As many of our clients will be aware, one of the great worries as the world recovers from the pandemic is inflation. Late last year the Bank of England suggested that inflation ‘might reach’ 5% in 2022. A week later the figures for November came out showing that inflation had already reached 5.1%. The UK …
Introduction January’s headlines were dominated not only by reports of lockdown parties in Downing Street, but also by growing tension on Ukraine’s border. Russian President Vladimir Putin massed his tanks on the border, with the Chair of the Commons Defence Committee saying that an invasion was “imminent and inevitable”, and a top Polish official said …
According to the latest Forbes Rich List, the richest person in the world is Jeff Bezos, founder and, until recently, CEO of Amazon. Forbes estimates Jeff Bezos’ wealth at $177bn (£133bn), which puts him ahead of those other well-known billionaires, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. These days it is easy to keep score …
We don’t want to sit behind screens anymore. According to a recent BBC article, ever-increasing numbers of us have reassessed our work and our lives post pandemic, and we want to work outside. Quoted in the article David Rochefort, a former IT worker, said the pandemic made him want to do something ‘astronomically different.’ “My …
The financial burden on the average consumer seems to be increasing daily. Food prices are rising, energy bills are on the up and National Insurance is about to increase. At the same time, businesses are struggling with issues such as rising transport costs and labour shortages, which have been linked to both Brexit and the …
Introduction Despite the pandemic, 2021 was a good year for the majority of stock markets we report on in the Bulletin. We wrote that a year ago and – irrespective of all the ups and downs it brought – 2021 was another good year for world stock markets. All but one of the markets we …
Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, delivered his second Budget speech of the year on Wednesday October 27th. It was, he declared at the start of the speech, “a Budget for a new age of optimism”. He sat down an hour later with Conservative backbenchers furiously waving their order papers as he promised “a …
Introduction November was a month when supplies of both oil and gas – or the lack of them – dominated the news. You will read several comments below about the threat of inflation. In many countries, it is reaching levels not seen for two or three decades, and the escalating price of oil and gas …
As the UK economy has gradually recovered from the effects of the pandemic there has been the usual mixture of good and bad news. The glass could be half full, with the UK growing at the fastest rate of G20 countries, or half-empty, with worker shortages threatening to derail the recovery, both being headlines within …
Introduction October was the month which brought us Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s second Budget of the year. Normally that would make the headlines, but October was also a month when the world gave us plenty to worry about. With factors such as rising energy prices and supply chain issues impacting economies worldwide, the UK’s economic outlook …
