In the first week of the New Year there was a story that was widely reported in many of the papers. ‘More and more people pushed into higher rate tax bracket’ ran the headline with – according to which paper you read – either 1m or 1.2m more people are set to pay the 40% …
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 alreadyreached 5.1%. The UK is …
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 …
Facebook is to hire 10,000 people in Europe to work on the metaverse. It has the potential to change our work, our leisure and our lives. Simply put, the metaverse is the next big thing. But perhaps we should start by explaining what it is… Most people have heard of virtual reality: the belief is …
There cannot be anyone reading this article who hasn’t heard of COP26, the conference on climate change and global warming which took place in Glasgow in the first two weeks of November. (If you didn’t know, COP stands for Conference of the Parties – those countries which signed the original UN Convention on Climate Change …
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 …
