A MAJOR high street bargain retailer has confirmed it will shut all its stores on Boxing Day to give staff a well-earned break.

Poundland, which runs over 800 UK stores, said it will close shops on December 25 and 26.

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The discounter said all its locations will also shut on New Year’s Day as a thank you to staff.

Meanwhile, workers will be given a £25 voucher to spend in their local Poundland branch on any Christmas shopping.

Simon Wells, people director at Poundland, said: “We have brilliant colleagues here at Poundland & Dealz who work incredibly hard throughout the year, bringing our brands to life every day and supporting our customers.

“But we know they all particularly shine at Christmas, bringing the magic to our stores that our customers know and love. 

“We’re delighted to be able to support them with a well-earned rest once the festive season is over.”

It comes as Poundland launches a drive to employ 1,000 new seasonal staff to cover the busy festive period.

The majority of the shop floor roles will end on Christmas Eve while some will be extended until early January.

You can find out more by visiting Poundland’s website.

It is common practice for retailers to close their stores on Christmas Day but not all shut branches the following day.

Some also shut branches on New Year’s Day to give staff an extra day off over the Christmas period.

A number of other retailers have already confirmed they will shut on Boxing Day as well as Christmas Day this year.

Aldi confirmed it will shut on December 25 and 26, as will Home Bargains, John Lewis and Waitrose.

DIY retailer Homebase has also said it will shutter branches over the two-day period.

If you’re keen to find out whether your favourite retailer will close its branches on Boxing Day, it’s worth keeping an eye on social media.

Chains often publicise their festive opening hours on X and Facebook.

You can also try using a retailer’s store locator tool which should tell you the opening hours for your local branch.

Most of the time, it will also feature a number you can call to find out opening times.

The latest two announcements from Poundland come after the bargain chain launched its loyalty scheme UK-wide.

It is now rolling out its Poundland Perks rewards scheme to all branches and online.

The bargain discounter had been trialling the phone-based loyalty scheme at around 100 stores in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Wight since last year.

Shoppers can download the Poundland Perks app on to their smart phone via the Google Play and Apple App store.

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The EU’s financial markets watchdog wants expanded powers to oversee major stock exchanges and other critical parts of the bloc’s financial infrastructure, as it bids to become a European version of the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Verena Ross, chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, said “there is clearly a political appetite” in the newly appointed European Commission to centralise more EU financial market supervision as part of a renewed push to revive the region’s struggling capital markets.

“Let’s evaluate in which areas it would make sense to move a step further to central EU supervision. We need to look particularly at all the cross-border systemically important infrastructure players,” Ross told the Financial Times, adding this would include exchanges, clearing houses and settlement systems. 

Esma was launched in 2011 to improve harmonisation of rules across the EU but most of its financial market activities continue to be supervised by the bloc’s 27 national authorities.

Paris-based Esma directly supervises relatively few entities, such as credit rating agencies, non-EU central counterparty clearing houses, securitisation repositories and benchmark administrators.

The idea of transferring more powers from national authorities to Esma has gained momentum in recent months as Brussels officials look for ways to boost capital markets activity to help finance an estimated €800bn of extra investment needs.

Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president, last month identified the transformation of Esma into a version of the SEC as “a key pillar” of boosting Europe’s capital markets in a landmark report on how to boost the EU economy.

Draghi said: “Esma should transition from a body that co-ordinates national regulators into the single common regulator for all EU security markets” by giving it power to supervise large multinational issuers, cross-border financial markets and all central counterparties.

Some smaller EU countries such as Luxembourg and Ireland have opposed the idea, fearing it could undermine their thriving financial sectors.

But Ross is convinced that the shift would improve the efficiency of Europe’s financial markets for both investors and issuers.

“Having an effective regulatory and supervisory framework has a big impact on making a single capital market work, and we don’t have that in Europe. So that is one of the areas that we need to focus on,” Ross said.

In a nod to the criticism from smaller countries, she said a “step-by-step” process of building up Esma’s powers was preferable to trying to turn it into an all-powerful European SEC overnight.

“It is more about thinking practically. We shouldn’t forget that the EU markets are quite different from the US markets in terms of the diversity of the legal systems,” she said. “Let’s make an EU central supervision role happen where it makes most sense at this point.”

The process could start by handing Esma more powers to supervise the “bigger, cross-border players” such as Euronext and Deutsche Börse that were “often servicing not just one country or a couple of them but genuinely serving investors across all the EU”, she said, adding that smaller markets and companies would continue to be supervised locally.

She suggested the EU missed an opportunity with its landmark crypto markets regulation, which comes into force at the end of the year but will leave oversight of companies in the hands of national authorities. “Would it have been more effective to have done it at an EU level? That was a debate we had at board level,” she said.

Draghi also called for Esma to strengthen its independence from national authorities that hold most of the voting positions on its board, by introducing independent members similar to those sitting on the ECB’s supervisory board, which oversees major Eurozone banks.

Ross rejected this, saying “the governance structure works pretty well at the moment”. It was important “to ensure that the national supervisors are fully part of that decision-making because a lot of the implementation is at national level,” she added.

Money makes the business world go around, but there is more to successful businesses than profits.

Financial advice firms are increasingly aware of their social responsibilities and are meeting them in numerous ways, from pro bono and charity work to B-Corp certification, which assesses the social and environmental impact of business practices.

Some firms are focusing their efforts on addressing the ‘advice gap’, where people who would benefit from financial advice cannot afford it.

It starts off about financial advice, but it will have a social impact. That’s why, for us, social enterprise is a win-win

But could social enterprises — businesses that trade for a social and/or environmental purpose — provide a longer-term solution?

A different approach

Social enterprise entrepreneur Nicole Bremner — who qualified as a non-practising financial adviser in Australia — is setting up a community interest company, Your Prosperity Group, to tackle the UK’s advice gap.

Bremner was motivated by seeing how distressed an elderly customer in a high-street bank had been as he insisted on making a payment to the bank or risk losing his life savings.

He did not receive the support he needed from the bank, and Bremner could not get this out of her mind.

Social enterprises rely on volunteers — but how do you maintain the quality and consistency of what is provided?

Drawing inspiration from the business model of family lawyer Jenny Beck, co-founder of Beck Fitzgerald, Bremner thought about partnering with financial advisers and other professionals to provide guidance to people who could not afford advice, supported by a reasonable fixed-fee model for those who could afford to pay.

At Your Prosperity Group, guidance will be free where a person’s net assets or household income are less than £35,000 a year — the average UK income.

Above this amount, a one-off fee of £1,499 is applicable, with follow-up meetings at £499 or an optional subscription of £35 a month.

“There is a mass of clients with less than £30,000 to invest who don’t need regulated financial advice,” says Bremner. “For them, it’s about debt and whether they should pay down their mortgage — it’s financial guidance, not advice.

If you’re improving financial literacy within communities, cities and countries, what is the social return on that investment?

“It’s very early days [with the company], but the way I want to do it is, if [someone goes] to a financial adviser and has only £10,000 to invest, the adviser can say, ‘We can assist you,’ and refer the client to us.”

If the client’s circumstances change, says Bremner, and they need regulated advice — for example, if they inherit a large pot of money — they will be referred back to the financial adviser.

She also wants to create a panel of trusted financial advisers for clients who go directly to Your Prosperity Group but need regulated advice later on.

The challenges

Chris McCullam, investments director at consultancy firm Altus, says the social enterprise route is an interesting way of tackling the advice gap.

However, he thinks it is not without challenges, such as delivering at a price that works for the mass market, and the availability of people who can deliver the service.

“Social enterprises rely on volunteers — but how do you maintain the quality and consistency of what is provided?” he asks.

There will be more prosperity, less crime and less vandalism as people understand the role of job creators and the role that business plays

“There are plenty of professional services that do pro bono work, but the nature of the work we’re in is a commercial enterprise.”

McCullam says people do what they can to help while making a living for themselves, but there comes a point where that becomes unsuccessful.

“It’s about getting the balance right,” he says.

Benefits for all

Practical considerations aside, we would all potentially stand to benefit from better access to financial guidance or advice.

“If you’re improving financial literacy within communities, cities and countries, what is the social return on that investment?” says social entrepreneur Claudine Reid.

There are plenty of professional services that do pro bono work, but the nature of the work we’re in is a commercial enterprise.

“There will be more prosperity, less crime and less vandalism as people understand the role of job creators and the role that business plays.”

As Reid points out, if local businesses are prosperous, they will create jobs for people, provide work experience for those in education, and so on. From a financial adviser’s perspective, this could increase the number of paying clients.

“It starts off about financial advice, but it will have a social impact,” says Reid. “That’s why, for us, social enterprise is a win-win.”

This article featured in the October 2024 edition of Money Marketing. 

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Good morning. Nuclear energy stocks have soared to record highs on the back of big tech’s demand for green energy. Will this be the start of a new chapter for the technology? Or will regulation, accidents, and popular opionion get in the way? To adapt J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quoting of the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become uncertainty, ruler of markets.” Email us: robert.armstrong@ft.com and aiden.reiter@ft.com.

Soft landing vs no landing

Recently there has been some debate across the financial-economic punditocracy about whether we are experiencing a “soft landing” or a “no landing” scenario. In a soft landing, growth slows but recession is avoided, while inflation returns to a low and stable level. In a no landing scenario, growth doesn’t slow and inflation remains either a worry — volatile, and not quite down to target — or an outright problem.

The difference matters. In a no landing scenario, the Fed has to keep the policy rate relatively high, which squeezes the rate sensitive and cyclical parts of the economy, as well as indebted consumers. Anyone who owns longer-duration fixed income is likely to feel some pain, and in equities, sectors with inflation-hedging characteristics — materials, for example — will do better. 

For a long time Unhedged has felt very confident that growth was falling gently and inflation was all but over with. Even just a few weeks ago, we were pretty dismissive about the odds of no landing. But our confidence, it pains us to admit, is wavering a bit. And it appears we are not alone. In the latest Bank of America fund manager survey, no landing remains a tail risk, but the tail is twice as wide as it was a month ago:

A summary of the recent growth data that is forcing this rethink:

• September’s stronger jobs report.

• September’s strong retail report, which showed 5 per cent annualised growth and cemented an accelerating pattern: the three month average rate is now higher than the six month rate, which is higher than the 12 month rate.  

• What we heard in the big banks’ earnings reports. JPMorgan’s CFO: “spending patterns [are] solid and consistent with the narrative that the consumer is on solid footing and consistent with the strong labour market and the current central case of a kind of no-landing scenario economically”; Bank of America CEO “[Consumer] payments were up 4 to 5 per cent year-over-year. The pace of year-to-year money movement has been steady since late summer . . . this activity is consistent with how customers are spending money in the 2016 to 2019 timeframe when the economy was growing, inflation was under control.”

• Wages are growing at a 4 per cent clip that has not slowed since April. 

• Markets’ increasing bullishness, which both reflects the economic growth and contributes to it. 

On the inflation side, there are a million ways to cut the data, but it is pretty clear that progress on inflation has slowed significantly; we have been stuck at 2.5 or 3 per cent for a few months now. Over at The Overshoot, Matt Klein gathers the various measures of CPI inflation with volatile components removed, and shows that 2024 looks a lot like 2023:

PCE inflation, which the Fed cares most about, is a bit better, but also appears to be stabilising a bit above target. The New York Fed’s model for the trend in PCE inflation is at 2.6 per cent:

Unhedged remains in the soft landing/inflation is over camp, and can point to various factors on both the growth side (manufacturing, housing, small business confidence) and the inflation side (shelter inflation finally coming down) to offset the uncomfortable warmth of recent data points. More importantly, zooming out, it simply makes sense that the economy should slow and inflation cool as we approach the five-year anniversary of the pandemic, especially in the context of a world economy that’s not all that great. There is no denying, however, that very recent trends are not supportive of this picture. 

Prediction markets

According to cryptocurrency-based prediction exchange Polymarket, Trump’s odds of winning in a few weeks are 60 per cent, while Harris is hovering around 40 — a much bigger lead than the neck-and-neck swing state polls would have you believe. Other popular US prediction markets PredictIt and Kalshi also show Trump ahead, but by a smaller margin.

Are election prediction markets accurate? Early iterations in the US were often on the mark, according to a historical study by Paul Rhode at the University of Michigan, predicting the winner of the US presidential race 11 times out of 15 in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But election markets have been more or less banned in the US since the 1940s — this election will be the first in decades with tacit federal approval for elections futures exchanges. 

A better way of asking the question is: are the markets more accurate than polls-based models, like those put out by 538 and The Economist? We’d like to believe that markets know better, but the evidence is mixed. In a recent study, elections-betting expert Rajiv Sethi at Barnard College built virtual traders that mimicked the polls-based models, in order to see their profitability relative to other market participants. Sethi found that his virtual traders did relatively well, suggesting that the polls are at least as prescient as the election market consensus.

But as Sethi pointed out to Unhedged, “forecasting accuracy is incidental to the business model” for these exchanges. Stocks’ valuations are supposed to represent underlying value and future cash flows, but are pulled around by hype cycles, market narratives, and short-term traders. Election prediction markets have all that too, and some additional structural problems that could make them even worse. They are not particularly liquid; according to reporting by our colleagues, $30M in trades by four accounts helped swing Polymarket’s US elections market by up to 10 points this month. Plus the market participants are not particularly representative of the electoral base. According to Justin Wolfers at the University of Michigan, bettors on these exchanges are “more likely to be white, male, and Republican”, and the exchanges are not restricted to US voters.  

That does not mean these markets are useless. They incorporate new information quickly. By asking “who will win” rather than polls’ “who will you vote for”, they may also prove a better read of the popular mood. And for traders, they offer a very straightforward hedge to a particularly unpredictable and consequential US election this year.

Due to their structural issues, and because they are still still new, we would not put too much credence in the absolute levels of the election markets in this cycle. But there is clearly some information in these nascent markets, and swings could be good directional indicators, provided they are not driven by just a few big bets.

(Reiter)

One good read

Bhutan.

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