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Mogg Asset Fund Somerset Capital Management, the boutique founded by Jacob Rees-Mogg, is launching one of the UK’s first global emerging market income funds next week. The Emerging Dividend Growth fund is offering a 4.6 per cent yield at first, with manager Edward Lam saying many of his stocks could double their pay-outs within five or six years. Mr Lam, a former Asia and global emerging market analyst from Lloyd George Management, will run a concentrated 40-stock portfolio and said he would cap assets under management at roughly $2bn (£1.3bn). He said: “What you have found over the last two years is that emerging company income has been more reliable than it has been in developed markets.” Emerging nations are focusing on dividends as a way of funding retirement, with South Africa, Chile, Brazil and China leading the way, while India, Russia and South Korea still lag behind, he said. ”The MSCI emerging index is heavily weighted to cyclicals, but we are focused on utilities, teleco...

The balance sheet that ate Switzerland Like a celebrity in flight from the paparazzi, the Swiss Confederation demands protection from its pesky admirers. To beat back the unwanted appreciation of the Swissie, the Swiss National Bank is--once again--vowing to move heaven and earth. Now under way is a speculation. Prompted by a friend (that's you, Harlan Batrus), we venture that the SNB will sooner or later be forced to permit the franc to appreciate and thus to enrich the holders of low-priced, three-year call options on the Swiss/euro exchange rate. It's a long shot, to be sure--the options are cheap for a reason--but we judge that the prospective reward is worth the obvious risk. Curiously, for all the damage that Swiss private banks have suffered at the hands of American regulators, and for all the Federal Reserve's throat clearing about the supposed imminent rise in dollar interest rates, the franc is still, for many, the monetary bolt-hole of choice. To the Swiss, w...

Any other country that had run a budget surplus for the last five years and was now facing a recession would have a clear response. Indeed, the pressure on policymakers to open the spigots would prove irresistible. But Germany is not like any other country. Despite entering a downturn the eurozone’s biggest economy is still — officially at least — clinging to its mantra of schwarze Null, or “black zero”, its commitment to a balanced budget. Under Angela Merkel, the policy has come to resemble an article of faith, the closest thing there is to a national ideology. Yet with much of Europe teetering on the brink of recession, there are growing calls for Germany to put its orthodoxy aside and stimulate its economy by borrowing and increasing spending. Critics of 'black zero' say it hampers investment into much needed new infrastructure, such as railways © AFP “Germany has perhaps a unique combination of need for fiscal stimulus and capacity to do fiscal stimulus,” says Jason Furm...

At last a shaft of light piercing the gloom. The Supreme Court has halted Britain’s slide towards banana republic status. Boris Johnson’s attempt to shut down parliamentary discussion about Brexit has been exposed as an abuse of power. The invigorating message from the 11 judges was simple: the rule of law sits alongside the ballot box as an essential pillar of democracy. The prime minister wanted to place himself above it. A politician with a smidgin of integrity would have responded to this damning verdict by resigning. In a matter of months his government has become a cacophony of chaos. Now Mr Johnson has been found out lying to the Queen and the nation in the attempt to suspend parliament. It was no surprise that he declined to take the honourable course. Mr Johnson is a narcissist. Humility, he thinks, is for “little people”. He has company. The judgment coincided with a display of mutual backslapping with Donald Trump during Mr Johnson’s visit to New York. The US president fac...

One of the world’s best-performing stock markets this month is also one of the most maligned: Japan. The Nikkei 225 is up about 8 per cent in local-currency terms, beaten only by a rebounding Argentina. That will come as some satisfaction to Michael Burry, one of the investors made famous by Michael Lewis’s The Big Short. His Scion Asset Management has laid another bet based on a conviction that prices (in this case Japanese stocks, rather than US mortgages) are out of line with reality. Scion’s Japan portfolio includes manufacturers of everything from roller coasters (Sansei Technologies) to semiconductor production equipment (Tazmo) and fire bricks for electric furnaces (Yotai). There are many other firms out there who would love this sortie by a celebrity fund manager to be hugely significant. But is it? In turning to Japan, Dr Burry faces one of the great investment enigmas of the last three decades. The Japanese stock market is awash with companies with lots of cash and hard a...

Sometimes it is the cleverest wheezes that come back to haunt you. Boris Johnson’s daring move to suspend the UK parliament, to limit the time for opponents to frustrate his Brexit strategy, has delighted his supporters. Yet even if it proves decisive, Conservatives may still come to rue his contentious but legal gambit. Among Mr Johnson’s allies there are those — his chief strategist Dominic Cummings, for example — who take a revolutionary approach to politics, yearning to refashion the old institutions of state. Rather more of Team Johnson, though, including the prime minister himself, believe in those institutions. Once the fight is won, they imagine normal political service will resume. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, insists that the British constitution “can bend to a passing storm”. This may be a fond hope. Parliamentary democracy has been irrevocably altered by the Brexit battle. Politics has become so polarised that reaction has largely divided along Leave and Rema...

Sometimes it is the cleverest wheezes that come back to haunt you. Boris Johnson’s daring move to suspend the UK parliament, to limit the time for opponents to frustrate his Brexit strategy, has delighted his supporters. Yet even if it proves decisive, Conservatives may still come to rue his contentious but legal gambit. Among Mr Johnson’s allies there are those — his chief strategist Dominic Cummings, for example — who take a revolutionary approach to politics, yearning to refashion the old institutions of state. Rather more of Team Johnson, though, including the prime minister himself, believe in those institutions. Once the fight is won, they imagine normal political service will resume. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, insists that the British constitution “can bend to a passing storm”. This may be a fond hope. Parliamentary democracy has been irrevocably altered by the Brexit battle. Politics has become so polarised that reaction has largely divided along Leave and Rem...