Pension planning is a massive issue for our ageing UK population. So the question of which options we should all consider for our retirement is clearly a very important one. My personal opinion is that the UK government should allow peer-to-peer business loans (P2P or P2B assets – as you prefer) to be held with […]
I have long believed that forcing people to buy annuities was unfair, and was a poor way for pensions to be invested. And so the government’s decision to remove the compulsion to buy an annuity at age 75 and, indeed, to allow anyone over 55 to take their pension money and invest it for themselves, […]
When will it finally dry up? The Federal Reserve in the US has been looking to extract itself from its quantitative easing programme (QE) over the last 18 months, but feared that if it did so too soon, it would cause turmoil in the financial markets. It has finally concluded, after having made $4 trillion […]
China can manufacture – but innovation is a different matter I have spent the last few days in China. The stock market has collapsed over the past year by 70 per cent as GDP growth has slowed from 10 per cent to 7 per cent. But the optimism amongst Chinese business people has not diminished […]
Reducing and digitising the retail network – or just self-harming? Commercial and retail banks appear to be very good judges of character – they don’t even like themselves. It may well be that investment banks are as implacably steeped in self-love and the relentless pursuit of profit as ever they were. But their commercial and […]
When I was a child, Radio 4 was permanently on in the kitchen, and I still listen to it at every opportunity. I have never been a great fan of the Archers, but it has been a constant in my life, despite the banal story lines. One of the current dramas in Ambridge involves Helen […]
Egg freezing – “a truly bizarre employee benefit” How do business-owners and managers decide what employee benefits to offer? This week, Apple and Facebook told the world that they were offering $20,000 to female employees who wanted to freeze their eggs. This is a truly bizarre employee benefit and is not one that I would […]
G The manufacturing sector is still a vital component of the UK’s economic recovery Britain has an illustrious industrial history, but the manufacturing sector’s contribution to gross deomestic product (GDP) has declined dramatically over the post-war years. In 1948, manufacturing accounted for 41 per cent of our GDP according to the Office for National Statistics […]
The Irwin Mitchell survey provided some eye-opening research data Seventy-five entrepreneurs met in Sheffield just last week at an event organized by the law firm Irwin Mitchell. They were asked a number of questions about crowdfunding and their responses were fascinating. When asked what sources of funding they were likely to pursue in the next […]
Crowdfunding: an attractive alternative, available now There isn’t really an excuse for the miserable returns that banks offer deposit account investors, as I pointed out in an earlier blog. But base rates, a key factor in determining retail-deposit rates, are extremely low right now. So a very important question must be where rates will be […]