The Edge

Richard Northedge takes on corporate finance

Dollar dividends cut UK investors’ income

When is a dividend increase not an increased dividend? When the company denominates its dividends in dollars but pays them to UK investors.
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Supermarkets are not the villains

Supermarkets are probably the most competitive business in the UK. Why then are they being lumbered with an ombudsman, a new supplier code and all the compliance bureaucracy that goes with them?
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Budget cuts will improve universities

If university students and lecturers are really the brightest in the land they would know why they are being told to trim academic budgets. Instead they have suspended their natural animosity to unite in protest against the government.
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Marks & Spencer and the corporate transfer

How appropriate that the terms of Marc Bolland’s recruitment to Marks & Spencer (LON:MKS) were announced on the last day of the football transfer window.  M&S is paying a £7.5m fee to attract him from rival retailer Wm Morrison (LON:MRW).
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China vs Greece: Global economic threats to Britain

Which country should British business worry about most, China or Greece? Both economies, while very different, are in danger of imploding.
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Virgin Money not necessarily a better bank

If we don’t want banks running private-equity operations, why do we want private equity operations running banks? In the eagerness to come up with a new banking model for the post-crash era, we mustn’t simply welcome any alternative.
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There’s nothing wrong with inequality

A report detailing the gap between Britain’s rich and poor has been met with universal shock and promises to narrow the divide. But why? Isn’t inequality not only inevitable but desirable?
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Out of recession – but only just

As the UK economy’s return to growth was slower and lower than expected, should we prepare for a return to recession? That could be the second dip of a W-shaped curve - but it might even stem from a revision of the figure that seemingly ended the slump.
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Volcker to tell UK MPs to split the banks

President Obama’s call to make banks shed risky trading – effectively a new Glass-Steagall Act – is not off the UK agenda, despite being dismissed by government ministers. The architect of the plan, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, is coming to the House of Commons to outline his plan.
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Shrinking Aim shows need for new small firms market

There has been a stream of stock markets for small companies over the past three decades, but with the latest, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), in decline, is it time for another go at this problem?
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