Our insights

Prospects

Spring Issue Fourteen

In this issue

Asset allocation in focus

Asset allocation: A snapshot

Collectives commentary

The Pursuit of all Weather Investing

The recent histories of the FTSE 100 and the FTSE All Share eloquently describe the challenges facing investors. Investing in these indices just over 16 years ago on 1st January 2000 would have…

JM Finn news

Taxation on dividends

These changes mean that anyone receiving annual dividends in excess of £5,000 will be liable to this tax, which is payable via your annual tax return. The key points are as follows: The government…

General interest

Shakespeare's 400 years

Who was Shakespeare?

Understanding Finance

Index-Linked Gilts

Index-linked gilts, or “Linkers”, are sold by the Debt Management Office (DMO) on behalf of the UK government and have both the coupon and the capital elements linked to inflation. I’ll use the…

Meet the manager

Matthew Mceneaney

Matthew Mceneaney discusses life as a wealth manager.

Independent view

Are you buying a second home?

As so often with something that sounds simple, the proposed new rules are staggeringly complex with the proposals run to 31 pages.

Can negative interest rates work?

Negative rates are effectively a tax on deposits, and as such are intrinsically contractionary and therefore a form of financial repression. The starting and simplistic view on negative interest…

Economic focus

Should we stay or should we go?

So the 23rd of June is the date for the Brexit referendum. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has concluded a deal with the EU that, although not a “game-changer” in terms of Treaty revisions, it is…

Bond focus

Peer to peer lending

Peer to Peer (or P2P) lending is a fast–growing alternative finance practice of lending money to individuals and/or businesses via an online platform that matches lenders directly with borrowers.

Guest editorial

The Changing Shape of European State Security

This should not be a major surprise to us since the West used exactly these ‘hybrid’ methods from Cuba via Iran to the Philippines to subvert governments throughout the Cold War.

Editorial

A crisis of self identity

Some have compared this with the Thirty Years War that raged between Protestants and Catholics in Europe between 1618 and 1648 and which left Germany devastated.

Welcome

Welcome Spring 2016

I was asked recently whether we should just sell everything in light of the uncomfortable first quarter we’ve just experienced, but rather than shut the door after the horse has bolted, I’m always…

Equity prospects

01.

DIAGEO

Diageo, at first glance, is an international drinks producer and distributor operating across developed and emerging markets. But, if you look deeper at the company you quickly discover that it…

02.

Hunting

Hunting manufactures and distributes equipment that enables the world’s oil and gas companies to drill for and then extract their oil and gas hydrocarbons.

03.

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) is one of the largest global oil majors with revenues split, in financial reporting terms, between its Upstream, Downstream and Integrated Gas divisions.

04.

Amec Foster Wheeler

Amec made the major acquisition of US peer, Foster Wheeler in 2014. This effectively doubled Amec’s global scale, mainly in downstream oil services and onshore US. The timing of this deal was…

05.

Shaftesbury

Shaftesbury represents a unique cluster of London based retail assets, backed by extremely high management ability within this sector and locality. As the company highlights, this collection of…