the rise.
"We cannot blame exceptional circumstances, this is a constant trend. It has been caused directly by the policy decisions of this Government. And it has gone on for far too long."
The statement adds: "The word 'existential' has been used a lot in recent days but this really is 'do or die' for our party. Each of us made a promise to the electorate. we don't believe that such promises can be ignored.
"The Government must propose, today, a comprehensive package of measures to meet the manifesto promise by the time of the next election."
MP Jonathan Gullis, a member of the New Conservatives, described the figures as being "completely unacceptable to the majority of the British people", demanding "drastic action now to bring legal migration down, as well as stopping the boats".
He told GB News: “The Prime Minister and Home Secretary should look at the ideas of the New Conservatives in order to get these numbers down quickly.
Meanwhile, Tory MP Phillip Davies told GB News: "The net migration figures are far far too high.
"We do not have the infrastructure to cope and we certainly don’t have the housing stock to accommodate it. It is absolutely essential these numbers come down substantially as a matter of priority."
“Three things that can be done immediately are increasing the salary threshold for the main skilled work visa to a minimum of £38,000, extend the closure of the student dependant route to those enrolled on one year research Master’s degrees, and raise the minimum combined income threshold for sponsoring a spouse.”
Today's numbers represent a dramatic increase from pre-Brexit immigration levels, with net migration for the year ending June 2015 - the year before the UK voted to leave the EU - at 336,000.
Other Tory MPs have also publicly criticised the numbers, with former Conservative minister Simon Clarke called for an "urgent change of approach".
He wrote on X: "This level of legal immigration is unsustainable both economically and socially.
"There is no public mandate for it, it is beyond our public services’ capacity to support and it undercuts UK productivity and wages by substituting cheaper foreign labour.
"We need an urgent change of approach. The earnings threshold for visa applications needs to be raised significantly.
"The shortage occupations list needs to be radically descoped. As set out by the Chancellor, we need to ensure more Britons are supported into work."
Former Health Minister Neil O'Brien said: "Here's net migration since 1947. In every election since 1992 we have promised to reduce migration.
"Today's extraordinary numbers mean the PM must now take immediate and massive action to do just that." | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
China Mortgage Rate Cuts Fall Short Of ‘Game Changer’ Policy
The mortgage rate reductions would impact most of the nation’s 38.6 trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion) worth of outstanding mortgages.
(Bloomberg) -- China’s anticipated cut to rates on existing mortgages marks one of the most concrete actions yet to boost the beleaguered economy, though it likely won’t be enough on its own to shore up growth.
That’s according to several economists after Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that the nation’s largest lenders are preparing to cut interest rates on existing mortgages and deposits. The state-directed measures mark the latest push by Beijing to spur consumer spending, juice the stock market and ease pressure on bank profit margins as the world’s second-largest economy loses steam.
The mortgage rate reductions would impact most of the nation’s 38.6 trillion yuan ($5.3 trillion) worth of outstanding mortgages. That should support household purchasing power and lift the gross domestic product growth rate by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points, according to Bloomberg Economics. They estimate the easing is equivalent to a cut in the policy interest rate of five-to-10 basis points.
“This is an incremental policy step. Not a game changer, because people’s confidence is still low,” said Larry Hu, head of China economists at Macquarie Group Ltd. “I think we’re going to see property easing come through in the coming weeks. I just don’t know if it’s going to be strong enough.”
China’s onshore stock benchmark CSI 300 Index reversed all gains to dip 0.1% as of 1:56 p.m. on Wednesday local time, set to snap a two-day winning streak. Financial stocks led the losses amid concerns over lenders’ profit margins.
China’s economic recovery is struggling under the weight of deflationary pressures, waning exports and a persistent property crisis. Real estate giant Country Garden Holdings Co. is teetering on the brink of default and risks from the property turmoil are now spreading to the country’s $60 trillion financial system.
Even so, authorities have held off on massive stimulus as they’re wary of driving up debt. Economists now see GDP expanding 5.1% this year, roughly in line with a government target of about 5% set in March that was broadly seen as conservative. A further downturn may put even that goal at risk.
The mortgage rate reductions are expected to only affect loans on first homes. The cuts are unlikely to be massive because regulators may try to avoid creating too large of a gap between the rates on mortgages held by first-time homebuyers versus those held by people who own multiple properties, according to Zhaopeng Xing, senior China strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.
“A big cut may prompt some to repay early loans on some properties they hold to make mortgages on the rest of homes they own eligible for the rate reduction,” Xing said. He doesn’t expect the magnitude of the cuts to be huge, given the need to reconcile the interests of developers, homebuyers and financial institutions.
Economists said it’s unclear whether consumers would spend the savings they make from lower mortgage payments. Societe Generale SA estimates the cut to be equivalent to less than 0.2% of GDP in income support to households.
“The question is still whether households are willing to spend or save this money,” said Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale. “Given still-weak house price momentum and continued distress affecting confidence, we may still not be able to see a property recovery soon.”
Major lenders are also poised to cut deposit rates later this week for the third time in a year, Bloomberg News reported. That measure should help reduce costs for the state-owned banks and protect their profit margins, allowing them to lower their lending rates over time.
The banks are trying to strike a balance between heeding government directives to shore up economic support and remaining profitable. Earlier this month they kept a key interest rate that guides mortgages on hold, failing to follow the central bank’s rate cut a few days earlier.
“No wonder banks are thinking about cutting deposit rates,” said Lam, adding that the mortgage rate cuts “for sure will have impact on their interest margins.”
What Bloomberg Economics Says ...
“The expected cuts to interest rates on existing mortgages may have a modest impact on their own, but are a useful supplement to looser monetary policy in boosting demand. Using our in-house SHOK model, we estimate the cuts are equivalent to the policy rate being reduced by 5-10 basis points. That would boost growth by another 0.1-0.2 percentage point.”
— David Qu and Chang Shu, economists
Read the full report here.
More policy action is likely forthcoming, though economists don’t expect huge moves.
Analysts recently polled by Bloomberg see the People’s Bank of China trimming the rate on its one-year policy loans by another 10 basis points before the end of the fourth quarter, after cutting it twice in 2023 already.
Expectations are also high for a reduction in the reserve requirement ratio, given recent liquidity tightening as local governments rush to use up this year’s quota of new special bonds, a key source of infrastructure investment financing.
“I don’t think it will be the end of the rate cut cycle,” said Kelvin Lam, a senior economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Ltd., of the anticipated reductions to mortgage and deposit rates. “But one symbolic cut in mortgage rates won’t be able to shore up the softening housing market in China.”
The bigger problem is on the demand side, Lam said. If sentiment among prospective homebuyers “beset by deteriorating job prospects and poor economic outlook, buyers will just be sitting on the sideline waiting for the economy to stabilize before joining the bandwagon.”
--With assistance from Emma Dong.
(Updates with markets reaction in the fifth paragraph.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Asia Business & Economics |
Credit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesManufacturers are furloughing workers and shutting down lines because they can’t pay the gas and electric charges.Glass stems on a conveyor belt at Arc International in France. The company needs natural gas to make its glassware, but Europe’s energy crisis has caused gas prices to surge.Credit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesLiz AldermanLiz Alderman, who writes about business and economics in Europe, reported this article in Arques, France.Sept. 19, 2022Updated 3:04 p.m. ETThe furnace, heated to 1,500 degrees Celsius, was glowing red. Workers at the Arc International glass factory loaded it with sand that slowly pooled into a molten mass. Nearby on the factory floor, machines transformed the shapeless liquid with a blast of hot air into thousands of delicate wine glasses, destined for sale to restaurants and homes worldwide.Nicholas Hodler, the chief executive, surveyed the assembly line, shimmering blue with natural gas flames. For years, Arc had been powered by cheap energy that helped turn the company into the world’s largest producer of glass tableware — and a vital employer in this working-class region of northern France.But the impact of Russia’s abrupt cutoff of gas to Europe has doused the business with new risks. Energy prices have climbed so fast that Mr. Hodler has had to rewrite business forecasts six times in two months. Recently, he put a third of Arc’s 4,500 employees on partial furlough to save money. Four of the factory’s nine furnaces will be idled; the others will be switched from natural gas to diesel, a cheaper but more polluting fuel.“It’s the most dramatic situation we have ever encountered,” Mr. Hodler said, shouting to be heard over the din of clinking glasses. “For energy-intensive businesses like ours, it’s crippling.”Arc is not alone. High energy prices are lashing European industry, forcing factories to cut production quickly and put tens of thousands of employees on furlough. The cutbacks, though expected to be temporary, are raising the risks of a painful recession in Europe. Industrial production in the euro area fell 2.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the biggest drop in more than two years.ImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMakers of metal, paper, fertilizer and other products that depend on gas and electricity to transform raw materials into products from car doors to cardboard boxes have announced belt-tightening. Half of Europe’s aluminum and zinc production has been taken offline, according to Eurometaux, Europe’s metals trade association.Among them is Arcelor Mittal, Europe’s largest steel maker, which is idling blast furnaces in Germany. Alcoa, a global aluminum products producer, is cutting a third of production at its smelter in Norway. In the Netherlands, Nyrstar, the world’s biggest zinc producer, is pausing output until further notice.Even toilet paper is not immune: In Germany, Hakle, one of the largest manufacturers, announced that it had tumbled into insolvency because of a “historic energy crisis.”The whirlwind has unnerved the inhabitants of Arques, a town whose fortunes have been tied to glassmaking for more than a century. The modern-day Arc was founded in 1825 as the Verrerie Cristallerie d’Arques, then a small local maker of fine crystal goblets.Today, Arc’s operations are enormous, spanning an area nearly half the size of New York’s Central Park. Its mass is such that Arc indirectly generates another 15,000 or so jobs in the region, from cardboard factories that package its glass to transport companies ferrying its products. Arc’s other factories are in China, Dubai and New Jersey.“The shutdown of the furnaces is bad news,” said one worker, a 28-year veteran of the factory, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of compromising his job. “Sure, high energy prices are having an impact,” he added, “but it’s scary how fast it's happening.”ImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesTo some extent, the crisis is a blowback from European sanctions that were intended to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. The pain has undermined confidence at European companies and their ability to plan.This past week, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed offsetting the hit by capping revenue from low-cost electricity generators and forcing fossil fuel firms to share the profit they make from soaring energy prices.But the solutions may not be fast enough. Costs have already soared beyond what many manufacturers can afford. Thousands of European companies are near the end of fixed energy contracts signed when prices were cheaper, and must renew them in October at current prices. Year-ahead electricity prices, which are tied to the cost of gas, are around 1,000 euros per megawatt-hour in Germany and France, while natural gas is at record highs of around €230 per megawatt-hour.What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Eschenbach Porcelain survived Germany’s transition from communism to capitalism after 1989. But when its energy contracts run out at the end of this year, the company will face annual energy bills of €5.5 million, or roughly six times what it is paying now, said Rolf Frowein, its director.“That would mean we have to more than double our prices, and nobody will pay that for our cups and plates,” he said. Eschenbach, a 130-year-old company in the eastern state of Thuringia, is in talks with local politicians about a potential solution. It is one of dozens of small and midsize firms in Germany fearing they will have to close for good.An hour north of the Arc factory, Aluminium Dunkerque, France’s biggest aluminum producer, will furlough part of its 620-person work force and cut production by more than 20 percent as it faces a potential fourfold jump in its energy costs.ImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“The time we spend dealing with energy issues been multiplied by 10,” said Guillaume de Goÿs, the chief executive. “We hope the crisis will be short-lived, but if it lasts, European industry will be in very big trouble.”Mr. Hodler is laboring to steer Arc away from trouble, after years of financial difficulties linked to overexpansion and, more recently, pandemic lockdowns. In December, shortly after Mr. Hodler took over in a management shake-up, Arc received an emergency €45 million loan backed by the French state and is now asking the government for additional relief from high energy bills.The site, which consumes as much energy as 200,000 homes, makes “arts de table,” including Luminarc dinner plates and Cristal d’Arques-branded table and barware. All told, Arc produces four million glasses a day, as well as items like candle holders for Bath & Body Works and promotional glasses for Heineken and McDonald’s.Doing so requires intense heat to melt sand into glass in furnaces that must stay lit 24 hours a day. In summer, Europe’s power crunch propelled Arc’s energy bill to $75 million, from 19 million euros a year ago. On top of that, consumers suddenly stopped buying items like candleholders and washing machines, for which Arc makes glass windows, sending orders plunging.“People are worried about their winter energy bills, and are saying, ‘I’ll wait to buy that nonessential item,’” Mr. Hodler said.The double-whammy sent Arc’s management team scrambling for solutions — all of them less than desirable.This month, 1,600 workers were asked to stay home two days a week to cut costs. And for the first time, Arc’s furnaces will switch to diesel power instead of natural gas, which is fed directly to the factory through a pipeline. The diesel will raise Arc’s carbon footprint by 30 percent, and must be delivered in huge quantities by tanker trucks.Even more daunting was the prospect of idling Arcs furnaces. “You can’t just shut down a glass furnace — it would destroy it,” Mr. Hodler said. “If they are powered down gently, they will survive, but then they take more than one month to be reheated.”ImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesTwo furnaces that were planned for scheduled maintenance may now remain offline for the foreseeable future, Mr. Hodler said. Another two will be temporarily mothballed to make up for the fall in demand.“We don’t want to stop operations completely,” Mr. Hodler said. “But we are not going to produce if we lose money.”All of which has locals in Arques very worried. At Le Cristal, a cafe that is a hangout for Arc factory workers, the fate of the furnaces was all anybody talked about on a recent afternoon.“Arc is the lifeblood of this region,” said Valerie Harle, the owner of the cafe, which opened in 1939 and is named in honor of Georges Durand, who built the Cristallerie d’Arques from a small-time factory into an empire. “If the furnaces don’t work, neither do the employees.”Veronique Cognoti, a longtime resident, said locals were bracing for a domino effect. “A lot of other businesses depend on it,” she said of the factory. “Transport companies, cardboard box makers — they will all feel the blow.”At a nearby table, a man who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he was furloughed this month from his job at a nearby cardboard factory that makes boxes and packaging for Arc, after the glassmaker cut production.“With the price of energy as it is, the factory isn’t working as much as it used to, and it is already creating a chain reaction,” he said.He was being paid 80 percent of his salary to stay home while his factory was idled, but that had added up to €130 in lost pay. At the same time, he said, the gasoline bill to fill his small car had jumped to nearly €100, from about €50 at the beginning of the year.“This is going to become a much bigger problem,” he said.ImageCredit...Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesMelissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin. | Europe Business & Economics |
Consumers are scouring the internet for online deals as they begin to cap off the five-day post-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza with Cyber Monday.
Even though e-commerce is now part and parcel of our everyday lives and much of the holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday –- a term coined back in 2005 by the National Retail Federation –- continues to be the biggest online shopping day of the year, thanks to the deals and the hype the industry has created to fuel it.
Adobe Analytics, which tracks online shopping, expects consumers to spend between $12.0 billion and $12.4 billion on Monday, making it the biggest online shopping day of all time.
For several major retailers, the "Cyber Monday" sale is a days-long event that begins over the weekend. Amazon's, for example, kicked off on Saturday and runs through Monday. Target's two-day event began overnight on Sunday, while Arkansas-based Walmart kicked off its most recent discounts Sunday evening.
Consumer spending for Cyber Week — the five major shopping days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday — provides a strong indication on how much shoppers are willing to spend during the holiday season.
Shoppers have been resilient this year in the face of stubbornly high inflation, which recently reached itsin more than two years yet remains painfully apparent in areas like auto and health insurance and some groceries, like beef and bread.
Economists, meanwhile, have cautioned strong spending is likely to wane in the coming months.
Stressed consumers in search of deals
Stressed consumers are relying on savings to fuel their shopping and are facing more pressure from, which has been on the rise along with delinquencies. They've also been embracing payment plans, which allow shoppers to make payments over time without — typically — charging interest.
The National Retail Federation expects holiday shoppers to spend more this year than last year. But the pace of spending will slow, it said, growing 3% to 4% compared to 5.4% in 2022.
A clear sense of consumer spending won't emerge until the government releases sales data for the holiday season, though preliminary data shows some good signs for the retail industry.
According to Adobe, shoppers spent a record $9.8 billion online Friday — marking a 7.5% jump from last year. Meanwhile, Salesforce, which also tracks online shopping, estimated that Black Friday online sales totaled $16.4 billion in the U.S. and $70.9 billion around the world. And Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks in-person and online spending across all payment forms, reported that overall Black Friday sales excluding automotive rose 2.5% from a year ago — a smaller but still notable jump compared to 2022's double-digit growth.
According to the firm, online sales rose 8.5%, while in-store purchases were up just 1.1%. Those numbers are not adjusted for inflation, which means that real sales in-stores could have dipped due to high prices.
Other data showed Black Friday saw some increases in store traffic — with large crowds in stores nationwide feeling more similar to pre-pandemic days.
RetailNext, which measures real-time foot traffic in stores, reported that store traffic rose 2.1% on Friday. Sensormatic Solutions, which also tracks store traffic, saw a bigger increase — reporting a 4.6% jump in shopper visits on Black Friday compared to a year ago. That also marks a turnaround from an average decline in store traffic seen throughout 2023 to date, Sensormatic said.
Grant Gustafson, head of retail consulting and analytics at Sensormatic, said that this marked the most significant Black Friday increase that his organization has seen in recent memory.
"This is a really good barometer of what to expect for the remainder of the holiday season," Gustafson said. "The overall trend that we saw in traffic is a really positive sign for not only physical retail, but also for e-comm retail — that the consumer is willing to spend when they find out (about significant sales)."
Electronics, clothing, toys and jewelry were among the categories that saw the most growth this Black Friday, per Adobe. Health and beauty products as well as sporting goods also saw significant sales increases.
Retailers began offering holiday deals in October this year, continuing a trend that started during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been resurrected multiple times due to supply chain clogs or inflation woes. But many consumers waited to buy until Black Friday.
Mickey Chadha, retail expert and vice president at the credit rating agency Moody's, believes that discounts will likely be quite strong and continue in the coming days, primarily because inventory, especially in discretionary categories, remains higher than demand. But he said the deals likely won't be as good as last year, when retailers had more items on hand.
Flat discounts compared to last year
The investment bank Jefferies, which tracked 54 retailers during Black Friday, said Monday that it found that a majority of them offered flat discounts compared to last year. Still, Salesforce's data showed discount rates rose to 30% in the U.S. on Black Friday, enticing customers to buy.
"They're once again playing a game — and winning the game — of discount chicken, where they wait for retailers to discount to where they feel most comfortable," said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of Retail at Salesforce. "And that's what's happening."
According to Adobe's stats, spending exceeded Black Friday during the weekend as consumers spent $10.3 billion to take advantage of discounts that have been higher than years past. On Thanksgiving Day, Adobe said shoppers had spent another $5.6 billion, up 5.5% compared to last year. That's nearly double the amount consumers spent online in 2017, showing the continued shift to online shopping during the gift-giving season.
The resale industry, which has grown in recent years, is also expected to be a significant part of the holiday shopping season. Salesforce predicts 17% of holiday gifts this year will come from resale markets like Facebook Marketplace or ThreadUp, as well as brands like Canada Goose, Patagonia and Coach offering resale options on their sites for environmentally-conscious consumers or those who enjoy vintage offerings.
for more features. | Consumer & Retail |
Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt has said the UK needs to be “taxing less” as Rishi Sunak comes under mounting pressure from senior colleagues to slash levies to unite the party.
The Commons leader said she is “unapologetic” about the need to focus more on cutting taxes and boosting the nation’s housing stock and less on issues that do not “move the country forward”, such as the culture wars.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, a former Conservative leader, and senior Tory MP Sir John Redwood have also urged the Prime Minister to lay out tax-cutting proposals to bring the party together after Boris Johnson dramatically quit as an MP.
Their calls on Sunday echoed demands by Mr Johnson in his resignation statement for Mr Sunak to “cut business and personal taxes rather than endlessly putting them up”.
Speaking at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Opportunity held by the Centre for Policy Studies on Monday, Ms Mordaunt said it “amazes” her that “the top guy is always the focus” in both UK and US politics, even though it is a “failed model of leadership”.
“I said to the Prime Minister, your team is the nation and we have to reframe our story in those terms, and that’s why the culture wars and all of that doesn’t help, because we’re here for everyone,” she said.
“And unless we can pool the nation’s talents together, unless we can get people focused on some national missions, and I started writing about national missions way before Keir Starmer decided to write about them, but these things are important – social care, housing, it requires all of us.
“And that’s why I am unapologetic about talking about building more and taxing less and not talking about culture wars, because it doesn’t move the country forward.”
‘We have to be strong’
Ms Mordaunt also appeared to take a veiled swipe at Mr Johnson himself, as she said “we have to be really strong” when it comes to calling out people who are “attacking the House for carrying out its work”.
“I’m going to go from you to the House of Commons, there’s going to be a debate on the floor of the House on standards, all sorts of things I’m sure that have been in the news recently will come up,” she said.
“We have to be really strong about calling out people who are attacking institutions, people who are attacking the House for carrying out its work, people who are attacking the media. I never thought I’d be defending the BBC, but people are attacking decent journalism.
“We have to stand up for these things because the price of not doing so is going to be very grave indeed.” | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Story at a glance
- Walmart has closed more than 20 stores across the country so far this year.
- In the Chicago area, the company shuttered four locations, with the company citing poor performance.
- Other big box stores have tightened their belts as well. Target, Best Buy and Macy’s have all reported some brick-and-mortar closures, particularly as shoppers increasingly turn to online retail.
In Overland Park, Kansas, customers said they were shocked after the Walmart Neighborhood Market shut down this spring. Dozens of people parked their cars in the Walmart lot and walked up to the doors only to find a sign that told them the store was closed permanently.
Walmart customer Robb said it was a “total shocking surprise,” while customer Camille Tague said the closure was “really sad.”
The Overland Park Walmart had been there since the early 2000s, and customers who spoke with Nexstar’s NewsNation said it was always packed. Still, the location is part of a series of closures announced earlier this year.
And given that Walmart’s earnings are up this year, people have said the closings just don’t make sense.
“Never in a million years did you think this would close or see a Walmart closing. Why? It’s just Walmart,” Antonique Flemmons said. “Walmart has been around my whole life and you go there for things you need and you don’t think twice about it being open or closed.”
In the Chicago area, the company shuttered four locations, with the company citing poor performance.
“The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community,” company representatives said in a press release earlier this year.
Walmart had announced plans to close the following locations as of April:
- 3701 SE Dodson Road, Bentonville, Arkansas
- 99 H Street NW, Washington D.C.
- 6900 US Highway 19 North, Pinellas Park, Florida
- 1801 Howell Mill Rd NW, Atlanta, Georgia
- 835 M.L.K. Jr Drive NW, Atlanta, Georgia
- 1032 Fort Street Mall, Honolulu, Hawaii
- 8431 S. Stewart Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
- 4720 S. Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
- 2844 N. Broadway Street, Chicago, Illinois
- 2551 W. Cermak Road, Chicago, Illinois
- 17550 South Halsted Street, Homewood, Illinois
- 12690 South Route 59, Plainfield, Illinois
- 840 N. McCormick Boulevard, Lincolnwood, Illinois
- 3701 Portage Road, South Bend, Indiana
- 10303 Metcalf Ave, Overland Park, Kansas City
- 1200 Shingle Creek Parkway, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota
- 301 San Mateo Boulevard SE, Albuquerque, New Mexico
- 1123 N. Hayden Meadows Drive, Portland, Oregon
- 4200 SE 82nd Avenue, Portland, Oregon
- 24919 Westheimer Parkway, Katy, Texas
- 11400 Hwy. 99, Everett, Washington
- 10330 W. Silver Spring Drive, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Other big box stores have tightened their belts as well. Target, Best Buy and Macy’s have all reported some brick-and-mortar closures.
Target financials show fewer people have been visiting the store, and executives expect store theft to cost them about $500 million.
And as more shoppers turn to online retail, more companies may close their storefronts.
“We are going to see that continued pressure on retailers to close their doors, especially in those urban areas,” economist Dan Roccato said. “By and large, we’ve got too much retail space in this country right now.”
By contrast, dollar stores are ramping up.
Dollar General reportedly plans to open more than 1,000 stores this year and Dollar Tree expects to open more than 600.
Despite Dollar General’s plan to open more stores nationwide, the company saw its shares fall this past week. It’s a sign that inflation still has a tight grip on Americans in this economy, and even the most cost-conscious stores may not be enough.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Consumer & Retail |
NHS workers have stopped paying into their pensions in an attempt to boost their take-home pay amid a long-running salary dispute.
More than 150,000 people opted out of the NHS pension scheme between April and December last year, according to a freedom of information request submitted by the wealth manager Quilter.
Unlike most private sector workers, NHS staff benefit from valuable “gold-plated” defined benefit pensions, which guarantee an inflation-linked income in retirement.
However, a rising number of staff have stopped contributing to these highly sought-after pensions in a bid to increase their take-home pay. Around 54,000 NHS workers froze their contributions because of cost of living pressures, Quilter found. Around half of these said that they left the scheme due to “affordability”, with the remainder citing “other financial priorities”.
Graham Crossley, of Quilter, said that the NHS pension scheme was one of the most lucrative in the country, and opting out should be a last resort.
“The scheme is very generous and people opting out in their droves is worrying as it can have a significant impact on someone’s future retirement prospects,” he said.
Middle-earners in the NHS contribute around 8pc of their salary into their pension, compared with a typical rate of 5pc in the private sector. This is then topped up by a 20.6pc contribution by the NHS, in contrast with a typical rate of just 3pc in the private sector.
Staff contribution rates changed last October, so that a NHS nurse earning £27,000 now contributes 7.7pc of their pay to their pension, down from 9.3pc. The payout that they receive upon retirement remains the same.
NHS staff ditching their pensions comes amid a wave of strikes over pay. This month, junior doctors walked out of hospitals for three consecutive days over a slump in real wages, while the Royal College of Nursing union plans the most extreme walk-out in the organisation’s history, with no agreed exemptions for urgent or cancer care.
Meanwhile, calls have grown for the NHS to allow its staff more flexibility around their pension contributions to help them to navigate the cost of living crisis. The generosity of the pension scheme means that young doctors are on track to receive an inflation-linked income worth 75pc of their salaries in retirement, analysis for The Telegraph revealed.
Tom Selby, of the stockbroker AJ Bell, said: “The fact that so many people are leaving the NHS scheme shows that there does need to be a debate around how pensions are balanced with pay. It is no good if NHS workers cannot afford to pay into their pension, no matter how valuable it is.”
Mr Selby said a higher number of staff opting out of the pension scheme would save the Government money.
“The NHS will save money if people leave the scheme as it won't have to pay as much in contributions. Plus the Treasury would save money, as it usually offers tax relief on pension contributions,” he said.
However, the British Medical Association, another union, has rejected the idea of tinkering with pensions, arguing that it would result in the NHS losing even more staff.
Dr Vishal Sharma, of the BMA, said that reducing pensions to boost pay was a case of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
A Government spokesman said: “The generous NHS pension scheme is one of the best in the country. NHS payroll data shows that around 90pc of permanent staff are members.
“Reformed in 2015 to ensure costs are sustainable for the future, the scheme pays out an unreduced pension at state pension age and provides a discounted contribution rate for lower earning members to encourage participation.” | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
A speech by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has been interrupted by green protesters.
Sir Keir was midway through announcing his party's pledges to overhaul education if they get into power, when a man and a woman - already on the stage - unfurled a banner, saying: "No more U-turns - green new deal now."
One young activist was heard heckling the Labour leader for watering down his previous commitment to spend £28bn on its green prosperity plan - a u-turn that shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves blamed on rising interest rates and the "damage" the Conservatives have done to the economy.
Another asked Sir Keir: "Which side are the Labour Party on?", to which he replied: "We are on the side of economic growth."
After further demands for "a green new deal right now" and for the leader to "stop making u-turns", the demonstrators were led away from the stage.
Before continuing his planned speech, Sir Keir told the audience: "I think they may have missed the fact that the last mission I launched was on clean power by 2030, which is the single most effective way to get the green future that they and many others want."
Labour has put forward five "missions" for government - including securing the highest sustained growth in the G7, making Britain a green energy superpower, building an NHS fit for the future and making Britain's streets safe.
But today's focus was on education, with a plan to "break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage". | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Sales at the vegan burger maker Beyond Meat have slumped by almost a third as consumers opt for cheaper animal protein amid the cost of living crisis.
The US company, whose plant-based products include burgers that appear to bleed and imitations of sausages and meatballs, has cut its annual revenue forecast in the latest sign that the vegan food bubble is bursting.
Sweden’s Oatly, the Swiss food company Nestlé and the London-based Innocent Drinks, which is owned by Coca-Cola, are among those that have pulled vegan products from sale in the UK this year.
Beyond Meat, which has co-developed McDonald’s McPlant vegan burger, said sales fell 30.5% to $102.1m (£80m) in the quarter to 1 July, missing analysts’ expectations. Its net loss shrank to $53.5m from $97.1m a year earlier.
It said it had been hit by “softer demand in the plant-based meat category, high inflation, rising interest rates and ongoing concerns about the likelihood of a recession”. For example, the US trial run of the McPlant burger was cancelled last August but it is still on sale in the UK and Ireland.
The company’s chief executive, Ethan Brown, said the ambiguity around the health benefits of eating plant-based meat had held back sales.
“This change in perception is not without encouragement from interest groups who have succeeded in seeding doubt and fear around the ingredients and process used to create our and other plant-based meats,” he said.
“As we look to the future, we remain steadfast in our belief that plant-based meat, and Beyond Meat specifically, will play an important part of the global response to a climate crisis that appears to be rapidly intensifying, while also delivering health benefits to the individual consumer.”
Beyond Meat has been trialling price cuts to attract more customers by offering its core products at prices that are at or below their animal protein equivalent.
The company is now forecasting 2023 revenues between $360m and $380m, down from its previous estimate of $375m to $415m, and below last year’s revenues of $418.9m.
The business was founded in 2009 with the brand promise eat what you love. In 2019, Beyond Meat was valued at more than $10bn, more than Macy’s or Xerox, but its market value has since plummeted to $981m. | Consumer & Retail |
FTX staffers found a so-called backdoor at its sister crypto trading firm Alameda Research that was allegedly used to withdraw billions of dollars of customer funds months before the crypto firm imploded, according to a report.
One worker at an FTX affiliate flagged the issue to his supervisor — who ended up getting fired after a member of Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle was alerted, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
“Just wanted to point out that there are currently a few places in the…code base where Alameda gets special treatment in one way or another,” employee Jim Outen wrote in a May 2022 message viewed by The Journal.
At the time, Outen, who worked for LedgerX — a Bitcoin and Ether-derivatives exchange FTX acquired in 2021 — was digging through FTX’s code to determine whether its main Bahamas-based operation could be used in the US, where regulations were much tighter.
His boss, LedgerX Chief Risk Officer Julie Schoening, replied that “there are less rigid rules” on the offshore exchange, but said, “we should clean up this sort of stuff.”
Schoening’s team proceeded to discover a slew of problematic practices with how FTX handled risk and liquidations, as well as Alameda’s exemption from FTX’s standard auto-liquidation process.
The backdoor is expected to figure prominently in the federal fraud trial against Bankman-Fried, who’s accused of stealing $10 billion of customer funds to fund lavish vacations, donate to politicians, and pay off lenders.
The trial kicked off in Manhattan this week and the FTX founder has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Prosecutors have alleged Alameda’s “special features” included a buried line of code that enabled the hedge fund’s balance to fall deep into the negatives — some $65 billion deep — allowing FTX to function as a sort of fund for Alameda from the time it was founded in 2019 until FTX collapsed last November.
FTX’s customers, however, weren’t allowed to have a negative balance and were automatically taken through a liquidation process — where FTX sold off their assets — if their balance fell below zero, according to The Journal.
Schoening relayed the team’s findings to LedgerX boss Zach Dexter, who raised the problems to FTX’s director of engineering Nishad Singh, sources familiar with the matter told The Journal.
The sources said Dexter believed the auto-liquidation was fixed after Singh allegedly removed a section of code, according to The Journal.
Schoening was fired in August under disputed circumstances that ended with her agreeing to a $5 million settlement after she sued for wrongful termination, according to the Journal.
However, the paperwork for the transaction wasn’t completed before the firm collapsed months later, the outlet reported.
Schoening was axed after FTX executives shared internal documents among themselves that supposedly contained screenshots of inappropriate messages she sent to other staffers, people familiar with the matter told The Journal.
Other sources told the news site that the messages were taken out of context, and Schoening simply irritated FTX’s higher-ups by identifying the company’s grave issues.
Schoening hired lawyer Lisa Banks, who threatened to sue for wrongful termination before FTX collapsed in 2022, according to The Journal.
The Post has sought comment from Schoening’s lawyer Lisa Banks, Bankman-Fried’s lawyer Mark Cohen of Cohen & Gresser, and LedgerX, which was acquired by Miami International Holdings in May.
Representatives for Miami International Holdings, which owns several US financial exchanges, did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Singh pleaded guilty to fraud charges earlier this year and is expected to testify against Bankman-Fried.
Another star witness expected to take the stand is Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s ex-lover who served as the CEO of Alameda.
The trial, which is expected to last about six weeks, comes nearly a year after FTX’s collapse shocked markets.
Selection of the panel of 12 jurors and six alternates took place on Wednesday, followed by opening statements, and federal prosecutors on Thursday are set to continue arguing that the 31-year-old Bankman-Fried headed up one of the biggest financial frauds of his generation.
Should he be convicted on all charges, Bankman-Fried faces over 100 years in prison. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Dilip Buildcon Q2 Results Review - Eyeing Net Debt Free By FY25E: IDBI Capital
Dilip Buildcon to become net debt free company by FY25E as it plans to raise Rs 20 billion from PE Alpha Alternative.
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
IDBI Capital Report
Dilip Buildcon Ltd.'s Q2 FY24 (standalone), profit after tax came in–line with our estimate. Though revenue increase was in single digit at 7% YoY, but Ebitda margin were maintained at 12%. Comparing Dilip Buildcon with its peers in construction space, company stands out in terms of getting order inflow.
In H1 FY24 order inflow is Rs 26 billion and guides for incremental inflow of Rs 75-95 billion in H2 FY24. Additionally, Dilip Buildcon to become net debt free company by FY25E as it plans to raise Rs 20 billion from PE Alpha Alternative.
Deal includes warrant issue (10% equity stake in Dilip Buildcon), and 26% stake in 18 hybrid-annuity-model projects.
Deal value HAM assets at 2.6 times price to book, which we find is lucrative.
Our projection doesn’t factor the upside from deal. On unchanged earnings per share estimate, we retain 'Buy' rating on the stock with target price of Rs 410.
Click on the attachment to read the full report:
DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner. | India Business & Economics |
The LDS Church is sued again over how it uses tithing contributions
A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints investment arm misused hundreds of thousands of dollars donated by three men by investing the money instead of using it for charitable purposes as they claim was promised.
The legal action brings more scrutiny about how the faith, known widely as the Mormon church, handles its vast financial holdings bolstered by so-called “tithing” by members who contribute 10% of their income. The church doesn't publicly disclose details about its finances.
This new lawsuit against the business and investment entities under the church in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City is similar to one filed in federal court in California by James Huntsman, brother of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., that recently scored a partial success on appeal and remains pending. That lawsuit seeks the return of $5 million he donated before he left the church.
In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined the church and Ensign Peak $5 million for using shell companies to obscure the size of the investment portfolio under church control. The church agreed to pay $1 million and Ensign Peak will pay $4 million.
Church officials didn’t immediately respond for comment on the lawsuit.
The church has previously defended how it handles member contributions, calling Huntsman’s claims baseless while claiming contributions go to a variety of religious purposes including missionary work, education, humanitarian causes and construction of churches, temples and other buildings important to church work.
At issue in both lawsuits is whether the church's investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and agriculture reflect the wishes of its donors.
The church's corporate arm, the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solicits donations for humanitarian relief with promises that all donations are used to help those in need. But those promises are untrue, the latest lawsuit argues.
Instead, the church allegedly hid the fact that some if not all donations are permanently invested in accounts never used for charitable work. That includes tithes; regular donations amounting to 10% of a person’s income expected from members of the church. The money instead has gone to Ensign Peak Advisors, a nonprofit created in 1997 that has grown to over $100 billion in value, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit is filed by Daniel Chappell, of Virginia, and Masen Christensen and John Oaks, both of Utah. They claim the three of them combined have donated about $350,000 to the church over the past decade. Their lawsuit seeks class-action certification, potentially involving millions of church members, and an independent entity to oversee collection and use of church donations.
Like the lawsuit filed by Huntsman, the lawsuit filed by the three men leans on allegations by whistleblower David Nielsen, a former Ensign Peak investment manager who this year submitted a 90-page memorandum to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee demanding oversight into the church’s finances.
Ensign Peak has spent funds only twice in its 26-year history, according to both lawsuits. In 2009, Ensign Peak spent $600 million to bail out a failing church-owned, for-profit life insurance company. From 2010-2014 it put $1.4 billion to build a mall near Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.
A judge ruled in favor of the church in Huntsman's case but in August the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in part and sent the case back to district court for further proceedings. The church has filed for a rehearing in the appeals court, saying the church president had explained the project would be paid for through investment earnings and not tithing funds.
This story was written by Mead Gruver of the Associated Press | Nonprofit, Charities, & Fundraising |
Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack announced Wednesday that his department will invest $300 million to improve the measurement and reporting of planet-warming emissions by the country's agriculture and forestry sectors.
The investment — which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S.'s climate law — will create a research network to monitor carbon levels in soil, which is crucial for understanding how much of the greenhouse gas is stored in the ground. It will also expand the agency's data management capacity and improve the research methods used to quantify and analyze greenhouse gases.
Agriculture contributed about 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, so a goal of the research will be to improve the system by which farmers can be rewarded for using climate-friendly practices.
“It’s important and necessary that we create multiple ways for farmers to generate revenue in income,” Vilsack said in a press conference Tuesday ahead of the announcement.
To reduce their emissions, farmers can adopt strategies like no-till agriculture or planting cover crops, both of which have been documented to lead to healthier and less erosive soil. That soil may also have the added benefit of storing more carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, driving climate change — though a 2019 report in the scientific journal Nature highlighted some of the uncertainties on exactly how much soil carbon storage can reduce emissions.
To get a clearer picture of the climate impacts, experts say they need more data. But measuring exactly how much carbon dioxide is being stored in a given field can be a technical and time-intensive process. And making the switch to new practices can be unappealing for some farmers, who often bear the cost burden if they lose any yields or have to buy new seed.
A better understanding of that data, proponents argue, may open the door for a more robust carbon market, where farmers can be compensated for their conservation efforts and shielded from the financial risks of changing their operations.
When policy helps farmers get compensation for better soil health practices and is at "the heart of a national conversation that involves the government, academia, and industry, that is a good thing,” said Shalamar Armstrong, an associate professor of agronomy at Purdue University who studies soil science, in an email.
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Follow Melina Walling on Twitter @MelinaWalling.
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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | Agriculture |
It starts slowly at first. A food bank crops up inside your local mosque. You notice more sleeping bags on the walk to work. Over time, the signs seem to grow. A donation bin appears in Tesco for families who can’t afford soap or toothpaste. Terms such as “bed poverty” emerge in the news because we now need vocabulary to describe children who are so poor that they have to sleep on the floor.
Then one day you read a statistic that somehow feels both shocking and wearily unsurprising: about 3.8 million people experienced destitution in the UK last year. That’s the equivalent of almost half the population of London being unable to meet their most basic needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.
The research – released on Tuesday by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) – lays out starkly not simply the scale of destitution in this country, but how potently it has spread. The number of people experiencing destitution in the UK has more than doubled in the last five years – up from 1.55 million in 2017. One million children are now living in destitute homes – a staggering increase of 186% in half a decade. The research, part of a project that has been monitoring the scale of destitution since 2015, found almost two-thirds of adults who are in severe poverty have a disability or long-term health condition; cancer patients going to chemotherapy and coming home to wear a coat in their freezing homes.
“Destitute” is a term that conjures up the Victorian era – a living standard so sparse, so removed from modern civilisation, that by all rights it should be consigned to the history books. You only have to read through the aching interviews in the JRF study to see what destitution in modern Britain looks like: children wearing their parents’ clothes because that’s all there is in the wardrobe; eating a banana as a single daytime meal; taking the one permitted toilet roll a week from the local church donation. Gone are the workhouses. Nowadays, we send the poor to sift through charity bins.
It would be natural to call this a social emergency, but that would suggest a sense of urgency that our political class has rarely demonstrated. Poverty has long been the background noise in Westminster while “real issues” such as small boats and woke elites define the national conversation. Rishi Sunak is reportedly now lining up a tax cut for the wealthiest earners and inheritors, to win back upper-middle-class voters. Meanwhile, food banks have become such an established fixture in Britain that they have been left to breed ever more horrifying iterations like “warm banks” and “baby banks” with barely a whisper. Almost every library in England, Wales and Northern Ireland plans to provide a free warm space for people who can’t afford the heating this winter, while there are thought to be 200 hubs nationwide distributing donations for deprived infants. New mothers queuing up in a community hall for donated nappies is “the new normal” and it has been normal for a while.
Over the last decade, billionaire-backed press and wealthy ministers have worked to propagate the myth that this deprivation has nothing to do with Conservative policies, blaming structural inequality on the working class’s apparent idleness and overspending. Or, as Andrew Cooper, the Tory candidate in last week’s Tamworth byelection, put it: jobless parents who are struggling to feed their children while paying for a phone should “fuck off”.
In reality, a decade of austerity and squeezed wages and benefits has ripped the social fabric, making large swathes of the population poorer, sicker and more insecure. At the same time, multiple crises – Brexit, the pandemic, soaring inflation – have exposed the gaping holes in the safety net once intended to catch us.
It is telling that nearly three-quarters of destitute households actually receive support from the benefits system, according to the JRF study. Or to put it another way: after a decade of benefits freezes, cuts and sanctions, social security rates are now so meagre that many of those who are “lucky” enough to qualify often still can’t afford to eat, wash or pay the rent. It is not as if this is an accident. Keeping benefits as low as possible has always been deliberate, a so-called legitimate means for ministers to divide the undeserving sick and poor from “hardworking families”. In this context, severe poverty is less a problem to fix than an accepted part of the status quo. It is destitution by design, where governments know which public policy will push the already struggling into dire conditions, and they implement it anyway.
If that sounds bleak, there is hope in it, too: when poverty is a political choice, politicians can choose to lift people out of hardship instead. As a society, we can take steps to invest in the poorest lives. We can increase social security rates to reflect the real cost of living and scrap sanctions on the unemployed and sick; we can tackle debt by, for example, reducing the amount of money the government can take from people’s benefits for repayments; we can introduce a real living wage to end poverty wages; we can build more social housing to free tenants from extortionate private rents.
Providing this economic security would improve not simply people’s material conditions, but their physical and mental wellbeing, too. After all, destitution isn’t simply about skipping meals. It is a psychological assault: lying awake at night anxious about the bailiffs knocking, or counting the slices of bread in the cupboard, wondering which day your children won’t get breakfast this week. Protecting people from destitution won’t just give them more cash in their pocket – it can give them part of themselves back.
Established wisdom says now is not the time for any of this, that a struggling economy means we cannot afford to do better. I would suggest we cannot afford not to. When Keir Starmer recently ruled out scrapping the two-child benefit limit (a move that would lift about 270,000 households with children out of poverty) he cited the need for “tough decisions” in order to be fiscally responsible. And yet true responsibility – fiscal as well as moral – comes from tackling the vast cost of social and economic hardship. In many ways, this is a matter of simple maths: child poverty alone is estimated to be now costing the economy £39bn a year due to the extra strain on public services and future unemployment. In the long run, doing the right thing is reassuringly cost-effective.
But it is also surely about a collective lowering of expectations: the nagging fatigue that says that, in one of the richest nations on Earth, millions of people going without the basics for sustaining life is “just the way it is”. Infants sleep on the floor. Mothers eat a piece of fruit for lunch. It starts slowly, yes, but we should all fear where it ends.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Pricepally, a Nigerian online grocery store for fresh produce and packaged food, has raised $1.3 million seed funding, backed by Samurai Incubate; a Japanese VC that also participated in the startup’s 2021 pre-seed round, SOSV, ELEA, Hi2 Global, Chui Ventures and ex-Unilever executive David Mureithi.
Following the new funding, the startup joins a handful of African food e-commerce startups, including South Africa’s Yebo Fresh and Morocco’s Terraa, that have raised funding this year, as venture capitalists continue to scale back their operations.
Pricepally says it will use the funding to expand beyond the three cities it currently serves in Nigeria and to re-introduce group buying to keep up with its promise of enabling consumers to buy food affordably. The startup facilitates same or next day delivery of the produce ordered through its digital channels including the app and WhatsApp chatbot. It has a network of fulfillment centers within the three cities it currently operates in but outsources delivery services.
Luther Lawoyin (CEO), Deepak Bansal (CTO), Mosun Lawoyin (CXO) and Jummai Abalaka (COO), launched Pricepally in 2019 to reduce the cost of food, ensure availability, and keep prices predictable amid shortages and mounting prices: exacerbated by rising inflation.
The startup says it sources fresh produce directly from farmers, some of whom it has contracted, and packaged food from manufacturers. Lawoyin (CEO) told TechCrunch the prices of the produce are often negotiated, which, coupled with the short food supply chains, ensures that the cost of its supplies are affordable.
“We have more control over quality and supply because we have specific farmers supplying specific products. We also carry out price research across local markets and our prices are a lot fairer and that’s just because we’ve taken out several layers of middlemen. The idea now going forward is for us to capitalize on our sourcing strength to solve one of Nigeria’s biggest problems currently, which is food insecurity,” said Lawoyin.
“In many ways we are more than just selling products. We are bringing transparency and visibility into the market.”
Lawoyin lists transparency among the major contributors of Pricepally’s steady growth of customer accounts and its high customer retention. Its existing buyers account for more than 80% of its revenues: a testament to the validity of its value proposition.
The startup mainly targets retail buyers, who make up 70% of its customers because unlike businesses, they pay upfront, are cheaper to acquire, and margins are higher, said Lawoyin.
The startup anticipates that the re-introduction of online group buying, which will enable even more retail customers to come together to unlock wholesale prices, will help accelerate its growth as food prices continue to bite. Besides, it is also looking to unlock new customers through April, its newly launched WhatsApp chatbot that targets the mass market in Nigeria, one of the countries with the highest WhatsApp usage globally.
Commenting on the deal Rena Yoneyama of Samurai Incubate told TechCrunch: ”The great thing about Pricepally is their execution ability. There are still many difficulties with e-commerce in Nigeria, and many things that work normally in other major African cities often do not work due to a lack of both hard and soft infrastructure and trust issues.”
“However, Pricepally has worked hard to improve the quality of service, increase customer satisfaction, earn the trust of customers, and has built up a very high percentage of repeat customers. Their healthy unit economics and continuous business growth proves that.” | Africa Business & Economics |
Tugende, a venture-backed lender based in Uganda, and Warbler Labs, the company building Goldfinch, a decentralized credit protocol, have agreed on a loan restructuring plan that may lead to the recovery of the $5 million loan that the East African motorcycle taxi financing company defaulted months ago.
Warbler Labs arrived at a restructuring “agreement in principle” (an arrangement that lays ground for a contract) with Tugende and its backers including a strategic investor, according to an investor update.
The terms of the agreement were not made public. Tugende co-founder and CEO Michael Wilkerson, declined to offer details of the restructuring plan promising more information in the coming weeks. “There is a larger transaction and a strategic investor coming together,” he said.
The planned restructuring comes after Tugende defaulted on the $5 million it took from Goldfinch protocol in October 2021 for its Kenya operations. Tugende was up-to-date with the $53,400 monthly interest until May this year, five months before the principal amount matured. It defaulted from June causing panic in the Goldfinch community.
Goldfinch is a a16z-backed decentralized lending protocol that lets entities in emerging markets access crypto loans without having any crypto holdings in the first place. This is unlike most DeFi platforms that require borrowers to stake crypto assets that exceed the value of the loan they want. Goldfinch’s protocol plan is to make it easier for entities outside the U.S such as Tugende to access funds based on off-chain collateral. For instance, Tugende put all assets, including bank accounts, as security.
The Bay Area startup has built capital pools, including “senior” which invests in diversified portfolio, allowing the likes of Tugende to get funding from investors on the protocol.
But lending to businesses, especially those that normal financial institutions are not too keen on, possess risks, even though Tugende’s default is Goldfinch’s first major setback since launch.
Efforts to recover the loan
Meanwhile, there is a sense of hope after investors were told that parties involved have agreed on a restructuring plan.
“Warbler Labs has signed a term sheet with Tugende agreeing in principle to a comprehensive restructuring plan that may result in a material recovery for the Goldfinch Senior Pool,” said the latest investor update, in a change of tune from the last post when it indicated that a restructuring may lead to “losses possibly up to the entire amount of the loan.”
“If the restructuring successfully closes at the indicated terms, the potential net write-down of the senior pool’s NAV [net asset value] due to the Tugende default may be reduced from approximately 3.95% to less than 0.79%,” Warbler Labs said. In the July update, it said the NAV of its senior pool was likely to suffer a 3.95% write-down over the four months to October.
Warbler Labs anticipates the restructuring and first payment to happen before the end of the year but was quick to add that it will be “based on current facts and circumstances, including legal work and any necessary regulatory approvals…However, it could be delayed due to unforeseen issues that may arise.”
“This is the first loan restructuring of this kind on the Goldfinch platform. Warbler Labs and Goldfinch will keep the community and investors apprised of the recovery efforts and remain committed to transparency and accountability,” Warbler Labs told TechCrunch.
Trouble for Tugende started late last year, when Warbler discovered that the financier had breached the “loan-to-value” covenant, which means “the outstanding loan must not be more than 80% of the value of the collateral for the loans.” It was also in contravention of the “tangible net worth to total assets” agreement that required Tugende to “maintain a tangible net worth that is at least 20% of their total assets,” to prevent overborrowing.
It was during Tugende’s quarterly reporting in December when Goldfinch also discovered that the lender had diverted $1.9 million of the loan meant solely for the Kenyan entity, to support its “struggling operations” in Uganda. This was in breach of the laid-down agreements, and was done without the consent of the Goldfinch community. Warbler notified investors of this breach in February.
Warbler then spent the next six months trying to support Tugende’s fundraising efforts to help it resolve the covenant breach. That is when it became clear that “the situation in Tugende Uganda (i.e., the affiliated company) is much worse than we were initially led to believe… Due in large part to macroeconomic factors (specifically inflation and rising energy costs) and certain managerial missteps (mainly an aggressive headcount increase in 2022), over the last 12 months, Tugende Uganda has performed poorly, and its balance sheet has deteriorated,” said Warbler Labs in their July update to investors.
Tugende launched its motorcycle taxi financing operations in 2012 in Uganda and expanded into Kenya in 2019. It took the loan to “grow its loan portfolio and create the profits needed to repay the loan” a plan, according to Warbler Labs, that failed to materialize. The loan is part of the $17 million debt it raised in 2021.
The company raised an undisclosed pre-series B funding last year backed by a number of new and existing investors including Toyota Tsusho venture arm Mobility 54, Partech Africa, Enza Capital, Global Partnerships, and Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II. According to Crunchbase it has so far raised $61.8 million in grants, debt, and equity funding. | Africa Business & Economics |
Why UK supermarkets are rationing food and how to prevent future shortages
Calls for the government to provide better support to U.K. food producers have intensified recently as supermarkets have been forced to ration sales of some fresh produce. Weather-related disruption has caused supply shortages of vegetables from places including Spain and North Africa.
Former Sainsbury's chief executive Justin King has partly blamed the government's decision not to subsidize producers' spiking energy costs this winter under its plan to help businesses affected by the cost of living crisis. The National Farmers' Union has also called on the government to "back British food production in order to secure a homegrown supply of sustainable food or risk seeing more empty shelves in the nation's supermarkets."
Food prices rises and produce shortages have been an ongoing problem for the U.K. recently—affecting everything from eggs to turkeys. As of January 2023, food price inflation was at a nearly 50-year high of 16.7%.
Gaining an understanding of the U.K.'s complex food supply chains can help explain why this is happening and also provides some ideas about how to prevent such shortages in the future. Here are three potential solutions based on current problems with U.K. food production, supply and import practices.
1. Diversify sources of imported food
Although it's one of the most food-import dependent countries in the world, the U.K. produces over 50% of vegetables consumed domestically, but only 16% of its fruit. Most of its fresh vegetables come from domestic and European sources, but its fruit supply is spread across the EU, Africa, the Americas and some domestic producers. Some of the main countries used for these imports include Spain, the Netherlands, Morocco and Egypt.
After Brexit, this dependency has become more expensive. This is because of new customs procedures and paperwork, which has led to delays and disruptions at ports and borders. Fresh produce with a short shelf life such as lettuce, tomatoes and citrus fruits are affected most by these changes.
The U.K. could diversify its sources of imported food to reduce reliance on particular regions or countries that may be subject to bad weather or other disruptions. Promoting local food systems could also reduce reliance on imported food by encouraging consumers to buy more seasonal and locally grown produce.
2. Increase support for domestic food production
Providing consumers with more local options would require better support for U.K. farmers and producers. Boosting domestic food production, particularly for crops that are currently being imported, could involve providing more subsidies or tax breaks to encourage farmers to grow more food. The government could also invest in research and development to improve yields, and create more favorable regulatory conditions for agriculture.
More immediate support is also necessary. Any fresh produce that is grown in the U.K. requires greenhouses. Significant increases in energy costs over the past year, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, have added to the cost of production and contributed to the food inflation. Some reports indicate that farmers renewing their energy contracts this autumn faced cost increases of up to 400%.
The U.K. could also expand seasonal worker programs to allow more migrant workers to come and work on farms during peak harvesting seasons. This could help alleviate labor shortages and ensure that crops are picked in a timely manner, reducing the risk of food waste and shortages.
3. Improve food supply infrastructure and logistics
But while factors like weather, war and worker shortages cause price rises and rationing, these issues also mask serious underlying supply chain problems that affect the networks used to transport goods from farm or factory to shop shelves.
Modern food supply chains are efficiency driven, relying on the just-in-time delivery method. This means that, rather than buying in more stock than needed "just in case," retailers attempt to predict precisely what consumers will need and when. This type of "lean" thinking saves on storage costs but leaves no margin of error if supply chain resilience is tested—as is partly happening at the moment in the U.K.
Indeed, just in time delivery is not very effective in the face of a major shock such as a pandemic, extreme weather conditions or changing geopolitical dynamics. Shoppers have experienced these problems first hand during the COVID pandemic and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine affected commodity supply chains last year.
The U.K.'s food supply chains are also vulnerable to disruptions due to their use of the Port of Dover for food imports. It represents a significant bottleneck in the U.K.'s food distribution network.
Compounding this bottleneck, U.K. supermarkets tend to use large warehouses for storing and distributing produce that aren't always close enough to stores to respond quickly to changes in demand or supply. This system cuts back on the cost of running lots of smaller warehouses, but it is difficult to adjust it in reaction to any volatility, uncertainty or complexity in the supply chains. The large warehouses are not close enough to supermarkets to respond quickly when conditions change.
Investment in improving this infrastructure and logistics would make it easier and more cost-effective for food to be transported from farms to supermarkets and other retailers. This could involve improving port capacity, rail links and creating more efficient distribution networks between warehouses and shops.
Preventing food waste
The problems with the U.K. food production industry and its supply chain not only lead to disruptions and shortages, but also food waste.
My research shows food producers' operating costs are significantly higher across processing, storage and distribution as a result of poor transportation and when buyers change products. This, alongside machine maintenance and inefficiency issues, human errors and product defects create food waste, as well as higher costs that could be passed on to consumers.
The solutions above would help supermarkets and consumers to reduce costs and manage shortages, but could also address food waste by ensuring timely delivery of the products that people want and need to buy.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Finance Ministry Calls Meeting Of Bankers, Other Senior Officials To Deal With Digital Payment Fraud
The meeting to be chaired by Financial Services Secretary will discuss issues related to financial cyber security and increasing digital payment fraud, sources said.
The Finance Ministry has called a meeting of senior bankers and RBI representatives on Tuesday to discuss steps to deal with increasing digital payment fraud and cyber security issue.
The meeting to be chaired by Financial Services Secretary will discuss issues related to financial cyber security and increasing digital payment fraud, sources said.
During the meeting Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Centre will make a presentation on the latest statistics of digital payment frauds as reported in National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP), including challenges and issues faced in countering such issues.
The meeting is expected to be attended by senior official of Department of Economic Affairs, Department of Revenue, Department of Telecom, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and National Payments Corporation of India.
The meeting assumes significance in view of digital fraud witnessed by UCO Bank and Bank of Baroda in the recent past.
Earlier this month, Kolkata-based public sector lender UCO Bank reported erroneous credit of Rs 820 crore to account holders of the bank via Immediate Payment Service (IMPS).
During Nov. 10-13, the bank observed, due to technical issues in IMPS, certain transaction(s) initiated by holders of other banks have resulted in credit to the account holders in UCO Bank without actual receipt of money from these banks.
IMPS is a real-time interbank electronic funds transfer system without any intervention.
The bank blocked the recipients' accounts and has been able to recover Rs 649 crore of the Rs 820 crore, or about 79% of the amount.
The state-owned bank is yet to clarify whether this technical glitch was due to human error or a hacking attempt.
However, the bank has reported the matter to the law enforcement agencies for necessary action. | India Business & Economics |
Welcome back to Chain Reaction.
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It’s week five of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial and a lot has happened for the former CEO of FTX.
He testified in front of jurors, for numerous days, after doing a hearing testimony without them present.
While we would have preferred to learn more about what transpired from the man behind the madness himself, he offered little context, especially when asked about his prior decisions and actions during cross-examination with prosecutors. In total, he said a whole lot of nothing, and yet, everything in his testimony, all at the same time (TC+). Bankman-Fried said “Yup” 372 times, “Not sure” 117 times and “I don’t remember” 73 times, for context.
Now, his verdict lies in the hands of 12 jurors, who will determine whether Bankman-Fried is guilty of seven charges related to fraud and money laundering.
With that said, our crypto coverage was all-in on SBF’s trial this past week, so let’s get into it.
SBF trial
- SBF’s prosecutors emphasize the case is not about crypto: ‘It’s about lies. It’s about stealing, greed.’ (TC+)
- Prosecution tries to paint Sam Bankman-Fried as a liar (TC+)
- SBF’s defense puts forth a 35-minute last-ditch effort to show his goodwill (TC+)
- Sam Bankman-Fried says he didn’t defraud FTX customers or take their funds (TC+)
The latest pod
For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn is joined by TechCrunch+ Editor in Chief Alex Wilhelm to discuss the end of the trial for Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX, who is facing seven charges related to fraud and money laundering.
They talked about:
- SBF’s testimony
- The prosecution’s closing arguments
- The defense’s closing arguments
- Key points in the case
- What’s next for the trial
Follow the money
- Modulus raised a $6.3 million seed round to bring AI technology to dApps
- Blockchain infrastructure and tooling startup Kana Labs raised $2 million in a seed round
- Surf Protocol raised $3 million to create a perpetual decentralized exchange on Coinbase’s Base blockchain
- Blockchain transaction tracking platform Vaas raised $2 million in a pre-seed round
- Anapaya Systems raises $2 million from Mysten Labs to build web3 infrastructure
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.
What else we’re writing
Want to branch out from the world of web3? Here are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our attention this week.
- A new generation of companies is moving on up in San Francisco
- For VCs and founders, building in public is about filling the top of the funnel (TC+)
- Founders: It’s never too early to start planning for your succession (TC+)
- Don’t be surprised if WeWork files for bankruptcy (TC+)
- Southeast Asia funding at its lowest level in six years
Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto news, memes and more. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Distressed Debt Anxiety Is Spreading Across Emerging Markets
Rapidly rising Treasury yields have brought back to emerging markets fears of a potential wave of defaults, with investors questioning which countries struggling with heavy debt loads will miss payments or be forced to restructure first.
(Bloomberg) -- Rapidly rising Treasury yields have brought back to emerging markets fears of a potential wave of defaults, with investors questioning which countries struggling with heavy debt loads will miss payments or be forced to restructure first.
A total of 21 emerging-market nations have sovereign dollar debt trading near distressed levels, as measured by their sovereign dollar bonds trading around a 1,000 basis-point premium to Treasuries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The number could go up this week as the weekend attacks in Israel, with its potential to spark conflicts across the the region, could undermine risk appetite further.
Ethiopia is seen by investors as one of the most likely to default next, with a yield spread over Treasuries of almost 50 percentage points. Tunisia, Pakistan, Argentina, Bolivia and Egypt are also seen at risk.
Now with US yields near 5% and the dollar at the highest in a year, the ripple effects of what Bank of America Corp. strategists call “a bond shock extraordinaire” are becoming clear. And while junk debt markets have been relatively calm recently, optimism is fading for the countries with the most fragile balance sheets.
Hopes for quick recoveries from defaults have also been dashed. Restructuring negotiations in Sri Lanka and Ghana are dragging on, and Zambia plans to sign a deal to restructure $6.3 billion in debt by the close of International Monetary Fund meetings this week.
“In a higher-for-longer rates environment, it is inevitable that vulnerable issuers will have difficulty accessing primary markets and be forced to re-profile their debt load,” said Jennifer Taylor, head of emerging-market debt at State Street Global Advisors, a $3.6 trillion asset manager.
Refinancing is increasingly unaffordable, especially with the average yield on junk-rated countries approaching 12%, the highest since November. New bond sales have also dried up, showing lack of demand.
Plus, repaying debt is more difficult with weaker exchange rates. Currency losses over the past year range from 5% against the dollar in Ethiopia, to 57% in Argentina.
Meanwhile, Israel went to war with Hamas in retaliation against the militant group’s incursion, sinking the region’s stock markets on Sunday. Concerns over a wider conflict could push investors into a rush for the safety of the dollar, deepening the currency selloff. In the bond market, high-yield sovereign risk premiums will be in focus, with the emerging market average currently at 828 basis points over Treasuries.
‘Significant Casualties’
Among investors, the mood is bleak. Emerging-market debt funds have recorded nearly $23 billion in withdrawals so far this year, according to a Bank of America report that cited EPFR Global data.
“It would be strange if this current ascent in bond yields ended without significant casualties in the global financial system,” said Arthur Budaghyan, chief emerging-market strategist at BCQ Research.
Among junk-rated sovereigns, only Guatemala, Uzbekistan, Trinidad & Tobago and the Emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates could sell euro- or dollar-denominated bonds in the second half of this year, raising a total of $2.4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The latter half of last year also saw almost no issuance, compared with $16.4 billion in the second half of 2021.
Here’s a look at the debt situation in countries around the world:
Sri Lanka: It suspended payments in April 2022 and is still looking to restructure its debt. Officials target a deal by the end of the year, with expectations building that Marrakesh could provide an opportunity for an initial agreement at least with bilateral creditors including the US, Japan and India, if not China.
Ghana: Private lenders are awaiting the conclusion of talks with bilateral creditors.
Egypt: It’s been unable to access the next tranche of its IMF loan almost a year after the Washington-based lender extended a $3 billion rescue package. The first review of Egypt’s program, expected in March, has yet to take place.
Bolivia: While the next principal repayment isn’t until 2026, the government is running out of dollars to service debt, and is looking to borrow from the IMF to avoid a default down the line.
Suriname: The country lingered in default for more than three years before striking an agreement in principle with creditors in May. But the final launch of its planned debt exchange has been delayed partly due to the value-recovery tool’s complex contracts.
At the end of these processes, investors can expect lower recovery values, according to Trang Nguyen, global head of emerging-market credit strategy at BNP Paribas
“For bondholders it means that you’re looking at a lower recovery value,” she said. “For the borrower nation, it means that the path to a restoration of market access would be longer and harder.”
What to Watch
- China’s trade data for September will probably show the export slump easing, but this will mostly be due to statistical noise – base effects and seasonal patterns. China’s September credit data will probably pick up for a second month — offering another sign that the economy is bottoming out
- Russia’s inflation report for September is likely to show that consumer prices rose to 5.8% year over year, exceeding the Bank of Russia’s 4% target by nearly 2 percentage points
- Mexico industrial production likely rose 4.8% in August from the year prior. Our forecast implies a small month-on-month advance, extending an uptrend that’s been bolstered by household demand and private and public investment
- Zambia’s official creditor committee plans to sign a memorandum of understanding to restructure $6.3 billion of debt by the close of the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting this week in Marrakesh, according to two people familiar with the matter said
--With assistance from Zijia Song, Ronojoy Mazumdar, Netty Ismail, Moses Mozart Dzawu, Carolina Wilson and Srinivasan Sivabalan.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Bonds Trading & Speculation |
- Trump's Manhattan civil fraud trial began week 3 on Monday with testimony by a Trump Org finance VP.
- He said CFO Allen Weisselberg told him, "Mr. Trump" wants his net worth numbers to go up each year.
- NY officials say this helps show Trump headed a conspiracy to defraud bankers and insurers.
One of Donald Trump's top finance executives on Monday gave the most powerful testimony yet supporting New York officials' claim that the former president was at the head of a longstanding conspiracy to defraud bankers and insurers about his net worth.
Patrick Birney confirmed this key contention by the New York attorney general's office – and his own earlier sworn deposition – by saying the former president personally told former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg that he wants his net-worth numbers to "go up" each year.
The testimony is key because it links Trump himself to the widespread fraudulent exaggerations in how Trump valued his properties that have already been proven by Attorney General Letitia James. She has alleged that Trump exaggerated his worth by up to $3.6 billion annually so he could save hundreds of millions in loan interest and insurance costs.
Birney's testimony helps link Trump directly to the top of this push for an ever-fatter bottom line.
"Did Allen Weisselberg ever tell you that Mr. Trump wanted his net worth on the Statements of Financial Condition to go up?" Eric R. Haren, special counsel to James, asked Birney as the morning's testimony drew to a close. It was the final line of questioning in Birney's three days on the witness stand.
"Yes," answered Birney, the Trump Organization's assistant vice president for finance operations.
"Where did that occur, your conversation with Mr. Weisselberg?" the lawyer asked.
"I think that happened in Allen Weisselberg's office," Birney answered.
"And approximately when did that occur?" the lawyer asked.
"Between 2017 and 2019," Birney answered, at which point the lawyer said, "Your honor, I have no other questions" and the finance executive was excused from the witness stand.
As bombshells go, this one had been well-forecast.
The AG's side mentioned the "Trump likes it to go up" directive in openings, and it's nothing Birney hadn't said before, and in somewhat greater detail, during a court-ordered deposition in the case from earlier this year.
"Allen Weisselberg told me Donald likes to see it go up in that period you just said," meaning 2017 - early 2020, Birney had told the AG's office in his deposition.
"Allen told me that," Birney said then. "He likes it to go up. And 'it' I don't think refers to assets. I think 'it' refers to net worth."
But getting Birney to support in open court this notion that Trump personally directed his finance people toward ever-higher net worths does check an important box for the AG's conspiracy case.
This is especially so since, for reasons they have not explained, the AG's side chose not to question Weisselberg last week about what role any Trump directives played in calculating the former president's bottom line.
Monday marks the start of the third week of testimony in James' $250 million civil fraud trial.
In deciding monetary and other penalties, the judge presiding over the non-jury trial, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, must determine if Trump broke specific criminal laws, including conspiracy to falsify business records and to commit banking and insurance fraud.
The attorney general's lawyer, Haren, also used Birney's time on the stand Monday to suggest that not only Donald Trump, but Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump were in the loop on major decisions about how the former president's golf courses and skyscrapers would be valued.
All three had minimized their involvement in the valuations at the center of the trial. But through Birney, Harem introduced internal Trump Organization correspondence showing that "the kids," as Birney called them in one memo, attended meetings and received hard-copy updates on the valuation process.
Trump is expected to attend the trial on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
Trump's appearance at the defense table, which is not mandatory in a civil trial, had been scheduled to coincide with the planned testimony of his personal attorney-turned-nemesis Michael Cohen. But in a comical exchange in the afternoon, the sides bickered over Cohen's last-minute need to cancel his testimony due to an unforseen illness.
Trump's previous trial appearances, during the first week of testimony, were met with crowds, traffic jams, a limited gag order, and multiple mini-press conferences that doubled as campaign events in the courtroom hallways.
This story was updated to reflect later developments in Monday's testimony. | Banking & Finance |
How much money can I give to my son and daughter-in-law without incurring a tax issue with the IRS?
-Irwin
For 2023, you can give your son and daughter-in-law each $17,000 without having to deal with the IRS. But even if you give more, you won't have to pay any taxes right now. In fact, unless you surpass the lifetime limit, currently around $12 million, you won't have to pay any gift taxes.
An experienced financial advisor can help you navigate those rules, so you can continue to give gifts to the people you love without having to worry about gift taxes.
What Is Gift Tax?
The gift tax is a federal tax that may be imposed when you give someone property or money, and they don't give you something of equal value in return. The IRS sets limits on how much you can give other people each year and over your lifetime. If you give more, you could end up owing taxes, but not until you cross the lifetime limit.
Gift tax rates are steep, starting at 18% and topping out at 40%. The person giving the gift pays the tax. (A financial advisor may be able to help you navigate the tax consequences of your gifting strategy.)
Gift Limits and Lifetime Exemptions
The annual gift limit usually changes every year. For 2023, the limit is $17,000. That means you can give anyone up to $17,000 without having to deal with the gift tax.
There's no limit on how many people can receive your gift. So you could hand out $17,000 to 10 people and not trigger any annual gift tax issues. You can also give the same person up-to-the-limit gifts every year with no tax implications.
If any gift exceeds the annual limit, you'll file a gift tax return on IRS Form 709. This is purely an informational return with no tax due until you cross the lifetime limit of $12,092,000 (for 2023). Only the excess portion of the gift starts to whittle down that lifetime exemption. For example, if you gave your niece $20,000 in 2023, you would file a gift tax return and deduct $3,000 of that from the lifetime exemption.
What Counts as a Gift?
Any time you give someone money or property, and they don't return something of equal (or close to equal) value, that counts as a gift. For example, if you give your sister your old car when you get a new one, that's a gift. Other examples include contributing $20,000 to your grandchild's 529 plan or treating your best friend to an all-expenses-paid vacation.
The IRS may also consider interest-free loans or loans that don't get paid back as gifts. Another sticky situation: joint bank accounts with nonspouses. If you have a joint bank account with your adult child, a romantic partner or a sibling, large withdrawals could trigger the need to file a gift tax return.
Some types of gifts are tax-free and never count toward the lifetime limit. Those include:
Charitable donations
Political contributions
Gifts to spouses
Gifts to dependents
Medical expenses
Tuition payments
Medical expenses and tuition payments only count as nontaxable gifts if the payments are made directly to the school or healthcare provider on behalf of the giftee. (A financial advisor may be able to help you navigate the tax consequences of your gifting strategy.)
Special Gift Tax Strategies
If you're likely to come up against that lifetime limit, there are moves you can make to reduce your chances of eventually owing gift taxes.
If you're married, you can use a gift-splitting strategy. Here, you and your spouse can each give the annual limit to the same person with no tax fallout. For example, in 2023 you could each separately gift $17,000 to an adult child for a total $34,000 nontaxable gift, but if just one of you gave the full amount it would trigger Form 709.
There's also a special rule that allows gift-givers to contribute $85,000 (in 2023) to a qualified tuition plan (QTP) and use up five years' worth of exclusions so as not to exceed the annual gift limit. You'd have to file Form 709 in the first year to report that choice, but not in the following years unless you make additional gifts to the same recipient.
For future planning, you'll want to make larger gifts before the lifetime limits revert to the much lower pre-2018 levels in 2026. Then, unless there are more rule changes, the lifetime limit will shrink back to about $5.5 million (adjusted for inflation). (A financial advisor may be able to help you navigate tax law changes and how they could impact you.)
Bottom Line
Most people won't pay gift taxes. But you could end up needing to file a gift tax return in a year that you give generously to friends or family if you give more than the annual limit to any one person. For example, paying for a wedding, giving a car as a graduation gift or making a large interest-free loan that doesn't get paid back could all potentially trigger Form 709.
Find a Financial Advisor
If you have questions specific to your gifting and tax situation, a financial advisor can help. Finding a financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to three vetted financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you're ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.
Understanding your tax bill can help you make plans for your money. Whether you plan on saving for retirement, paying off college or credit card debt, or investing your money differently, SmartAsset's tax return calculator can help you figure out how much you will get back from the government so you can plan ahead.
Michele Cagan, CPA, is a SmartAsset financial planning columnist and answers reader questions on personal finance and tax topics. Got a question you'd like answered? Email [email protected] and your question may be answered in a future column.
Please note that Michele is not a participant in the SmartAdvisor Match platform, and she has been compensated for this article.
Photo credits: ©iStock.com/Everyday better to do everything you love, ©iStock.com/LuckyBusiness | Personal Finance & Financial Education |
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NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began testifying at his fraud trial on Friday, saying the innovative business he hoped would move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward ended up doing the opposite and hurting customers.
The one-time cryptocurrency golden boy lost his businesses and his reputation as a pioneering entrepreneur in an emerging facet of finance when a rush of customers withdrew their money last year, exposing that billions of dollars were missing.
Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some of his failures early in his testimony, saying he made mistakes, large and small.
WATCH: Michael Lewis on his controversial book documenting the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
“We thought we might be able to build the best product on the market,” he said.
The goal was to move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward, he added.
“It turned out basically the opposite of that,” and a lot of customers and others got hurt, Bankman-Fried said.
Asked by his lawyer, Mark Cohen, if he defrauded anyone or took customers’ funds, Bankman-Fried answered, “No, I did not.”
The California entrepreneur has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges accusing him of diverting billions of dollars from his clients and investors to make risky investments, buy luxury housing, engage in a star-studded publicity campaign, and make large political and charitable donations.
His much-anticipated testimony in Manhattan federal court instantly became the centerpiece of a defense that has tried to convey that Bankman-Fried had no criminal intent as he took actions that prosecutors say were directly to blame for the collapse last November of businesses Bankman-Fried ran from the Bahamas since 2017.
He was extradited from the Bahamas to New York in December to face fraud charges.
Though he was initially granted a $250 million personal recognizance bond and allowed to live with his parents in Palo Alto, California, the bond was revoked in August and he was jailed when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to influence potential witnesses at his upcoming trial.
Prosecutors built their case against Bankman-Fried for three weeks, relying largely on his former top executives, an inner circle of individuals who shared a penthouse apartment in the Bahamas with Bankman-Fried.
The executives testified that Bankman-Fried directed them to spend billions of dollars taken from the accounts of FTX customers and funneled through Alameda Research, a hedge fund he started in 2017, two years before he created the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
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Oct 26 | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
New retail crime stats reveal employee theft, customer aggression and fraud in NZ and Australia
A Griffith University report exposes statistics about theft, fraud and violence experienced by Australia and New Zealand retailers.
Commissioned by the Profit Protection Future Forum, the 2022 Australia & New Zealand Retail Crime Study provides crucial insight into retail crime and aims to help retailers mitigate retail crime through evidence-based strategies and prevent losses.
Co-author and Griffith Criminology Institute Professor Michael Townsley said retailers lose thousands of dollars per year because of retail crime, and understanding how and when it is happening is crucial for business planning.
"We estimate crime costs Australian and New Zealand retail economies about $4.3 billion per year, and that's a 28% increase over four years from when the last similar study was conducted," Professor Townsley said.
"Customer theft was the largest category of retail crime making up 53% of losses followed by employee theft which made up 24% of losses.
"While employee theft is less frequent than external theft incidents, each employee theft incident is typically of a much higher value.
"On average, an individual external theft incident costs a retailer around $415 compared to an internal theft incident costing an average value of $1200.
"We have discovered discount department stores, sports and recreation stores, and hardware stores consistently reported the highest frequency of violent or aggressive behavior from customers.
"In some good news, robbery has seen sustained reductions, and there appears to be a shift from armed robbery to unarmed robbery in the last four years."
Some of Australia and New Zealand's largest retailers responded to the survey, representing a combined $136 billion in annual revenue, constituting roughly one-third of the retail economies of both countries and more than 8,900 stores were interviewed.
The report also responds to the cultural and economic shift since the COVID-19 pandemic forced many businesses to adopt online trading, while at the same time dealing with panic buying, supply chain disruption, lock-downs, and personnel shortages.
"Retailers reported an increase in customer aggression and violent incidents during the height of COVID-19 and since verbal abuse and violence without injury are likely to go unreported, the increase is likely higher than official statistics suggest," Professor Townsley said.
"It is fascinating to know the types of items most targeted for theft which include things such as fresh meat, make-up, sports-related clothing, batteries, and connection devices.
"We found thieves employ an extensive range of methods, and their techniques evolve to circumvent each improvement in store and product security.
"However, the most frequently cited methods of theft were not very sophisticated, such as distracting staff while the item is taken, concealing an item on their person, or simply walking straight out of the store."
COVID lock-downs and working from home shifted customer traffic online and retailers responded by rapidly scaling up their online channels and this attracted the attention of new types of criminals.
"We know from other studies that online scams tripled during COVID-19, and bad actors exploited the uncertainty and insecurities of individuals for monetary gain," Professor Townsley said.
"Retailers were not exempt as many retailers needed to figure out online trading at a scale they hadn't planned for, so it's no surprise some found online security a challenge."
The study also found large differences in retailers' perception of the level of support they received from police.
"75% of retailers felt they received adequate support from the New South Wales Police Service and New Zealand Police Service but only 25% of retailers felt they were supported by Victoria Police," Professor Townsley said.
"The gap between the highest and lowest rated police agencies was quite striking and individual retailers were in agreement that differences in levels of support is substantial.
"Our qualitative data reflected the heart of the issue appears to be the level of engagement at a local level."
Provided by Griffith University | Australia Business & Economics |
RBI To Stop Exchange Of Rs 2,000 Notes At Bank Branches From Today
The public can deposit or exchange Rs 2,000 notes at RBI Issue Offices from Oct. 8
The Reserve Bank of India will stop the deposit and exchange of Rs 2,000 currency notes at bank branches from Saturday, Oct. 7.
From Oct. 8, the public will still be able to deposit or exchange this withdrawn currency note, but only at RBI issue offices.
This facility, however, would only be available up to a limit of Rs 20,000 at a time, the central bank said in a statement.
The Rs 2,000 bank notes will continue to be legal tender, unless mentioned otherwise.
Of the total value of Rs 3.56 lakh crore worth of Rs 2,000 notes in circulation (as of May 19), Rs 12,000 crore are yet to come back, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in a press conference after the Monetary Policy Committee announcement on Friday.
On Sept. 30, the RBI said that Rs 3.42 lakh crore of notes had come back as of Sept. 29, and Rs 14,000 crore were left.
This means that only Rs 2,000 crore worth of these bank notes have come back during the extended timeline given to the public by the RBI.
Starting Oct. 8, the public will also be able to send Rs 2,000 notes through India Post, addressed to any of the 19 RBI Issue Offices, for credit to their bank accounts in India, as per the central bank.
With the return of Rs 2,000 in bank notes in the system, there was some liquidity overhang as well. However, the central bank brought in some measures, like the imposition of an incremental cash reserve ratio, to aid that.
"Moderation in excess liquidity conditions, as a result of the combined impact of I-CRR and advance tax outflows in September, has resulted in greater recourse to the marginal standing facility (MSF) by banks," Governor Shaktikanta Das said in his monetary policy statement on Friday. | India Business & Economics |
Rishi Sunak has rejected criticism that recent U-turns mean the UK cannot be taken seriously, as he fought to maintain order before a Conservative conference set to be dominated by questions about tax cuts and rivals jostling to succeed him.
In the traditional pre-conference TV interview, the prime minister again refused to say whether HS2 would extend as far as Manchester, the host city for the conference, which begins on Sunday afternoon.
Questioned on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sunak said he was relaxed about taking office without any election and then dropping significant parts of the Tories’ 2019 manifesto, saying he instinctively understood what the public wanted.
“I have a good sense of what the British people’s priorities are,” he said. “I’m going to set about delivering for them. And that’s the change that I’m going to bring.”
Shortly before Sunak spoke, Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, highlighted the extent to which cabinet ministers had been freelancing on policy before the conference, calling for tax cuts before the next election.
Similarly, in newspaper interviews, Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, and Suella Braverman, the home secretary, made their pitches to the Tory right to succeed Sunak after an election, by calling for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights.
In a sometimes combative interview, Sunak sought to present himself as a reinvigorated prime minister with a plan for change, following the recent policy reversal on net zero targets, and the expected U-turn on HS2.
Asked whether the uncertainty about HS2 risked the UK being seen as a “laughing stock”, Sunak replied: “I’d completely reject that. I speak to business leaders all the time. I’ve just been around the world. I’ve recently been in Japan, in America, in Europe. We’re attracting billions of pounds of investment into this country, creating jobs everywhere.
“That’s what I hear from business leaders around the world. They’re excited about the opportunity that investing in Britain offers.”
However, Sunak refused once again to say whether HS2 would run to Manchester, as planned, or stop at Birmingham.
“There are already spades in the ground with HS2, and we’re getting on with delivering it,” he said. When told that was not the question, he added: “I’m not going to comment on all this speculation.”
Kuenssberg played Sunak a clip of Richard Walker, the executive chairman of the retailer Iceland, who said Sunak’s government was “drifting out of touch with the needs of business of the environment, and also the everyday people that my business touches and serves”.
Sunak – who appeared to argue that Walker might in part be disgruntled because he had failed to be selected as a prospective Tory MP – said: “Change may be uncomfortable for people. People may be critical of it, but I believe I’m doing the right thing for the country.”
With the conference likely to be the last Tory gathering before an election, Sunak will face significant pressure to agree to tax cuts, with Gove making the case for this in his interview.
“I would like to see the tax burden reduced before the next election,” he told Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips programme. “My own view is, wherever possible, we should cut taxes on work. In other words, we should incentivise people to work harder, we should make sure they are better rewarded for the enterprise, the effort, the endeavour that they put in.”
Asked about this, Sunak said only: “The best tax cut we can give working people is to halve inflation.”
Pressed on his easing of green targets, and his decision to prioritise the needs of drivers over bus users, pedestrians and cyclists, Sunak insisted this had not been “a knee-jerk reaction to to the Uxbridge by election” in July, where the Tories unexpectedly won by campaigning against London’s expanded clean-air zones.
However, he did hint that moves to restrict councils’ abilities to impose 20mph zones and other road safety measures might end up being fairly limited.
Pressed about how this would work, he said it was about “making sure that the statutory guidance that goes to local councils from government is clear about making sure the councils – which are obviously in charge of what’s happening in their local areas – are doing things with the support and consent of their local community”. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Walmart’s chief merchandising officer for its US operations is stepping down from the job as the retailer faces a tougher year ahead, an internal memo shared to US associates Friday said.
Charles Redfield, whose career at Walmart spanned 32 years, will transition on May 1 and remain in an advisory role. In a memo viewed by CNN Business, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said Redfield wants to spend more time with his family.
Redfield held his position at the retailer for a little more than a year, beginning in January 2022.
The leadership shakeup comes after America’s largest retailer warned it is facing a more challenging year ahead and will approach 2023 with caution.
Despite a strong holiday season, Walmart forecast slower sales and profit growth in February. Its strong holiday sales were fueled by groceries. Grocery prices rose 11.8% annually in December, pushing customers toward more affordable options.
However, sales were slower for traditional holiday products like toys, electronics and clothing – a sign that consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending.
Walmart did see an 8.3% sales increase during its latest quarter ended January 31 at US stores open for at least one year. More customers are buying its private label brands and more higher-income households are shopping at its stores, the company said.
“The consumer is still very pressured,” Walmart CFO John Rainey told CNBC. “And if you look at economic indicators, balance sheets are running thinner and savings rates are declining relative to previous periods. And so that’s why we take a pretty cautious outlook on the rest of the year.”
The retail industry in general is expected to face challenges this year after sluggish holiday sales.
Redfield is a Walmart veteran. He began his career as a Sam’s Club cashier while attending the University of Arkansas. He became assistant manager with Sam’s Club and worked his way up the ladder.
“There are merchants, and then there’s our Chief Merchandising Officer Charles Redfield,” CEO John Furner said in a memo viewed by CNN Business. “I could probably stop there and many associates across our businesses and the retail industry would know exactly what I mean.”
Redfield became CMO for Asda, Walmart’s UK subsidiary, in 2010. In 2012, he was named executive vice president of merchandising for Sam’s Club and named executive vice president of food for Walmart U.S. in 2015.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the departure.
Furner said the company will be announcing a new CMO soon.
This week, Walmart said it was selling its trendy menswear brand, Bonobos, at a steep loss, to management firm WHP Global and retailer Express Inc. for $75 million. Walmart acquired the brand in 2017 for $310 million.
In a note, Neil Saunders, managing director of consultancy GlobalData, wrote that discounted price for Bonobos “reflects the current weaker outlook across retail, but some is also the result of Walmart not having done much to develop the brand over the past six years.”
CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn and Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report. | Consumer & Retail |
Labour is “pro-worker and pro-business”, a shadow minister has insisted following reports Keir Starmer’s party has watered down its commitment to strengthen the rights of gig economy employees.
Stephen Morgan, the shadow minister for schools, was responding to reports that Labour has scaled back its commitments to bolster workers’ rights in an attempt to court corporate backers.
Questioned by Sky News over the matter, Mr Morgan insisted he could not comment, but added: “Labour set out its five national missions. That has been approved by our national policy forum in July.
“Obviously we will set out more detail in our manifesto, but the Labour party can be pro-worker and pro-business.
“We have got a really good relationship with business now, we can be trusted to run our economy and to run our country, and we have got a set of policies which are pro-worker too.”
The Financial Times reported last night that a pledge to boost the protection of gig economy workers was diluted by the party’s leadership at Labour’s national policy forum in Nottingham last month.
The text agreed last month will be published in the run-up to Labour’s annual conference in October and will form a menu from which it picks its manifesto pledges.
The FT reported the passages showed that Labour has diluted its 2021 pledge to create a single status of “worker” for all but the genuinely self-employed, regardless of sector, wage or contract type.
Instead of introducing the policy immediately, therefore, Labour has agreed it would consult on the proposal in government, considering how “a simpler framework” that differentiates between workers and the genuinely self-employed “could properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” and ensure workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”.
Labour also clarified that its previously announced plans to introduce “basic individual rights from day one for all workers”, including sick pay, parental leave and protection against unfair dismissal, will “not prevent … probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”. | Workforce / Labor |
Auction fails to secure bids for offshore wind farms
No new offshore wind farms are expected to have been bid for in a government auction this week, in a significant blow to the government’s clean energy ambitions.
Ministers are scheduled to announce tomorrow the winners in their annual auction of financial support contracts for renewable energy projects.
A number of sources have told The Times they understood the auction had failed to procure any big new offshore wind farms, after the government ignored repeated industry warnings that support on offer was too low to reflect soaring inflation.
Such an outcome would jeopardise the government’s ambitious target of more than tripling offshore wind capacity to 50 gigawatts by 2030 — more than enough to power every home, and up from less than 14 gigawatts today.
Five offshore wind projects with about 5 gigawatts combined capacity are believed to have been eligible for this year’s auction — enough to power more than 5 million homes. However, their developers — Vattenfall, ScottishPower and SSE — have all sounded the alarm over cost inflation.
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The contracts offer developers valuable revenue certainty by guaranteeing that consumers will pay a fixed price for the electricity they generate. When wholesale prices are lower, consumers pay subsidies to top up the difference; when wholesale prices are higher, developers back pay the difference.
The price required by offshore wind farms has plummeted over the past decade and recent contracts have been below prevailing wholesale power prices. However, developers say supply chain cost inflation of up to 40 per cent means they need a modest increase in prices once more. The government has declined to increase the maximum price on offer for offshore wind, even though it would still be significantly cheaper than gas-fired power plants. | Renewable Energy |
IRS crackdown on wealthy taxpayers brings in $160M in back taxes
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has brought in $160 million in back taxes from wealthy taxpayers, amid a recent push to crack down on top income earners.
The agency said Friday that it had collected $122 million from 100 taxpayers, on top of the $38 million it collected from more than 175 high-income earners earlier this year.
The 100 taxpayers resulting in the latest haul are just a portion of the 1,600 individuals that the IRS is currently contacting for hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes, according to the agency.
In one case, an individual was ordered to pay more than $15 million for falsifying personal expenses — including the construction of a 51,000-square-foot mansion, luxury cars, artwork, country club memberships and homes for his children — as deductible business expenses.
Another person was sentenced to more than four years in prison for fraudulently obtaining $5 million in COVID relief loans that he used to purchase multiple luxury cars.
The IRS touted recent investments from the Inflation Reduction Act for its latest enforcement efforts.
“Prior to the Inflation Reduction Act, more than a decade of budget cuts prevented the IRS from keeping pace with the increasingly complicated set of tools that the wealthiest taxpayers use to hide their income and evade paying their share,” the agency said in Friday’s press release.
“The IRS is now taking swift and aggressive action to close this gap,” it added.
However, the extra funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act has been whittled down, after Democrats agreed to scrap $20 billion of the $80 billion meant for IRS enforcement in order to reach a deal with Republicans to raise the debt ceiling this summer.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | Banking & Finance |
The CBI faces a deadline next September to refinance millions of pounds of funding put in place to avert its collapse during the autumn.
Sky News has learnt that a seven-figure facility put in place with banks will expire at the end of the third quarter next year.
While the size of the facility is unclear, sources have said it is likely to be several million pounds.
According to the business lobby group's annual report and accounts, which was circulated to members late last week, it was able to survive the aftermath of a sexual misconduct scandal "through the backing of key members, the use of reserves, support from creditors and with bank financing".
"The bank financing is due to terminate on 30 September 2024, after which it is the board's current intention to look to renew the facility if required.
"The exceptional costs from the past year have now been paid and the organisation has been reshaped so that salary costs are appropriate given the expected level of income."
On Friday, Sky News revealed that the CBI was urging members to swallow a further rise in fees even as it battles to regain its former standing among political and business leaders.
Members will be asked at its annual meeting this week to approve a 5% rise in their subscription costs.
Self-styled as "the voice of British business", the CBI has been slowly rebuilding its reputation, staging a slimmed-down version of its annual conference last month which featured an address by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor.
The group has been slashing costs by axeing a chunk of its workforce and closing most of its overseas offices following several rape allegations against former employees, which triggered an exodus of corporate members including Aviva and John Lewis Partnership.
Tony Danker, its director-general - who was accused of inappropriate behaviour but had nothing to do with the more serious allegations - stepped down in April weeks after being suspended.
The CBI briefly entertained autumn talks about a merger with Make UK, the manufacturers' body, but these have now been curtailed. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Christine Rogers of Wake Forest, North Carolina, didn't hesitate when she was asked to fill out a routine mental health questionnaire during a checkup last November.
Her answers on the form led her primary care doctor to ask about depression and her mood, and Rogers said she answered honestly.
"It was a horrible year. I lost my mom," Rogers said she told her physician.
After what Rogers estimates was a five-minute conversation about depression, the visit wrapped up. She said her doctor did not recommend treatment nor refer her for counseling.
"It's not like anything I told her triggered, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to prescribe you medication,'" she said.
Then the bill came.
The Patient: Christine Rogers, 60, a public relations/communications worker who is insured by Cigna Healthcare through her job.
Medical Services: An annual wellness visit, which included typical blood tests, as well as a depression screening and discussion with a physician.
Service Provider: WakeMed Physician Practices, part of WakeMed Health & Hospitals, a Raleigh-based, tax-exempt system with three acute care hospitals, outpatient centers, and hundreds of physicians across a range of specialties.
Total Bill: $487, which included a $331 wellness visit and a separate $156 charge for what was billed as a 20- to 29-minute consultation with her physician. Her insurer paid $419.93, leaving Rogers with a $67.07 charge related to the consultation.
What Gives: Rogers said the bill came as a surprise because she knows annual wellness checks are typically covered without patient cost sharing as preventive care under the Affordable Care Act. And as part of an annual physical, patients routinely fill out a health questionnaire, which may cover mental health topics.
But there is a catch: Not all care that may be provided during a wellness visit counts as no-cost preventive care under federal guidelines. If a health issue arises during a checkup that prompts discussion or treatment — say, an unusual mole or heart palpitations — that consult can be billed separately, and the patient may owe a copayment or deductible charge for that part of the visit.
In Rogers' case, a brief chat with her doctor about mental health triggered an additional visit charge — and a bill she was expected to pay.
Rogers said she didn't broach the subject of depression during her checkup. She was asked when she checked in to fill out the questionnaire, she said — and then the doctor brought it up during her exam.
The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover a variety of preventive services without a patient paying out-of-pocket, with the idea that such care might prevent problems or find them early, when they are more treatable and less costly.
The federal government lists dozens of services that are classified as no-cost-sharing preventive care for adults and children, such as cancer screenings, certain vaccinations, and other services recommended by either of two federal agencies or the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent group of experts in disease prevention.
Depression screening is covered as preventive care for adults, including when they're pregnant or in the postpartum phase.
Rogers requested an itemized bill from her doctor's practice, which is part of WakeMed Physician Practices. It showed a charge for the wellness visit (free for her), as well as a separate charge for a 20- to 29-minute office visit. Earlier, Rogers said, she had discussed the initial bill with the office manager at her doctor's office, who told her the separate charge, roughly $67, was for discussing her questionnaire results with her doctor.
For Rogers, it wasn't so much about the $67 she owed for the visit, as it was a matter of principle. The separate change, she said, was "disingenuous" because she was specifically asked about her mental health.
Also, annual physicals are intended to nip health problems in the bud, which sometimes requires a few more minutes of attention — whether to discuss symptoms of depression or palpate an abdomen for digestive issues.
Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, agrees the charge seemed a bit over-the-top: Depression screening "is now a recommended part of the annual physical," she said. "Implicit in that is someone looks at answers and makes an assessment, and you should not be charged for that."
Beyond the confusion of being charged for what she thought would be free preventive care, Rogers wondered how the bill was calculated: Her conversation with her doctor about depression did not last that long, she said.
A 20- to 29-minute-visit billing code is commonly used in primary care, reflecting not just the time spent, but also the complexity of the condition or diagnosis, said Yalda Jabbarpour, a family physician in Washington, D.C. She also directs the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies, which researches primary care in the U.S.
Billing codes exist for other, shorter time frames, though those are rarely used except for the most minimal of services, such as a quick question about a test result, she said.
Physicians said Rogers did the right thing, emphasizing that patients should be honest with their doctors during preventive visits — and not keep silent about issues because they are concerned about potential cost sharing.
"If you have a condition like depression, not only does it affect mental health, but it can have significant impact on your medical health overall," said Stephen Gillaspy, senior director for health and health care financing at the American Psychological Association.
The Resolution: Confused by getting billed for a visit she thought would have no charge, Rogers initially called her doctor's office and spoke with the office manager, who told her the claim submitted to her insurer was coded correctly for her visit. She then called her insurer to question whether a mistake had been made. She said her insurer said no, agreeing that the physician had billed properly.
Rogers paid the bill.
After being contacted by KFF Health News, and with Rogers' permission, the WakeMed health system investigated the bill and said it was handled correctly.
"We do split bills when a service is provided that is above and beyond the preventive components of a physical — in this case, beyond a positive screening for depression," WakeMed spokesperson Kristin Kelly said in an email.
By contrast, Cigna Healthcare, Rogers' insurer, sent her a new explanation of benefits statement after being contacted by KFF Health News. The EOB showed Cigna had zeroed out any cost to Rogers associated with the visit.
Cigna spokesperson Meaghan MacDonald, in a written statement, said the "wellness visit was initially billed incorrectly with two separate visit codes, and has now been resubmitted correctly so there is no cost-share for Ms. Rogers. We are working with the physician to ensure she is refunded appropriately."
The insurer's website says Cigna covers a variety of preventive services without copayment and encourages doctors to counsel patients about depression.
Not long after receiving the new EOB, Rogers said she received a refund of $67.07 from WakeMed.
The Takeaway: While many preventive services are covered under the ACA, the nuances of when a patient pays can be complicated and open to interpretation. So, it is not uncommon for medical practices to narrowly interpret the term "preventive service."
That creates a billing minefield for patients. If you respond on a questionnaire that you sometimes experience heartburn or headaches, most physicians will inquire about your responses to assess the need for treatment. But should that come with an extra charge? Other patients have written to KFF Health News and NPR expressing frustration over being billed for conversations during a checkup.
Additional time spent during a wellness exam discussing or diagnosing a condition or prescribing medication can be considered beyond preventive care and result in separate charges. But if you receive a bill for a preventive service that you expected would be free, request an itemized bill with billing codes. If something seems off, ask the physician's office.
If you're billed for time spent on extra consultation, question it. You know how long the provider spent discussing your health issue better than a billing representative does. Next, reach out to your insurer to protest.
Most important, be honest with your primary care provider during your annual physical.
Stephanie O'Neill reported the audio story.
Bill of the Month is a crowdsourced investigation by KFF Health News and NPR that dissects and explains medical bills. Do you have an interesting medical bill you want to share with us? Tell us about it!
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing.
for more features. | Personal Finance & Financial Education |
Manappuram Q2 Review - Earnings Beat Driven By Higher Other Income; Gold Loan Growth Muted: Motilal Oswal
NIM up ~15 bp QoQ aided by expansion in yields; Consolidated AUM grew 5% QoQ
BQ Prime’s special research section collates quality and in-depth equity and economy research reports from across India’s top brokerages, asset managers and research agencies. These reports offer BQ Prime’s subscribers an opportunity to expand their understanding of companies, sectors and the economy.
Motilal Oswal Report
Manappuram Finance Ltd.’s consolidated profit after tax grew ~37% YoY to ~Rs 5.6 billion (8% beat) in Q2 FY24, aided by high other income. Net interest income grew 25% YoY to ~Rs 13.5 billion and pre-provision operating profit rose ~37% YoY to ~Rs 8.7 billion (10% beat). Annualised credit cost for the quarter was stable QoQ at 1.3% (versus 1.0% in Q2 FY23).
Gold assets under management increased by ~1% QoQ and 8% YoY to ~Rs 208 billion. Gold tonnage was largely stable QoQ at 59.4 tonne.
Gold loan yields in Q2 FY24 improved by 50 bp to ~22.1% (versus 21.6% in Q1 FY24). Consolidated net interest margin expanded ~15 bp QoQ to ~15%, aided by expansion in yields and sequentially stable borrowing costs. We expect gold loan yields to stabilise now.
To mitigate the cyclicality in the gold loan segment, Manappuram Finance has been actively diversifying into non-gold segments, with the share of non-gold products in the company's AUM mix at 47% (versus 37% in Q2 FY23).
We believe Manappuram Finance should tread carefully in the non-gold segments as it is yet to exhibit any clear ‘right to win’ in these segments.
We raise our FY24E/FY25E EPS by ~5%/6% to factor in stronger growth in the non-gold segments and higher other income. We estimate a 10%/20% AUM compound annual growth rate in gold/consolidated book over FY23-26.
We model a consolidated PAT CAGR of ~27% over the same period to arrive at consolidated return on asset/return on equity of ~5.0%/20% in FY26. Reiterate 'Buy' with a target price of Rs 180 (based on 1.0 times Sep-25E consolidated book value per share).
Click on the attachment to read the full report:
DISCLAIMER
This report is authored by an external party. BQ Prime does not vouch for the accuracy of its contents nor is responsible for them in any way. The contents of this section do not constitute investment advice. For that you must always consult an expert based on your individual needs. The views expressed in the report are that of the author entity and do not represent the views of BQ Prime.
Users have no license to copy, modify, or distribute the content without permission of the Original Owner. | Banking & Finance |
Keir Starmer has condemned the prime minister’s climate policies, declaring the failure to invest in renewables such as wind turbines a “gift to Putin”.
The Labour leader also described the Conservatives’ onshore wind ban as “ludicrous” and said it now means every family in the country is paying £180 more on their energy bills.
“Every turbine we fail to build is a gift to Putin, who has strangled the international gas market we are hooked to,” Starmer wrote in the Times. “Last year, President Putin put his boot on the world’s neck by using energy as a weapon of war. But it is Conservative failure over many years that left Britain paying a heavy price.”
Starmer’s comments followed a wave of criticism of green policies from Rishi Sunak, following the Tories’ narrow byelection win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, which some have attributed to a protest vote against Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) in London.
Ministers’ net zero plans were also heavily criticised by their own advisers in June, when the government caused dismay by approving a new coalmine in Cumbria. Sunak has also recently pledged to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves in the North Sea.
“David Cameron was told to ignore the long term and ‘cut the green crap’,” Starmer said. “He went along with it and oversaw a collapse in gas storage, prevented onshore wind, abandoned energy efficiency measures and stalled new nuclear projects.
“Each cut corner has added to today’s energy bills, piling up costs for every family and business and forcing the government to borrow more.
“The tragedy for Britain is that rather than learn from his predecessors’ mistakes, Rishi Sunak is making them all over again.”
Starmer also waded in about the apparent divide in the cabinet over new cars being electric or hybrid by 2030.
Last week, Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, suggested electric vehicle mandates could hamper investment in Britain and lead to job losses, in a sign that another of the government’s green pledges is in doubt.
Badenoch was discussing the automotive industry’s concerns about a rule to be introduced in January that will require manufacturers to ensure at least 22% of new sales in the UK are of emissions-free models, rising each year to reach 80% by 2030.
A manufacturer will be fined £15,000 for every polluting car sold over the limit, unless it can buy in extra allowances from another company.
The UK ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars is due in 2030. However, there are widespread concerns over whether Britain has adequate infrastructure and capacity for the growth of electric vehicles.
Starmer wrote: “Last week we had cabinet members arguing against all new cars being electric or hybrid by 2030, undermining the investor certainty we need to ensure a wide a range of affordable vehicles with the charging infrastructure to support them.
“That’s why Labour’s plan will give these manufacturers clarity, turbocharge the rollout of electric vehicles, increase the availability of charging points and lower costs for households in the process.
“While Labour is developing serious plans for the future of the British car industry and for British motorists, what is the prime minister focused on?
“Trying to create a cultural wedge between motorists and those who want to tackle climate change. It won’t work because British people overwhelmingly both drive cars and want to tackle climate change.”
Starmer also distanced himself from Just Stop Oil by criticising its call to immediately cease drilling for oil and gas, saying a Labour government would not revoke any existing licences and he would only block new oil and gas developments in the North Sea.
Last week Sunak announced plans to grant more than 100 exploration licences for new oilfields and gasfields before the next election, which experts said could be catastrophic for the climate.
Starmer wrote: “The likes of Just Stop Oil want us to simply turn off the taps in the North Sea, creating the same chaos for working people that they do on our roads. It’s contemptible.” | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
A convicted former JPMorgan Chase executive was sentenced to nearly two years in prison on Tuesday — the stiffest prison term given to an individual since the government’s crackdown on market manipulation.
Gregg Smith, who worked on the bank’s precious-metals desk, was convicted last year on 11 charges for manipulating gold and silver prices from 2008 to 2016.
His boss, Michael Nowak, was also convicted but was sentenced to 13 months on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
Smith, 57, was described by an assistant US attorney as “the most prolific ‘spoofer’ that the government has prosecuted to date” for orchestrating an illegal scheme where he placed bogus market orders with no intention of carrying out the transactions, Bloomberg reported.
Spoofing causes market prices to go up or down, at which point the trader cancels the sale and places an opposite bet in an effort to manipulate share price — a blatant violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules.
Nowak, meanwhile, was described as “the boss” behind the scheme.
Smith will begin his sentence on Jan. 15, Chicago US District Judge Edmond Chang said in court on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
“You told many lies to the market,” Chang told the fraudster. “For many years, you injected fraud into the market.”
Smith’s lawyer told Bloomberg that he plans to appeal the conviction.
Prosecutors had originally wanted Smith to spend six years behind bars, according to Bloomberg, though it was revised to 23 months for an undisclosed reason.
Smith’s legal counsel reportedly argued that their client should be spared prison entirely, claiming he never personally benefitted from his illicit actions.
Nowak was originally facing five years in prison before having his sentence reduced to 13 months.
The Post has sought comment from Smith’s counsel at Kobre & Kim and Nowak’s attorneys at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
JPMorgan declined to comment.
Smith’s sentencing comes after three other former JPMorgan precious metals traders, John Edmonds, Christian Trunz and Jeffrey Ruffo, were also accused of masterminding an eight-year scheme to manipulate international markets for gold and silver.
Edmonds — the first on the desk to plead guilty to market manipulation back in 2018 — said that he’d work to take down his three other former colleagues, who were charged with wrongdoing in 2019.
Edmonds testified that he learned how to “spoof” trades from colleagues at JPMorgan, where he executed as many as 400 of the fraudulent transactions, which he added was “expected” of everyone on the desk.
“Our job was to do whatever it takes to make money,” he said during Smith’s trial last year.
Prosecutors alleged the precious metals desk made as many as 50,000 spoof trades under Nowak’s watch.
Trunz — Smith’s protégé who sat next to him in JPMorgan’s New York office — also pleaded guilty to the crime and skirted jail time by agreeing to cooperate with the DOJ.
Trunz was another star witness who testified during Smith’s trial last July, where he said that Smith was so fast at placing and canceling bogus orders that his colleagues would joke he needed to put ice on his fingers to cool them down, according to Bloomberg.
“This was an open strategy on the desk. It wasn’t hidden,” he said on the stand.
Ruffo, meanwhile, who was only charged with racketeering and conspiracy, was acquitted of both last August.
In 2020, JPMorgan paid $1 billion in fines for the fraud. | Banking & Finance |
Sam Bankman-Fried Won't Be the Last Crypto Mogul Behind Bars
(Bloomberg Opinion) --
If the 31-year-old’s culpability for the “pyramid of deceit” behind FTX’s collapse seemed so obvious, it’s partly because he was prosecutorial gold. You didn’t have to know what a blockchain was to comprehend his former lieutenants saying that the $8 billion of missing customer funds happened on his watch and with his knowledge. Nor did you have to grasp GAAP accounting to see that the frizzy-haired wunderkind’s own testimony contradicted his communications and electronic records. Bankman-Fried had no filter, though his lawyers might wish he had.
Having lost a lot of people a ton of money, Bankman-Fried’s lack of empathy and remorse played a big role in this trial. And that matters when committing corporate crimes: If you don’t care about other people, especially your customers, it becomes very easy to exploit them. Or, as Dan Davies put it on social media, to take a $10 billion account labeled “Not My Money” and re-label it “My Money.” There was a dangerous mindlessness to Bankman-Fried, once worth more than $15 billion, who openly played video games while giving interviews or holding meetings.
“One camp of people in my group is saying forget it, the value of crypto is zero, there’s nothing behind it,” Bjoern Jesch, the global chief investment officer of $900 billion German asset manager DWS Group, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “And there’s this other group of people saying like, hmm, I mean at least there’s a price of $35,000 for Bitcoin. Someone is paying $35,000.”
There are other parts to the story of FTX that explain the incentives beyond the individual. The crypto sub-culture, for example, and its overlap with the aggressive quantitative trading culture where Bankman-Fried cut his teeth. Few in crypto-land seemed to blink an eye at the huge amounts of leverage offered by FTX, its lack of a chief financial officer or paucity of experience among its senior managers. The exchange’s raciest growth happened offshore while US regulators focused their attention on TradFi (where everything from public-transit tickets to expenses are scrutinized these days). FTX, along with other market players, even invented its own token, FTT, and used it as cash — Bankman-Fried’s view that “money is fungible anyway” is pure crypto babble, but plenty of people bought into it until the inevitable painful contact with reality.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
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Hong Kong Is Asia's New Crypto Capital: Andy Mukherjee
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Crypto Bros Have the Fix for a $1 Trillion Problem: Tim Culpan
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Crypto Is Small But Deadly Slice of Hamas' Funds: Lionel Laurent
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Troubled China Shadow Bank Warns Of $36 Billion Shortfall
Embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co. told investors it is “severely insolvent”.
(Bloomberg) -- Embattled shadow banking giant Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co. has revealed the depth of its financial difficulties, telling investors it is “severely insolvent” with a shortfall of $36.4 billion.
The privately owned wealth manager said liquidity has dried up and the recoverable amount from asset disposals is expected to be low, according to a letter sent to investors on Wednesday seen by Bloomberg News.
Zhongzhi first triggered concern in August after one of its trust-company affiliates failed to make payments to customers on high-yield investment products. The group’s financial difficulties add to President Xi Jinping’s challenges as officials grapple with a property crisis and a weak economy.
“The government will have to step in to help, and make sure the asset disposal will be conducted in an open and fair approach,” said Sun Jianbo, founder of Beijing-based asset manager China Vision Capital, adding bad assets are typically sold with a 70% discount. “For investors, it’s a lesson with huge costs.”
An audit found Zhongzhi’s debts total 420 billion yuan to 460 billion yuan ($64.4 billion), compared with assets of 200 billion yuan, according to the letter.
The firm said the death of its founder Xie Zhikun in 2021 and the subsequent departure of senior executives had led to a failure of internal management. Previous efforts at a “self-rescue” didn’t live up to expectations, Zhongzhi said in the letter.
The company didn’t respond to a request seeking comment. The firm earlier hired KPMG to carry out what is likely to be a protracted restructuring process.
Those affected by Zhongzhi’s troubles are likely to be wealthy individuals. Shadow banks like Zhongzhi are loosely regulated firms that pool household savings to offer loans and invest in real estate, stocks, bonds and commodities. In recent years, even as rival trusts pared risks, Zhongzhi and its affiliates, especially Zhongrong International Trust Co., extended financing to troubled developers and snapped up assets from companies including China Evergrande Group.
“Preliminary due diligence shows the group has endured a significant risk of sustainable business operation and the company doesn’t have sufficient assets to cover debt in the short term,” the firm said in the letter.
--With assistance from Li Liu and David Scanlan.
(Adds analyst comment, details throughout.)
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Asia Business & Economics |
The simple way to save £1,300 this year! Money saving expert shares 52-week challenge to boost your bank accountMoney-saving expert has shared simple 52-week challenge with her TikTok fans Carly Sparkles, took to her TikTok page to share the simple money saving hackRevealing an A4 page with different coloured circles and sums of money on itThe colourful circles on the page range from £1 to £52 - one for every week Published: 06:22 EST, 16 January 2023 | Updated: 06:22 EST, 16 January 2023 A money-saving expert has shared a simple 52-week challenge which can help you to save more than £1,300 in a year.Carly Elizabeth, who is from the UK, took to her TikTok @carly_elizabeth_h to share the easy money saving challenge with her followers. Revealing an A4 page with different coloured circles and sums of money on it, she explained that each week you choose a circle and decide that's the amount you will try to save.The colourful circles on the page range from £1 to £52 - one for every week of the year. A money-saving expert, Carly Sparkles, has shared a simple 52-week challenge which can help you to save more than £1,300 in a yearIn the clip, which racked up 83,300 views on the platform, Carly reveals the hack can help you to put away enough money for a holiday, a house deposit or whatever else you're saving for.Replying to a comment which read: 'So do you just pick a circle every week that you can afford.'The TikToker explained: 'Hello yes, so you just pick a circle each week, so it could be one week you're going to do £5, one week you're going to do £20.'It's just depending on what you can afford, and you do that every week throughout the year.' Revealing an A4 page with different coloured circles and sums of money on it she explained that each week you choose a circleShe captioned the video: 'Replying to @Gillian Park each week I picked an amount I could do, I found that doing some of the higher numbers earlier on in the year helps as it's not so close to Christmas then.'In a separate video the saving guru explaining that you can carry out the challenge whether you get paid weekly or monthly.Replying to a comment which read: 'Can you help with a plan for monthly payments.' Many people rushed to the comments with plenty saying they're going to try it out for themselvesShe replied: 'So I am the same I actually get paid every four weeks and I still did this challenge based on my monthly payments.'So what I would do is see what I have been paid that month, work out what I can afford to spare that month and then choose four different amounts from that, i hope this helps. 'She captioned the clip: 'Replying to @skyedryburgh for monthly wages, you can work out what you have spare that month and choose 4 amounts based on that and then select 1 to do each week.'Many people rushed to the comments with plenty saying they're going to try it out for themselves. One person wrote: 'I am going to try this one x'To which Carly wrote: 'Good luck! I think this one is a good one to do.'Another wrote: 'So is it basically numbers 1 to 52? So the highest amount u will save one week is 52 Pound ? Thanks'To which Carly replied: 'Yes that's it numbers 1 up to 52 and you pick an amount each week to put aside x.'While someone else wrote: 'How much does it add up to' and Carly replied: 'It adds up to £1,378 x' Advertisement | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Fortis Malar Hospitals To Sell Malar Hospital In Chennai For Rs 45.5 Crore To MGM Healthcare
Adjunct to this transaction, the OPD and radio diagnostics business operations related to the Malar Hospital, including the land and building, and the adjacent land parcels, are also being divested by two wholly owned subsidiaries of Fortis Healthcare Ltd -- Fortis Health Management Ltd, and Hospitalia Eastern Pvt Ltd -- to MGM, it added.
Fortis Malar Hospitals Ltd on Friday said it will sell Malar Hospital at Gandhi Nagar in Chennai for Rs 45.5 crore to MGM Healthcare Pvt Ltd.
The company has signed a definitive agreement for the sale of its business operations pertaining to Malar Hospital at Gandhi Nagar, Adyar, Chennai, to MGM Healthcare (MGM), a prominent healthcare delivery service provider, Fortis Malar Hospitals Ltd said in a regulatory filing.
The sale consideration is about Rs 45.5 crore, it added.
Adjunct to this transaction, the OPD and radio diagnostics business operations related to the Malar Hospital, including the land and building, and the adjacent land parcels, are also being divested by two wholly owned subsidiaries of Fortis Healthcare Ltd -- Fortis Health Management Ltd, and Hospitalia Eastern Pvt Ltd -- to MGM, it added.
Fortis Healthcare owns a 62.7 per equity stake in Fortis Malar Hospitals.
The transaction will be an all-cash deal and is expected to be consummated by the end of January, subject to certain conditions, including the approvals from shareholders of both the company and Fortis Healthcare, the filing added.
On the reasons for the sales of the Malar Hospital, that has around 140 beds, the company said it has been facing certain legacy issues.
"Over the past few years, with continuous efforts, several of these issues have been resolved. However, some of the legacy aspects continue to persist, which have given rise to certain challenges for the company and constrained further investments into the facility," it said.
The matter has accentuated the need for the company to divest its business as a viable and prudent option for its stakeholders, Fortis Malar Hospitals added.
"After a number of deliberations amongst the management and the board, the proposed divestment of business operations of the Malar Hospital seems to be a practical solution in the interest of all stakeholders," Fortis Malar Hospitals Non-Executive Chairman Daljit Singh said.
For MGM, the proposed acquisition is in line with its strategy to further expand its presence in Chennai, in addition to its two quaternary care hospitals with a combined bed capacity of about 600 beds at present and another 450-bed greenfield hospital under development.
"As a part of our long-term growth and expansion plans, MGM Healthcare has been investing in both greenfield and existing facilities to enhance care and clinical offerings for a broader patient population," MGM Healthcare Managing Director Prashanth Rajagopalan said.
He further said the acquisition is a crucial step in "our planned capacity expansion nationwide, allowing us to extend our commitment to providing the best in quality, affordable and personalised healthcare".
"With this acquisition, we would bring our total bed count in Chennai to approximately 800 beds," Rajagopalan added. | India Business & Economics |
What was claimed
A video shows Mr Starmer promoting an investment scheme for UK residents.
Our verdict
False. The video is not genuine and appears to have been altered using artificial intelligence.
A video shows Mr Starmer promoting an investment scheme for UK residents.
False. The video is not genuine and appears to have been altered using artificial intelligence.
A video circulating on Facebook appears to show Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer promoting an investment scheme. However, this video is not genuine and the audio on it appears to have been altered using artificial intelligence (AI).
The video starts with footage of what is supposedly Mr Starmer talking directly to the camera before showing a montage of different clips as the audio plays over the top. He says he is promoting a “new platform that offers a unique opportunity for residents of the United Kingdom to earn passive income”.
It has been shared with the caption: “A special initiative by the UK government for all British citizens! Act fast before slows fill up!”, and overlaid text says: “Earn up to £40,000 monthly! Start today with just £250 and make £1,000 on your very first day!”
However, a spokesperson for Mr Starmer has confirmed to Full Fact that this video is not genuine.
We could not find any reports by either the government or reliable sources describing such an investment scheme.
It appears that the footage is actually a deepfake video created by cloning Mr Starmer’s voice. Deepfake content refers to the use of artificial intelligence to create original images, audio and videos that can be used to convincingly imitate real people.
The deepfake appears to have used video from Mr Starmer’s real 2023 New Year address, which has different audio.
The fake audio also repeatedly pronounces the pound sign before its corresponding number, for example saying “pounds 35,000” rather than “35,000 pounds''. This would be a very unlikely mistake for a native English speaker, such as Mr Starmer, to make multiple times.
Mike Russell, founder of the audio production company Music Radio Creative and a certified audio professional with more than 25 years of experience, told Full Fact that “the use of ‘pounds’ really gives it away”.
However, he warned that this type of deepfake audio can be “easy for anyone to make” and that voice cloning is becoming increasingly “hard to detect”.
In the video, the area around Mr Starmer’s mouth appears to be blurry or smudged. Dr Dominic Lees, convenor of the University of Reading’s Synthetic Media Research Network, previously told Full Fact that this is a telltale sign videos have been poorly lip synced.
Referring to a different deepfake video allegedly showing BBC presenters promoting an investment scheme, he explained how AI “finds it very difficult to generate a natural look in the teeth so often leave this blurry and out-of-focus.”
We’ve written about other examples of audio clips that Full Fact has found no evidence are real, such as one supposedly recording Mr Starmer swearing at his staff and another of Sadiq Khan appearing to call for ‘Remembrance weekend’ to be postponed.
The emergence of realistic deepfake material exposes the increased challenges of verification posed by new technology and the challenge of ensuring an effective and proportionate response by social media platforms on such content.
Misinformation spreads quickly online so it’s especially important to consider whether something is likely to be genuine before sharing.
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Image courtesy of Rwendland
Full Fact fights for good, reliable information in the media, online, and in politics. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Fedfina Announces Rs 1,092 Crore IPO; Sees No Impact Of RBI Norms On Issue
Fedfina, a subsidiary of south-based Federal Bank, has set a price band of Rs 133-140 per share.
Fedbank Financial Services on Friday said it plans to raise up to Rs 1,092-crore through an initial public offering opening on Nov. 22.
The Reserve Bank's circular increasing the risk weights on unsecured lending will increase the borrowing costs, but the negative market sentiment will not impact the offering, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Anil Kothuri told reporters.
Fedfina, a subsidiary of south-based Federal Bank, has set a price band of Rs 133-140 per share for the issue which comes amid a raft of other issuances before the holiday season and the next year's general elections. The issue will open for three days starting Nov. 22.
The offer consists of fresh issue of Rs 600 crore, while the rest is offer for sale under which existing shareholders, including Federal Bank and homegrown private equity fund True North are exiting.
Kothuri said that post issue, Federal Bank's overall holding will come down to 61 per cent from the present 73%, while True North's holding will come down to 8.5 per cent from the present 25%.
The new investors will hold over 31% of shares post-issue. True North had first invested in the company in Nov. 2018 at Rs 42 per share, while the last fund raising by the company was a rights issue in Nov. 2021, when shares were subscribed at Rs 70, Kothuri said.
The overall capital adequacy for the company, which does mortgage and gold lending, will go up to over 25% post-issue from the present 19%, Kothuri said.
At present, about 16% of the overall Rs 9,300 crore loan book is unsecured business loans, and Kothuri said the RBI's revised norms on risk weights will impact the company as borrowing costs may go up.
However, he exuded confidence that it will not impact the IPO as the negative sentiment –shares of a slew of financiers are down today - is for the short term and an IPO investor will buy into the long term potential.
Its chief financial officer C V Ganesh said the company's unsecured lending exposure is not personal loans, which the RBI seems to be looking to curtail, but loans to small business owners done by seeing the cash flow. Therefore, there is a need for greater clarity, he underlined.
The Federal Bank scrip closed 1.40% down at Rs 148 on the BSE on Friday as against a 0.28% correction on the benchmark. | Banking & Finance |
People are being made homeless because housing benefits are not keeping up with rental costs, charities have said.
A survey in February of private properties advertised for rent in Wales found that only 32 out of 2,638 could be covered by housing benefits.
The Bevan Foundation, which conducted the survey has said the UK government needs to increase benefits.
The UK government said it gave a £1bn boost to housing benefit rates in 2020 and maintained that level ever since.
Mario, 65, from Swansea, thinks he is one of the lucky ones, despite being made homeless when his partner died and finding himself in temporary accommodation with no cooking facilities.
With the help of the charity Crisis, he found a flat two months ago.
"I've got somewhere warm to stay, somewhere where I can cook my own food, somewhere where I can shut the door," he said.
"It means the world to me because I was in such a bad place, I didn't know where I was going to go, I was having really dark thoughts."
Now Mario is decorating his new flat and making the most of his kitchen, where he is looking forward to cooking and entertaining friends again.
"Having my own place and being able to put my own stamp on it, make it mine and get back into things and reassess my life. It means the world to me." he said.
But his housing benefit doesn't entirely cover the rent, leaving him £75 short every month.
Mario can just about afford to top it up using his pension.
"It's a bit tight, but it's my own place and you've just got to reassess your finances." he said.
"It is difficult for other people who are not as fortunate as myself to have that little bit of spare cash in order to get a place, otherwise you'd be on the housing list forever and a day."
People who claim housing benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit for privately rented properties get an amount determined by a formula called the Local Housing Allowance (LHA).
It was designed to cover rental costs for the cheapest 30% of private properties in a given area, but it has been frozen since April 2020, despite rents continuing to increase.
In the year to April, private sector rents in Wales rose by 4.8%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) - the biggest annual percentage increase since the ONS started measuring the data in Wales in 2010
Debbie Thomas, head of policy in Wales for Crisis, said: "Rents are really difficult and it's really hard for people to find the money to keep a roof over their heads."
She said the UK government needed to "to get with the times, to get with the soaring cost of living so that people can start to use housing benefit for what it's meant to be for, to have somewhere safe you can call home".
The Bevan Foundation's Steffan Evans said the current situation left people with "really difficult choices" which risk them over-extending financially or settling for "really poor-quality accommodation because that's all they can afford".
Mr Evans said more than 10,000 people in Wales were living in temporary accommodation, a figure which had increased by 25% in the past 12 months, with "the problem around LHA is absolutely one of the drivers of that".
The UK government said the April 2020 LHA increased provided more than "a million people with an extra £600 a year on average".
"The UK government is also giving an extra £50 million to help people in Wales with essential costs," it added. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
ITR Filing By Individuals Grows 90% To 6.37 Crore In Annual Year 2021-22
There has been a 291% increase in ITRs filed by individuals with gross total income between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh.
The income tax department on Thursday said I-T returns filed by individual taxpayers have risen 90% in 8 years to 6.37 crore in AY 2021-22, indicating a widening of the taxpayer base.
The returns filed by individual taxpayers have increased from 3.36 crore in Assessment Year (AY) 2013-14 to 6.37 crore in AY 2021-22, registering an overall increase of 90 per cent. During the current fiscal too, 7.41 crore returns have been filed for AY 2023-24 till date, including 53 lakh first-time filers, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement.
Giving a breakup of the returns filed by individual taxpayers across various ranges of gross total income, the CBDT said the ITRs filed by individual taxpayers earning between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh have increased 295 per cent during the period from AY 2013-14 to AY 2021-22.
There has been a 291% increase in ITRs filed by individuals with gross total income between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 25 lakh.
"This indicates that individual taxpayers are showing a positive trend of migration to a higher range of gross total income," the CBDT said.
In the range of gross total income of up to Rs 5 lakh, the number of returns filed by individual taxpayers has increased from 2.62 crore in AY 2013-14 to 3.47 crore in AY 2021-22, registering an increase of 32 per cent. This range of income includes individuals having income below the taxable limit who may not be filing returns.
A further analysis of the data of individual taxpayers for AY 2013-14 and AY 2021-22 showed that the average gross total income for individual taxpayers increased from about Rs 4.5 lakh in AY 2013-14 to about Rs 7 lakh in AY 2021-22 representing an increase of 56%.
The increase in average gross total income for the top 1% of individual taxpayers is 42%, while that for the bottom 25% of individual taxpayers is 58%.
The proportionate contribution of the gross total income of the top 1% of individual taxpayers vis-à-vis all individual taxpayers has decreased from 15.9% in AY 2013-14 to 14.6% in AY 2021-22.
The proportionate contribution of the gross total income of the bottom 25 per cent of individual taxpayers vis-à-vis all individual taxpayers has increased from 8.3% in AY 2013-14 to 8.4% in AY 2021-22.
The proportion of gross total income of the middle 74% group of individual taxpayers increased from 75.8% to 77% during the period.
"…data is clearly indicative of a robust growth in the gross total income of individuals across different income groups subsequent to AY 2013-14. The overall impact has been reflected in an increase in net direct tax collections from Rs 6.38 lakh crore in FY 2013-14 to Rs 16.61 lakh crore in FY 2022-23," the CBDT said.
The 2023-24 budget has pegged direct tax collection at a little over Rs 18.23 lakh crore, a 9.75% higher than Rs 16.61 lakh crore mopped up in the last fiscal. | India Business & Economics |
- In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Branson said his business empire no longer has "the deepest pockets" in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
- Virgin Investments remains the second-largest shareholder in Virgin Galactic, according to LSEG data, with a 7.69% holding, behind State Street Global Advisors with 8.43%.
Virgin Galactic shares plunged more than 17% Monday, after British billionaire Richard Branson ruled out further investment in the company.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Sunday, Branson said that his sprawling business empire no longer has "the deepest pockets" in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, adding that Virgin Galactic should have "sufficient funds to do its job on its own."
Virgin Galactic shares finished down 17.5%.
The company, founded by Branson in 2004, last month announced job cuts and the suspension of commercial flights for 18 months by mid-2024.
The cost-cutting is part of a plan to save cash to develop a larger spacecraft, dubbed Delta, that aims to take passengers past the edge of space. The group estimated that its current funding would carry it through to 2026, when Delta is scheduled to enter service.
Virgin Investments remains the second-largest shareholder in Virgin Galactic, according to LSEG data, with a 7.69% holding, behind the 8.43% of State Street Global Advisors. | Stocks Trading & Speculation |
Rising temperatures “are likely to be beneficial” for Britain because seven times more people in the UK die from cold than from heat, Lord Frost has said.
The former Brexit negotiator said the fall in deaths related to cold temperatures had “more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperatures” since the start of the millennium, calling on the Government to tackle climate change differently.
He told the Lords it was the “rational thing” to “move away from the current high-cost mitigation efforts, efforts which also involve huge investments in unproductive renewables, huge changes in lifestyles as well as crushing economic growth”.
Lord Frost said mitigation should be pursued by “investing in effective energy production, nuclear, gas, other technologies as they emerge, and meanwhile spend the manageable sums that we need to on adaptation so we can adjust to the perfectly manageable consequences of slowly rising temperatures as they emerge”.
He said: “Now, I’m not sceptical about adaptation. I’m sceptical about mitigation.”
His comments come as the Conservative Party becomes engulfed in a row about its net zero commitments.
After Labour failed to win the Uxbridge by-election amid a voter backlash against the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) under Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor, there have been calls from within the Tory party for it to rethink some of its own climate change policies.
In an interview, Rishi Sunak said the Government would “make progress towards net zero” but “in a proportionate and pragmatic way”, declining to explicitly say that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would go ahead in 2030 as planned.
Campaigners have said it is the wrong time to falter on net zero commitments, pointing to record global temperatures last week and wildfires raging across the Greek island of Rhodes as evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change.
Lord Frost said that in the UK “more will need to be spent on things like flood protection and reservoirs”, but added: “Digging deeper, what are those consequences of the hotter, warmer summers and warmer, wetter winters? At the moment, seven times as many people die from cold as from heat in Britain. Rising temperatures are likely to be beneficial.
“The Government Actuary’s Department, no less, wrote in April this year, and I quote: ‘It is the low winter temperatures that have a greater effect on the number of deaths.’
“Since the start of the millennium, a decline in deaths from cold temperature periods has more than offset any increase in the number of deaths associated with warmer temperature over the same period.”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, a Green Party peer, accused Lord Frost of reading “Right-wing conspiracy theories” and making “denialist tropes”.
Lord Callanan, the energy minister, said: “Adaptation and net zero in fact go hand-in-hand – achieving net zero actually requires adaptation. We have a huge opportunity to make the substantial net zero investments that are resilient to current and future climate change risks and doing so can, of course, prevent future higher costs.
“Let me, for the avoidance of any doubt, confirm that delivering net zero is of course vitally important to this Government.” | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
An Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund is poised to take control of the Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine.
RedBird IMI said it had agreed to provide loans to repay debts owed by the publication's previous owners, the Barclay family, that would bring the titles out of receivership.
If the deal is approved then Redbird IMI's chief executive, former CNN boss Jeff Zucker, would run the business.
However, any deal is likely to face close regulatory scrutiny.
It comes five months after the Telegraph and Spectator were taken over by Lloyds bank as it sought to recover debts owed by Barclay brothers.
Lloyds launched a sales process of the business to recover more than £1bn that was outstanding.
However, on Monday the investment fund, which is a joint venture between US firm RedBird Capital and International Media Investments (IMI) of Abu Dhabi, confirmed it had reached a deal with the Barclays.
This would see the debts owed to Lloyds repaid, and the news titles taken out of receivership.
RedBird IMI will lend the Barclays £600m, secured against the publications, with IMI also providing a similar sized loan against other Barclay-owned assets.
Under the terms of the deal Redbird has the right to turn the loan secured against the Telegraph and Spectator into equity, which would hand it control of the titles.
A spokesman said it planned to "exercise this option at an early opportunity".
Other bidders interested in the publications are seeking clarity on whether the auction process will still go ahead. They are also exploring legal options to ensure RedBird IMI's Gulf backers are subject to the same levels of regulatory scrutiny their bids would have been subject to.
The BBC understands the Culture and Media Secretary, Lucy Frazer, has held discussions with other interested parties on this issue today.
'Material influence'
On Sunday, six Conservative MPs wrote to Deputy PM Oliver Dowden and the business and culture secretaries to raise concerns about how RedBird IMI's offer could affect national security and press freedom.
They said International Media Investments was owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Emirati royal family and the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates.
The MPs wrote: "Material influence over a quality national newspaper being passed to a foreign ruler at any time should raise concerns, but given the current geopolitical context, such a deal must be investigated."
In its statement, Redbird IMI said that following the transfer of ownership, RedBird Capital alone would take over the management of the titles. It added that International Media Investments "will be a passive investor only".
It added: "RedBird IMI are entirely committed to maintaining the existing editorial team of the Telegraph and Spectator publications and believe that editorial independence for these titles is essential to protecting their reputation and credibility."
Other names have been linked to the Telegraph and Spectator since they were put up for sale including GB News investor Sir Paul Marshall, Daily Mail publisher DMGT and German publisher Axel Springer. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Abolishing complex relief on inheritance tax and raising the threshold to £1m could win the Tories next year’s general election – just like it did in 2010 – according to MPs.
The South Cambridgeshire MP Anthony Browne, said the Government should scrap the £175,000 relief on family homes and raise the threshold instead.
It comes as YouGov’s latest voting poll shows the Conservatives currently hold just around 24pc of the vote, with Labour in the lead at 46pc.
In a blog post on Conservative Home, Browne, who chairs the Backbench Treasury Committee, recalled the “huge political debate” over inheritance tax in 2009.
He said he suggested to then-shadow chancellor George Osborne that upping the inheritance tax threshold to £1m would be a vote winner. A few weeks later, Osbourne announced the policy as part of the Tories’ election campaign.
Browne said: “The proposal changed the political narrative so much that it transformed the Tories from looking like losers to looking like winners.”
But while Osbourne did increase the threshold to £1m after the Tories regained power, the policy came with a number of caveats.
Inheritance tax is charged at 40pc on wealth over £325,000. Individuals then have an extra £175,000 allowance towards their main residence if it is passed to children or grandchildren, and spouses can share their allowances. This takes the allowance to £1m between a married couple.
With Labour in the lead, Browne says the Government could win voters by implementing the 2009 policy properly.
He said the Government should remove the family homes relief and raise the entire inheritance tax threshold to £1m.
“A million pounds is not as much now as it was in 2009, but is still a good number,” he wrote.
He added: “Abolition would certainly be popular among Tory MPs, many of whom are adamant they want to scrap it, rather than reform it.
“[The tax] has created a whole industry of estate planners that enable the wealthiest to pay less than middle class families.”
The Telegraph, along with some 50 MPs, is calling on the Government to abolish inheritance tax.
Originally designed for the wealthiest, the tax is now affecting more middle-class families because house prices have grown but the tax-free allowances have been frozen since 2009.
Inheritance tax is a significant source of revenue for the Treasury. Grieving families paid a record £7.1bn in inheritance tax in 2022-23.
Conservative MP for South Thanet and chartered tax adviser Craig Mackinlay agreed that “substantial changes” to inheritance tax would be electorally popular.
He said with a growing number of competitor jurisdictions scrapping the tax – including “socially democratic” Sweden – the time has come wholesale reform.
Mackinlay added: “There are few other taxes which create such behavioural effects as inheritance tax, hence why it is so despised and planned for.
“The problem is that mitigation is easier for the very wealthy rather than the middle classes, whose primary asset may be the family home and little else – so seven-year gifts are difficult.
“A substantial uplift to the starting threshold would be a good start.”
Conservative MP for Dudley North, Marco Longhi, said he supports the lowering or abolition of taxes “of any kind”.
He added: “As a Conservative, I support a smaller state and allowing people to keep more of their own money. With inheritance tax, this is especially the case as people have already paid taxes on the money they have earned and intend to leave behind.”
But Longhi reckons his party could go even further with its promises before the next general election.
He said: “Taxpayers will vote on policies that will make them better off today. Personal taxes, VAT, and corporation tax would be my targets, as these have the dual benefit of stimulating economic growth and being less inflationary.” | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
UK’s Fast-Growing Wages Put Another Jumbo Rate Hike on the Cards
Analysts at firms including Saxo Bank A/S and TD Securities said policymakers could boost the size of next month’s interest-rate increase to 50 basis points after data showed wages grew at the fastest pace on record.
Traders are once again entertaining the prospect of an outsized interest-rate hike in the UK, setting the nation’s battered bond market up for further losses.
Analysts at firms including Saxo Bank A/S and TD Securities said policymakers could boost the size of next month’s interest-rate increase to 50 basis points after data showed wages grew at the fastest pace on record.
Money markets now imply almost one-in-three odds of a half-point hike in September. Before the data, not even a quarter-point increase was fully priced.
The UK bond market is the worst performing in the developed world this year, with 10-year yields up 94 basis points. That’s almost three times as much as similar-dated US Treasuries and eight times the move in German bonds.
A half-point hike is now a “possibility,” said Althea Spinozzi, senior fixed-income strategist at Saxo Bank in a Bloomberg TV interview. “That’s going to be extremely bad for the bond market, because at this point bond investors will need to price more premium in yields.”
The BOE slowed the pace of tightening to a quarter-point clip this month after delivering a half-point increase in June.
Accelerating the pace of tightening would widen the gulf between the BOE’s policy and Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, both of which are drawing close to the end of their rate-hike cycle.
Swaps tied to central bank meeting dates imply 84 basis points of additional hikes in the UK, compared with 24 basis points for the euro zone and around half of that for the US.
Read more: Record UK Wage Growth Keeps Bank of England on Hike Path
The BOE’s next move largely depends on UK inflation data due Wednesday as well as a nation-wide print due a day before officials meet to set policy on Sep. 21. Economists expect UK inflation will fall again when July’s data is released.
The Consumer Prices Index is forecast to slide to 6.7%, the lowest since the start of last year but still more than triple the BOE’s 2% target.
While “flipping back and forth between 25bps and 50bps is unlikely,” according to Derek Halpenny, head of global markets research for EMEA at MUFG Bank, he said yields will push higher ahead of tomorrow’s inflation data.
UK bonds fell Tuesday with the policy-sensitive two-year yield rising as much as 12 basis points to 5.20%, the highest in four weeks. German bonds were also dragged down, with the 10-year yield rising to the highest since March.
“The MPC will now almost surely hike by at least 25bps in September,” said James Rossiter, head of global macro strategy at TD Securities. “And we should absolutely not rule out a 50bps hike should the CPI data or indeed next month’s wage data surprise further to the upside.”
--With assistance from Anchalee Worrachate and Greg Ritchie.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | Interest Rates |
Cybercriminals can be inventive—especially if there’s money on the table. One hacker has penned a 50-page essay on how to invest in cryptocurrency and sell at the right time to make a profit. Another put together a guide for how to create a fake version of blockchain.com that could be used to steal people’s usernames and passwords. And another produced instructions—cryptically titled “Elegantly breed daddies on lavender”—explaining how to scam money from people who pay to watch webcam models perform.The unusual collection of documents and tutorials were all produced by cybercriminals and hackers trying to win money for their ideas, technical skills, and writing ability. Once they finish their articles, they submit them to be judged in competitions on Russian-language cybercrime forums. These contests, which can pay out thousands of dollars, are one of the forums’ more peculiar aspects.For more than a decade, Russian-language cybercrime forums—which largely exist for trading stolen data, touting new security vulnerabilities, and connecting criminals—have run contests allowing their members to make some extra cash and gain some kudos in the process. A new analysis by cybersecurity firm Sophos is shedding some light on how these contests run and how they’ve rapidly grown in size in the last few years. For those entering, there’s the potential of a decent payday: $80,000 USD was the total prize pot in one recent contest.“You can tell some people put a lot of work into these,” says Christopher Budd, director of threat research at Sophos X-Ops. “Sometimes what people present isn't necessarily the newest or most original stuff. But it's stuff that is interesting or in some way has appeal to the audience.”In the analysis, Sophos researcher Matt Wixey examined the most recent contests on the cybercrime forums Exploit and XSS. The forums’ administrators announce the contests and ask people to submit written articles. While the entries are most often in Russian, Budd says, sometimes forum members will translate them into English to be “a good community member.”The most recent competition on XSS was held between March and July 2022. There was a general prize pot of $40,000—up from $15,000 the previous year. The Sophos analysis says the contest was general, with forum members being asked to submit entries on around half a dozen topics. Malware development, methods for dodging antivirus and security products, ways of hiding malicious code, and social engineering techniques were all included in the list.Meanwhile, Exploit’s last contest offered more prize money—$80,000 in total—but was more specific, asking for entries on cryptocurrency attacks, thefts, and vulnerabilities in April 2021. One sub-genre of the theme was “security of working with cryptocurrencies, except for banal things.”“It's another way that the criminal world is mirroring and adapting and adopting best practices from the legitimate side of the business,” says Budd. He compares some of the processes and entries as akin to those of legitimate cybersecurity research conferences and events, such as Black Hat, Defcon, and Pwn2Own. Unlike cybersecurity researchers who find issues to make products and services more secure before sharing their research for others to learn from, the criminals are producing the work with malicious intent.The criminal contests have their own rules to reduce the chance of cheating, Budd says. On Exploit, the rules say the entries “must not have been published elsewhere,” should be “meaningful and voluminous,” they should include technical details such as code or algorithms, and be “at least 5,000 characters (excluding spaces).” That equals out to around 1,000 words, or the rough length of this WIRED article. The rules on XSS are similar—“copy-paste = expulsion from the contest, in disgrace”—but they require articles to be longer (at least 7,000 characters) and say there should be “proper formatting, spelling, and punctuation.”However, scammers are going to scam. In their most recent contests, Exploit had 35 entries and XSS had 38 entries. But XSS disqualified 10 of them. The winners of the competitions are decided by forum members voting on the entries, but the sites’ admins can also pick the winners, and there have been complaints of vote rigging, according to Sophos.These competitions have evolved and grown over time, Budd says. Previous research from cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows, which has since been acquired by ReliaQuest, shows that contests on cybercrime forums started around 2006. Roman Faithfull, a cyber-threat intelligence analyst at ReliaQuest, says these earliest competitions were very simple. “At the start, they were quite low-key,” Faithfull says. “They weren't always organized by forum administrators.”Some of the earliest competitions, he says, asked forum members to design logos or even offered a small monetary prize to the commenter on a forum thread who had the longest account history on the site. “As forums became more sophisticated, the contests in general became more sophisticated,” Faithfull says.Since around 2015, the contests, most of which are held annually, have focused on writing and submitting articles and code, the ReliaQuest researcher says. “There's a lot of focus on stuff that will make people money,” he adds. As this has happened, the prize pots have increased too: On XSS, the total prize pot was $1,000 in 2018 and rose to $40,000 with $14,000 for the winner in 2021. “No one is going to put out their absolute best stuff into this unless they're in a really hard spot and need some quick cash,” Faithfull says. “You're unlikely to see a ransomware group, or really, someone really high up.”The content of the entries to the most recent two contests is reasonably broad, the Sophos research found. Some were more innovative, while others were essentially repeating information found elsewhere. The winning entry in Exploit’s 2021 crypto competition was the creation of the cloned blockchain.com website, with Sophos saying it is “relatively simplistic” overall. “A cloned site like this would typically be used like any other phishing or credential-harvesting site,” the research says.Other winning entries or those getting honorable mentions in the Exploit competition focused on targeting initial coin offerings, a guide to creating a phishing site to steal people’s cryptocurrency account details, and a tutorial on creating a cryptocurrency from scratch. However, it is worth noting that there have been free and publicly available tutorials on how to do this for several years,” the Sophos research says.One entry into the XSS competition detailed the author's experience attacking Microsoft’s Active Directory service and how to hide hacking tools from Windows’ antivirus systems. The winning XSS entry, though, centered on vulnerabilities in electronic payment systems; it also highlighted one vulnerability in the XSS forum that allowed people to “effectively generate cryptocurrency out of thin air,” the Sophos research says. Only one article focused on hardware. The author wrote a guide to creating a hardware cryptocurrency wallet and included photographs and CAD drawings. It isn’t cybercrime-specific, and instead tries to keep people’s bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies safe from attacks, the research says.“These are good for helping us to understand what people in the criminal underground are looking at, broadly speaking,” Budd says, adding he believes the main purpose of the contests for the forums is to encourage community. Multiple cybercrime forums of different sizes are operating at any one time, and if a forum has better conversation, technical information, and offers incentives, then there’s a greater chance people will keep coming back.But the contests may also help to feed into more organized cybercrime groups. The prize money for the contests is often put up by the forum owners, but it can also be provided by prominent cybercrime gangs—including All World Cards and the LockBit ransomware group. The XSS competition in 2022 was sponsored by one threat actor using the handle Alan Wake, which has been linked to the Conti ransomware group by some. “If your sponsor likes your article,” one post read, “after the end of the competition you will be offered a highly paid job in the Alan Wake team.” | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders steering campaign money to a nonprofit founded by two of his close family members raises "legitimate concern," according to a watchdog.
Fox News Digital reported last week that the independent senator in January and March transferred $200,000 in donor cash to the Sanders Institute, which his wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, and stepson, David Driscoll, co-founded in 2017.
The Sanders Institute appears to perform minimal work while paying out six figures in salary and other compensation to Driscoll, according to its most recent tax forms from 2021.
"The facts present in this case and the family ties involved certainly raise legitimate concern," Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, told Fox News Digital. "Obviously, a senator is not allowed to use his campaign to simply transfer large sums of money to family members — regardless of the route the dollars take."
"While on its face the percentage the nonprofit paid out in salary alone is not necessarily problematic, legally the issue hinges on whether the salaries were paid for bona fide services at fair market value," Arnold said. "In other words, if the nonprofit and its executive director are truly producing work and actually earning the money, it is not illegal, but it is frowned upon. On the other hand, if nothing or very little is being done to legitimately earn the money, then it is highly likely a serious campaign finance violation has taken place."
It's unclear precisely what the nonprofit has accomplished. In its 2021 tax forms, the Sanders Institute reported dropping $159,885 into developing The Timeline Project, which it described as a "policy-focused resource based on Bernie Sanders' work over four decades" that would be one of the "key pilars [sic] of the website."
That expense, however, appears never to have transpired. The website does not contain anything along the lines of "policy-focused resource" as described in its documents.
The institute also reported disbursing nearly $89,000 for a news website, a matching amount for social media and content creation, and $17,765 for a gathering that never occurred due to the pandemic.
But despite the content creation costs, many of the blog posts on its website are primarily taken from and credited to other sources. Its YouTube page has uploaded just two short videos this year. Its profile on X, formerly Twitter, also mostly appears to push external news articles and opinion pieces from its fellows.
The Sanders Institute also did not identify sending any grant money to other liberal groups in its most recent tax documents despite Jane Sanders saying its purpose was to "revitalize democracy in the support of progressive institutions" at its launch.
Meanwhile, Sanders's most recent cash transfers were not the first to his wife and stepson's institute. In 2021, his presidential committee sent $350,000 to the nonprofit, according to federal filings. The funds accounted for nearly half the $716,000 in donations the group raised that year, while Driscoll collected $152,653 in compensation.
Fox News Digital has yet to receive any answers on the matter. The Sanders Institute never responded to questions about the campaign cash and their work or accomplishments. The Sanders campaign also did not explain why they had wired the donor cash to the institute. | Nonprofit, Charities, & Fundraising |
Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs will cost more in the new year as Girl Scout cookies become the latest victim of inflation.
The beloved American treats, which are generally sold through registered Girl Scout councils from January through April, will go for $6 this cookie season in some states — up from $5 last year.
At least one New York chapter, the Girl Scouts Heart of Hudson, is among the troops implementing the $1 increase when starts selling cookies on Feb. 1, 2024, according to CNN.
The chapter’s interim CEO Helen Wronski notified the outlet that “in order to combat rising production and material costs, GSHH will be increasing the price of all cookie packages to $6.”
“We expect our neighboring councils to announce similar increases in the coming weeks and months,” Wronski added.
The Girl Scouts of Western New York had already implemented the $1 increase, saying in a Jan. 31 notice that “inflation is taking a toll.”
“Due to the increasing costs of supplies, shipping and fuel, GSWNY has had to make a tough decision, like many other companies, to increase,” the troop said.
Wronski also pointed to Girl Scouts’ cookie supplier, Little Brownie Bakers, as reason for the price increase.
“Unfortunately, both LBB and GSHH are not immune to inflation, and costs have risen for all aspects of the business,” Wronski said, according to CNN.
The Girl Scouts of Oregon and Southwest Washington announced last year that their beloved treats were increasing to $6 per box, and Boston’s Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts announced that they’d be joining in on the price hike just this week.
The cookie season for the GSOSW and GSEM start on Jan. 26, 2024, and Dec. 13, 2024, respectively.
The Girl Scouts of Louisiana-Pines raised its prices by $1 during the 2022 season, though the increase brought its core cookies to $5 and specialty varieties, like S’mores and Toffee-Tastic, to $6.
The Girl Scouts of Northern California were among the first to change its prices, announcing ahead of last year’s cookie season that core cookies like Trefoils and Do-si-dos would be $6, while the cost of specialty cookies would be reduced — meaning all cookie flavors are $6.
The GSNorCal said at the time that the price increase was “necessary to make progress towards balancing our budget,” and noted the the troop hadn’t raised its prices in eight years.
“Each of our 111 Girl Scout councils sets local Girl Scout Cookie prices based on several factors,” a spokesperson for Girl Scouts of the USA told CNN.
“In some instances, councils are faced with the tough decision to raise the prices, though prices have remained steady in many areas for a number of years.”
The Post has sought comment from the Girl Scouts of the USA and its cookie provider, Little Brownie Bakers.
Consumers lately have been spending less on discretionary items in response to economic uncertainty spurred by inflation, which rose a surprisingly stiff 3.7% last month — still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
However, one particular cookie from the 2022 season serves as hope that the price increase won’t deter Americans from buying up Girl Scout cookies this year — the Raspberry Rally.
The online-only addition to the Girl Scout lineup made its debut on Feb. 27, 2023, and was described as a “sister” cookie to the beloved Thin Mint thanks to its crispy inside and same chocolatey coating.
The inside, however, boasted a raspberry flavor instead of mint that saw the popular cookie flavor selling out within hours of its launch.
In fact, $5 boxes of the Raspberry Rally were so in demand that the variety was being sold on the secondary market on sites like eBay for as much as $199.97 despite the Girl Scouts marking all cookie packages as “not for resale.” | Inflation |
Millionaire Sam Blyth, a distant relative of Mr Johnson, allegedly stepped in to acted as a guarantor to up to £800,000 of credit to fund the ex-PM’s his lavish lifestyle when he found himself in financial trouble in 2020Video LoadingVideo UnavailableBoris Johnson says Richard Sharp controversy is ‘nonsense’ The BBC Chairman has ordered an internal inquiry into potential conflicts of interests amid claims he helped Boris Johnson to secure a loan of up to £800,000. Millionaire Sam Blyth, a relative of Mr Johnson, allegedly stepped in to act as a guarantor for up to £800,000 of credit to fund the ex-PM’s lavish lifestyle when he found himself in financial trouble in 2020, according to the Sunday Times. Richard Sharp, a former Tory donor who was appointed as chair while Mr Johnson as in No10, became embroiled in the row when he admitted to introducing the ex-PM's distant Canadian cousin to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case. In a statement to BBC staff, he apologised for his involvement which he said had become a "distraction for the organisation" and said he had asked for a scrutiny panel to examine potential conflicts of interest. Commissioner for Public Appointments William Shawcross has also said he would review the competition which led to Mr Sharp's appointment. Ex-PM Mr Johnson dismissed the reports as "absolute rubbish" today - and said Mr Sharp knew nothing about his finances. In a lengthy note, Mr Sharp admitted introducing his "old friend" Mr Blyth to civil service boss Simon Case "as Sam wanted to support Boris Johnson". He said: "Prior to my appointment, I introduced an old friend of mine - and distant cousin of the then prime minister - Sam Blythe (sic), to the Cabinet Secretary, as Sam wanted to support Boris Johnson. BBC Chairman Richard Sharp (
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PA) "I was not involved in making a loan, or arranging a guarantee, and I did not arrange any financing. What I did do was to seek an introduction of Sam Blythe (sic) to the relevant official in Government. "Sam Blythe, who I have known for more than 40 years, lives in London and having become aware of the financial pressures on the then Prime Minister, and being a successful entrepreneur, he told me he wanted to explore whether he could assist." Mr Sharp said he had been working in Downing Street at the time as a special economic advisor to the Treasury during the pandemic and he notified Mr Case of his application to BBC chairman when they spoke. Mr Johnson, Mr Sharp and Mr Blyth reportedly had dinner at Chequers before the loan was finalised, though the trio denied discussing Mr Johnson's finances. Mr Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker, had already submitted an application to be chairman of the BBC at the time. He was announced as the Government's choice for the role in January 2021. Downing Street denied the appointment of was an example of "cronyism". The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "There are processes in place to ensure that these appointments are done properly. "That was followed in this instance." Mr Johnson was confronted over the row outside his London home today - but insisted Mr Sharp didn't know anything about his finances. Boris Johnson travelled to Ukraine on Sunday for a surprise visit as questions mounted at home (
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@IuliiaMendel/Twitter) He said: "This is a load of complete nonsense, absolute nonsense. Let me just tell you, Richard Sharp is a good and a wise man but he knows absolutely nothing about my personal finances. I can tell you that for 100% ding dang sure. "This is just another example of the BBC disappearing up its own fundament." Rishi Sunak said Mr Sharp went through a "rigorous" appointments process for the top BBC job. Speaking during a visit to a hospital in Northamptonshire, the Prime Minister said: "This appointment was obviously made by one of my predecessors before I became Prime Minister. "The appointments process itself for appointing the BBC chairman is a rigorous process, it is independent, there are two stages to it, it is transparent and published online. "Mr Sharp's appointment went through that full process." Mr Johnson made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Sunday, where he met President Volodymyr Zelensky and visited Bucha and Borodyanka to the north of Kyiv, the scenes of some of the grimmest atrocities committed by the Russians. He is a popular figure in Ukraine and he struck up a friendship with President Zelensky, with critics sometimes accusing him of using calls to Kyiv as a distraction when he faced political troubles at home. The Liberal Democrats said the £115,000 allowance for Mr Johnson to run his office as ex-PM should be withdrawn until he answers questions about his financial arrangements. The party's chief whip, Wendy Chamberlain, said: "Boris Johnson has a dismal track record of avoiding scrutiny and covering up his lies and deceit. "We know he's only interested in following the money, so it's time to hit him where it hurts - his wallet." Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Sir Keir Starmer today delivered a speech that a Tory leader could have given. And he knows it. In fact at one point he made a direct appeal to Conservative voters.
After listing the economic meltdown triggered by the Truss administration over a year ago, Starmer addressed Conservative voters head on.
He said: "If you feel our country needs a party that conserves, that fights for our union, our environment, the rule of law, family life, the careful bond between this generation and the next, then let me tell you: Britain already has one. And you can join it. It’s this Labour Party."
The crux of Starmer's speech was to list the problems afflicting the country and offer up very Conservative solutions for them.
WATCH: Starmer targeted by protester
Sir Keir Starmer protester storms stage
A Labour government would build on unloved parts of the Green Belt and construct new garden cities - both ideas which a Tory leader might champion.
He promised reform of the National Health Service. And he wanted to create a Britain "built to last where working people are respected”.
This was a country where “crime is prosecuted. Ambulances come. The minimum wage is enforced. Infrastructure gets built. Children feel safe in their classroom. Business and workers unite in partnership”.
Which Tories would argue against that? The main difference was how Labour would pay for all this: by forcing non-domiciled millionaires to pay more tax in the UK, and adding VAT to private school fees.
But few believe that these measures will pay for Labour's plans, and Starmer was notably silent on how else he made raise more cash as Prime Minister.
Sir Keir Starmer gave a speech to that many Conservative leaders could have done
PA
Some of the loudest cheers were for Starmer's comments about supporting Israel in its war with Hamas and making clear that antisemitism had no place in the Labour party.
Starmer was offering "a changed Labour Party. No longer in thrall to gesture politics. No longer a party of protest. A party of service".
The audience - bar the protester who 'glitter-bombed' the Labour leader - loved it. I counted 53 rounds of applause, a dozen of which were standing ovations.
A measure of how far Labour has come was that Starmer did not even need to say his party would not do a deal with the SNP to get hold of the keys to 10 Downing St.
He was able to present Labour as the clear alternative to two tired administrations in London and Edinburgh.
This feels like a party hungry for power, a complete change from the chaotic annual conferences when Jeremy Corbyn was leader between 2015 and 2019.
Labour needs to be careful though. Starmer wanted to see: "Britain strong enough, stable enough, secure enough for you to invest your hope, your possibility, your future".
Strong and stable government? This was the slogan of the Tories’ 2017 election campaign, when Theresa May defined the Conservatives against a chaotic Labour party as she to win a landslide for the Conservatives. And we all know how that ended. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Liz Truss will blame the UK’s economic problems on “25 years of economic consensus” as she doubles down on the policy proposals that helped trigger financial turmoil and caused her to be ousted from Downing Street after just 49 days.
The former prime minister will give a speech at the Institute for Government on Monday, almost exactly a year since her government’s “mini-budget”, which caused the pound to crash and ultimately led to her downfall.
Speaking days after it emerged that the UK economy shrank by 0.5% in July, Truss will say the UK’s current economic problems are not her fault.
“I believe that the reason for the problems we have is the 25 years of economic consensus that have led us to this period of stagnation,” she will say, according to extracts from her speech briefed in advance. “And I believe it is vital that we understand that and shatter that economic consensus, if we are to avoid worse problems in the future.”
Truss will add: “Some say this is a crisis of capitalism – that free markets are responsible. But that’s not borne out by the facts. Quite the opposite is true. The fact is that since the Labour government was elected in 1997, we have moved towards being a more corporatist social democracy in Britain than we were in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Truss has spent the past few months attempting to rehabilitate her political reputation after her turbulent time in No 10 – the shortest ever term for a prime minister.
Last week she gave an interview to the Mail on Sunday in which she accused the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility of being part of “an orthodoxy that was gradually moving to the left”. In her speech on Monday she will say: “Free market economists went off to lucrative jobs in the City, allowing academic institutions and thinktanks to be captured by the left.”
Truss’s opponents reacted to news of the speech by renewing their criticisms of her premiership. Daisy Cooper, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, likened the speech to “an arsonist giving a talk on fire safety”, while Labour urged her successor, Rishi Sunak, to block her planned resignation honours list.
The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney said Truss created “Argentina on the Channel” not “Singapore on Thames”. Carney was in Montreal on Saturday at the Global Progress Action Summit, and made the comment in a reference to Argentina’s history of being unable to services its debts and Truss’s mini-budget of unfunded tax cuts.
Truss is writing a book about her period in office entitled Ten Years To Save the West, which is due to come out next spring. But further details about that time emerged over the weekend in extracts from a forthcoming book by the Telegraph’s political editor, Ben Riley-Smith.
According to the book, senior officials at No 10 and the Treasury had to intervene to persuade Truss to abandon many of her policies after being warned by City executives that the UK would enter a financial crisis within days if she did not.
Extracts revealed that several people at the top of government – including the incoming Treasury permanent secretary, James Bowler, and the cabinet secretary, Simon Case – were brought in over the course of a single day last September to warn her of the potential consequences of her policies. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
A court hearing to liquidate a Barclay family holding companies in order to smooth a sale of The Daily Telegraph is poised to be adjourned after a last-gasp offer to repay more than £1bn to Lloyds Banking Group.
Sky News understands that a hearing scheduled to take place in the British Virgin Islands on Monday is expected to be postponed while the bank considers the Barclays' latest effort to end the auction of the broadsheet newspapers.
An application to adjourn the hearing was submitted late on Friday.
Sources said this weekend that the Barclay family hoped to deliver a full repayment of its long-standing debt to Lloyds by the end of the month.
The adjourned court hearing would be expected to take place shortly after that date if the Barclays do not succeed in repaying the £1.16bn.
Initial offers for the Telegraph and Spectator are due on November 28, with the billionaire hedge fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall and Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere among the bidders.
Sky News revealed on Friday that RedBird IMI, an investment vehicle run by Jeff Zucker, the former CNN chief, is backing the Barclay family's £1bn-plus bid to regain control of The Daily Telegraph.
RedBird IMI would lend approximately £600m to the family, with the balance of the debt being funded by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family - said to be Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan - the ultimate owner of a controlling stake in Manchester City Football Club.
If Lloyds is satisfied about the provenance and scale of the funding available to the Barclays, it would accept the debt repayment, thereby ending the auction process.
Mr Zucker's credibility means that his partnership with the Barclays therefore has the potential to radically alter the dynamics of the Telegraph's journey to new ownership.
Mr Zucker is one of the world's most prominent media executives, having served as president of CNN for nine years before his departure last year.
Nevertheless, rival bidders and Conservative MPs have begun to raise questions about the appropriateness of the Telegraph being financed largely by Middle Easter investors.
Neil O'Brien, the MP for Harborough, said on Friday: "The Telegraph and Spectator are two of our most prestigious publications.
"Naturally there's interest from around the world in gaining control of them.
"I hope [the government] will scrutinise the financing and ownership structure of any deal closely and put them through the usual PIIN process."
There have been repeated questions in recent weeks about whether bids for the influential and traditionally Conservative-supporting Telegraph newspapers financed by Gulf investors would trigger a government probe.
Danny Kruger, a backbench Conservative MP with links to another of the Telegraph bidders, the hedge fund tycoon Sir Paul Marshall, wrote to the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, to urge her to issue a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN) into the funding.
Lloyds, which forced the Telegraph and Spectator magazine's holding companies into receivership more than five months ago, has been engaged in a long-running stand-off with the family over its borrowings.
The success of the Barclays' offer to repay its debt in full to Lloyds will also rest on the outcome of RedBird IMI's due diligence.
The Barclays have made a series of increased offers in recent months to head off an auction, raising its proposal last month to £1bn.
Lloyds, however, has repeatedly told the family and its advisers that they should either repay the debt in full or participate in the auction alongside other bidders.
Talks orchestrated by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, have now kicked off with prospective buyers, who also include the London-listed media group National World.
The new board of the Telegraph holding company has established an incentive plan to keep key employees motivated during the sale process, with collective financial rewards totalling millions of pounds.
Until June, the newspapers were chaired by Aidan Barclay - the nephew of Sir Frederick Barclay, the octogenarian who along with his late twin Sir David engineered the takeover of the Telegraph 19 years ago.
Lloyds had been locked in talks with the Barclays for years about refinancing loans made to them by HBOS prior to that bank's rescue during the 2008 banking crisis.
The family's debt to Lloyds also includes some funding tied to Very Group, the Barclay-owned online shopping business.
Ken Costa, the veteran City banker who advised the Barclay brothers on their purchase of the Telegraph in 2004 and counts the sale of Harrods to Qatar Holding among his other flagship deals, is acting as a strategic adviser to the family.
The Telegraph and Spectator disposals are being overseen by a new crop of directors led by Mike McTighe, the boardroom veteran who chairs Openreach and IG Group, the financial trading firm.
Mr McTighe has been appointed chairman of Press Acquisitions and May Corporation, the respective parent companies of TMG and The Spectator (1828), which publish the media titles.
In July, Telegraph Media Group (TMG) published full-year results showing pre-tax profits had risen by a third to about £39m in 2022.
A successful digital subscriptions strategy and "continued strong cost management" were cited as reasons for the company's earnings growth.
"Our vision is to reach more paying readers than at any other time in our history, and we are firmly on track to achieve our 1 million subscriptions target in 2023 ahead of our year-end target," said Nick Hugh, TMG chief executive..
Lloyds and a spokesman for the Barclay family declined to comment on Saturday.
Standfirst: The Barclay family is aiming to repay a long-standing debt to Lloyds Banking Group within a fortnight to regain control of The Daily Telegraph and Spectator, Sky News learns. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Weddings are on the rise as pandemic-stymied couples get around to tying the knot. In 2022, 400,000 more couples held nuptials compared to an average year, according to The Knot.
If you are planning a wedding, higher prices for venues, catering, flowers and other elements of the celebration are likely apparent. All told, the average cost for a wedding in the U.S. was over $29,000 last year, according to The Wedding Report.
Persistent inflation is driving the rising cost of weddings, Kelcy Christy, senior editor of Inside Weddings Magazine, told CBS News. For example, rising grocery prices feed into higher price tags from caterers, she said.
A January survey of roughly 300 wedding vendors found that 83% of participants said their business expenses will increase in 2023, according to CNBC. What's more, 77% of vendors surveyed said they raised rates this year to offset the rising operational costs.
How to save
Christy tells couples to not be discouraged by rising prices, as it's still possible to host a memorable event — if you're selective about spending.
"Couples are trying to find ways to cut back and still have the weddings they envisioned," she says. "And it is possible…find out where you want to splurge and where to save."
While it may seem counterintuitive, hiring a wedding planner within your budget could actually save money, because they vendors sometimes offer them discounts, according to Christy.
Eloping and having a party with friends afterwards could be a solution for couples that want to celebrate with a smaller guest list, she said.
Couples that prefer a larger event venue will likely have to skimp on other extras, Christy warned, as hotels and resorts are among the most expensive options. Couples could consider unique and possibly cheaper venues such as a public beach — which could be free — or a private estate. One caveat: Vendors sometimes charge more to operate at these types of venues which can be logistically challenging, versus a location where they've worked before.
"You have to bring in all those rentals, when a hotel may already have those available," she said.
Another suggestion is nix welcome gifts and wedding favors for guests and instead offer more dessert options or a signature cocktail, she said.
for more features. | Inflation |
- In the face of higher costs, more restaurants are tacking on extra charges.
- Although most diners don't like the added expenses, these fees are likely here to stay, according to the National Restaurant Association.
- Just like tip prompts, such surcharges are a “hidden tax,” one expert says.
First tip prompts, now surcharges.
And like 'tipflation,' the extra expenses can add a significant amount to the cost of dining in or carrying out.
This year, 15% of restaurant owners added surcharges, according to the National Restaurant Association's restaurant business conditions survey.
Unlike other small businesses, it can be hard for restaurants to absorb or pass on price increases. A restaurant's typical pre-tax profit is about 5% of sales; "it's a very thin margin to begin with," said Hudson Riehle, the National Restaurant Association's senior vice president of research.
At the same time, most costs, including food, labor and rent, are higher now than they were before the pandemic and show no signs of coming back down.
"It's a situation that really is unprecedented," Riehle said.
As a result, restaurant operators have come up with different strategies to stay afloat, he added, and "some have elected to add on to a typical check certain fees."
Although such surcharges are unpopular among diners, Riehle expects this new business model "will become permanent."
Hamei Hamedi, the owner of El Patio in Berkely, California, added a 2.4% credit card fee in 2021 after raising the prices on some menu items.
"We operate on such small margins and people expect us to eat the credit card fee too," he said.
So-called swipe fees, which companies like Visa or Mastercard charge businesses every time a credit card is used to make a purchase, have more than doubled over the last decade, forcing more small businesses to feel they have no choice but to pass on the fees to consumers.
Still, some diners have taken to social media to express their distaste for the proliferation of additional costs now tacked on to a bill.
"Surcharges rub people the wrong way," said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate. Like tip prompts, it's seen as "a hidden tax that pushes more of the cost burden on customers."
"On the face of it, people may believe in these causes, but they don't like the line item," Rossman said. "People want to pay one price." | Consumer & Retail |
Labour has pledged to bring in a 'Liz Truss law' to stop a repeat of last year's mini-Budget carnage.
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has pledged that a Labour government would ensure the budget watchdog is not "gagged" by chancellors and prime ministers. The promise comes ahead of tomorrow's one year anniversary since ex-PM Ms Truss and ex-Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unleashed an economic wrecking ball on the country.
Ms Reeves has set out a proposal for ministers to be legally bound to consult the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) on major tax and spending changes under plans to prevent a recurrence Ms Liz Truss's ill-fated mini-budget.
Ms Reeves told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm saying that we won't allow that to happen again because the OBR will not be gagged. We will bring forward this charter in legislation, and MPs will vote on it and then we will ensure that, in the future, when budgets happen there will always be a forecast."
Ms Truss announced a barrel of unfunded tax cuts last year, which caused markets to collapse and the pound to spiral. She was forced to sack her Chancellor Mr Kwarteng in a bid to cling onto power but in the end had no choice but to stand down, making her the shortest PM in history, with a stint of just 49 days.
One of the reasons the markets were so spooked by their mini-budget was that they refused to publish the OBR's independent forecasts for the public finances alongside the plans. Labour promised to amend the rules so the OBR would be able to independently publish the impact of any major fiscal event making permanent tax and spending changes.
Boris Johnson also considered not going to the OBR before his first budget as PM, but this was rejected by his then-chancellor Sajid Javid, according to a book by the Telegraph's political editor, Ben Riley-Smith.
Labour also said it would set out a fixed timetable for annual autumn budgets, followed by a spring update in early March, to give families and businesses time to prepare for changes ahead of the new tax year, which starts in April. Major tax and spending decisions would be reserved for November under the plans, while only minor policy changes would be allowed in a spring update.
Ms Reeves defended the proposal, rejecting the assertion that it would make it harder for chancellors to respond to unpredictable events. "This is good international practice, that you set a date for the budget and you stick with it," she said.
"And to have a budget in the autumn rather than just a few days or weeks before the new financial year gives businesses, gives families, a chance to plan for any changes in taxation, for example, so that's good international practice."
Ms Reeves and Mr Starmer will face more questions about the plans during a visit to the London Stock Exchange today.
Ms Truss said: “It beggars belief that Labour think Britain’s problems will be solved by bigger government and even more powers for quangos." | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis was more concerned about Iowa corn farmers than Florida taxpayers when he vetoed a popular bill that could have saved the state $277 million by adding electric vehicles to state and local government fleets, a Democratic critic says.
More EVs would mean less of a demand for ethanol, which is processed from corn grown in states such as Iowa, the expected home to the first presidential caucus next year.
It’s another example of DeSantis putting his own political ambitions to be president over the needs of Floridians, said Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando.
“The Iowa caucus voters who are all about ethanol don’t see electric vehicles as something that is economically in their favor,” Eskamani said. “DeSantis is catering to his Iowa voters, not passing policy for Floridians.”
The electric car bill, SB 284, sponsored by Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary, would have required all state and local governments, colleges and universities to buy vehicles based on their lowest lifetime costs. Current law requires such purchases to be based on fuel efficiency.
It ordered the Department of Management Services to make recommendations by July 1, 2024, to state agencies, colleges, universities and local governments about buying electric vehicles and other vehicles powered by renewable fuels.
“It allows us to look at procuring electric vehicles,” Brodeur said. “It doesn’t mean you have to purchase any.”
The governor’s veto last week was perplexing, supporters said. Both the Florida Natural Gas Association and the Sierra Club supported the measure, along with the Advanced Energy United and Electrification Coalition, a group that supports increasing the use of alternative-fuel vehicles.
“It was a common sense, good governance bill. There is nothing in this bill that any person in America should be against,” said former Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Tampa Bay Republican who tried getting similar legislation through last year.
The law could have saved state and local governments $277 million over 15 years by adding more electric vehicles to their fleets, said Michael Weiss, the Florida state lead at Advanced Energy United, a trade association of clean energy companies.
Advanced Energy United and the Electrification Coalition calculated the bill would have saved governments an average of $18,000 per vehicle by switching to an all-electric vehicle fleet, Weiss said. Using the state’s vehicle data provided by the Department of Management Services, they conducted a total cost analysis of the state’s fleet.
“This veto is a baffling decision that will cost Florida taxpayers millions of dollars,” Weiss said. “The Florida Legislature saw the clear economic and taxpayer benefits of a modern and efficient state fleet, but Gov. DeSantis somehow didn’t get the memo.”
It was only a few years ago that DeSantis touted the benefits of electric cars at a news conference announcing the construction of EV charging stations at rest stops along Florida’s Turnpike.
“It’s amazing how much cheaper it is to just charge a vehicle than to fill up a gas tank,” DeSantis said at the time. “And so as technology evolves, we hope that that’ll be reflected in people’s pocketbooks. So we want to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to make that a reality.”
His staff didn’t respond to a request to explain the veto.
The bill passed both chambers of the Legislature with just a single no vote, by Rep. Yvonne Hinson of Gainesville. But it is not likely anyone would even suggest trying to override the veto because of the governor’s immense grip on Tallahassee.
“That’s not going to happen,” Eskamani said.
Eskamani said DeSantis also has put personal politics first with culture war laws such as sexual orientation in schools, banning gay-themed books and drag shows, and making it harder for unions to collect dues.
She and other Democrats have pointed out problems such as soaring insurance premiums and a spike in housing costs that go unsolved.
“Not a single part of his agenda that passed is helping Floridians,” she said. “His agenda is tailored to the needs of Republican [primary and caucus voters].” | Renewable Energy |
It was a high-stakes gamble with almost everything on the line, and in the end it may have been the clearest demonstration of Sam Bankman-Fried's biggest weakness: his hubris. The former crypto billionaire's decision to testify in his defense was an incredibly risky move for a man facing seven felony counts for allegedly defrauding millions of global customers out of a mind-boggling $8 billion, among other crimes.
But after all, he is the same man who attracted immense press for taking risks while building what seemed like an innovative crypto exchange, FTX, valued at one point north of $65 billion and putting him in the same social circles as Bill Clinton, Tom Brady and Katy Perry.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty, with his defense team arguing that he was simply an overworked entrepreneur who was
too successful and delegated big tasks to a team that couldn't handle them. But the MIT graduate turned Jane Street Capital intern could have allowed his lawyers to do all the talking, so as to prevent himself from being exposed to the government's relentless, well-prepared cross-examination.
He didn't. He built his own empire and believed he could mount his own defense.
Wednesday's closing arguments are closely watched by the New York City jurors as they decide Bankman-Fried's fate after more than four weeks of lengthy, often complicated fintech-themed testimony – including that from three of SBF's co-conspirators and former friends.
, an executive and onetime romantic partner, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh pleaded guilty to their part of the scheme, which included using Alameda Research – an FTX-sister company – as a vehicle to spend and invest FTX customer deposits illegally. All are cooperating with the prosecution to secure more lenient sentences, but could also face decades behind bars.
Still, for all the complexity of cryptocurrencies, "margin exchanges" and "front-running," jurors only need to answer one simple question: can you believe what Bankman-Fried says?
When pressed by the government's lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, on whether he meant what he said to Congress while advocating for crypto-exchange regulation, Bankman-Fried said he did. But then he was asked to read aloud the government's evidence of his texts to a reporter at that time — "just PR" followed by "f*** regulators" and calling customers "dumb motherf****ers."
When asked if he remembered telling reporters how he safeguarded customer deposits after the fall of FTX, but before his indictment, he couldn't recall, which was often followed by the exact podcast audio, split-screen video or news article transcript confirming that the loquacious founder did make those remarks.
At one point he was asked about admitting that FTX would not have grown so large if not for its sister company Alameda Research, but he said he didn't remember saying as much. Prosecutors then handed him investigative journalist Zeke Faux's newly released book "Number Go Up" and asked him to turn to page 226 in which Bankman-Fried is quoted as saying Alameda Research "had more leeway" on FTX than your typical customer.
Even if the jury takes into account that it is expected for a federal prosecutor to hammer the defendant, they also watched as Southern District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan repeatedly interrupted Bankman-Fried's testimony to get him to answer questions clearly, at one point saying in a calm but stern voice, "look, just answer the question."
CBS legal analyst Rikki Klieman, a former defense lawyer, says, "Jurors take their direction, whether it's explicit or implicit, from a judge and [Kaplan] has also been pretty harsh with Sam Bankman-Fried's lawyers; the jury doesn't miss that."
At the very least this jury, which includes a nurse, retirees, and a special education teacher, has been shown in dramatic fashion how a 31-year-old Silicon Valley whiz calculated massive risks and faced potential peril. They will soon decide if any of it was criminal.
There were many times when Bankman-Fried seemed to buckle under pressure when pressed by the prosecution on how he approached risk/benefit calculations. At one point on Tuesday he was asked repeatedly in various ways, "Was it your practice to maximize making money even if there were a risk of going bust?"
Bankman-Fried eventually answered, "With some business decisions, yes."
for more features. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Most households have been getting £400 from the government in energy support, paid in monthly instalments since October.
The last of these ends on 1 March with average household energy bills expected to reach £3,000 a year.
A charity is asking those who can afford it to consider donating their final rebate payment to people in need.
When 40-year-old Libby Austin-Foley from Cheltenham lost her business, the bottom fell out of her world.
She had run her gem and crystal-selling company for 15 years but footfall was down post-Covid and no-one came into her shop, so she had to close.
Blaming stress, her marriage fell apart, and she is now more then £55,000 in debt. After bills she is left with just £20 a week to cover petrol and food.
Libby has multiple disabilities, which prevent her from working full-time for an employer.
Just before Christmas she did not eat for an entire week, as she could not afford to buy food.
"I ended up in hospital because I wasn't eating. I lived on tea and coffee for a week," she said.
'Helps me survive'
I met Libby on her second visit to Springbank food bank in Cheltenham.
For £3.50 she bought two shopping bags full of pasta, tinned tomatoes and fresh fruit.
"It helps me survive otherwise I'm using credit cards.
"I'm not putting the heating on, life is a bit difficult," she said.
Gail Mezzone, 58, from Cheltenham, told me she had to choose between putting her electric scooter on and heating her home.
To get out and about she relies heavily on her scooter, but this means she can only afford to turn her heating on for two hours a week when she looks after her granddaughter.
"I either have my mobility scooter or my heating, it's a simple choice," she said.
She uses the food bank to get ingredients and then batch cooks.
She can make a roast last for 10 meals and has not turned her oven on for a year, relying on her air fryer.
At the food bank, she got some dark chocolate fudge.
"I can only afford essentials - you can't buy treats if you are on a budget, I haven't had chocolate since Christmas," she said.
The charity Warm Cheltenham is now calling on households who do not need all of their rebate to donate the money so it can support other charities within the town.
The BBC understands the government is reviewing the level of energy support it gives households amid warnings many more could face difficulties.
It comes after Energy Secretary Grant Shapps said he was "very sympathetic" to the idea that the government should stop the rise in annual energy bills.
At the moment, the government is limiting the typical household bill to £2,500 a year, plus a £400 winter discount, which will also end from April.
The Treasury declined to comment. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Securely Storing and Transferring Carbon Credits in the Energy Industry Using Blockchain Technology
Carbon credits have become an increasingly popular tool for companies and organizations to offset their carbon emissions and contribute to the fight against climate change. However, the traditional methods of storing and transferring carbon credits have faced significant challenges such as fraud, double-counting, and a lack of transparency. As a result, trust in the carbon credit market has diminished, making it harder to promote sustainability initiatives.
Blockchain has the potential to transform the way carbon credits are stored and transferred in the energy industry. It can increase security, transparency, and efficiency, and promote greater participation in sustainability initiatives. With these benefits, Blockchain can help to build trust in the carbon credit market and support the transition towards a more sustainable future.
The Energy Web Foundation's Energy Attribute Certificates (EAC) Registry is an example of a blockchain application being used in the energy industry to track the ownership and transfer of renewable energy certificates. This Decentralized ledger technology ensures that renewable energy certificates are genuine, can only be owned by one entity at a time, and can be tracked throughout their lifecycle.
The Challenges of Storing and Transferring Carbon Credits
The traditional methods of storing and transferring carbon credits have faced several challenges that have hindered the growth of the carbon credit market. One of the main challenges is a fraud, where unscrupulous entities create fake carbon credits or double-count existing ones. This results in a loss of trust in the carbon credit market and undermines the effectiveness of carbon offset programs.
Another challenge is the lack of transparency and accountability in the carbon credit market. It can be challenging to track the ownership and transfer of carbon credits, making it difficult to ensure that they are genuine and are being used to offset carbon emissions effectively. This lack of transparency can also lead to the same credits being sold and resold, which leads to a loss of trust in the market.
Blockchain can address these challenges by providing a decentralized and immutable ledger that can securely track transactions and ownership of assets. By using decentralized ledger technology, carbon credits can be tracked from creation to retirement, preventing double-counting and ensuring the integrity of the system. This transparency and accountability can help to build trust in the carbon credit market and promote greater participation in sustainability initiatives.
Blockchain technology can also provide increased security and efficiency in the storage and transfer of carbon credits. As a decentralized system, it eliminates the need for intermediaries and reduces transaction costs. Additionally, it can enable smart contracts, which can automate the transfer of carbon credits when certain conditions are met. This can help to streamline the process of transferring carbon credits, making it faster and more efficient.
Overall, Blockchain Development Services providers can help revolutionize carbon credit markets by providing innovative solutions that utilize blockchain technology to create secure, transparent, and efficient platforms for tracking and verifying carbon credits. These solutions have the potential to expedite the shift towards a thriving future by optimizing processes, cutting down transaction costs, and fostering trust within the market.
Benefits of Using Blockchain for Carbon Credits in the Energy Sector
Using blockchain technology for carbon credits in the energy sector can provide several benefits, including:
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Increased transparency: Blockchain provides a transparent and tamper-proof ledger of transactions, allowing for greater accountability and trust in the carbon credit market.
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Enhanced security: The decentralized nature of blockchain makes it more secure than traditional centralized systems, reducing the risk of fraud and cyber-attacks.
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Improved efficiency: By automating the verification and tracking process, blockchain can reduce the administrative burden and costs associated with traditional carbon credit systems.
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Incentivizing sustainable practices: By enabling the secure tracking and verification of sustainable practices that reduce carbon emissions, blockchain can incentivize businesses and individuals to adopt more sustainable practices.
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Standardization: Blockchain can provide a standardized approach to tracking and verifying carbon credits, allowing for greater interoperability and coordination across different markets and regions.
Blockchain for Sustainability: Real-World Applications in the Energy Industry
Blockchain is enabling the energy industry to improve sustainability and reduce carbon emissions, with real-world applications such as carbon credit markets, energy trading platforms, and decentralized renewable energy systems. There are already several examples of how Blockchain Industry Solutions are being used in the energy industry for carbon credits:
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IBM's "Blockchain for Climate" initiative: This project aims to use blockchain technology to create a more transparent and secure carbon credit market. It involves working with major corporations and organizations to develop blockchain-based solutions for tracking and verifying carbon reduction and removal efforts.
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Power Ledger: This blockchain-based platform allows users to trade renewable energy and carbon credits in a secure and transparent way, incentivizing the adoption of sustainable practices and supporting the transition to a more decentralized energy system.
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LO3 Energy: This company uses blockchain technology to enable peer-to-peer energy trading and the secure tracking of renewable energy generation and consumption, ultimately supporting the transition to a more sustainable energy system.
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Climate Coin: This cryptocurrency is designed to incentivize sustainable practices by rewarding individuals and organizations for reducing their carbon footprint. The cryptocurrency can be exchanged for carbon credits or used to fund renewable energy projects.
These examples demonstrate the potential of blockchain to transform the carbon credit market and support the transition to a more sustainable energy system.
Conclusion
The future of blockchain in the energy sector is promising, with the potential to enable the transition to a more decentralized energy system, improve energy efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and promote sustainable energy production and consumption. Blockchain-based platforms can also facilitate the development of smart cities, enabling the secure exchange of data between different energy systems to optimize efficiency and reduce waste.
As a leading provider of Blockchain Technology Solutions, Codezeros has the expertise to help businesses leverage this transformative technology to achieve their sustainability goals in the energy sector and beyond.
Post Author
Vivek is a passionate writer and technology enthusiast with expertise in blockchain development. As the lead writer for Codezeros, he aims to educate and inform readers about the potential of blockchain technology and simplify complex concepts to present them in an engaging manner for both technical and non-technical readers.
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Step, the digital banking service geared toward teens and young adults, is now offering a 5% rate on its savings accounts.
With just 1 in 3 Americans having adequate savings for emergencies, Step is among dozens of startups, like Current, Greenlight, Super.com and Hyve, focused on helping people save.
There are no monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements on the Step accounts, and customers who open an FDIC-insured savings account with up to $250,000. However, to secure that 5%, users have to set up a monthly direct deposit of $500 or more from a payroll provider or employer.
“The direct deposit is to encourage people to utilize the full suite of Step products,” CJ MacDonald, co-founder and CEO of Step, told TechCrunch.
And to be clear, “the savings percentage is not interest, but instead earned as cash rewards directly funded and managed by Step,” according to the company.
Speaking of rewards, also new is Step’s elevated rewards program. Customers who qualify for the 5% on their savings will also earn 3x points on purchases at select merchants; 2x points on restaurant dining, food delivery and charitable donations; and 1x points on entertainment, streaming and gaming.
The news comes about a month after Apple launched its savings account balance of 4.15%. When that announcement was made, current data from Bankrate showed savings accounts APY rate of 3.5% to 4.75%. As of May 17, the APY range is 4% to 4.85%, so it’s safe to assume that Apple’s entry into the market perhaps inspired neobanks and others financial organizations to close the gap.
Step always had a goal to offer the highest percentage among competitors in order to attract and grow with customers, so Apple’s move didn’t inspiration it to launch the high savings rate, MacDonald said.
“The hard thing with interest rates is that they keep changing,” MacDonald said. “In the last year and a half, rates have been going up. Each time they go up, the [Federal Reserve] Fed Fund Rates go up, and for any institution getting paid, the interest is going up, too. If they continue to rise, the 5% could go even higher. Based on today’s rates, it’s important to give customers back essentially what Fed Fund Rates are at.”
Step is working with its long-time bank partner Evolve Bank & Trust on the savings accounts. Meanwhile, the company, which has raised over $500 million in venture-backed funding — most recently last October — has over 4 million account holders. | Banking & Finance |
Public policy is a series of choices. Lawmakers and regulators weigh resources available versus desired outcomes and through that process they shape the way the country functions. In this case, Congress made the choice to turn a successful experiment in boosting American families and lifting kids out of poverty into a catastrophic failure.
That failure was confirmed on Monday, when the Census Bureau released its latest statistics on poverty in America. While the country’s official poverty rate stayed the level in 2022, the bureau’s Supplement Poverty Measure, or SPM, which factors in noncash federal assistance and a broader range of necessary expenses, ticked up to 12.4%. That’s an increase of 4.6 percentage points from 2021, and the first time it rose since 2010, during the Great Recession. But the real heartbreaking statistic is that the SPM of childhood poverty more than doubled from 2021 to 2022 — from an all-time low of 5.2% to 12.4%. That equates to roughly 5 million kids who were worse off last year than they were the year before.
Much of that backslide resulted from the ending of the expanded Child Tax Credit, which was passed as part of the American Rescue Plan in 2021. As I wrote at the time, that stimulus bill included a $125 billion provision that boosted the credit’s reach in three important ways:
First, it would bump up the maximum credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000. (That would be raised to $3,600 for kids under 6.) Second, it would get rid of income requirements on one end and a refund cap on the other, meaning more families would be eligible for cash. And finally, its most intriguing aspect: Instead of getting it all at the end of the year, parents who qualify could expect to get checks of about $300 per child monthly starting this summer. At the end of the year, the other half of the credit would be applied to people’s taxes and would likely be refunded.
Taken together, those changes provided a major infusion of cash in the pocket of households that otherwise were struggling to make ends meet. Not long after the stimulus bill passed, researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame used census data to estimate that the child poverty rate had spiked to 17.4% over the course of the pandemic. Then the monthly checks started being doled out, which lead to the childhood poverty rate plummeting. An August 2021 paper from the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University found that after just the first payment, the child poverty rate dropped to 11.9%, from 15.8%.
We knew this was coming and yet it still hurts to know that millions of children are now worse off than they were.
But the program was only designed to be in place for a year, with monthly checks going out starting in June and the remaining months of credits being applied to taxes at the end of 2021. It became pretty clear as 2021 wore on that the credit was likely on the chopping block as Congress wrestled with the Build Back Better plan that President Joe Biden had submitted to the Democrat-controlled House and Senate. And though congressional Republicans opposed the expanded credit’s extension, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., shoulders most of the blame for the program’s ignoble death.
Manchin favored keeping the broadened CTC in place only if it included work requirements and other forms of “means testing” that would greatly limit its ability to help the neediest children. He reportedly told colleagues in private that unless such red tape was added, recipients of the tax credit would spend the money buying drugs. It’s worth noting here that just this month, yet another peer-reviewed study proved that idea was a myth. Instead, the study found, people given cash tend to use that money to provide basic necessities like food and shelter. (Manchin, when confronted with the new numbers on Tuesday, shrugged them off, saying, "The federal government can’t run everything.")
Though the Census Bureau’s statistics only came out this week, the effect of the policy’s end was apparent almost instantaneously, as NBC News reported in January 2022. The prediction, which has been proved out, was that the poverty rate would skyrocket once again. Amber Fredenburg, 32, a house cleaner in Florida, told NBC News that the credit “helped us get by and not have to stay stressed about how we would have lights or water, if we would have somewhere to sleep.” Then, after less than a year, it was gone.
As Ryan Cooper wrote over a year ago, as the reality that efforts to revive the extended Child Tax Credit had failed sunk in, “It’s one of the most barbaric things I’ve seen in politics. It’s cold comfort to have proved that a child allowance can cut poverty, but it’s all we have at this point.” We knew this was coming and yet it still hurts to know that millions of children are now worse off than they were. Worse still is that they will remain impoverished when we know that there’s another option, thanks to the choices of our supposed leaders in Washington. | Inflation |
Vijay Janapa Reddi runs a lab at Harvard University where he and his team attempt to solve some of the computer world’s greatest challenges. As a specialist in artificial intelligence systems, the technology he studies even follows him home, where his two daughters love to talk to their Amazon Alexa.
“They put a person inside that black box,” Janapa Reddi likes to joke with his four-year-old.
Janapa Reddi may be teasing when he tells his daughter a person is squeezed into their machine, but isn’t that where we’re headed? Smart home devices may never host a miniature human being inside of them — this isn’t that one episode of Black Mirror — but as the AI ecosystem evolves, voice assistants will quickly begin to feel hyperrealistic. Indeed, tech companies like Amazon are now attempting to integrate large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT into smart home devices to elevate user interaction.
“These devices are finally coming a step closer to how we naturally interact with the world around us,” Janapa Reddi said. “That’s a pretty transformative experience.”
“These devices are finally coming a step closer to how we naturally interact with the world around us”
But a machine can’t behave like a human without a cost. All that intelligence requires massive amounts of data — and the computers storing that data require loads of energy. At the moment, over 60 percent of the world’s electricity generation comes from fossil fuels, the main contributor to climate change. A study published in the journal Joule in October found that widespread integration of generative AI could spike energy demands. In one worst-case scenario from the analysis, the technology could consume as much energy as the entire country of Ireland.
Climate change is already exacerbating heatwaves. Last summer was the hottest on record. To make matters worse, the climate crisis has increased the scarcity of water, which some data centers need to stay cool. In order to keep a bad situation from getting worse, scientists have been urging world leaders to stop using fossil fuels. Some advocates, on the other hand, have demanded Congress take action on the energy burdens the AI sector presents.
These concerns link two of society’s most seemingly apocalyptic scenarios: world-dominating AI and world-ending climate change. Are smarter (and more energy-intensive) smart homes really worth the trouble?
Janapa Reddi uses his Amazon Alexa to listen to the news or music. His youngest daughter, on the other hand, often asks Alexa to play “The Poo-Poo Song,” her current obsession. Indeed, there’s something satisfying about coming home after a long day to find your lights dimmed and temperate set just how you like. Smart homes are kind of magical in this way: they learn a user’s behaviors and needs.
The computers storing that data require loads of energy
Though AI has become a buzzword this year with the rise of ChatGPT, it’s been in the background for many years. The AI most people know about and interact with — including in their smart homes — has been around for about 10 years. It’s called machine learning or deep learning. Developers write programs that teach voice assistants what to say when someone asks them for the time or a recipe, for instance.
Smart homes are capable of doing an impressive amount of work, but the technology behind them isn’t as complex as, say, GPT. Alexa gives the same answer to pretty much everyone, and that’s because it’s preprogrammed to do so. The machine’s limited responses, which are processed locally in a person’s home, keep its energy demands quite low.
“The current type of AI that is in these systems are pretty simplistic in that they don’t take in a lot of factors when making decisions,” said William Yeoh, an associate professor of science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
GPT, on the other hand, generates original responses to every query. It considers many factors when it’s deciding how to respond to a user. How was the prompt worded? Was it a command or a question? Is the question open-ended or factual? Generative AI is fed immense amounts of data — trillions of different data points — to learn how to interpret questions with such intelligence and then generate unique responses.
“You never tell [the system] that these are things people might ask because there’s an infinite number of questions people could ask,” said Alex Capecelatro, CEO of AI company Josh.ai, which has built a generative AI smart home system. “Because the system is trained on all of this knowledge… the information is able to be retrieved in pretty much real-time.”
What if this type of deep learning were applied to smart homes? That’s what Capecelatro sought to do back in 2015 when he and his team began to develop JoshGPT, a smart home device doing exactly that. The product remains in development, but the company believes JoshGPT is “the first generative AI to be released in the smart home space.” The technology has processed millions of commands during the six months JoshGPT has been live. Capecelatro is hoping to expand to an international market by early 2024.
For him, this sort of integration is the future: “The old AIs are kind of like a vending machine. You get to pick from the options that exist, but those are the only options. The new world is like having the world’s smartest and most capable chef who can make whatever you ask.”
Are smarter (and more energy-intensive) smart homes really worth the trouble?
Josh.ai isn’t the only company investing in a new smart home ecosystem. In September, Amazon previewed the new iteration of Alexa: one that’s “smarter and more conversational,” per the company’s announcement. Its technology will assess more than verbal directions; it will even follow a user’s body language to offer the perfect response. Meanwhile, Google announced in October new generative AI capabilities that will help users write grocery lists or captions for social media posts. So far, Google hasn’t released plans to add this upgrade to smart home speakers, but it feels like a natural progression.
Smart home proponents like Capecelatro believe the technology can cut a household’s carbon footprint by automating tasks that can reduce energy — like lowering the blinds to keep a room cool or raising them to add natural light. Buildings contribute to over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. One report from research firm Transforma Insights found that connecting buildings to smart home technologies could reduce global energy consumption by about 5 percent.
Suruchi Dhingra, research manager at Transforma Insights, spoke enthusiastically at length about smart blinds, smart lighting, and smart HVAC systems, shedding light on the energy savings they offer. But when asked about generative AI smart home integration, Dhingra looked confused: “Is there actually a need?”
It’s an important question to ask considering how much more energy goes into training and running AI models like GPT compared to current smart home models. Current energy emissions from these devices would be “significantly smaller” than ones featuring generative AI, Yeoh said. “Just because the number of factors or variables are so much smaller,” he said. Every user command or query would require more computational resources if plugged into a generative AI model. The machine wouldn’t be reciting a response a human programmed; it would be generating an original response after sorting through all the data it’s learned. Plus, smart homes with such advanced technology would need a strong security system to keep intruders from breaking in. That requires energy, too.
“The new world is like having the world’s smartest and most capable chef who can make whatever you ask.”
It’s hard to know whether the potential emissions reductions from smart home capabilities would outweigh the emissions that would come from adding generative AI to the mix. Different experts have different opinions, and none interviewed were comfortable speculating. Like Dhingra, all wondered whether generative AI in smart homes is necessary — but haven’t convenience and ease always been the point? Did we ever actually need to ask a machine for the weather when our phones can already tell us? We had manual dimmer switches before we had smart lights.
However, industry folks like Capecelatro want to see these generative AI models run as efficiently as possible so they can cut costs.
“I’m actually pretty confident we’re going to see a really good trend toward lower and lower emissions needed to generate these AI results,” he said. “Ultimately, everyone wants to be able to do this for less money.”
In October, Alex de Vries published a paper to examine the potential energy demand of AI. The founder of digital trends research company Digiconomist tried to forecast one scenario in particular where Google integrates generative AI into every search. Such functionality would be similar to how a Google Home generative AI integration would work even though de Vries wasn’t examining smart homes.
The study’s worst-case scenario painted a future where Google AI would need as much energy in a year as the entire country of Ireland — but that’s not what he wants the public to take away from the research. “This is a topic that deserves some attention,” de Vries said. “There’s a very realistic pathway for AI to become a serious electricity consumer in the coming years.”
He’s especially critical of the widespread application of generative AI. “One thing you certainly want to avoid is forcing this type of technology on all kinds of applications where it’s not even making sense to make use of AI,” he said.
When asked about generative AI smart home integration, Dhingra looked confused: “Is there actually a need?”
His paper sheds light on the potential emissions that can come from running these huge models — not only from training them, which has historically been a source of energy consumption. De Vries argues that operating these technologies may be driving more emissions now with the deployment of ChatGPT, which saw 100 million users just months after launching. With AI being used in this way, the emissions can grow even higher when you consider that the models need to be retrained every few years to ensure they stay up to date, he said.
That’s why many computer engineers are working on efficiency. What de Vries worries about is that more companies will use generative AI as the technology grows more efficient, keeping energy demands high. “It’s become a guiding principle of environmental economics that increasing efficiency doesn’t necessarily translate to less use of resources — it’s often quite the opposite,” said de Vries, who is also a PhD candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam School of Business and Economics. “I don’t think that there is going to be one single thing that is going to solve all our problems.”
Not everyone is as pessimistic. Peter Henderson, an incoming computer science and public affairs professor at Princeton University, is impressed with the efficiency gains AI has seen, especially with the ability of hardware to run programs more locally, which requires less energy. He imagines that if smart homes were to integrate generative AI, they’d default to whatever mechanism is most efficient. Indeed, that’s how JoshGPT is being built: its model splits queries based on whether a command can go through the local processor or requires a full GPT response.
“All in all, the power required for what we are doing is far less than what would be needed to do routine Google searches or streaming Netflix content on a mobile device,” said Capecelatro of Josh.ai.
So much of this, however, is speculative because there’s little transparency around where companies like OpenAI are sourcing their energy. Is coal powering their data centers or hydro? Buying energy from clean sources would alleviate many of the environmental concerns, but there’s only so much energy the Sun or wind can generate. And there’s only so much we can allocate to computers when there are still people without access to electricity or the internet.
“I’m actually pretty confident we’re going to see a really good trend toward lower and lower emissions needed to generate these AI results.”
Without more data, Henderson isn’t sure what to expect for the future of AI. The situation could be better than it seems — or it could be much worse. He’s hopeful about what AI could mean as a tool to combat climate change by optimizing energy grids or developing nuclear fusion, but there are too many questions about the generative AI we may see in our homes one day.
For Janapa Reddi, the questions run much deeper than environmental costs. “What does this all mean in terms of educating the next generation?” he asked. This thought process is why he teases his four-year-old that there’s a person inside their Alexa; he wants his daughter to treat the technology with empathy so that she develops manners she can practice with actual people. Now, his daughter is nicer to Alexa, using words like “please.”
“These are very simple things — but important,” Janapa Reddi said. “They’re going to be using these devices day in, day out, left and right, up and down.”
Underlying all of these conversations and questions is an overall desire to build a better world. For some, “better” entails more convenience and comfort. For others, it’s less reliance on these flashy new technologies. What everyone can agree on, however, is the longing for a healthy world to exist at all. | Energy & Natural Resources |
Savers looking for a safe, steady, angst-free investment for a year or less can now get the best yields in years from Treasury bills — thanks to the Federal Reserve.
Not even a downgrade of the US credit rating could derail those returns.
Treasury bill yields are above 5% after the Federal Reserve lifted its benchmark lending rate by a quarter-point last week, pushing interest rates to their highest level in 22 years.
A one-year T-bill is now yielding 5.36% versus 3.09% a year ago. A six-month T-bill was at 5.52% compared with 3% a year ago, and the three-month T-bill was yielding 5.53%, up from 2.56% a year ago.
While these short-term securities issued by the federal government are not a swing-for-the-fences type of investment, T-bills currently offer savers a better yield than most online savings accounts and short-term certificates of deposit.
"Cash-like assets, including T-bills, can provide investors with a sense of safety and control during market volatility," James Martielli, head of investment trading services at Vanguard, told Yahoo Finance. "While recent rate hikes have increased returns across this category, the role of these assets remain unchanged."
Even after Fitch Ratings agency this week lowered the US sovereign debt rating to AA+ from its top score of AAA, experts expect the move will have "no material impact on Treasury yields."
"The US Treasury market is the global safe haven," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told Yahoo Finance. "Sure, the US has significant fiscal problems and our politics are a mess, but that’s nothing new. It’s been that way, more or less, since the nation’s founding. The US Treasury has been good money, through thick and thin, and global investors know it."
Here’s what else to know.
What are T-bills
Treasury bills — like I bonds and Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS — are issued by and backed by the US government. I bonds, for example, pay interest for up to 30 years. T-bills are typically for people looking for short-term savings of up to a year.
Additionally, savers benefit from tax savings on T-bills, which are exempt from state and local income tax.
How T-bills work
T-bills are sold at a discount to their face value; when the bill matures, your interest is the difference between what you paid and the T-bill’s face value. For example, if you bought a $1,000, one-year T-bill at a rate of 5%, you would shell out $950 upfront and receive $1,000 at the end of the year.
You must buy on auction dates, which are weekly for all maturities, except the one-year T-bill, which is every four weeks. Most individual investors make a noncompetitive bid, which means you land the average yield set at auction.
When you buy through TreasuryDirect — the government’s website — you must hold new Treasury marketable securities for at least 45 calendar days before transferring or selling them (even if it’s a four-week security). Interest is paid when the security reaches maturity.
You won’t pay a penalty or fee if you want to sell early like you would if you pulled your money from a CD early. That said you could possibly lose money, if the sale price of the T-bill is lower than the original purchase price, which you are guaranteed at maturity.
Where to purchase T-bills
You can buy newly issued Treasurys in terms ranging from four weeks to 52 weeks through your bank or brokerage, which may charge a commission. Or, you can buy them online for a minimum of $100 through the government’s TreasuryDirect program, with no commission.
Large firms, however, such as Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard, do not charge a fee when you buy a T-bill. That said, the minimum order for a new-issue Treasury is typically $1,000 in face value when you purchase it via a brokerage.
And if you want to purchase T-bills for individual retirement accounts (IRA), you must go through a broker. For those nearing retirement, these can be a shrewd place to set aside cash without losing sleep over what might happen with the stock market.
If you’re looking for a place for your emergency fund, however, T-bills are probably not your best option. Unlike money market funds or high-yield savings accounts, you need to sell a T-bill if you’d like to tap the cash prior to maturity — which may result in a price higher or lower than the purchase price.
Eric Park, a certified financial planner at LPL Financial in Washington, Mo., has this advice: "Keep in mind that while US Treasury debt will mature at full value, their prices fluctuate in value along the way. The longer the maturity, the more they fluctuate, so if you’re unsure when you might need the money, or have time at your disposal, you may consider a laddering concept."
With a laddering strategy, you invest in several T-bills with staggered maturities, giving you the opportunity to either reinvest at higher rates as the terms expire, or to invest or use the funds somewhere else.
"Laddering provides some compromise in commitment and some diversity of maturities," Park added.
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Reporter and Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a workplace futurist, a career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, including "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in The New World of Work" and "Never Too Old To Get Rich." Follow her on Twitter @kerryhannon. | Interest Rates |
RBI Says 93% Of Rs 2,000 Notes Returned To Banks
According to the data received from the banks, the total value of Rs 2,000 banknotes received back from circulation is Rs 3.32 lakh crore up to Aug. 31, 2023, it said in a statement.
The Reserve Bank on Friday said that as much as 93% of Rs 2,000 currency notes that were in circulation on May 19 -- the day when the currency was withdrawn from circulation -- have been returned to banks.
According to the data received from the banks, the total value of Rs 2,000 banknotes received back from circulation is Rs 3.32 lakh crore up to Aug. 31, 2023, it said in a statement.
"Consequently, Rs 2,000 banknotes in circulation as at the close of business on August 31, 2023 stood at Rs 0.24 lakh crore. Thus, 93% of the Rs 2000 banknotes in circulation as on May 19, 2023, have since been returned," it said.
Data collected from major banks indicates that out of the total banknotes in Rs 2,000 denomination received back from circulation, about 87% is in the form of deposits and the remaining around 13% has been exchanged into other denomination banknotes.
The RBI had announced the withdrawal of Rs 2,000 banknotes from circulation on May 19, 2023.
The total value of Rs 2,000 banknotes in circulation, which amounted to Rs 3.62 lakh crore on March 31, 2023, had declined to Rs 3.56 lakh crore as at the close of business on May 19, 2023.
RBI requested the members of the public holding the high-value banknote to utilise the remaining period until Sept. 30, 2023, to deposit and/or exchange them. | India Business & Economics |
Bud Light is planning a major marketing blitz after its sales got slammed by an ill-fated partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney — and the company is promising beer distributors there won’t be another screwup, The Post has learned.
At a closed-door meeting this week in Washington, DC, Anheuser-Busch executives told US beer distributors they will “spend heavily on the brand after spending fell off a cliff last year,” Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, told The Post.
Bud execs said at the Monday meeting that the fresh marketing push will begin this week, Steinman said, as the beer giant scrambles to reverse the damage from the controversial Mulvaney campaign, which sent sales of Bud Light plunging 17% during the week ended April 15.
Anheuser-Busch “did promise to spend lotsa dough on Bud Light [marketing] this spring and summer, starting with big push this week for the NFL draft,” Steinman wrote in a report to clients on Wednesday that was obtained by The Post.
The company has been largely tight-lipped since April 1, when the 26-year-old Mulvaney released videos on social media of herself swigging Bud Light in a bubble bath and showing off a commemorative Bud Light can with her image on it to celebrate her first year as a woman.
But in a series of private Zoom meetings with US beer distributors this month, Bud has promised “there will be an improved screening process before any marketing hits the public,” a Northeast-based distributor told The Post.
“Executives will have to go through a more rigorous screening process,” said the distributor, who cited briefings from Bud execs during Zoom meetings this month.
That’s after Anheuser-Busch revealed earlier this week that two marketing executives overseeing Bud Light — the brand’s vice president of marketing Alissa Heinerscheid and her boss, Daniel Blake — have been put on leave as the brand scrambles to clean up the mess.
On Tuesday, Anheuser-Busch gave the wholesalers a letter filled with talking points that were meant to be shared with their retail customers to dispel the “confusion” and “misinformation” that surrounds the Mulvaney controversy, according to Beer Business Daily.
“This was one single can given to one social media influencer,” Anheuser-Busch said in the letter, adding,
“This can was not made for production or sale to the general public” nor was it “a formal campaign or advertisement.”
“Bud Light’s official campaign is ‘Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy,'” the letter said.
“You may have seen our ad during the Super Bowl.”
“Our new Vice President of Bud Light [Todd Allen] and all of us at Anheuser-Busch are committed to reminding all of our consumers why they love Bud Light and why they’ve made it the #1 beer in America,” the letter added.
Bud Light, the biggest beer brand in the US, has been losing market share for years as Anheuser-Busch has slashed spending on the brand, according to industry experts.
Last year, the company spent just $10 million marketing Bud Light from January through July, compared with $183 million in 2018.
Bud Light spending was $125 million in 2019, then dropped to $76 million and $57 million in 2020 and 2021, respectively, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights, which cited data from Kantar.
Aside from a pledge to reverse the drops in spending, however, Bud provided scant details on its plans at Monday’s meeting in Washington, according to sources.
The meeting “wasn’t that productive and the distributors were hoping for more concrete plans,” on how to stop the backlash against Bud Light, Steinman said. “They want to put this behind them.”
Indeed, many of Anheuser-Busch’s 400 distributors left the meeting frustrated that Anheuser-Busch never apologized for “what they’ve gone through and the lost business they’ve had to deal with,” according to a report by another industry newsletter, Beer Business Daily.
“Wholesalers have long felt that Anheuser-Busch was too focused on innovation and not enough on their bread and butter brands,” according to Steinmann.
Some Bud Light drinkers were likewise enraged over what they felt was a non-apology from Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Brendan Whitworth, who said in an April 14 statement, “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people …
“We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”
That’s after Heinerscheid had previously called Bud Light “a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor” that needed a revamp to appeal to a new generation of “young drinkers.”
“I’m hoping that the message, no matter how they convey it, gets to the retailer and the consumer, because we are starting to feel the impact,” said the Northeast-based distributor, who asked not to be identified. | Consumer & Retail |
- Many young adults do not become financially independent until they are well into their 20s.
- However, there are steps parents can take that can speed up the process.
- Here are four money moves to help children become financially independent, according to an advisor.
These days, many young adults do not become financially independent until they are well into their 20s.
To be sure, inflation has made it even harder for those just starting out.
But, in addition to soaring food and housing costs, millennials and Gen Z face financial challenges their parents did not as young adults: On top of carrying larger student loan balances, their wages are lower than their parents' earnings when they were in their 20s and 30s.
While older generations are more likely to think their kids should be completely financially independent by the time they turn 21, young adults say that's a good age to start paying some of their own expenses, such as credit card bills and travel costs, according to a separate report by Bankrate.com.
"There's definitely a disconnect between parents and adult children," said Ted Rossman, Bankrate's senior industry analyst.
Now, 68% of parents with children over the age of 18 are making a financial sacrifice to help support them, Bankrate's report also found.
From buying groceries to paying for cell phone plans or covering health and auto insurance, parents are spending more than $1,400 a month, on average, helping their adult children make ends meet, a report by Savings.com found.
For parents, however, supporting grown children can be a substantial drain at a time when their own financial security is in jeopardy.
Paying those bills "can also put your own retirement and other financial goals at risk," Rossman said. "You can get loans for a lot of things, but retirement isn't one of them."
About half of parents with adult children said support has come at the expense of their own emergency savings or ability to pay down debt, while slightly fewer said supporting their children has been detrimental to their retirement savings, Bankrate found.
However, there are moves parents can take now to protect themselves down the road, according to Derek Miser, a financial advisor and president of Miser Wealth Partners in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Here are his top tips to help yourself, and your adult child, take financial control:
- Focus on yourself. For starters, your debts and obligations should take priority before providing any financial support, Miser said. Further, you should also save for your future by contributing to retirement accounts, he added, so you are in a better position to help your adult offspring.
- Avoid giving and instead loan. "It's okay to financially help your children, but don't just give money out without expecting payment back," Miser advised. Consider loaning money instead, he said, and put a repayment plan in place, in writing to set the parameters.
- Help children build healthy credit. Co-signing on credit cards or loans can help your children build healthy credit while they're young to ensure they won't need to lean on you in the future, he said. However, be aware that you may be responsible for that debt if your child cannot pay it back.
- Introduce your children to financial experts. When you visit your financial, tax or accounting advisor, consider bringing your child and encourage them to participate in the conversation, Miser said. "This can help them understand how money works and what they can expect to be dealing with in the future." | Personal Finance & Financial Education |
Supermarkets are being investigated by the competition watchdog over rising food and fuel prices.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would look at whether a "failure in competition" meant customers were overpaying.
Supermarkets said they were working to keep food prices "as low as possible".
But an investigation into the fuel market, which has already started, has found some supermarkets have increased margins on petrol and diesel.
The CMA said evidence suggested at least one supermarket had set a higher target for its margin on fuel prices in 2022, which could have led to rivals following suit and raising prices too.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents supermarkets, did not comment on the CMA's fuel price findings. The BBC has contacted supermarkets individually for comment.
Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the BRC, said supermarkets were "confident" that they were "doing all they can to keep food prices as low as possible".
"The UK has one of the most competitive markets for food in the world, and as global prices begin to fall we are confident that the competitive nature of the industry will help food inflation fall as a result," he said.
Higher food prices have been hitting households hard in recent months, and some have questioned why a drop in the cost of wholesale food globally has not led to falls in the prices charged by UK supermarkets.
Supermarkets have said there is typically athree to nine-month lag to see price falls reflected in the shops.
But the war in Ukraine has driven up food prices around the world, and the UK has faced other problems on top of this - from Brexit red tape to labour shortages.
CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell, said the watchdog recognised that "global factors" were behind many grocery price increases and said it had seen "no evidence at this stage of specific competition problems".
She added due to concerns about high prices, the CMA was "stepping up our work in the grocery sector to help ensure competition is working well and people can exercise choice with confidence".
Ms Cardell said the watchdog was "concerned about the sustained higher margins on diesel compared to petrol we have seen this year".
She said her team was not satisfied that all the supermarkets had been "sufficiently forthcoming with the evidence" on fuel pricing, and said bosses would be called in for formal interviews to "get to the bottom of what is going on".
The CMA said although supermarkets still tend to be the cheapest retail suppliers of petrol and diesel, evidence indicated "at least one supermarket" had significantly increased its margin targets last year.
"Other supermarkets have recognised this change in approach and may have adjusted their pricing behaviour accordingly," the watchdog added.
The CMA noted while Russia's invasion of Ukraine had caused prices to rise, higher pump costs could not be "attributed solely to factors outside the control of the retailers".
It said the higher prices at the pumps appeared to be in part due to "some weakening of competition" in the UK fuel retail market.
A review of the fuel market has been ongoing for several months, over initial concerns that retailers and forecourts were failing to pass on a 5p fuel duty cut to motorists.
Motoring groups claimed the findings from the CMA confirmed what they had been campaigning on for some time - that drivers were not getting a fair deal.
In December, the CMA said it found evidence that so-called "rocket and feather" fuel pricing happened in 2022, when fuel prices rise as wholesale costs rise, but then fall more slowly than costs come down.
"If ever a business sector needed a major shake-up, it's the fuel trade - critical to the cost of living, family finances, transport costs and inflation," said Edmund King, president of the AA.
Simon Williams, fuel spokesman for the RAC, added: "Something badly needs to change to give drivers who depend on their vehicles every day a fair deal at the pumps. We hope even better news will be forthcoming later this summer." | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
Covered Under Your Employer's Group Health Policy? Here's How You Can Make Most Of It
You are recommended to buy separate individual policies, but there are alternatives.
If you are covered under your employer's group health insurance plan, and are unsure of whether you need a separate individual policy, then here is all you need to know.
Individuals are mostly recommended to buy separate individual policies, over and above their group health cover, because of insufficient and incomplete coverage of hospitalisation expenses and limited coverage periods.
But, there are alternatives.
Buying A Top-Up Plan
A group health insurance plan typically provides a medical expenses cover of about Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, S Dheeraj Krishnaa, head of wellness and telehealth at Star Health and Allied Insurance, told BQ Prime.
"So, an employee has the option to buy a top-up policy for the additional coverage or a larger sum assured with the same insurer." This, he said, would cost less premium and provide the coverage as desired.
This can be done when an individual is employed.
Convert Group Policy To Individual Policy
In a separate scenario, where an individual has not taken a separate individual policy during his/her employment but now plans to quit the existing organisation, they can convert existing group health insurance policy to an individual one.
According to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, an employee can convert their group coverage into an individual health insurance plan with the same insurance company after completing the necessary formalities.
"Individuals, who are covered under a group insurance plan, can migrate along with family members to an individual or family health insurance policy with the same insurer. The application for porting the policy should be done at least 45 days prior to the last working day with the employer," Bhaskar Nerurkar, head–health administration team at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, told BQ Prime.
The individual may have to pay an extra premium and provide a medical certificate to change from group to individual health insurance. However, this is not a mandatory requirement, and it is the insurance company’s discretion to offer the conversion or not, he said.
Conversion Versus Buying A Fresh Policy
Star Health's Krishnaa highlighted two main advantages of conversion:
Moratorium period: When a policyholder has maintained the coverage for eight years without a break, the health insurance provider cannot deny a claim. For an employee, who is covered under a group health policy with a particular insurer, when it is converted to an individual policy, all his years under the group policy would also be considered for the moratorium advantage.
Waiting period: Certain lifestyle diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac ailments have a waiting period of one or two years since the purchase of the policy. A conversion of existing group to individual policy would help overcome the waiting period clause.
Addressing Policy Conversion 'What-Ifs'
What if the former employee wishes to change the insurance provider after conversion to individual policy?
Nerurkar said the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India regulations state that the employee can convert group coverage into individual health insurance plan only with the same insurance company. "After a year under the individual cover, you can switch to a different insurer."
If the employee quits and wishes to opt for an individual policy with a different insurer than the one affiliated with the organisation, then the policy will be treated as a fresh policy with the new insurer, he said.
What if an employee quits one organisation and joins another where the group policy is provided by a different insurer?
In such a scenario, it will be a fresh policy and the period for moratorium and waiting periods would start afresh.
Thus, if one wishes to own an individual retail policy, one could consider converting their first group policy into a retail policy to enjoy benefits while being additionally covered at the next organisation.
Health Premiums And Age
There is no right age to buy insurance policies. Health insurance premiums depend on the age slab and both the existing and new policyholder will be required to pay premiums depending on and appropriate to his/her age.
However, buying early could come with some advantages, according to Nerurkar:
Premiums will be affordable, which allows getting the best coverage.
Can afford additional coverage such as maternity insurance and get over its waiting period in case you plan to start a family in the coming years.
Lifetime renewal facility and earn a cumulative bonus with ease.
Also, onset of certain critical ailments like cancer could lead to a person not being issued an individual health insurance policy later. So, it is better to take a cover while an individual is in good health, Krishnaa said. | Personal Finance & Financial Education |
The Conservative Party conference may have just drawn to a close, but some of the moments from the four-day event will stay with us forever.
Hundreds of delegates descended on Manchester this week to swap ideas about Conservative values and – ultimately – to help raise money for the party.
And the annual get-together has certainly made a lot of headlines over just a few days – just not necessarily for the right reasons.
So here’s a look at some of the most unexpected, jaw-dropping or overlooked moments from the jam-packed affair...
1. Tory chair Greg Hands slammed the Labour leader for “flip flopping” over his policies, and offered to sell pairs of “Sir Keir Starmer flip flops for just £16.99”.
2. Liz Truss’s hardline speech drew in a huge crowd a year after her policies crashed the economy, triggering her resignation.
3. Claire Coutinho started a beef with Labour – the energy secretary claimed the opposition were considering taxing meat, even though this is not a Labour policy.
4. Priti Patel heaped praise on GB News one week after Ofcom launched another investigation into the broadcaster.
5. Nigel Farage and Priti Patel were seen singing and dancing together to Frank Sinatra’s I Love You Baby.
6. A huge crowd formed at the book signing for ex-PM Theresa May’s new exposé, Abuse of Power.
7. Lee Anderson asked why anyone would want to go to Bradford when asked about HS2. He said: “Anyone here from Bradford? Would you want to get there quicker?”
8. Michael Gove claimed Brexit did actually deliver on the £350m a week for the NHS.
9. Jacob Rees-Mogg openly supported hormone-injected beef from Australia.
10. After one Tory MP claimed that asylum seekers may pretend to be gay to get through the system, Rees-Mogg suggested some may self-harm.
11. Transport secretary Mark Harper was accused of spouting right-wing conspiracy theories after claiming local councils want to control how often you go to the shops.
12. Rishi Sunak did not rule out former UKIP leader and former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage’s return to the Tory Party.
13. Farage later said he wouldn’t join or even vote for the Tories, saying it represented “nothing I believe in”.
14. Suella Braverman doubled down on her divisive rhetoric, saying there would be a “hurricane” of migrants coming to the UK.
15. On the Human Rights Act, the home secretary said: “I’m surprised they didn’t call it the criminal rights act.”
16. Tory candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, claimed some Jews are “frightened” of current mayor Sadiq Khan. She later refused to apologise, claiming she had been misunderstood.
17. The London chair of the Conservative party, Andrew Boff, was kicked out of Suella Braverman’s speech, after complaining she was delivering a “homophobic rant”.
18. Suella Braverman was pictured standing on a guide dog’s tail.
19. The Conservatives released a new poster which claims they are “kicking woke ideology out of science”.
20. A lavish auction hosted by the Conservative Democratic Organisation saw a lunch with Priti Patel go for £1,700 amid the current cost of living crisis.
21. Kemi Badenoch claimed Britain is the best country to be Black a week after Braverman claimed multiculturalism has failed.
22. Jeremy Hunt asked if voters wanted “sound money under the Conservatives or to run out money under Labour”, despite being brought in as chancellor after his Tory predecessor crashed the economy.
23. West Midlands Tory mayor Andy Street made an impromptu speech against the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2. Reports that he was considering quitting soon followed.
24. After repeatedly insisting they had not decided to scrap the HS2 line to Manchester, the Tories scrapped the HS2 line to Manchester, while meeting in a former railway station Manchester.
25. Tory press office reportedly refuse to let newspaper sketch writers in the conference room where Sunak was to give his closing comments.
26. Akshata Murthy gives an unexpected introduction to Sunak, claiming her husband, the PM, is a man of “honesty and integrity”. It comes after days of criticism over Sunak’s lack of transparency over HS2.
27. Rishi Sunak said there is a feeling that “politics just doesn’t work the way it should” in the UK in his closing speech. The Tories have been in power since 2010 and Sunak became PM by default last year when all other Tory leadership contenders pulled out. | United Kingdom Business & Economics |
A former Republican speaker of Ohio’s House of Representatives was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison for his role in a $60 million bribery scheme.
Larry Householder was convicted by a federal grand jury in March on racketeering conspiracy charges in connection with a scheme to accept bribes in exchange for ensuring the passage of a billion-dollar bailout for a nuclear energy company.
“We are deeply disappointed in the court’s sentence which we believe was unduly harsh and failed to adequately take into consideration all of Larry’s good deeds in the community over the course of his lifetime,” Householder’s attorney Steve Bradley told CNN in an email. “We are also disappointed that Larry was not permitted to self surrender to begin serving his sentence. We will vigorously pursue an appeal with the hope of winning a new trial.”
Former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matthew Borges was also convicted in the scheme. Borges is set to be sentenced in a Cincinnati federal court on Friday.
The US attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio in a March news release did not explicitly identify the nuclear energy company involved in the scheme but noted that utility company FirstEnergy Corp. previously agreed to pay a $230 million penalty for “conspiring to bribe public officials and others” as part of a deferred prosecution settlement.
Following Householder’s sentencing, FirstEnergy Corp. told CNN in an email that the company has “accepted responsibility for its actions related to House Bill 6 and has taken significant steps to put past issues behind us. Today we are a different, stronger company with a sound strategy and focused on a bright future.”
The scheme centered on House Bill 6, a $1 billion dollar bailout that saved two nuclear plants operated by FirstEnergy Corp. In March 2017, FirstEnergy started making quarterly $250,000 payments to Householder’s tax-exempt social welfare account named Generation Now, US attorneys in Ohio’s southern district had said.
Householder’s team then used that money to support HB 6’s passage and stop a ballot effort to overturn the law, the implementation of which has since been blocked.
Millions of those dollars went to Householder’s bid for speaker, to other state House candidates likely to support him and to his team’s own pockets.
Householder, federal prosecutors said, spent over $500,000 of those funds to “pay off his credit card balances, repair his Florida home and settle a business lawsuit.”
Borges used about $366,000 for his own benefit and used another $15,000 to bribe an Ohio Republican operative for information on the number of signatures collected on the ballot referendum opposing HB 6, according to the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of Ohio.
Jeffrey Longstreth, Householder’s longtime campaign and political strategist, and Juan Cespedes, a lobbyist, previously pleaded guilty to their roles in the racketeering conspiracy.
CNN’s Jack Forrest contributed to this report. | Energy & Natural Resources |
Here's Why Now May Not Be the Best Time to Buy New Construction
KEY POINTS
- If you're unable to find an existing home that meets your needs, you may be willing to pay to build one.
- Starting a new construction project in the winter could subject you to numerous delays -- and costs.
If you've been struggling to buy a home, you're no doubt in good company. Housing inventory has been sluggish this entire year. And as of late September, there was only a 3.4-month supply of homes on the U.S. real estate market, according to the National Association of Realtors. That's well below the four- to six-month supply that's generally needed to meet buyer demand.
As such, you may be at the point where you're willing to pay to have a home built from the ground up rather than wait for the right existing home to hit the market. Doing so will likely mean taking on a larger mortgage. And at a time when mortgage lenders are charging higher borrowing rates, that may not be ideal.
But if you can afford to purchase and finance a new construction home, you may decide to just go for it. Embarking on that project now, however, is a move you might regret for one big reason.
Will weather get in the way of your home-buying plans?
Any time you sign up to purchase new construction, you run the risk of delays. And those delays can stem from different places.
Homes being built from the ground up need to go through different stages of inspections. Sometimes, there can be a delay on the part of a township or municipality that holds up the construction process.
Similarly, home construction can be delayed if supplies aren't available when they're needed. There can also be delays if builders experience staffing issues, such as if their subcontractors cancel on them or fall ill.
There's basically no time of the year that's immune to delays when it comes to construction. But if you're starting a new construction project in winter, you may be more likely to fall victim to weather-related holdups. And that could end up being problematic.
If your home build is delayed extensively, it might put you in a situation where you have to move out of your existing home before your new one is ready. From there, you might have to bear the expense of temporary housing and storage. You could also run into problems if your mortgage rate lock expires and the cost of borrowing rises.
Talk things through with your builder before signing on
Homes get built during the winter months all the time. But if you're starting a new construction project going into winter, it pays to sit down with your builder and ask some questions first. Those might include:
- What weather-related delays are most common?
- Are there steps you can take to mitigate them?
- What's the longest delay you've experienced in the course of building a single home?
You may decide to move forward with new construction regardless of the season. But it's important to know what you're getting into so you can adjust your plans accordingly. That could mean extending your current lease by a few months so you don't risk ending up without a place to live, in case your new home takes a lot longer than planned to become move-in ready.
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NBFCs Likely To See Assets Growth Moderately Lower Than 16-18% In FY24: Crisil
India's NBFC sector is expected to record a moderate growth of 16-17% in the current fiscal because of relatively slower expansion on unsecured retail loans due to the recent regulatory measures issued by the RBI, said Crisil Ratings.
The growth in the country's NBFC sector is expected to be moderately lower than 16-18% in the current fiscal because of relatively slower expansion on unsecured retail loans due to the recent regulatory measures issued by the RBI, Crisil Ratings said on Wednesday.
Assets Under Management of Non-Banking Financial Companies are set to log a healthy 14-17% growth next fiscal on the back of continued strong credit demand across retail loan segments, it said in a release.
"Growth may be moderately lower than 16-18% in the current fiscal, as unsecured retail loans, the fastest growing segment in the NBFC AUM pie so far, are likely to see a relatively slower growth as NBFCs recalibrate their strategies due to the recent regulatory measures issued by the Reserve Bank of India," it said.
Going forward, diversification in product offerings and funding profile will be key constituents of their growth strategy, it added.
The rating agency further said retail credit growth continues to be driven by sound underlying macro and micro factors.
"Private consumption is trending well above the long-term average as retail spends on homes, vehicles and consumer durables remain strong. And backed by healthy balance sheets, NBFCs have been agile to ride this retail credit-growth wave," it said.
Speaking at a webinar, Crisil Ratings Managing Director Gurpreet Chhatwal said the recent regulatory measures are targeted at unsecured retail loans and do not impact the secured asset classes where growth is expected to be steady.
"Importantly, the regulatory changes do not impact HFCs," he said.
According to the agency, the two largest traditional segments of home loans and vehicle finance now comprise 25-27% each of the NBFC AUM.
Both segments are expected to report steady growth.
In the home loan segment, growth of 12-14% next fiscal will be driven by HFCs' focus on affordable home loans (ticket sizes of less than Rs 25 lakh), while vehicle finance is expected to grow 18-19% this fiscal and sustain 17-18% growth during 2024-25 on the back of solid underlying-asset sales.
"Unsecured loans is now the third largest segment in the NBFC AUM pie. And this segment is likely to see a moderation in growth due to the regulatory measures which affect NBFC AUM growth on both their asset and liability sides on three fronts," said Chhatwal.
As per Crisil Ratings' estimates, bank loan borrowing costs for NBFCs could increase 25-50 bps. However, its impact on the balance sheets of NBFCs will be lower and linked to the extent of their reliance on bank funding. | India Business & Economics |
How to Decide on and Enforce Your Rental Policies as a Landlord
Explore how to simplify deciding your rental policies and what to cover to ensure smooth tenancies down the line.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Whenever you set up a new rental unit, you have a variety of decisions to make. From choosing a reasonable rent rate to screening new tenants to reside in the unit, you have your hands full.
Deciding on your rental policies is one important step in setting up your rental. If you have other properties, you may decide to migrate the same lease/policy structure. However, individual properties have individual features and needs, and you may find you need to revise or adjust your policies accordingly.
You might also be wondering: What are the "best" policies for landlords? Which policies are proven to be good for landlords and tenants, and which are a disaster waiting to happen?
If you have any of these questions or others, read on to learn about how to decide on and enforce your rental policies.
Step 1: Know the law
Before you can establish any policies, you need to know which policies are legal. Landlord-tenant relationships are regulated by federal, state and local laws. Why know them? Violations are costly, and it's easy to make one if you don't know the laws that apply in your region.
Before writing any rental agreement contract, your first step should be to review these laws. It's not light reading, but it's complex for good reason — your policies have a real effect on tenants' housing and lives. The key is to know what's illegal in your state and seek the advice of an experienced lawyer if any questions come up.
Step 2: Research and form your policies
After you're clear on how the law will influence your policies, you can start making decisions. Below are some common policy items many landlords include in their leases with commentary about each.
Late fees and grace periods:
Of the several elements included in your rent policy, two important ones are late fees and grace periods. Most landlords establish late rental fees for late payments as a motivation for tenants to pay on time. Late fees themselves aren't consistent revenue for you, but they do encourage consistent on-time payments, which is necessary for the success of any rental business.
Grace periods are another good policy to include in your lease. A grace period allows tenants several days after the due date to pay rent before fees are applied. Grace periods tend to be a good idea because they can prevent unnecessary fees or eviction notices for tenants who simply had a temporary setback with their paycheck.
Both late fees and grace periods are regulated by state laws. There may be a limit on late fee amounts or a minimum grace period set by your state's legislature.
Pets:
Pets are another controversial policy. Should you allow them?
While pets certainly pose many risks to your properties (think clawed furniture, barking, messes, etc.), you should also consider the type of value they could add to your rental community. Pets bring comfort, happiness — and above all — money. Pet owners will pay hundreds more for units that accommodate their furry friends, and appealing to that market is highly lucrative.
If you choose to allow pets in your properties, it's recommended that you include pet fees and/or a pet deposit in your rental pet policy. This way, you'll have guaranteed funds in case of any damages. Then, make sure you advertise your pet-friendly properties in every way you can: Include pet details on your listings, post on social media, or even invest in some pet amenities like park areas or dog-washing stations.
If you decide not to allow pets, just remember that it's illegal to deny a tenant the right to have their service animal or emotional support animal (ESA), regardless of your pet policy.
Subleasing:
What about subleasing? Landlords who might be struggling to sustain tenancies and need long-term assurance might turn to subleasing to ensure rent payments are consistent. But is it a good idea in the long run?
Subleasing isn't for everyone, but landlords who do allow it will benefit from defining clear and strict subleasing policies in their rental agreements. For instance, require that your tenant submit the subtenant's name and information to you before finalizing so that you can screen the person yourself. This way, you'll always know who is living in your property, and you can ensure yourself that they're a good fit. Additionally, retain the final say on all subtenants, and outline all logistics in the lease.
Tenant modifications:
Often, when making a new place home, tenants want to add a personal touch. This is natural, and it's typically not a problem. But what if your tenant wants to make permanent modifications to the unit, such as painting, adding shelving, etc.?
A simple way to handle these requests is to simply establish a blanket "no-modifications" policy, so you don't have to worry about allowing some tenants and denying others. But occasionally, your tenant might have a really good idea.
If you choose to allow it, you want the job done right. It's generally a good idea to establish some ground rules ahead of time. For the painting example, you should specify what can and can't be painted, require a solid primer, and define some standards for the job (as well as any consequences for botched jobs, such as paying for a professional painter to redo the job). It's also best to specify the type of paint you'll allow, not the color — this gives your tenants some freedom while ensuring high-quality materials.
Renter's insurance:
Lastly, requiring renter's insurance is always a smart policy. Your tenants' insurance usually kicks in before yours in case of an accident, so this policy will save you the time and trouble of interacting with your own insurance company. Make renter's insurance a provision of the lease.
Step 3: Define penalties and legal consequences
Your policies aren't effective unless there are distinct consequences for breaking them. If these are clearly spelled out in your rental agreements (and compliant with local law), you shouldn't have any trouble enforcing them.
For instance, you can enforce late fees so long as they do not exceed local limits. Other violations might be penalized first with a gentle reminder, then a stern warning, and finally an official lease violation and eviction notice.
Don't hesitate to enforce severe consequences for severe violations. If any illegal activity occurs, most states allow you to send an immediate and unconditional notice to quit. If you don't respond to these violations quickly and sternly, tenants will lose respect for you and quickly learn they can violate any policies they wish.
Deciding on your rental policies is a tedious — but exciting — step in setting up your property. You're finally going to implement your ideas and see your hard work come to fruition. But early attention to these minute details does make a difference down the line. By investing in creating strong policies now, you can reap the benefits of smooth tenancies later. | Real Estate & Housing |
Cannabis multistate operator MariMed secured a new 10-year loan worth $58.7 million, most of which will be used to refinance existing debt at an unspecified lower interest rate.
MariMed CEO Jon Levine said the refinancing “will generate significant cash savings.”
“Importantly, we are pleased there is no warrant or other equity component resulting in dilution to our shareholders,” Levine said in a Monday statement.
MariMed described the new 10-year loan as a construction to permanent commercial real estate mortgage from an unidentified U.S. chartered bank.
The company did not disclose the interest rate but said in a news release that it was a “lower fixed rate” that will be reset five years into the loan.
MariMed will make interest-only payments for the first year.
“After the first 12 months, payments will be based on a 20-year amortization schedule,” the Massachusetts-based company said in its release.
The loan is secured against MariMed’s “operating assets and real estate holdings” in Maryland and Massachusetts.
MariMed will use the new capital to pay off $46.8 million worth of loans from Chicago Atlantic and Bank of New England as well as a seller note from MariMed’s acquisition of Massachusetts medical cannabis company Ermont earlier this year.
The remainder of the new loan will be used to finish expanding MariMed’s cultivation facility in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Levine said the refinancing will save MariMed $4.7 million in principal and interest in Year One as well as $3.5 million annually afterward.
Those savings “will significantly improve cash flow from operations going forward, and provide funds that can be used for acquisitions if we choose,” Levine said. | Banking & Finance |
The energy price cap is set to rise in January at a steeper level than initially expected due to "growing volatility" in global wholesale costs, according to a closely watched report.
Market specialist Cornwall Insight said the Israel-Hamas war and the effects of industrial action overseas had contributed to a shift in its energy price cap predictions since September.
Then, it had seen the average annual dual fuel bill, paid by direct debit, rising by an average £64 in January on the current cap level of £1,834.
But it said on Thursday that it now sees January's sum rising to £1,923 per year - with a small, further increase to £1,929 from April.
Global oil costs have been on the rise since June - initially due to production cuts by major oil-producing nations Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Volatility has increased amid fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East since the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent retaliatory military action in Gaza.
Wholesale gas costs - which spiked to unprecedented levels last year in the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine - remain well down on those record highs.
However, there is a traditional increase heading into the northern hemisphere winter and costs still reflect the growing dependence on liquefied natural gas (LNG) due to the loss of Russian supplies.
Day-ahead contracts, according to LSEG data, showed a UK wholesale price of 89p per therm.
Pre-Russia war that figure, for the time of year, would be closer to 60p.
The energy price cap is set by the regulator Ofgem.
It is due to reveal the new figure for the cap, to run for three months from January, later this month.
If the Cornwall Insight projections prove accurate, it threatens to add to the evolving cost of living crisis.
The Bank of England added to the gloom on Thursday when it warned that Bank rate would remain high, likely for longer than financial markets expect.
It dashes hopes that borrowing costs, such as mortgages, will see any shift downwards over the next 12 months.
Dr Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said of its findings: "The jump in price cap predictions since September has once again highlighted the vulnerability of UK energy prices - and customer bills - to geopolitical events.
"As we saw with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a delicate balance in the global energy market which can easily be disrupted by unexpected events, and it looks as though the situation in the wholesale markets may to some extent be repeating itself."
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He added: "The government needs to take steps to proactively limit the impact that such situations have on the UK's energy market, and already stretched households, rather than reacting to events as they occur.
"Stop-gap measures such as social tariffs and one-off payments are helpful, but they are not a long-term solution.
"While the UK will never be entirely protected from global price increases, reducing the country's reliance on imported energy and prioritising sustainable, domestically sourced energy will help protect the country from international energy shocks, and work to stabilise prices over the next decade.
"This is a far better approach than simply mitigating price rises each time they occur." | Energy & Natural Resources |
Tornado Cash developers Roman Semenov and Roman Storm have been charged with three conspiracy counts in an indictment unsealed today. Storm has been arrested and Semenov remains at large, according to a statement from the Southern District of New York.
Tornado Cash is a so-called “mixer,” a privacy service meant to obscure the trail of ownership for cryptocurrency that passes through it. The mixer “knowingly violated” US sanctions and “laundered more than $1 billion in criminal proceeds,” according to a statement from US Attorney Damian Williams. “While publicly claiming to offer a technically sophisticated privacy service, Storm and Semenov in fact knew that they were helping hackers and fraudsters conceal the fruits of their crimes.”
The two are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter. The mixer itself was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control last year; today, Semenov was specifically sanctioned by OFAC as well. A third co-founder, Alexey Pertsev, will be tried in the Netherlands and isn’t mentioned by name in the indictment.
The indictment alleges that Tornado Cash was used by North Korea’s Lazarus Group to launder hundreds of millions of dollars. Mixers such as Tornado Cash are also used to launder funds from ransomware, security experts have said.
“It would be unlikely as a fund that we’d use a ‘compliant mixer.’”
It wasn’t just criminals using Tornado Cash; privacy is a real concern for cryptocurrency. Once an identity is linked to a wallet, it’s possible to trace every transaction. That makes privacy tools popular among those who aren’t engaged in wrongdoing. But Tornado Cash was also allegedly used by North Korean hackers to launder $615 million in stolen tokens from the Ronin Network.
Tornado Cash operated without know-your-customer (KYC) or anti-money laundering (AML) programs as required by US law, the document alleges. It also did not register with FinCEN as a money-transmitting business, the indictment says. Semenov and Storm also created a document called “Tips to Remain Anonymous,” which advised customers to consider using Tor or a VPN, delete data from their web browsers, and leave their money in Tornado for longer periods of time to better anonymize their transactions. They also advised users to employ different IP addresses for deposit and withdrawal.
Storm suggested creating a version of Tornado with KYC / AML enabled, but Tornado’s unnamed venture capital investors were dismissive, saying, “I just don’t know if anyone will actually want this.” The investor added, “It would be unlikely as a fund that we’d use a ‘compliant mixer.’”
Besides the Ronin hack, two other incidents were referenced, one in 2020 and one in 2021. This appears to line up with the KuCoin hack in 2020 and the BitMart hack in 2021, according to CoinDesk.
“Despite knowing full well that the Tornado Cash service was being used to launder criminal proceeds, and that the Tornado Cash pools contained large amounts of ETH representing criminal proceeds that were commingled with other customer deposits for the purpose of concealment, the Tornado Cash founders took no steps to implement effective AML or KYC programs,” the indictment said. Rather, the developers took steps to increase anonymity so they could profit from the volume of transactions they were processing, according to the indictment. | Crypto Trading & Speculation |
Subsets and Splits