Top investment house delists world biggest meat producer over lack of commitment to sustainability issues The investment arm of northern Europe’s largest financial services group has dropped JBS, the world’s biggest meat processer, from its portfolio. The Brazilian company is now excluded from assets sold by Nordea Asset Management, which controls a €230bn (£210bn) fund, according to Eric Pedersen, its head of responsible investments.The decision was taken about a month ago, over the meat giant’s links to farms involved in Amazon deforestation, its response to the Covid-19 outbreak, past corruption scandals, and frustrations over engagement with the company on such issues. “The exclusion of JBS is quite dramatic for us because it is from all of our funds, not just the ones labelled ESG,… [Read More...]

Covid-19 pandemic pushes traditional savers to consider other options but there are golden rulesIt has been a miserable time to be a saver – interest rates, which were already poor, have fallen further since the Bank of England cut its rate to a record low. At the same time, workers lucky enough to have kept their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic have saved thousands of pounds – and now they are looking at where to put it. Total retail bank deposits in the UK have jumped by £78bn since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.Perhaps it is no wonder that online trading in shares by small investors has taken off in recent weeks, with evidence of working-from-home employees dabbling in the markets on … [Read More...]

Neil Woodford was the UK’s most famous fund manager. His fall highlights an industry both lucrative and dysfunctionalIn his classic book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, the Princeton economist Burton Malkiel writes: “A blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a newspaper’s financial pages could select a portfolio that would do just as well as one carefully selected by experts.” Last year, the Wall Street Journal threw darts at a list of shares and pitted the resulting random portfolio against those of the cream of the hedge-fund world. The result? The dartboard beat the professionals by 27 percentage points.The investment world is no place for geniuses; anyone who claims otherwise is a fool or a charlatan. Yet this does not stop money managers touting themselves as … [Read More...]

Social investment model stepped up amid rising concern for economically disadvantagedCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA London investment manager is launching a campaign to encourage investors to support communities in the developing world hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.Alquity’s 40-40 campaign aims to improve the lives of 40,000 people in countries where overcrowded living conditions, chronic ill health and weak public health systems leave the population at risk from coronavirus. Continue reading… [Read More...]

Someone with £250,000 in scheme at start of year will have seen it shrink to about £225,000Coronavirus – latest updates Savers are nursing losses approaching 10% in their pension schemes since the start of the coronavirus market panic, while holders of share Isas have lost as much as a quarter of all their money in some funds.The stock market rout means someone who had accumulated £250,000 in their pension scheme at the start of this year will have seen it shrivel to about £225,000 on Monday. Related: FTSE on course for biggest fall since financial crisis It is not all bad news. Drivers will at least see the price of petrol fall Continue reading… [Read More...]

Payout, which is due in March, represents a fraction of £2.1bn pot distributed in January More than 300,000 investors trapped in Neil Woodford’s failed flagship investment fund will share £142m as part of a second payout, and have been warned they are unlikely to receive extra cash soon.The payout, which is expected by 25 March, is a fraction of the £2.1bn pot that was distributed back in January. It represents 20% of the remaining assets of the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF), worth about £575m. Continue reading… [Read More...]

Legal & General fund managers voted against more than 100 chairmen in 2018The UK’s biggest fund management group voted against more than 100 chairmen last year, at firms including Barclays, Ted Baker and Sports Direct, for failing to boost the number of women in their boardrooms.Legal & General Investment Management, which manages more than £1tn in assets, more than doubled the number of protest votes cast in 2018 over a lack of gender diversity. A year earlier the asset manager only voted against 37 UK chairmen. Continue reading… [Read More...]

Government orders FCA inquiry into £236m scandal surrounding investment firmThe City watchdog has been ordered by the government to launch an independent review of how it handled the collapse of London Capital & Finance, the investment firm at the centre of a growing £236m financial scandal.LC&F sold £236m worth of bonds which promised returns of 6.5% to 8% a year, but the company has collapsed with more than 11,000 investors expected to receive little more than a fifth of their money back. Continue reading… [Read More...]

Chancellor’s measures to improve economic growth include training, tax relief and £2.5bn fund for innovatorsThe government’s latest attempt to tackle Britain’s poor productivity record focused on extra funding for artificial intelligence, skills and technology, as the chancellor introduced measures to boost economic growth.Philip Hammond said there would be an expansion in the national productivity investment fund which he launched last year. The fund would rise from £23bn to £31bn to help kickstart improvements in efficiency levels across the UK. Productivity is an economic measure of the efficiency of a workforce. It typically measures the level of output per hour of work, or per worker. Related: Budget 2017: Hammond masks gloomy outlook with stamp duty cut Related: The real budget story is the sharp cut … [Read More...]

Advisers criticised over keeping poor-performing fund in influential buy-list but excluding top performerBritain’s biggest financial adviser, Hargreaves Lansdown, has slashed the fund offerings on its highly influential buy-list, controversially excluding top manager Terry Smith while keeping faith with rival Neil Woodford.The Hargreaves Lansdown Wealth 150 list of funds is regarded as the most powerful buy-list in the asset management industry, driving huge flows in and out of fund firms. Related: Is Terry Smith the best money manager Britain has ever had? | Patrick Collinson Continue reading… [Read More...]

A Standard Life fund that holds nearly £20bn of Britons’ cash should not have been sold to the public, says Alan MillerIt’s the biggest single stock market fund in Britain, holding nearly £20bn of small investors’ cash. Yet while the FTSE 100 has soared, hitting a record high this week, the fund, managed by Standard Life, has made nothing for investors for five years. Now Alan Miller, husband of anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller and a senior figure in the fund management industry, is calling it “potentially one of the greatest mis-selling scandals in the UK”.The fund is called Standard Life Global Absolute Return Strategies (Gars). It was launched in 2006 with a golden promise – a hedge fund for the masses that would make 5… [Read More...]

His straightforward strategy has made him the most successful fund manager of his generationPrepare yourself for an unusually gushing assessment (for the Guardian) of a super-rich, money manager currently ensconced in a luxury home in an Indian Ocean island paradise. Terry Smith has become the most successful fund manager of his generation, amassing £17bn in his Fundsmith fund, much of it on behalf of small investors. He has repaid their trust by giving them quite extraordinary returns. Some people compare him to the great Warren Buffett. But Smith is probably better.Anyone who invested on day one of Fundsmith’s launch in November 2010 – and Guardian Money featured it strongly -has made a gain of 309%. Over the same period Warren Buffett has seen a rather more … [Read More...]