Tag: Martin Wolf

Woodford Changes, FT Political Comment, and Digital Services Tax

Apparently Neil Woodford is losing some of his senior staff. Perhaps he needs to cut costs as the funds being managed by his firm have shrunk as investors have walked and holdings in the funds have shrunk in value. But the Equity Income Fund is still closed to redemptions with no certain date when it will reopen, and there is no sign of the vigorous action I suggested. I put forward these alternatives on June 5th, but Neil Woodford is clearly not rushing into action:

1) That Neil Woodford appoint someone else to manage the fund – either an external fund management firm or a new fund management team and leader. Neil Woodford needs to withdraw from acting as fund manager and preferably remove his name from the fund; 2) Alternatively that a fund wind-up is announced in a planned manner; 3) Or a takeover/merger with another fund be organised – but that would not be easy as the current portfolio is not one that anyone else would want.

Once a reputation is lost, resignations should follow, with new leadership put in place. Which brings me onto the subject of the comments in the Financial Times over the last two days over the position of our ambassador to the USA and Brexit.

Yesterday I sent these comments to the FT’s political editor about his views on the position of Sir Kim Darroch which were headlined “Darroch pays price for would-be PM’s craven and shameful conduct”:

“Dear Mr Shrimsley,

I found your article in today’s FT on the US Ambassador and Boris Johnson most objectionable. Mr Johnson’s comments on Sir Kim Darroch’s position were restrained and not unreasonable. President Trump has indicated he will not work with our ambassador which surely makes his position untenable. There is no point in the UK defending or retaining him in post. He has subsequently resigned – and quite rightly.

Sir Kim clearly made some injudicious comments which unfortunately have leaked out even though foreign embassies have very secure communications facilities. Was this in a private communication by him? If so it was unwise in the extreme. But if there is to be any witch hunt it should be focussed on that issue alone.

This has nothing to do with Brexit and it should have nothing to do with your newspaper’s dislike of Trump or support for Brexit. So I suggest your article was misconceived as was the accompanying FT article printed on the same page about the relationship between the Civil Service and Government Ministers. The fact that Boris Johnson failed to defend or back Darroch while Jeremy Hunt rushed injudiciously to do so surely shows which politician is wiser.”

Today we have another article in the FT so extreme as to be comic by Martin Wolf which is headlined “Brexit means goodbye to Britain as we know it”. It suggests the UK will lose its reputation for being stable, pragmatic and respected. It describes Boris Johnson as a serial fantasist and concludes that the UK is no longer a “serious country”.

But the FT did cover well the publication of draft legislation on a new Digital Services Tax – see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introduction-of-the-new-digital-services-tax . This will impose a tax on companies that operate social media platforms, search engines or online marketplaces to UK users. This is aimed to collect tax on revenues in such companies that are currently avoided by the fact they frequently operate from low tax jurisdictions. The focus is clearly on companies such as Alphabet (Google) and Facebook who generate large revenues from the UK but pay relatively little tax.

However there are some UK companies that are potentially liable such as Rightmove or Just Eat but they are likely not to have to pay because a group’s worldwide revenues from these digital activities needs to be more than £500m with more than £25m of these revenues derived from UK users.

The USA is crying foul over a similar French tax and surely quite rightly. The size exclusion means only the big US firms are going to be liable, and there is the issue of double taxation – they will be taxed on both revenue in the UK and potentially profits also. I suggest the USA has a justifiable complaint. It should surely be a tax on all such companies other than very small ones, with a deduction from Corporation Tax allowed to offset the double taxation issue.

There is one thing for certain. Such measures from the UK and France may threaten retaliation by the USA and might certainly jeopardize any new trade agreement between the UK and USA post-Brexit.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Brexit, and the Finances of the Young

The national media continue to try to turn news into controversy. Their words are often incendiary and designed to provoke debate and therefore attention – as a means no doubt of promoting their publications. So their headlines become “verbal click-bait”.

As most people now read news on the internet, the publishers could be considered as acting as “trolls”. Here is the definition in Wikipedia of an internet troll: “In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion…….”

Written words are not the only example. Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC has adopted a similar verbal approach in her reporting. It’s not just Labour party members who should be complaining about her hysterical style.

There were a couple of news items this week that caught my attention in this area. There were several comments on the report issued by the FCA on family finances. The report indicated that half of UK adults were “financially vulnerable” and that those in their 20s and 30s were reliant on borrowing (personal loans and credit card debt). It reported that one fifth of 25-34 year olds have no savings at all with many struggling to pay bills. But this was interpreted by some of the media as the new “generational divide”.

But was it not always so? I certainly don’t recall having much in the way of savings at the age of 30 and lived from month to month, sometimes using credit card debt. In other words, I doubt that the situation has been changing over time; although the elderly have become better off lately due to rising state pensions I am not convinced the young have been getting poorer. But the media like to put a “spin” on any news item to grab attention.

As the report shows, the elderly do have more savings as one might expect but they are not evenly distributed. One amusing statement in the report is “A high proportion of retirees do not know how much savings they have”.

It’s a report well worth reading although rather long at almost 200 pages. Here is one useful titbit of information from it: “Around one in five (22%) 45‑54 year olds hold a stocks and shares ISA and the same proportion hold shares or equities directly”. It would have been good to obtain more detail information on that but it just shows there are a lot of shareholders out there.

Another example of media hysteria is the reporting on the Brexit negotiations. Will it be a hard or soft Brexit? Will the bill be £20 billion or £100 billion? Are Tories threatening to quit if there is any compromise, or revolt against the rule of Theresa May? Will Jeremy Corbyn scupper the whole affair by underming the Bill going through Parliament to support it? Who really knows, but it all makes for good headlines.

The Financial Times has become one of the leaders in scare mongering over Brexit with regular articles of a polemic nature by Martin Wolf and Simon Kuper on the topic. The latest example was by Martin Wolf in yesterdays FT. Now I have never thought much of Mr Wolf’s opinions on financial matters since he supported the nationalisation of Northern Rock, but his latest article (headlined “Zombie ideas about Brexit that refuse to die”) is pure hysteria. I don’t mind the occasional editorial opinion piece on Brexit, or some reporting on the potential technical difficulties if not slanted, but this piece was just propoganda in essence. It pointed out all the difficulties associated with a “hard” Brexit where no trade deal is agreed beforehand, but that is well known and most folks do not think that is likely. It certainly did not give a balanced view of the arguments for or against Brexit and what our negotiating stance should be. In reality there is likely to be a compromise of some kind – that is what politics usually ends up being about – compromise after compromise. Indeed it is one of the frustratations of anyone in the political world that achieving revolutions, rather than compromise, is not just difficult but exceedingly time consuming.

It is certainly regrettable that the Financial Times, since its takeover by Nikkei in 2015 has become much more politicised, and there is less factual reporting and more opinion. Perhaps it is just pandering to the views of most of its readers (the London-centric financial players and international businessmen) but if they expect to influence politicians or the wider community they will be disappointed.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )

You can “follow” this blog by clicking on the bottom right.

© Copyright. Disclaimer: Read the About page before relying on any information in this post.

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%