Ever since Labour stormed to victory in the general election, it has been making the case it has inherited a sluggish economy and a set of public finances in tatters.

Now, the latest GDP figures for the UK suggest the former isn’t strictly true, while the latter is arguably being used to lay the groundwork for potentially unpopular tax rises to be announced at the upcoming Budget in October in order to bolster those public finances.

Already Labour has tightened the belt with various allowances either being scrapped or put under consultation. This has led to much speculation about what could be next, with inheritance tax (IHT) being touted as one area ripe for raiding.

Removing this relief could raise £1.1bn in the current tax year, with this rising to £1.6bn by the end of the decade

In particular, some are suggesting business relief on AIM shares should be removed to help raise revenue. Currently, if you hold investments in qualifying AIM companies for at least two years before you pass away, the assets are passed on free of IHT.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates removing this relief could raise £1.1bn in the current tax year, with this rising to £1.6bn by the end of the decade. Not a huge amount and won’t help too much in addressing the chancellor’s £22bn ‘black hole’ but sizeable nonetheless.

That said, in the lead up to the election and soon after, Labour made economic growth a priority. Given AIM’s bias towards UK small- and medium-sized growth companies, removing the IHT benefits would somewhat go against this.

Firstly, any changes would likely be consulted on, giving people time to shift strategies and move assets away from AIM and into other investments or vehicles for mitigating IHT.

Over the past 29 years, more than £135bn has been raised by over 4,000 companies on AIM

This would have the subsequent effect of dragging share prices of these growth companies lower and eroding value in the UK stock market – hardly a positive incentive at a time when UK capital markets are already under intense pressure.

AIM has been a fantastic proving ground for a number of companies and there are a number of success stories, despite recent performance struggles. Over the past 29 years, more than £135bn has been raised by over 4,000 companies on AIM. It may be home to small-caps, but it has been a mighty contributor to UK GDP growth, innovation and employment over the years.

You have companies such as Breedon Group, a construction company based in Leicestershire, which listed on AIM in 2010 before moving to the main market last year. There are household names, such as Jet2 and YouGov, which have flown the flag for AIM over the years. Meanwhile, we are seeing a spate of acquisitions of AIM companies as private equity and corporates recognise their value at what are fairly depressed levels.

Any removal of investor incentives could harm these companies providing popular and vital services but which remain at an early stage in their growth.

Quality companies, regardless of their size, have enduring characteristics

We are also at a juncture in markets where small-cap stocks have a great opportunity to outperform. Rate cuts are beginning to be implemented, inflation is seemingly under control and AIM is coming off a tough couple of years. The companies of the future need to be nurtured, and while not every company in AIM benefits from an IHT premium, the whole market will be hit indiscriminately as a result of any changes.

Given investing is for the long term, and business relief comes in after just two years, it reasons that a number of people are not invested in AIM solely for the purpose of mitigating an IHT bill. It is important the government remembers that when deciding its next steps.

For advisers and investors with exposure to AIM, the best thing to do right now is keep calm and carry on. AIM has its IHT benefits and these will not be taken away overnight, but careful planning will still be needed to mitigate the tax implications for clients.

Let’s hope the government agrees and gets behind its own growth agenda

Most importantly, though, investing in AIM should not be considered solely as an IHT play. It remains an exciting and intriguing investment opportunity, particularly for clients with longer time horizons, giving them access to quality and well known companies that have the potential to grow and perhaps join the main market one day.

Quality companies, regardless of their size, have enduring characteristics. AIM is home to a number of these companies, so it is important growth is not stifled but embraced. Let’s hope the government agrees and gets behind its own growth agenda.

Amisha Chohan is head of small-cap strategy at Quilter Cheviot

A Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina has insisted he will not exit the race after it was reported that he made controversial comments on a porn website more than a decade ago.

Mark Robinson characterised the CNN report, which alleged that he had referred to himself as a “black Nazi” on an adult forum, as “salacious tabloid lies”.

He has been under pressure from state Republicans and members of Donald Trump’s campaign team to quit the race in the swing state, according to anonymous sources quoted by the Carolina Journal newspaper.

Trump himself did not refer to the report during his comments at a Thursday night event in Washington about antisemitism.

Robinson, 56, is a former furniture manufacturer who was elected to be the state’s first black lieutenant governor in 2020.

He won the nomination to run for governor in March after receiving an endorsement from Trump, who called him “Martin Luther King on steroids”.

Robinson’s race is in a potentially pivotal swing state which Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is hoping to wrest from the Republicans.

According to the CNN report published on Thursday, Robinson used to visit a porn website from 2008-12 called Nude Africa, with the username “minisoldr”.

According to CNN, minisoldr posted about enjoying watching “tranny” porn, adding: “Yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!”

The BBC has not verified the CNN report.

In 2021, Robinson refused to apologise after he was criticised for saying that children in schools should not be learning about “transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth”.

In a video posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday, as the CNN story was being published, he denied wrongdoing.

“Let me reassure you, the things you will see in that story, those are not the words of Mark Robinson,” he said.

“We are staying in this race. We are in it to win it.”

He said he was the victim of a “high-tech lynching” by his white Democratic opponent, Josh Stein.

Stein’s campaign said in a statement that “North Carolinians already know Mark Robinson is completely unfit to be governor”.

Opinion polls already suggest Stein, a Harvard-educated lawyer who is currently North Carolina’s attorney general, has a firm lead in the race.

The North Carolina Republican Party defended Robinson in a statement, saying “the Left” was “trying to demonise him via personal attacks”.

Trump himself did not address the controversy during Thursday night’s comments to the Israeli-American Council National Summit, in which he vowed to “stop the toxic poison of antisemitism from spreading all over America and all over the world”.

He bemoaned the lack of support he said he was receiving from Jewish voters, saying if he failed to win the election, “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that”.

The Harris campaign posted a video on social media reminding voters of Trump’s past praise for Robinson.

The deadline for withdrawing from the governor contest was on Thursday evening, as postal ballots go into the mail on Friday. Early voting in the state begins in less than a month.

Recent polling in North Carolina shows Harris and Trump effectively tied among likely voters.

The Tar Heel State has been a Republican stronghold, with only one Democratic presidential nominee winning there in the last 20-plus years.

Trump narrowly beat Joe Biden in North Carolina four years ago by less than 2%.

Democrats have campaigned heavily in the state this election season.

Michael Jackson’s estate has initiated legal proceedings against a former associate of the late pop icon, who threatened to raise fresh allegations of inappropriate conduct just as it hopes a big-budget film will banish the child sex abuse claims that shadowed his later years.

The man and four others told the estate in about 2019, a decade after the singer’s death, that they might go public with allegations that he had acted inappropriately with some of them when they were children. 

In 2020, the estate quietly struck a previously unreported settlement worth nearly $20mn, under which the man and the other accusers agreed instead to defend Jackson’s reputation.

Now, the people managing Jackson’s music and image rights are accusing the man of fabricating his earlier claims while seeking to extract $213mn more in a new settlement with the estate, according to an arbitration claim. They have reported the matter to the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Jackson’s estate is asking an arbitrator to award damages, order the accuser to abide by the terms of the 2020 deal and issue an injunction barring him from releasing details he previously agreed to keep secret.

The episode illustrates how Jackson’s interactions with children, which led to a criminal prosecution and at least one out-of-court settlement, continue to hang over his estate years after his death in 2009 from an overdose of sedatives and anaesthetic. The Jackson estate maintains the singer never engaged in inappropriate conduct with children.

The estate, which was initially $500mn in debt, has since amassed more than $3bn — a figure revealed by its executors in an interview with the Financial Times for the first time.

The change of fortunes has come through the sale of his music catalogue, a Broadway musical and Cirque du Soleil shows. The beneficiaries are Jackson’s three children, his mother and charities.

In an interview, John Branca, a longtime Jackson aide who co-manages the estate, said: “The time has come to stand up, take a stand, tell Michael’s story.”

The man allegedly making the claims against the Jackson estate did not respond to repeated requests for comment. He is not being named by the FT.

Jackson is one of the most successful but controversial figures in pop music history, springing to fame as a five-year-old with a soaring voice on the pop, soul and funk songs performed by his family band, The Jackson 5. He went on to record Thriller, which remains the best-selling album of all time more than 40 years after its release.

But he was also accused on multiple occasions of inappropriate conduct with children, beginning in the 1990s and continuing until his prosecution in 2005. Though the accusers’ accounts were at times contradictory and Jackson was acquitted in the court case, the allegations took a toll.

When he died, Jackson’s will gave Branca and music executive John McClain the responsibility of managing his estate. Branca has spent the past decade and a half working to restore the singer’s troubled finances and his complicated legacy.

The strategy suffered a setback after HBO’s 2019 documentary, Leaving Neverland, which featured the graphic accounts of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged Jackson abused them as children.

Shortly after, the five unnamed accusers — who were not featured in the Neverland documentary — made their allegations. According to Jackson’s estate, the man had previously denied Jackson ever engaged in inappropriate conduct.

The estate agreed to settle those claims under what it has described as a “business decision”. The settlement deal, signed in January 2020, was styled as a purchase of their life rights and a consulting agreement, with each of the five accusers to receive $3.3mn over six years.

Since then, it is claimed, each of the accusers received $2.8mn. But in January, before the final $500,000 payment was made to each of them, the man notified the estate that he no longer planned to abide by the agreement, and that he was seeking $213mn in new payments.

The claim is that the man’s lawyers demanded a “substantive response” to their overture for more payments, and warned they would “be forced to expand the circle of knowledge” if the ultimatum was not met.

The demands came at the time the estate was finalising terms for the $600mn sale of a 50 per cent stake in Jackson’s music catalogue to Sony, valuing the total package at $1.2bn. The accuser’s lawyer asked the estate if it had disclosed his claim to Sony, raising the spectre of risk for the new owners of Jackson’s music and potentially affecting the deal’s value.

When Jackson died, his estate was saddled with debt after years of unsuccessful business practices and profligate spending.

Progress has been uneven in digging out of the hole; the Broadway show has grossed $216mn, according to Broadway World. But in the aftermath of Leaving Neverland, according to Branca, national commercials with Nike and two banks that each paid $1mn to $2mn a year evaporated and attendance at MGM’s Cirque show dropped for an extended period.

The estate laid low for a few years but is now taking a more assertive approach as it seeks to defend Jackson’s name. The biopic is being directed by Antoine Fuqua, with actor Miles Teller playing Branca.

“We survived Leaving Neverland but I’m not sure we could have with those additional allegations,” Branca said. His lawyers, he said, told him: “You have no choice. If these people come forward and make these allegations, then Michael is over, his legacy is over, the business is done.”

Hoo Zoo and Dinosaur World

Hoo Zoo and Dinosaur World

Cinnamon’s family ‘off colour’

Are capybaras an endangered species?