Bank of America Merrill Lynch finds buyer for $6.5bn fund platform July 8, 2018 Bank of America Merrill Lynch has found a buyer for its $6.5bn (£4.89bn) MLIS Ucits platform. Generali Investments has purchased the platform, according to a source familiar with the matter. The MLIS (Merrill Lynch Investment Solutions) platform was set up by the firm to offer "innovative and added value" strategies for investors, in order to [...]
Last Week in the City: Trade wars begin July 6, 2018 | City Talk Garry White, chief investment commentator, looks at the market-moving events that have shaped the UK equity markets this week (2 to 6 July 2018). The World Cup is “distracting” for participants in global markets, according to Citigroup. "We find that football is indeed distracting, subtly impacting market depth, traded volumes and execution cost,” the US [...]
London-based tech company Fever secures $20m Series C funding July 5, 2018 Secret London owner Fever is set to expand into new markets across Europe and North America after securing $20m (£15.1m) in a Series C fundraise. The company runs a fast-growing entertainment and experience booking app that uses a recommendation algorithm to help its 12m unique weekly users discover new restaurants, bars, events, concerts, and experiences. [...]
June’s most widely bought and sold funds on Charles Stanley Direct July 4, 2018 | City Talk Artemis Global Income remained a popular choice for exposure to high yielding global stocks among Charles Stanley Direct customers in June, while Fundsmith Equity was the most widely-purchased global equity fund, beating another regular favourite Lindsell Train Global Equity. In the Asia ex-Japan sector Invesco Perpetual Asian outstripped the perennially popularStewart Asia Pacific Leaders in [...]
Lloyds faces landmark legal action in the High Court over pensions equalisation July 4, 2018 Lloyds Bank could have to fork out up to £508m to equalise its pension scheme if a landmark course case finds it has discriminated against female employees. Three female members of Lloyds' pension scheme claim they have been discriminated against because their pensions increase at a lower rate than their male counterparts. The case, which [...]
This bull market has relied on technology shares July 4, 2018 | City Talk This has been a long and unusually hesitant and worried bull market. Indeed, there have been a substantial number of sectors that have lived through their own bear markets whilst the overall indices push on to new highs. The US has outperformed the other advanced country equity markets and China easily over the twelve months, [...]
Tokenising Gold – Morning Wire’s Crypto Insider Interviews Jinbi co-Founder Joe Crawley July 3, 2018 London-based Joseph Crawley heads up the gold mining operations and corporate strategy for Jinbi Token, a UK and Belarus-based gold-backed blockchain business. Jinbi merges traditional gold investment with blockchain technology, which allows the token holder to experience the best of both worlds. Joseph is an expert in precious metals, trading, and mining and understands well [...]
Pension savers hoping for ’74 per cent of salary’ in retirement may face a shock July 3, 2018 | City Talk After a lifetime of saving, investors may be in for a shock when they come to retire, the results of a global study suggest. Investors close to retirement (aged 55 and over) expect they will need income equivalent to 73.9 per cent of their current salary to afford to live comfortably in retirement. But those [...]
Revealed: June’s top and bottom performing funds July 2, 2018 | City Talk June was dominated by trade war fears as Donald Trump said he would add further tariffs on Chinese and European goods should there be any retaliation to his initial tranche of measures. The prospect of mercantilist trade policies unnerved investors concerned about future growth. There are few, if any, real winners in a full-blown trade [...]
Last Week in the City: Amazon buys a pharmacy June 29, 2018 | City Talk Garry White, chief investment commentator, looks at the market-moving events that have shaped the UK equity markets this week (25 to 29 June 2018). The FTSE 100 traded little over the week, despite a rally in oil prices. There was more bad news from the retail sector after The John Lewis Partnership warned on profits [...]