Financial news

• What can be done about the ‘great gender pension chasm’? | Letter

  11-06-2023 18:55
  
  Ethnic minority women are the most likely to face pension poverty in the UK, writes Pete GlancyThank you for the depiction of the “great gender pension chasm”, (Women’s private pensions worth 35% less than men’s in Great Britain, 5 June). It is something we’ve long been concerned about and tracked for a number of years, examining how it has persistently shaped women’s retirement prospects for the worse.The vast inequality between private pension pots for men a
  
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• Timpson family takes £12.8m dividend after lockdown effect recedes

  11-06-2023 15:33
  
  Demand resurfaces for dry cleaning, watch repairs and key cutting, though shoe repair remains out of favourThe Timpson family paid themselves a £12.8m dividend last year as dry cleaning, key cutting, watch repairs and photo processing bounced back at the high street stalwart after pandemic lockdowns – but shoe mending sales remained downtrodden.The family-owned Timpson Group includes Snappy Snaps, Johnsons dry cleaners and a small group of pubs alongside its namesake shoe-repair and
  
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• Travelodge to be put up for sale by GoldenTree with £1.2bn price tag

  11-06-2023 13:01
  
  US hedge fund seeks to profit from post-pandemic surge in demand for budget hotel chainTravelodge is to be put up for sale with a price tag of more than £1bn as the owner of the budget hotel chain seeks to cash in on a post-pandemic boom in demand.GoldenTree, the US hedge fund that took over Travelodge in 2012, has held meetings with investment banks to explore a potential sale of the chain of 595 hotels. Continue reading...
  
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• Urge to soothe markets may blunt Labour’s edge on Tories

  11-06-2023 11:59
  
  Scaling back of green prosperity plan reflects a possibly costly desire to project fiscal stabilityDread of the financial markets is part of the Labour party’s DNA. This primal fear has been passed down the generations. Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were all battle-scarred from their vain attempts to defend the pound.Even though the signs point to a big Labour victory at the next election, the mood at the top of the party remains cautious. For months,
  
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• Pocket money: how best to give your children cash

  11-06-2023 11:00
  
  From payment cards and apps to how much, there are ways to help kids learn to manage financesSome parents still give their children notes and coins as pocket money but many kids now have little contact with cash, and growing numbers of families have been turning to the various payment cards and apps that have emerged to serve this market. Continue reading...
  
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• It’s a struggle to leave behind the wealth or poverty of our birthplace | Torsten Bell

  11-06-2023 10:32
  
  Research reveals the extent to which our earnings and values are determined by where we are bornWhere you are born matters a lot. There’s the accent, of course, but I mean in rather less superficial ways. It’s the breadth of those impacts that stands out in a new study from London School of Economics researchers, which shows how the economic circumstances of where and when we were born shape far more than our economic outcomes – moulding everything from our cultural outlooks to
  
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• A tale of two cities: Paris proves that you don’t need skyscrapers to thrive | Rowan Moore

  11-06-2023 10:02
  
  A ban on high-rise buildings contrasts with Britain’s ever thrusting capitalThere’s a story that sections of the British commentariat have liked to tell for some time, about the differences between London and Paris. The French capital, it says, is over-regulated and over-taxed, nice to look at, good for weekend mini-breaks, but stagnant, frozen, a museum piece. Its British counterpart, in this reading, is thrusting, dynamic, creative, global, open for business.The contrast plays out
  
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• UK food giant calls for higher fat, sugar and salt taxes

  11-06-2023 08:00
  
  Danone boss urges ministers to help people make healthy choicesOne of the country’s biggest food firms has said ministers should consider taxing products high in fat, sugar or salt to combat the obesity crisis.Danone UK & Ireland, which sells the Actimel yogurt drink brand, says government intervention is required to ensure consumers are offered healthier products. It says some food firms in the UK have not shown “enough appetite to change”. Continue reading...
  
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• Labour should be candid about the Brexit disaster | William Keegan

  11-06-2023 08:00
  
  Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are cautious about spending plans. Rejoining the EU would create the prosperity to fund them‘Now the very bounds of Britain are laid bare, and wonder grows where knowledge fails.” (“Nunc terminus Britanniae patet, atque omne ignotum pro magnifico est.”) Tacitus was writing of the Roman invasion of this country 2,000 years ago. Unlike Brexit and post-2010 austerity, that invasion was not an act of self-harm but inflicted from without.All thes
  
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• Fantasy fears about AI are obscuring how we already abuse machine intelligence | Kenan Malik

  11-06-2023 07:31
  
  We blame technology for decisions really made by governments and corporationsLast November, a young African American man, Randal Quran Reid, was pulled over by the state police in Georgia as he was driving into Atlanta. He was arrested under warrants issued by Louisiana police for two cases of theft in New Orleans. Reid had never been to Louisiana, let alone New Orleans. His protestations came to nothing, and he was in jail for six days as his family frantically spent thousands of dollars hiring
  
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• Falling funds and the rise of AI are top of the menu at London tech talks

  11-06-2023 01:05
  
  Artificial intelligence will be the main talking point at the coming London Tech Week but investment and skills problems remainFor some companies attending London Tech Week this Monday, just being there is an achievement. The sudden failure in March of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a financial cornerstone for the UK and US tech industries, had left many British companies wondering how they were going to see out that month.Ashley Ramrachia, chief executive of Academy, a tech company with headquarter
  
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• Labour says ‘Tory mortgage penalty’ costs homeowners extra £7,000 a year

  11-06-2023 00:51
  
  Opposition finds fallout of Liz Truss mini-budget has raised average mortgage interest payments by £150 a week in two yearsHomeowners are being hit with a “Tory mortgage penalty” of £7,000 a year with interest rates triple what they were two years ago, according to Labour.Pat McFadden, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, blamed what he called the “reckless economic gamble” taken by the Conservatives during September’s mini-budget when Liz Truss was p
  
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