Knowledge and Insight

Empires rise and fall, and so do companies. As America’s biggest technology businesses continue to reach astonishing new heights, what threats must they guard against?

From greed to fear – where next?

We’ve seen how a savings shortfall makes it likely that younger generations will either be working longer, saving more or consuming less than their predecessors. We’ve seen that housing wealth is unlikely to plug this gap. Is there anything governments can do about it?

Polls suggest that a majority of the British public would like to see rail, energy and water services renationalised. We look at the history of nationalisation in the UK and consider what a return to state control would entail and whether it is genuinely viable.

With the Brexit decision tree we shared earlier this year we aimed to make sense of what at times has seemed a senseless situation. There are still many unknowns, but with new information starting to shine through in the last month, we are now publishing an update.

When did you last review your investment mandate? Are you taking unappreciated risks in following an income-only approach? Andy Pitt, Head of charities at Rathbones, assesses what to consider when answering these questions. 

As far as the environment is concerned, Christmas is the least wonderful time of the year, as the highest heights of consumption are scaled through miles of wrapping paper, mountains of turkey, and rivers of petrol. But fear not! There are ways to keep Scrooge from darkening your door while making your Christmas more environmentally friendly too.

If housing wealth were used to provide an income in retirement, researchers calculate that the savings gaps, discussed in our previous article, could be halved. But few retirees draw on property wealth today, while home ownership rates are falling.

The devastating consequences of dementia are now impacting more lives than ever. Every three minutes someone in the UK develops the degenerative disease, making it the leading cause of death in this country. Insufficient levels of funding and the high failure rate of prospective treatments have contributed to the situation, but could science offer us new hope?