My weekly commentary followed by this week’s links to blogs and financial articles.
Star fund manager Neil Woodford caused a stir this week by revealing he has sold his holdings in oil giants BP and Shell.
Woodford believes the oil majors dividends are not secure, which makes them untenable in his £18 billion equity income fund.
More French office workers are dying by suicide every day. I don’t mean they’re wasting time in dead-end careers. They’re jumping out of windows.
The Guardian reports:
France Telecom, now Europe’s third-biggest phone company, has seen its brand name, Orange, suffer a public relations disaster as 24 workers have killed themselves in shocking circumstances in the last 18 months, with at least a dozen others making failed attempts to take their lives. Some staff were found dead in their workplace or left harrowing notes blaming the company for “management by terror” and bullying.
In the latest death, a 51-year-old threw himself off a bridge in the Alps after being moved from a back-office job to one in a call centre. Previously, a 32-year-old jumped from her office in front of colleagues at the end of the working day. Both left notes blaming unbearable working conditions and enforced job changes.
It’s possibly a statistical quirk. France Telecom employs 100,000 people, and unfortunately a percentage of any big number of people kill themselves annually, as The Independent points out.
But if the suicide notes are to be believed, then the news is even sadder and more frustrating.
Despite the vast size of the bond market, there are only a few user-friendly information sources about corporate bonds online, especially compared to all the noise about equities.
A quick reminder that the annual ISA contribution limit has gone up to £10,200 a year if you’re lucky enough to be 50 or over between now and April 5th 2010.
(Let’s be honest, eh? We’d all rather have the riches of the young!)
The rest of the populace will have to wait until April 6th 2010 for the new ISA limit to apply.
I’ve written in detail why all UK investors should try to exploit this new maximum ISA limit to the full, by investing in stocks for the long-term.
