Financial news

• George Soros raises donation to anti-Brexit Best for Britain group

  11-02-2018 22:20 via theguardian.com
  Investor pledges additional £100,000 in response to ‘smear campaign’ in rightwing pressGeorge Soros has moved to defy his critics over his £400,000 donation to the pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain by pledging an additional £100,000 to support efforts to fight Brexit.The billionaire investor’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) is set to match a crowdfunding campaign set up in the wake of attacks on Soros, which has already raised more than £50,000 since
  
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• Tesco 'planning' discount chain to take on Aldi and Lidl

  11-02-2018 16:09 via theguardian.com
  Retailer has reportedly hired advisers to develop separate brand as threat from discounters growsBritain’s biggest supermarket group is understood to be working on a secret plan to develop a new discount grocery chain to take on cut-price chains Aldi and Lidl.Tesco is said to be developing a separate brand that would match the German discounters on price in a bid to halt the constant drift of customers away to the cheaper rivals. The new chain would offer a far more limited range of produc
  
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• Virgin Trains and Stagecoach must be punished harder – for their own good

  11-02-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  The very existence of rail franchising is threatened by the cycle of overbidding and collapse. Firms should welcome disciplineThe railways and profit do not sit easily together, largely because a carriage load of other considerations need to be weighed first: safety, punctuality, affordability. The presence of private rail operators on our infrastructure is therefore contingent on the public accepting this added, complicating consideration.One way of keeping that delicate compact in place is to
  
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• ‘Loyalty to British Gas cost me £629 for a year’s cover’

  11-02-2018 08:00
  I cancelled my agreement and found that as a new customer the same cover would be £384Having recently retired, I have been taking a keener interest in my outgoings. As I went through all the paperwork, I was staggered to see that Scottish Gas (British Gas) has demanded £629 to renew my HomeCare 4 agreement which covers my boiler, central heating and plumbing. I had been paying it by direct debit which, more than likely, made me a bit lax in checking the renewal quotes and as result i
  
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• In spread betting, the house wins. But maybe not this time

  11-02-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Odds-makers on the financial markets have agreed so readily to regulators’ reforms that it almost makes one suspiciousIn 1994, during a series of US congressional grillings dubbed the Waxman hearings, the seven chief executives of Big Tobacco all memorably stood in a line and swore they did not believe nicotine was addictive.The footage of the so-called “seven dwarves” doesn’t look all that great now, what with the subsequent disclosure of the companies’ own scienti
  
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• Britain’s sad circular journey: from empire to Efta to Brussels to Brexit

  11-02-2018 07:59 via theguardian.com
  A glance at Britain’s history with Europe reveals that, then as now, we are worse off outside a union than we are inside itWhen I was a schoolboy it was common practice to go to the cinema (or “the pictures”, as we used to say) and arrive well after the start of a double bill. We would then stay until the action in the first film had reached the point where we had come in.As this country becomes the laughing stock of the world in regard to the so-called “negotiations&rdqu
  
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• Dawn of the techlash | Rachel Botsman

  11-02-2018 01:04 via theguardian.com
  Once seen as saviours of democracy, tech giants are now viewed as threats to truth. But how did our faith in all things digital turn into an erosion of trust, particularly in the arena of information and politics?Outside, the air was a crisp – minus two degrees – with six feet of snow piled high as heads of state and global business leaders gathered for the World Economic Forum last month. Inside, a different chill hung in the air, as a frosty backlash against the social media compan
  
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