Sally Hickey

Removing three key inheritance tax reliefs could raise £3bn for the Treasury in the current tax year and would result in a fairer system, according to a leading think-tank. Eliminating the special treatment of shares listed on Aim (the Alternative Investment Market), capping agricultural and business reliefs and taxing defined contribution pension pots when they are passed down would raise £2.7bn in the 2024-25 tax year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in a report on Thursday. Inheritanc…

Every year, St James’s Place, which over the last three decades has become one of the UK’s most successful financial services companies, organises a glitzy show for its thousands of investment advisers. Guest speakers have included Bill Clinton, Bob Geldof and David Beckham, while top-performing advisers were paraded onstage to huge cheers from their colleagues at a company that was famed for its sales-driven culture. One former employee says they were “gobsmacked” at how “lavish” that event w…

Global investors have slashed their allocations to real estate to a 15-year low as the sector struggles under the pressure of high interest rates. A net 28 per cent of managers were underweight the real estate sector in May, down 13 percentage points on the previous month, according to Bank of America’s latest global fund manager survey. The commercial property market has undergone a painful shift away from ultra-low interest rates, compounded by uncertainty over the future of offices followin…

A flurry of speculation by futures market traders has pushed prices of metals such as copper and gold to all-time highs, as funds bet on upcoming shortages in supplies and try to hedge against inflation. Copper has rallied 30 per cent since the start of March to break through $11,000 per tonne this week, its highest level ever. That has helped lift the prices of other industrial metals from aluminium to zinc. The rush of investor buying has also pushed gold through its previous records to hit…

When Linda acquired a lump sum of cash last year after a business sale, she wasn’t sure what to do with it. “I put most of it in bank accounts — it terrified me,” she says. But, determined to make the investment decisions herself, she set about teaching herself about the best place for her money. It was only then that she made a discovery about the investment platform she had used for a decade. “I used Hargreaves Lansdown for around 10 years and had no idea how expensive they were,” says Linda…

Ocado also poised to be demoted from blue-chip index next month in quarterly reshuffle

A company that is planning to transform former second world war tunnels in London into a tourist attraction is pursuing a listing in Amsterdam, six months after announcing a planned initial public offering in London. The London Tunnels, which intends to develop the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels under Chancery Lane, said on Monday it had applied for a listing on the Euronext Amsterdam, and expected its shares to start trading on June 27. The group said it hoped to raise £30mn from the IPO, giving i…

Nearly 3mn people in the UK fell into financial difficulties last year, increasing the likelihood of being excluded from financial services. Some 20.3mn people, or 44 per cent of the UK adult population, are now living in financially vulnerable circumstances, according to a two-year study by not-for-profit Fair4All Finance and research agency Trajectory, which warned that these people “face paying more just for being poor”. People with flaws in their credit scores risk being excluded from acce…

New regulations governing fund ratings will help, but there are other ways to navigate the confusion

Large variations in income and security make it hard for many to plan properly for life after work