We know that Barclays chief executive Jes Staley committed a “serious offence” when he tried to unmask a whistleblower, and that the poor thing will now have to get by on just his basic salary of nearly £10,000 a day when his bonus is slashed as punishment. What we don’t know is if the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority will go further once their investigations are concluded.

The regulators’ ultimate weapon is declaring an individual not fit and proper to be a director of the bank and therefore forcing Staley’s dismissal, although Barclays’ share price (which had risen slightly by the close of trading) tells you the market thinks that outcome highly unlikely.

Staley’s defence appears to be that the whistleblower was making a malicious personal attack on a colleague, rather than anything substantive about the bank’s operations. It’s difficult to argue that personal issues, whatever they were, really threaten a financial institution.

What Staley is probably guilty of is behaving like a bit of a chump. A streak of hot-headedness surfaces in this story, which the experts and advisers appear to have failed to restrain. Has Staley created a culture in which his word is not to be questioned? Or is there another interpretation – that this is the story of a boss who is intensely loyal to his staff? Maybe, although that’s no defence from breaching fairly transparent rules surrounding whistleblowing.

This melodrama is worthy of a Mexican daytime soap, not the head of one of Britain’s biggest banks. The next episode airs on 10 May, when Staley must face shareholders at the bank’s annual general meeting. Staley will likely ride that one out, but when the FCA/PRA final report emerges, the resolution of his future could be a cliffhanger. Patrick Collinson

High street retailers face bumpy road ahead

Retailers have had a rotten start to 2017. After unexpectedly perky trading conditions late last year, life has got a lot tougher.

The latest snapshot of the sector from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG found that sales were lower in March than they were a year earlier, the first decline since the choppy post-Brexit vote environment last August.

To be sure, the timing of Easter played a part. Consumers tend to increase their spending over the long bank holiday weekend, and retailers will be expecting the sort of bounce over the coming days that they got in March last year.

But it is not just Easter. Three other factors also appear to be playing a part. Firstly, consumers brought forward spending into late 2016 because they anticipated that prices would go up this year as a result of the rising inflation caused by the depreciation of sterling.

That fear proved to be well-founded. The annual inflation rate has been rising since the middle of last year and prices are now rising as fast as wages.

Secondly, it is now costing consumers more to fill their cars with fuel and to heat their homes. They have less left over to spare on little treats than they did this time last year. Impulse buying has been replaced by a more cautious approach.

Finally, consumers appear to have decided that they would rather cut back on spending in the high street than on eating out. Bars and restaurants are doing better than shops.

It’s hard to see life getting easier for retailers any time soon. The apprenticeship levy and the higher national minimum wage are adding to their costs at a time when consumers are highly sensitive to prices rises. There will be winners – Aldi and Lidl spring to mind – but plenty of losers. Larry Elliott

Rail boss pay reward doesn’t seem fare

It has become standard practice for large companies to build ever closer links between pay and performance in recent years, the theory being that there should be no rewards for failure. Variable pay ought to be all the more important in businesses whose failings end up hurting ordinary people. That’s why the half a million pound pay packet for Southern Rail boss Charles Horton will raise hackles among passengers.

Many have found themselves missing out on jobs or getting home too late to read their children a bedtime story due to repeated delays and cancellations on the stricken network. If they are suffering, why shouldn’t executives suffer with them? Of course, there is more to this than Southern’s management of the franchise.

An acrimonious and complex labour dispute over driver-only trains has weighed heavily on Southern. But many passengers will feel that the buck must stop with the company accepting their money. Rob Davies

Philip Hammond has signalled that the government is facing a multibillion-pound loss from selling off its 73% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland.

The chancellor told MPs that that “we have to live in the real world”, as he indicated that the remaining shares could be sold below the 502p average price that was paid for them during 2008 and 2009 when £45bn of taxpayers’ money was pumped into the Edinburgh-based bank.

Shares in the bank – which has reported nine consecutive annual losses since its rescue by the taxpayer – are trading at about 224p. This is the first time Hammond has acknowledged that the shares are likely to be sold at a loss to the taxpayer, although Hammond’s predecessor George Osborne sold off a 5% stake in 2015 at 330p a share – a £1bn loss.

Hammond said: “The government is not at present actively marketing its stake in RBS. Our policy remains to return the bank to private hands as soon as we can achieve fair value for the shares, recognising that fair value could well be below what the previous government paid for them.

“We have to live in the real world and make decisions on the future of our holding in RBS in the best interests of taxpayers.”

He has previously described the stake as a long-term asset and any further sell-off as being hindered by the uncertainty surrounding selling off 300 branches as mandated by the EU and a fine by the US for mortgage bond mis-selling in the run-up to the financial crisis.

In contrast, the government has reduced its stake in Lloyds Banking Group from 43%, when it invested to prop up the company during the financial crisis, to less than 2% and has sold off £12bn of Bradford & Bingley mortgages.

A US banker has been ordered to pay his ex-wife half of the family’s £140m fortune, after the court of appeal rejected his claim that his “genius” outshone her contribution to the marriage.

Randy Work, 49, a former executive at Texas-based private equity firm Lone Star, had first claimed that his wife of 20 years, Mandy Gray, was entitled to only £5m because she had “unfortunately” failed to stick to the terms of their prenuptial agreement and had had an affair with the couple’s personal physiotherapist.

A high court judge rejected Work’s claim that he made an “exceptional contribution” to the marriage and was therefore entitled to more than a 50-50 split of the couple’s assets, which include a £30m mansion in Kensington, west London, complete with swimming pool and fitness centre and an £18m ski lodge in Aspen, Colorado.

Ruling on their divorce in 2015 Justice Holman told the businessman that his wealth contribution – which Work said totalled more than $300m in 10 years – was not “wholly exceptional” and rejected his claim to be a financial “genius”.

“I personally find that a difficult, and perhaps unhelpful, word in this context,” Holman said. “To my mind, the word ‘genius’ tends to be overused and is properly reserved for Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Einstein and others like them.”

Work, who has spent at least £3m fighting to keep his wife from collecting half of the family fortune, took the case to the court of appeal which on Tuesday unanimously rejected his appeal against Holman’s ruling. “In our view the husband has failed to demonstrate that Holman J’s decision was wrong,” three court of appeal judges said.

London has become known as the divorce capital of the world because British judges tend not to discriminate between breadwinner and homemaker and order equal splits of combined fortunes. However, Work had hoped to convince the court of appeal judges to allow him to join those few men who had been granted more than half of the combined assets in a divorce in recognition of the “wholly exceptional nature” of their success.

Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of advertising firm WPP, was awarded 60% of joint assets in his 2005 divorce from Sandra, his wife of 33 years. In 2014, a judge granted the ex-wife of Chris Hohn, the billionaire founder of hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund, 36% of their $1.5bn fortune.

Holman had ruled that although Work was an “astute businessman”, Gray was a “highly intelligent” woman who had given up her career to follow her husband to Tokyo, where he made hundreds of millions of pounds exploiting the Japanese financial crisis.

“A successful claim to a special contribution requires some exceptional and individual quality in the spouse concerned. Being in the right place at the right time or benefiting from a period of boom is not enough,” Holman said.

“It may one day fall for consideration whether a very highly paid footballer, who is very good at his job but may be no more skilful than past greats, such as Stanley Matthews or Bobby Charlton, makes a special contribution or is merely the lucky beneficiary of the colossal payments now made possible by the sale of television rights.”

Mandy Gray, who split up with Work in 2013. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Holman said Work and Gray, 47, had been “two strong and equal partners” and he would not have been able to amass his vast fortune without her contribution.

The pair, who are both American and have two teenage children, met in 1992 and married in 1995. They split up in 2013 when Gray began an affair with the couple’s physiotherapist, 44, who she now lives with in a rented flat in Kensington.

During the divorce hearing Holman had said the case “should be so easy” to settle as there was “plenty of money to go round” and criticised the couple for descending into “unedifying and destructive pugilism”.

I’m writing about a ludicrous issue I’ve had with The Co-operative Bank. I tried to transfer £150 to my father by phone, which I needed to do before the weekend. It proceeded to ask an array of security questions, which I answered, and kept me on hold for an hour before telling me that I wasn’t 15 (I most definitely am) due to my “deep voice”.

When my dad asked what was going on, it refused him access to a manager, and the staff member wouldn’t even give his name. Because of the branches being closed all weekend I have essentially been refused access to my money. The bank offered me a derisory £25 as a goodwill payment but I think their behaviour amounts to discrimination.

​BS (age 15), Cottingham, near Hull

We can understand your frustration – particularly given how you appear to be handling your finances independently – but (dare we say) we think perhaps you have been over sensitive about the security questions. Clearly it is difficult to determine someone’s age given voice changes around puberty. We contacted the Co-operative Bank which double-checked its records and said that on the call you correctly answered the normal security questions followed by some additional ones. The adviser said you appeared to sound a little older than your age and the call was transferred to somebody else. They went on to ask the same questions again, only to refer you to your branch.

The Co-op said it had investigated your complaint and put your findings in writing. It stressed the importance of speaking to the correct customer, which involves a clear “process” if there are any concerns. However, as it believes this has let you down, and as it has meant extra trips to withdraw funds from the cash machine and delayed your purchase, it has agreed to uphold your complaint. The Co-op has given feedback to the relevant team and is considering reviewing it and looking at alternatives. It has also arranged for £50 to be paid into your account as a way of saying sorry. You balked at this offer too, but we think you should accept it.

We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at consumer.champions@theguardian.com or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number

Wells Fargo has clawed back $75m from two former top executives after an internal report concluded management had little interest in dealing with an overly aggressive sales culture that dated back at least 15 years until that culture spiraled out of control, resulting in millions of accounts being opened fraudulently.

The bank’s board clawed $75m in pay from former CEO John Stumpf and community bank executive Carrie Tolstedt, saying both dragged their feet for years regarding problems at the second-largest US bank. Both were ultimately unwilling to accept criticism that the bank’s sales-focused business model was failing.

The 110-page report has been in the works since September, when Wells acknowledged that its employees opened up to 2m checking and credit card accounts without customers’ authorization. Trying to meet unrealistic sales goals, Wells employees even created phony email addresses to sign customers up for online banking services.

“(Wells’ management) created pressure on employees to sell unwanted or unneeded products to customers and, in some cases, to open unauthorized accounts,” the board said in its report.

Many current and former employees have talked of intense and constant pressure from managers to sell and open accounts, and some said it pushed them into unethical behavior. The report backs up those employees’ accounts.

“It was common to blame employees who violated Wells Fargo’s rules without analyzing what caused or motivated them to do so ... (or determine) whether there were responsible individuals, who while they might have no directed the specific misconduct, contributed to the environment (that caused it),” the board said.

The report also says that problems in the bank’s sales culture date back to at least 2002 – far earlier than what the bank had previously said – and that Stumpf knew about sales problems at a branch in Colorado since at least that year.

The bank has already paid $185m in fines to federal and local authorities and settled a $110m class-action lawsuit. The scandal also resulted in the abrupt retirement last October of longtime CEO John Stumpf, not long after he underwent blistering questioning from congressional panels. The bank remains under investigation in several states, as well as by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for its practices.

The board’s report recommended that Stumpf and Tolstedt have additional compensation clawed back for their negligence and poor management. Tolstedt will lose $47.3m in stock options, on top of $19m the board had already clawed back. Stumpf will lose an additional $28m in compensation, on top of the $41m the board already clawed back. Along with the millions clawed back from other executives earlier this year, the roughly $180m in clawbacks are among the largest in US corporate history.

The board found that, when presented with the growing problems in Wells’ community banking division, senior management was unwilling to hear criticism or consider changes in behavior. The board particularly faulted Tolstedt, calling her “insular and defensive” and unable to accept scrutiny from inside or outside her organization.

The board also found that Tolstedt actively worked to play down any problems in her division. In a report made in October 2015, nearly three years after a Los Angeles Times investigation uncovered the scandal, Tolstedt “minimized and understated problems at the community bank”.

Tolstedt declined to be interviewed for the investigation, the board said, on advice from her lawyers.

Stumpf also received his share of criticism. In its report, the board found that Stumpf was also unwilling to change Wells’ business model when problems arose.

“His reaction invariably was that a few bad employees were causing issues ... he was too late and too slow to call for inspection or critical challenge to (Wells’) basic business model,” the board said.

Stumpf, however, did not seem to express regret for how he handled those initial weeks after the bank was fined, including when he initially levied most of the blame on low-level employees for the sales practices problems instead of management, said Stuart Baskin, lawyer with Shearman & Sterling, the firm that the board hired to investigate the sales scandal.

The investigation found that Wells’ corporate structure was also to blame. Under Stumpf, Wells operated in a decentralized fashion, with executives of each of the businesses running their divisions almost like separate companies.

While there is nothing wrong with operating a large company such as Wells in a decentralized fashion, the board said, the structure backfired in this case by allowing Tolstedt and other executives to hide the problems in their organization from senior management and the board of directors.

When the scandal broke, Wells said it had fired roughly 5,300 employees as a result of the sales practices, the vast majority of them rank-and-file employees. But when that figure was announced, it was the first time that the board of directors had heard the sales practices problems were of such a large size and scope. According to the report, as recently as May 2015, senior management told the board that only 230 employees had been fired for sales practices violations.

Wells has instituted several corporate and business changes since the problems became known nationwide. Wells has changed its sales practices and called tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.

The Bank of England has found itself under the spotlight again over the fixing of a key interest rate during the credit crunch after new details emerged of bankers discussing Threadneedle Street’s alleged involvement in the setting of Libor.

BBC1’s Panorama programme said it had obtained a recording of a 2008 call between two bankers at Barclays in which the more senior person said the government and Bank of England were exerting pressure on it to lower the rate it offered for Libor – the London interbank offered rate, which is the interest rate banks charge each other for short-term loans.

Libor is used as a reference point around the world for loans and mortgages and is set each day by a panel of leading banks, with each one submitting the rates at which it is willing to borrow.

Revelations that the rate was rigged at the height of the financial crisis have led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds from a variety of regulators, while bankers from Barclays and UBS have been jailed.

The BBC said its investigations added to evidence the Bank of England had pressured commercial banks to push their Libor rates down and that the transcript of the phone conversation at Barclays called into question evidence to the Treasury select committee in 2012 by the former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, former deputy governor of the Bank of England.

Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, called for a new investigation on the back of the broadcaster’s report.

“This is an extremely serious revelation that contradicts past assurances about the role of the Bank of England in the Libor scandal,” he said.

“It goes to the very heart of whether our financial institutions can be trusted. Therefore, it warrants an immediate high-level investigation, and the chancellor must act straight away to ensure this happens.”

The BBC said that in the recording, a senior Barclays manager, Mark Dearlove, is heard instructing a Libor submitter, Peter Johnson, to lower his rates.

“The bottom line is you’re going to absolutely hate this ... but we’ve had some very serious pressure from the UK government and the Bank of England about pushing our Libors lower,” Dearlove told Johnson, according to the BBC.

Johnson, a 35-year Barclays veteran, pleaded guilty in October 2014 and was sentenced to four years in prison for conspiring to fraudulently rig global benchmark interest rates.

The October 2008 conversation between Dearlove and Johnson was first reported in the recently published book on Libor rigging, The Fix, by Gavin Finch and Liam Vaughan.

For the Bank of England, the recording returns unwelcome attention to its role during the Libor scandal after it was forced to deal with allegations about pressure on commercial banks during parliamentary hearings almost five years ago.

In 2012, the former senior Barclays executive Jerry del Missier justified his decision to order his staff to manipulate interest rates in 2008 by saying he believed he was acting on the instruction of the central bank.

Del Missier told MPs on the Treasury select committee that he had issued the instruction after a conversation with his then boss, Diamond, in October 2008, when the financial system was on the brink. Diamond was then running Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm, before being promoted to chief executive.

Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays in the wake of the £290m fine received by the bank for attempting to manipulate Libor.

Tucker was also called before the committee to explain his dealings with Diamond. The MPs largely exonerated Tucker, but the release of a series of emails, including one in which he referred to Diamond as “an absolute brick”, raised questions about his cosy relationship with the City.

One member of the current Treasury committee, the Conservative MP Chris Philp, said he had seen the BBC’s “explosive” evidence. “Urgent enquiry needed,” Philp added on Twitter.

Chris Philp MP (@chrisphilp_mp)

I have seen Panorama's explosive evidence on LIBOR rigging. Suggests in 2008/9 Bank of England instructed rigging. Urgent enquiry needed

April 10, 2017

The Bank of England said it had provided a statement to the BBC noting that Libor and other global benchmarks were not regulated in the UK or elsewhere at the time. The Bank added it was helping with investigations by the Serious Fraud Office into Libor manipulation by employees at commercial banks and brokers.

“The Bank is committed to publishing materials relating to the SFO’s investigations into benchmark manipulation when it is appropriate to do so. Until the SFO’s ongoing prosecutorial activity relating to Libor and other benchmarks has concluded, the Bank is not in a position to publish these materials,” the statement said.

The Treasury also sought to provide reassurances that standards had improved since the Libor scandal.

“The government is absolutely clear that we must learn from the lessons of the past,” said a Treasury spokesman.

“That is why, since the financial crisis, we have carried out wholesale reform of how the financial system is regulated in this country, including making the manipulation of Libor a criminal offence.”

A spokesman for Diamond declined to comment. Barclays also declined to comment on behalf of the bank itself or on behalf of Dearlove.

Tucker had not responded to a Guardian request for comment at the time of publication.

Credit Suisse bosses have cut their bonuses by 40% in the hope of avoiding an embarrassing protest by shareholders and politicians at the bank’s annual meeting.

The bank’s executives, led by chief executive Tidjane Thiam, had proposed paying themselves bonuses totalling 78m Swiss francs (£62m) even though the Swiss bank lost SFr2.7bn last year and has been fined $5.3bn (£4.2bn) by the US authorities for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis.

Institutional investors and Swiss politicians had publicly criticised the bumper payouts – including a total of SFr12m for Thiam - and vowed to vote against the awards at the bank’s AGM later this month.

The bank, which had defended the planned bonuses as recently as Thursday, announced it was reducing the awards early on Friday morning. “I hope that this decision will alleviate some of the concerns expressed by some shareholders and will allow the executive team to continue to focus on the task at hand,” Thiam said in a letter to investors published on the bank’s website. “My highest priority is to see through the turnaround of Credit Suisse which is under way.”

Tidjane Thiam, CEO of Credit Suisse. Photograph: Ennio Leanza/AP

Thiam conceded that the “financial impact” of the toxic mortgage settlement with the US Department of Justice was “not appropriately reflected in the compensation of current management”.

Thiam told Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft last month that “making today’s management pay for [the mis-selling of toxic mortgage securities] wouldn’t be a good incentive”.

Three shareholder advisory services, including the influential Institutional Shareholder Service (ISS), had urged shareholders to vote down the pay awards. “Despite a second consecutive net loss, variable remuneration levels for the executive board remained high, including a SFr4.17m short-term incentive for the CEO,” said ISS, which advises more than 1,700 of the world’s biggest investors.

Shareholder votes on executive pay are binding in Switzerland. If Credit Suisse had lost the vote, it would have been the first major veto since the so-called “fat cat law” came into force four years ago and would serve as a major embarrassment for the bank.

Thomas Minder, a Swiss politician who has led a revolt against excessive executive pay in the country, said the scale of proposed bonuses being offered by a loss-making company were a “mortal sin”.

“If corporate governance is correct and the company has worked well and has a good annual result, then yes, some of [the profits] should be distributed,” said Minder, who led a 2013 referendum resulting in the implementation of the binding shareholder vote on executive pay. “But if it worked badly, like Credit Suisse, then, dear me, nothing can be allowed to be paid out.”

Minder told Reuters: “If there’s no money in the coffers, then there are no bonuses for top management or employees. That is a mortal sin.”

Thomas Minder. Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters

Thiam, who was previously boss of insurance giant Prudential, said: “Our decision [to cut the bonus pool] reflects the total confidence we have in the progress we are making. Although that progress is not yet reflected in our share price, I am confident that our strategy and our disciplined execution will in due course create value for you, our shareholders.”

Credit Suisse’s shares have lost more than 11% of their value over the past year.

Excessive boardroom pay has moved up the British political agenda since the financial crisis of 2008. Last year, the prime minister, Theresa May, stated an ambition to crack down on poor corporate governance in the UK.

May had called for annual binding shareholder votes on executive pay to end the “irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what these companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses” and to help “make our economy work for everyone”.

However, a government green paper on corporate governance reform published in November backed away from a binding shareholder vote at AGMs.

On a sunny afternoon in west Beijing, on the auspicious eighth floor of a nondescript concrete high-rise, Huai Yang sits with the curtains drawn in his apartment, making his own luck.

For the past six months, 27-year-old Yang has worked mainly from home, mainly from his sofa, tracking and trading bitcoin, and watching the money roll in. The flat itself is modestly sized; Yang moved in in his pre-bitcoin days when he worked variously for a crowdfunder start-up, a branding consultancy and dabbled in hedge-fund management, all of which he describes as “creative financial work”. Now, though, his main focus is bitcoin, which is “much younger, more fun, and much more money”. Yang claims to make up to 1m yuan (£116,000) a month, under the radar of the taxman, purely from trading the online cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin has no physical form but the rewards are very tangible; Yang’s home is packed full of expensive gadgetry, most prominently a mega-sized flat screen smart board, over a metre wide, which Yang uses to chart bitcoin’s rise and fall in HD.

Normally, the graphs on Yang’s screen show bitcoin’s and his own fortunes going up and up. At the time of writing, one bitcoin is worth 6,600 yuan (£768) – recent months have seen the value hover well above 8,000 yuan. The global worth of bitcoin is over $14bn USD (£11.3bn), of which over 90% is in yuan, and Yang and his peers are cashing in. “I want a more splendid life,” he says.

Huai Yang, who trades bitcoin from his sofa Photograph: Naomi Goddard for the Guardian

There’s certainly big money to be made in bitcoin, but it comes at a high risk. Bitcoin was designed to be a peer-to-peer currency, free from interference from government and central banks. Since the currency was launched in 2009, however, the Chinese market, where government interventions are common, has come to dwarf all others.

One such intervention took place in February this year, when the government warned that there would be “serious violations” for trading platforms that failed to abide by strict money-laundering regulations. In line with this, OKCoin and Huobi.com, the two biggest exchanges in China, announced that they would be suspending bitcoin withdrawals for one month.

Incidents like these, which Yang sees as “not convenient, but not [a] problem,” give Chenxing (who asked that I only use his first name) pause for thought. Chenxing, a boyish, skittish 35, has been trading bitcoin for the past four months, after giving up his “too comfortable” job as a geo-information engineer for the government. The government’s pressure on bitcoin platforms is “not so easy to understand,” he tells me. “I’m not sure it’s really about money laundering … they try to control [bitcoin], but they cannot”.

For Chenxing, it’s the system itself that is vulnerable: “Technology changes every day,” he explains. “Maybe tomorrow a hacker can find a way to crack bitcoin … the security is from mathematics. If you can crack the mathematics, bitcoin is nothing.” That’s why, even though Chenxing describes himself as a “believer” in bitcoin, he doesn’t plan to stay involved for the long term.

“It’s really not a stable thing,” he says, both in terms of fluctuating prices and the uncertain technological future of the cryptocurrency. That said, he’s still “making more money” than in his previous government job. In a good month, Chenxing will pocket the cash value of around five bitcoin, which is close to 40,000 yuan, and which Chenxing prefers to have in cold, hard cash.

Chenxing is something of an anomaly in Chinese bitcoin circles, where the general mood is one of evangelical faith in the currency’s potential, especially in an economy where the government often devalues the national currency.

Brendan Gibson, 32, is a United States national who has been in China for six years, trading bitcoin for three. We’ve barely sat down to talk when Gibson takes my phone and downloads the BTC Wallet app onto it, before transferring me the seeds of my cryptocurrency fortune: 0.0027 bitcoin, worth £2.50, which is the amount that everyone in the world would have if the 21m bitcoin in existence were equally divided up between all 7.8 billion of us. He believes that “everybody’s aunt … or grandma” should be using bitcoin.

Brendan Gibson: ‘I’m just kind of fed up with the system.’ Photograph: Naomi Goddard for the Guardian

For Gibson, bitcoin is a way of life. He hopes to be completely bank free in the near future. Hailing from the “shady mortgage industry” of corporate America, Gibson shares Chenxing’s distrustful attitude, but is more concerned about private banks than bitcoin’s technological vulnerability. “I’m just kind of fed up with the system,” he tells me over coffee in a slick café and co-working space from where Gibson does most of his work remotely.

“I don’t think economies should be built on inflated numbers, and I think it’s kind of ridiculous that everybody relies on this inflated number in their bank account when it’s definitely not there … bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are making it so that we are our own banks, and that’s one less things we have to worry about.” Gibson owns two companies in China, and as far as possible uses bitcoin for all his daily expenses, converting the personal profits he makes into bitcoin to avoid using banks.

One of the commonly cited weaknesses in the bitcoin system is that if you lose your private key to access your bitcoin wallet, the bitcoin within are lost forever. In 2015, it was estimated that up to 30% of all mined bitcoins had been lost, with a value of £625m. Unsurprisingly, plenty of people see this as an opportunity to make some money.

Sun Zeyu, 27, works at a tech start-up based near Beijing’s university district that specialises in bitcoin. His latest project is Coldlar, an offline, physical wallet that stores users’ bitcoin and can be accessed by scanning a QR code. Bitcoin security is a “tough question”, Sun tells me, which is why he and his colleagues designed a product that allows people to circumvent bitcoin platforms and have even greater control over their bitcoin. “Now that the value [of bitcoin] is going up,” he explains, “people really realise the importance of security.

Before, when we just traded one or two coins, people didn’t mind, [but] now the value of bitcoin is much bigger”. Sun got involved with bitcoin while at university after attending a seminar run by Huobi, one of the biggest trading platforms in China. Like his flashier friend Yang, Sun wanted money, and lots of it. He won’t tell me exactly how much he earns, but assures me that it’s “hundreds or thousands” times more than the 10,000 yuan per month he was earning when he first dabbled in bitcoin three years ago.

His money comes from both his trading activity and his company salary. With the growth of bitcoin and related products like his Coldlar wallet, Sun believes that in 10 years’ time, the value of the cryptocurrency will be “one bitcoin, one house in Beijing”. Minor shocks to the system, like the recent suspension of bitcoin withdrawals in China, are “just like breathing,” he insists, and the inhalations of profit dwarf any other bumps in the road.

Sun Zeyu at work. Photograph: Naomi Goddard for the Guardian

Despite the solitary nature of their work, Yang, Sun, Gibson and Chenxing are all sociable creatures. Gibson is connected to hundreds of bitcoin aficionados in China, and has introduced close to 1,000 new people to the technology (although how many are like me, with £2.50 lying dormant in an unused wallet, is unknown), such is his enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency. Chenxing cites the social side of the bitcoin scene in Beijing as one of the main attractions of staying in the industry and the city.

“I can meet some fun people who really love bitcoin … I think most of the people who like bitcoin are people who like freedom” he says. Yang, however, takes a slightly harder-edged approach. He has little patience for sceptics: “Yes, bitcoin is a risk. Why should I have to discuss these things with [people concerned about the security]? I earn my money, that’s enough. I don’t waste my time explaining bitcoin … [if] you’re not my client”. In some ways, Yang concedes, the less people understand bitcoin, the better it is for him. At the moment, the industry is “like an ATM” for him and his peers, and he’s perfectly happy for things to stay that way.

In the fast-changing world of the crypto-currency, nothing seems to stay the same for long. Whether it’s unpredictable government interventions, or debates within the community about how the industry can and should be scaled, general growth in value thus fair doesn’t necessarily suggest anything about the future of bitcoin, despite the faith of its adherents. Gibson makes the point that bitcoin has only been around for nine years; it took PayPal at least 10 to properly catch on.

In Japan it has recently been recognised as legal tender. It’s unlikely that the same could ever happen in China, no matter how much its popularity continues to balloon. Chenxing, who has years of insider experience, is sure that “[the government] will never accept a thing that’s not built by themselves”. Many bitcoin traders in China are in it for the long haul, confident that they can ride out any governmental interferences, as long as they have access to the internet. Chenxing, however, is more paranoid. His final thoughts on bitcoin are: “I never feel secure”.

Whistleblowing charities and law firms have called for companies to offer more protection to workers who flag up internal problems after the chief executive of Barclays attempted to track down the author of anonymous letters.

Jes Staley is being investigated by financial regulators and faces a significant cut to his pay after admitting trying to unmask a whistleblower who made allegations about a long-term associate he had brought to the bank.

Public Concern at Work (PCaW), a charity for whistleblowers, said there was “much work to be done” while GoodCorporation said the Barclays saga would be a “real test” for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority.

There are strict regulations in the financial services industry about encouraging and protecting whistleblowers. This includes the senior managers and certification regime, which is aimed at improving individual accountability within the financial services industry.

Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the House of Commons Treasury select committee, said: “The senior managers and certification regime is supposed to ensure that whistleblowers are protected. This is the first proper test of those rules, and it is for the regulators to test whether Barclays had the right processes in place. The Treasury committee will take a close interest in the regulators’ conclusions.”

Cathy James, the chief executive of PCaW, said there had been an increase in interest from City firms about how to draw up internal guidelines and calls to its helpline from potential whistleblowers.

James said: “I’m not in a position to say whether that’s good or bad news in terms of a change in culture.”

“Is that because of increased confidence in whistleblowing, or increased interest from the regulator? It still remains to be seen,” she said. “There is clearly much work to be done.”

Last year the whistleblowing charity advised on 130 cases involving individuals working in the financial sector, compared with 98 in 2015 and 102 in 2014. So far this year, it has received 35 calls from the financial sector.

PCaW is working with some of the big banks and other financial firms to help them draw up internal whistleblowing guidelines. James said new FCA rules, including the requirement to have an internal whistleblowing champion since last September, had contributed to the surge in interest.

However, one employment lawyer said Barclays’ refusal to sack Staley undermined its approach to whistleblowers. Barclays has said it will send Staley a formal written reprimand and cut his bonus but also backed him to continue as chief executive.

Anna Birtwistle from CM Murray said: “While cutting Staley’s pay may outwardly appear to represent a strong response from Barclays, it is difficult to reconcile the board’s continued confidence in Staley with its stated commitment to whistleblowing.

“Fostering an open culture of disclosing wrongdoing in the workplace requires top-down stewardship and while it may be understandable that Barclays has backed Staley given his successes in post, the bank’s response to Staley’s actions may give mixed messages to its employees and the wider financial services industry about the steadfastness of its commitment to whistleblowing.”

GoodCorporation, a consultancy that advises businesses on ethics, said Staley’s conduct could discourage others whistleblowers from speaking out.

Leon Martin, the managing director of GoodCorporation, said: “The Barclays whistleblower scandal will be a real test for the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority, whose rules on whistleblowing clearly state that a whistleblower’s confidentiality must be protected and that firms need to create a culture that encourages employees to raise concerns about poor behaviour.

“It is hard to see how an organisation whose CEO instructs his internal security team to identify the author of a whistleblowing letter has created an open culture whereby employees feel confident to speak out. With all that has been said about reforming behaviour in the banking sector, it seems clear that this is still a work in progress.

“Whistleblowing is an essential component of good corporate governance which needs to be embraced at the top of an organisation. An effective board will ensure that the right culture is in place, paying particular heed to employee confidence in raising concerns and to monitoring the ways in which they are dealt with. Avoiding any form or repercussion or detriment is essential.”

The rise of anti-globalisation political movements and the threat of trade protectionism have led some people to wonder whether a stronger multilateral core for the world economy would reduce the risk of damaging fragmentation. After all, lest we forget, the current arrangements – as pressured as they are – reflected our post-world war two forebears’ strong desire to minimise the risk of “beggar-thy-neighbour” national policies, which had crippled growth, prosperity and global stability in the 1930s.

Similar considerations fuelled the launch, nearly 50 years ago, of the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing right as the precursor to a global currency. And with renewed interest in the stability of the international monetary system, some are asking – including within the IMF – whether revamping the SDR could be part of an effective effort to re-energise multilateralism.

The original impetus for the SDR included concerns about a national currency’s ability to reconcile the need for global liquidity provision with confidence in its role as the world’s reserve currency – what economists call the “Triffin dilemma”. By creating an international currency that would be managed by the IMF, member countries sought to underpin and enhance the international monetary system with a non-national official reserve asset.

Legal and practical factors, as well as some countries’ political resistance to delegating economic governance to multilateral institutions, have prevented the SDR from meeting its creators’ modest expectations, let alone the grand role of a truly global reserve currency that anchors the cooperative functioning of a growth-oriented global economy. Information and other market failures have added to the challenges, as have weak institutional infrastructure and inadequate branding. The result is a substantial gap between the SDR’s potential and its performance.

That gap has meant missed opportunities for the global economy – particularly in terms of asset liability management, responsive liquidity, adjustment between deficit and surplus countries – and thus a gap between actual and potential growth. With the SDR providing a stronger glue at the international monetary system’s core, prudential currency diversification could have been made easier, the need for costly and inefficient self-insurance could have been reduced and the provision of liquidity could have been made less pro-cyclical.

So, do today’s anti-globalisation winds – caused in part by poor global policy coordination in the context of too many years of low and insufficiently inclusive growth – create scope for enhancing the SDR’s role and potential contributions?

Addressing this question, were it to gain traction, would involve a focus on an ecosystem of SDR use, with the composite currency – which last year added the Chinese renminbi to the British pound, euro, Japanese yen and US dollar – potentially benefiting from a virtuous cycle. Specifically, the SDR’s three roles – an official reserve asset, a currency used more broadly in financial activity and a numeraire – could ensure greater official liquidity, expand the range of new assets used around the world in public and private transactions, and boost its use as a unit of account.

Of course, given the advanced economies’ embrace of more inward-looking, populist and nationalist politics, a “big bang” approach to reinvigorating the SDR is highly unlikely. Even an incremental approach, starting with practical low-hanging fruit that does not require amendments to the IMF’s articles of agreement, would face political challenges. But it would be worth considering.

Areas of focus would include using the SDR for some bond issuance and trade transactions, developing market infrastructure (including payments and settlement mechanisms), improving valuation methodologies and gradually developing a yield curve for SDR-denominated loans and bonds. This would also help to leverage the inter-connectedness of the SDR’s roles, in order to reach critical mass quickly and have a foundation for further incremental gains.

For the effort to succeed, the IMF’s approach would need to evolve – just like it did on country-specific issues.

When I joined the IMF in the early 1980s, discussions with non-government counterparts, whether on country or policy work, were discouraged. The situation today is very different. Broader national engagement – with NGOs, local media and a broad set of politicians – is now viewed as an integral part of effective country advice and program implementation, as well as being essential for the fund’s “surveillance” function under its article of agreements.

A similar pivot is needed if the IMF is to deliver better on the supranational issues that are now migrating up its policy agenda. Specifically, the fund would need to complement its traditional core constituency of governments and other multilateral institutions (particularly the World Bank) with systemically influential sub-national and private counterparts. The resulting public-private partnerships would enhance issuance, the development of market infrastructure, and liquidity provision for the SDR.

While it is not easy to combine developmental and commercial activities, the implications for global growth and stability of not doing so suggest that it is an effort that should be explored. Moreover, the IMF could start small, focusing on interactions with other official multilateral and regional institutions, sovereign wealth funds, and multinational financial companies – all anchored by an active coalition of the willing among the G20.

In an ideal world, the SDR would have evolved into more of a reserve currency during the era of accelerated trade and financial globalisation. In the world as it is today, the international monetary system faces two options: fragmentation, with all the risks and opportunity costs that this implies, or an incremental approach to bolstering the global economy’s resilience and potential growth, based on bottom-up partnerships that facilitate systemic progress.

The government has agreed a £2.3bn sale of the Green Investment Bank to the Australian bank Macquarie, according to sources close to the process.

The privatisation of the bank was expected in January but signoff was delayed in the face of stiff political opposition and wrangling over the final price.

Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election and political concerns that the deadlock could become a campaign issue may have broken the stalemate.

An official announcement is expected to be made by Nick Hurd, the climate minister, on Thursday, the Guardian understands.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party have criticised the sale, questioning Macquarie’s track record and commitment to green energy. Former ministers including Lord Barker and Vince Cable also warned the taxpayer risks being shortchanged by the sale because some of its assets will be worth far more later.

But Hurd will argue that the sale achieves the government’s two objectives of maximising value for the taxpayer and maintaining the bank’s green mission.

Macquarie has put up £1.7bn to buy the bank, with a further £600m supplied in part by the UK-based Universities Superannuation Scheme, a pension scheme for university professors.

The road to completing the sale to the Australian bank was cleared when a judicial review brought by Sustainable Development Capital (SDCL) – a rival bidder for the bank – was refused by the high court earlier this month.

Under the deal reached, the bank will retain both its Edinburgh and London offices. It is expected the government will still hold £140m of the bank’s assets, which the institution will continue to manage until they can be sold for the best return to the public purse.

The Green Investment Bank has stakes – either directly or via funds managed by third parties – in 85 projects that vary from an energy efficient street lighting project in Barking and Dagenham and windfarm in Dumfries and Galloway, to a biomass plant at Port Talbot and an energy-from-waste plant in Belfast.

The bank also manages the world’s first offshore wind fund, which is comprised private capital from a sovereign wealth fund, European institutional investors and a number of UK pension funds. It was launched in 2012 with £1.5bn of taxpayer money under the coalition.

Environmental groups urged Macquarie to stay true to the bank’s original purpose.

Karen Ellis, chief adviser on economics and development at WWF-UK, said: “Macquarie must guarantee that the green mission of the bank is protected and maintained and that it will provide substantial new capital for green investments.

“Numerous market failures are constraining the availability of finance for green investment, so to ensure the Green Investment Bank continues to deliver on its mandate, it should invest in novel green projects, which are less likely to be funded privately; it needs to focus on crowding in additional finance by reducing the barriers to investment.”

“Philip Hammond has signalled that the government is facing a multibillion-pound loss from selling its 73% stake in Royal Bank of Scotland” (Report, 19 April). Is that the government or the UK taxpayer facing the massive loss? And who precisely will be making a profit out of the shares when they’re sold at rock-bottom prices?
Father Julian Dunn
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

• The toast mentioned in Clare Stares’ Country diary (14 April) is “to the little man in black velvet”. William III was riding a black pony when it was distracted by a mole and unseated him causing his eventual death. Whether the toast referred to the pony, originally belonging to Sir John Fenwick, a Jacobite executed for high treason, or to the mole is uncertain.
Geoff Fenwick
Southport

• Reading about spoilers (Letters, 20 April) reminded me of the awful one in Penguin’s 1967 edition of War and Peace. While I was transfixed wondering if Andrei would survive, the cover of volume two showed the painting Death of Prince Andrei by Leonid Pasternak. As an aside, one chapter opens with the glorious line: “Count Rostov had the grandest balls in all Russia”.
Akiva Solemani
London

• Felicity Cloake’s recipe for salted caramel brownies (G2, 20 April) looks truly excellent. However, please could she explain her central premise of “surplus Easter chocolate”?
Colin Barr
Ulverston, Cumbria

• Among the other things we have to worry about during the next seven weeks is that, on the principle of burying bad news, the BBC might use this period of preoccupation with politics to announce a staggeringly poor choice to take over the role of Doctor Who (Pass notes, G2, 18 April).
Bryn Hughes
Wrexham, Clwyd

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John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is calling on Philip Hammond to hold an urgent public inquiry into whether Bank of England officials colluded in the rigging of the Libor rate.

The senior Labour politician said Hammond’s silence on the issue was unacceptable after a BBC Panorama programme said it had evidence of pressure exerted by Threadneedle Street on the setting of Libor – the London interbank offered rate, which is the interest rate banks charge each other for short-term loans.

Libor is used as a reference point around the world for loans and mortgages and is set each day by a panel of leading banks, with each one submitting the rates at which it is willing to borrow.

Revelations that the rate was rigged at the height of the financial crisis have led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds from a variety of regulators, while bankers from Barclays and UBS have been jailed.

In a letter to Hammond released over the weekend, McDonnell said new allegations potentially implicating the Bank of England “demand an immediate response from this government”.

“Continuing official silence from the chancellor is not acceptable when confronted with this scale of rigging,” he said. “It is essential that we clarify who took the decisions to rig the Libor index, and when, so that the schools, NHS hospitals and local councils that lost out can be paid the compensation that is rightfully due and public confidence in our banking system and official institutions can be restored.”

More recently, the Bank of England has found itself under the spotlight after new details emerged of bankers discussing Threadneedle Street’s alleged involvement in the setting of Libor.

BBC1’s Panorama programme said it had obtained a recording of a 2008 call between two bankers at Barclays in which the more senior person said the government and Bank of England were exerting pressure on it to lower the rate it offered for Libor.

The BBC said its investigations added to evidence that the Bank of England had put pressure on commercial banks to push their Libor rates down and that the transcript of the phone conversation at Barclays called into question evidence to the Treasury select committee given in 2012 by the former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker, former deputy governor of the Bank of England.

In 2012, the former senior Barclays executive Jerry del Missier justified his decision to order his staff to manipulate interest rates in 2008 by saying he believed he was acting on the instruction of the central bank.

Del Missier told MPs on the Treasury select committee that he had issued the instruction after a conversation with his then boss, Diamond, in October 2008, when the financial system was on the brink. Diamond was then running Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm, before being promoted to chief executive.

Diamond resigned as chief executive of Barclays in the wake of the £290m fine received by the bank for attempting to manipulate Libor.

Tucker was also called before the committee to explain his dealings with Diamond. The MPs largely exonerated Tucker, but the release of a series of emails, including one in which he referred to Diamond as “an absolute brick”, raised questions about his cosy relationship with the City.

Responding to last week’s Panorama report, the Bank of England said: “Libor and other global benchmarks were not regulated in the UK or elsewhere during the period in question.”

Germany’s biggest bank is coming under pressure from a US senator to give further details of its lending to Donald Trump and meetings it has had with the administration.

Chris Van Hollen has written to Deutsche Bank asking for assurances that it will not use the president’s outstanding multimillion-dollar loans as “leverage”. The Democratic senator is also demanding to know whether the bank has restructured Trump’s debt or sold it to “foreign entities”.

Trump currently has two loans and two mortgages with Deutsche Bank and owes it about $340m (£270m). The bank has also extended another $950m to a venture in which Trump owns a 30% stake, the Wall Street Journal reported in January.

Van Hollen, who sits on the Senate banking committee, said he had “great concern” about possible conflicts of interest between Deutsche and Trump and questions about whether the bank’s role as the president’s largest creditor could influence multiple ongoing investigations into the German bank.

In a letter to Bill Woodley, the CEO of Deutsche Bank America, the senator wrote: “I am asking that you do not use your institution’s ties to President Trump as leverage in any of these ongoing cases or ongoing regulatory oversight.

“Further, I ask that Deutsche Bank and its executives do not take any actions to assist Mr Trump in circumventing any of his ethical obligations to avoid conflicts of interest.”

Deutsche Bank says its position is that it will not comment or guide on any stories about Trump’s financial affairs.

The letter, sent on Wednesday and obtained by the Guardian, comes as Deutsche Bank faces ongoing investigations by the Department of Justice into alleged money laundering involving Russia. It is also in settlement talks with federal officials over its alleged role in the mortgage crisis.

Van Hollen and another prominent Democrat, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, have raised concerns about whether Jeff Sessions, the US attorney general, could oversee an impartial investigation given the bank’s close ties to the White House. Van Hollen said Sessions had not responded to an earlier letter about his oversight of the Deutsche probes at the DoJ, but Van Hollen’s position on the banking committee means the German bank could feel compelled to reply.

In recent months Deutsche Bank’s alleged links with Russia have come under intense scrutiny. The FBI, meanwhile, has announced that it is investigating possible collusion in the run-up to the US election between officials from the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

In January the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) fined the bank $425m for failing to prevent $10bn of Russian money laundering. The “mirror trades” scheme was run out of its Moscow office. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority imposed a £163m fine – its biggest ever – for the same offence.

The previous month Deutsche paid $7.2bn to settle a decade-old toxic bond mis-selling scandal with the US Department of Justice.

In March it emerged Deutsche played a prominent role in a second Russian money-laundering scandal. It was one of dozens of western financial institutions that processed at least $20bn – and possibly more – of criminal Russian cash. The scheme, “the Global Laundromat”, ran from 2010 to 2014.

The Guardian revealed in February that some of Trump’s immediate family members were clients of Deutsche, including the president’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and Kushner’s mother, Seryl Stadtmauer.

In his letter Van Hollen said Kushner, the president’s trusted senior advisor, had a multimillion-dollar line of credit with the bank. Deutsche has provided $370m in financing for a Kushner Companies’ property in Time Square.

Deutsche has conducted a close internal examination of the US president’s personal account to gauge whether there are any suspicious connections to Russia. It was looking for evidence of whether loans to Trump, which were agreed in highly unusual circumstances, may have been underpinned by financial guarantees from Moscow. Sources inside Deutsche said no link was found.

But in his letter to Woodley, Van Hollen said he wanted more information about this internal review, triggered when Trump won the Republican nomination for president. The senator asked for a description of the bank’s “risk management” and whether any irregularities emerged during the internal inquiry.

Van Hollen is also seeking reassurances that the president and his family are not receiving preferential treatment in a way that would violate federal ethics laws, and further explanation of efforts to restructure Trump’s debt, including whether any had been sold to foreign entities.

8 Business Ideas for Entrepreneurial College Grads

8 Business Ideas for Entrepreneurial College Grads

It's a tough job market out there for everyone, but especially recent college graduates. With little firsthand experience, it can be difficult to land that first job, which is of course necessary to gain experience in the first place. Finding a job in your field is certainly desirable, but for some the calling of launching their own business offers more promise than interview after fruitless interview. Instead of waiting around for their dream jobs to open up, many recent grads are choosing to start careers as entrepreneurs. Here are eight low-cost businesses you can start as a new college graduate.

Clothing company

Did you dream of working in the fashion world, but couldn't find more than a few low-level opportunities in the field? If you have a great eye for design, you can strike out on your own and start an independent clothing company. Knowing how to sew or silk screen will help you get off the ground, but you'll eventually need to find a good manufacturer to reach the next stage of growth. As with any business, high-quality products combined with great marketing skills are the keys to success. 

Content creation

Thanks to social media and the 24-hour news cycle, creative individuals like writers and graphic designers can use their talents to produce high-quality, shareable content for businesses and media outlets. A growing part-time economy of freelance and contract workers makes it easier than ever to market yourself as a professional freelance content creator. This can also be a great way to build up your skills should you choose to seek a full-time job later on.

Electronic repair

In today's tech-obsessed world, most people have smartphones, tablets and laptops that they use daily. With constant usage, there's a good chance that at least one of those devices is going to crash or otherwise break at some point. If you're a techie who can fix these issues with relative ease, you can offer to repair people's electronics for cheaper than what the big retailers charge. Get started by marketing your services to students at your alma mater who don't want to wait for the campus IT department to fix their hard drives.

Event entertainment

If you spent your undergrad years tinkering with sound-mixing software and staffing the DJ booth at your college radio station, starting an event entertainment company could be the right path for you. With only your music collection and your laptop, you can get people out on the dance floor at weddings and birthday parties, or simply provide background music at more-casual events. DJ equipment is a big investment, but plenty of companies offer daily rentals of speakers, subwoofers and other accessories that you can use until you save up enough to buy your own.

Fitness instruction

Were you constantly hitting the gym after class? Turn your passion for fitness into a lucrative job by becoming a fitness instructor or personal trainer. You'll have to put in a small amount of time and money to get certified, but organizations like the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America offer online certification programs that you can complete at your own pace. Once you're a certified trainer, you can look for openings at local gyms or work one-on-one with clients at their homes. You can also find numerous programs for certification to teach fitness classes like yoga or Zumba.

Graphic design

Are you a wiz with software tools like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop? Many small businesses are clamoring for an affordable way to gain access to professional branding, such as logos, banners and signs. If you're about to leave college with a toolbox full of graphic design skills, consider launching a freelance design business that caters to other entrepreneurs. Once you establish a network of contacts and a reputation for quality designs, you can leverage past work into new jobs and possibly even set yourself up with a full time job right out of college.

Handmade crafts

Do you have a knack for knitting, jewelry making or creating other small crafts? If you can produce a lot of items quickly, you can open up an online storefront and sell your creations to the public. Startup costs are extremely low if you purchase your materials in bulk from a craft supplier, and if you can turn orders around quickly, you'll make a profit in no time. You could even turn your store into a full-time gig.

Social media consultant

Want to put that marketing or communications degree to good use? Consider starting a social media consulting firm. Small businesses often have to take care of their own social media marketing. But, with so many other responsibilities, the company's owners may be too busy to come up with great strategies for each of the growing number of social channels companies are expected to utilize. As a consultant, you can help businesses determine the best tactics, posting schedules and content for your clients' target audiences. As their follower counts grow, so will your business.

Credit: Anita Rahman

Concerns that the credit card industry creates, and then milks, over-indebted consumers are not new. It was as long ago as 2003 that Matt Barrett, then chief executive of Barclaycard owner Barclays, generated headlines when he told MPs that he had advised his children never to borrow on a credit card “because it’s too expensive”.

His analysis was spot on, of course, which is why it is so alarming that the FCA says 3.3 million people in the UK are in persistent credit card debt, defined as those who are repaying less in principal than they are paying in interest and charges over a period of 18 months. The financial pain can be delayed by teaser rates and zero-interest periods but, when it comes, it can be severe.

The FCA offers the illustration of a customer with a £3,000 debt on a credit card with an annual percentage rate of 19%. If paying as much in interest and charges as in principal, it would take almost 20 years to clear the debt and £2,900 would be paid in interest.

When a financial product is so lucrative for the lender, the market won’t reform itself. Royal Bank Scotland, commendably, has taken a principled stand against teaser rates on credit cards since 2014 – “We will not be in the business of trapping people in debts they cannot afford,” said the chief executive, Ross McEwan – but few other big banks are interested.

In the circumstances, the FCA is right to intervene. It proposes that after 18 months credit card firms must prompt persistent debtors to make faster repayments. After another 18 months, they must suspend the card. And, in certain circumstances, interest and charges would have to be scrapped or reduced for customers unable to make faster repayments.

There will be grumbles about nanny-state intervention. Ignore them. While the plastic works fine for most people, credit card debt has become more like a high-interest personal loan for the 3.3 million in persistent arrears. That is not how the product is meant to operate. Unless lenders are forced to accept a few obligations to borrowers, the grubbier end of the credit card industry will look outright exploitative. Nils Pratley

Imagination has no choice but to bite back at Apple

One suspects that Imagination Technologies will become a case study for management consultants about the importance of diversification after its announcement on Monday morning.

The news that Apple, which accounts for roughly half of Imagination’s revenues, plans to stop using Imagination’s technology within 15 months to two years wiped more than 60% off its share price. Analysts at JP Morgan were particularly glum about the situation, brutally describing it as “potentially fatal” for Imagination.

It is easy to sniff at Imagination’s reliance on one customer, and the company’s £63.2m pre-tax loss last year highlights that it may have been more focused on shoring up its finances then developing its technology into new avenues such as the “internet of things”.

But when your biggest customer is the most valuable company in the world it is inevitable that it will be a vital part of your business.

The key for Imagination now is what happens next. A legal battle or some sort of settlement with Apple looks inevitable. Imagination says it would be “extremely challenging” for Apple to develop a graphics processor unit (GPU) without infringing its intellectual property rights.

Going into battle with the biggest company in the world is hardly an appealing prospect, but Imagination has no choice. Graham Ruddick

Fund managers have the power to drive change

Legal & General’s annual corporate governance report reveals that the fund manager voted against 118 pay resolutions and 18 named directors at company meetings in 2016 due to concerns about remuneration.

The report is a refreshing attempt by one of the biggest institutions in the City to explain its actions, approach and ambitions for the future. Remuneration, board diversity and climate change dominate its thinking. On climate change, L&G is pressing ahead with plans to vote against the re-election of chairs whose companies don’t do enough to lower carbon emissions.

Fund managers have the power to drive change at British companies on these issues. Money talks, and if fund managers refuse to invest in companies that don’t change their ways then boards would be forced to change or watch their share price suffer.

L&G is taking this approach with its Future World Fund, which will divest its shares in companies that do not tackle climate change.

This is a welcome start, but if this approach could be widened to all funds and to remuneration and board diversity as well as climate issues then change could be rapid. Graham Ruddick

More than $20bn (£16bn) was shifted out of Russia between 2010 and 2014 in a large-scale money laundering operation called the Global Laundromat. The scheme was run by criminals with links to the Russian government, and moved billions in dirty money into Europe through shell companies.

The majority of the companies involved in laundering the money were registered in the UK. Over 50% of the money transacted through the Laundromat flowed to shell companies registered in London, Birmingham and Scotland.

One of the core companies that was involved in the greatest number of transactions was Seabon Ltd, which handled $9bn, according to the data. However, due to the nature of the scheme, which pinged billions of dollars around a network of companies, it is difficult to ascertain the exact amount that was laundered.

What we do know is that Seabon was registered to an address on Tooley Street in London, and purchased a hotel apartment in Prince’s Square in Bayswater at a cost of £13.2m. It was just one of more than 400 companies in the UK that received funds through the Laundromat scheme.

The figures come from an exclusive collaboration between the Guardian and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), the results of which were published this week.

global laundromat russia money laundering data graphic

Aung San, father of Suu Kyi, recognised the divergent aspirations of the Shans, Mons, Karens, Chins, Burmans and a myriad of other national groups, including those like the Muslim Rohingyas who arrived and settled more recently (Report, 31 March). Independence from British rule was not just that, it was a challenge to form an inclusive Burmese identity not dominated by the majority Buddhist Burmans. Aung San Suu Kyi has never shown an understanding of the need to channel the contested idea of Myanmar identity into a constructive force. Instead, her view of Myanmar politics has been shaped by a single-minded focus on replacing the military rulers by elected rulers.
SP Chakravarty
Bangor, Gwynedd

• Why the retrograde step (HSBC to offer customers choice of gender-neutral titles, 31 March)? My current bank cards from HSBC carry no title, nor do letters in the Guardian. Unless it truly is optional, of course, and people wish to use such titles. Just please don’t say “the computer needs it”. I changed one bank account after it refused to accept creation of an account without a title.
Hilary Grime
Oxford

• Isn’t it a bit misleading to classify exercise by how long you do it (One in four adults take less than 30 minutes of exercise every week, 31 March)? By that measure, in my 70s I take exercise for far longer than I did in my 50s, but only because it takes me twice as long to get up the mountain and back down again.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife

• I was interested to read about the campaign to rename a building at Bristol University because the fortune of Henry Wills III, who funded it, derived from the slave trade (Pass notes, G2, 30 March). Has anyone warned the Tate?
Ian West
Broseley, Shropshire

• Forty years on – and not a word about San Serriffe (April Fool, 1977). Where is it now? How far-flung are the Flongs? What happened in the Serriffendum? We need to know.
Adrian Sinfield
Edinburgh

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A prolonged period of low interest rates will tempt banks to take greater risks and sound the death knell for final salary pensions, the International Monetary Fund has warned.

A new study from the IMF said a continuation of the cheap borrowing environment seen since the global financial crisis a decade ago would pose a “significant challenge” to financial institutions and force them to make fundamental changes to their business models.

Although interest rates have recently started to rise in the US, the IMF said Japan’s experience suggested an imminent and permanent end to the current low interest rate environment could not be guaranteed. Some economists, such as the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, say the global economy is gripped by so-called secular stagnation, in which excessive savings and weak investment lead to weaker growth and lower interest rates.

The IMF, in a chapter from its forthcoming Global Financial Stability Review, said the decline in real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates since the mid-1980s had been caused by slow-moving structural factors such as weaker growth and the desire of an ageing population to save more for their retirement.

It was possible that the pace of innovation had slowed, while rising savings and an appetite for advanced-country financial assets in emerging nations had also put downward pressure on interest rates in the west over the past 15 years.

Japan has had ultra-low interest rates for almost three decades, while other developed countries cut borrowing costs aggressively in response to the deep financial and economic crisis that began almost a decade ago.

The Bank of England held borrowing costs at 0.5% for more than seven years before cutting them to 0.25% last August, the lowest level in its 323-year history. The European Central Bank has adopted a similar approach and its president, Mario Draghi, has said there would be no early rate rise for the eurozone.

The IMF said a low interest rate environment would hit the earnings of banks and pose “long-lasting challenges for life insurers and defined-benefit pensions funds”.

It added: “Smaller, deposit-funded and less diversified banks would be hurt most, which could increase the pressure to consolidate. As banks reach for yield at home and abroad, new financial stability challenges may arise in their home and host markets. These hypotheses are supported by the experience of Japanese banks.”

Life insurers and pension funds would probably need to raise more capital because permanently low interest rates would make it more difficult to make the returns needed to fund existing liabilities taken on when borrowing costs were higher.

The IMF said defined-benefit schemes – already under threat in many developed countries – would tend to become less attractive than defined-contribution schemes, where the risk is taken by the employee rather than the employer.

The study said ageing populations would mean a reduction in demand for credit but increase demand for health and long-term care insurance. Smaller banks would need to consolidate and policymakers would need to beware of calls for a softer touch regulatory regime.

“Prudential frameworks would need to provide incentives to ensure longer-term stability instead of falling prey to demands for deregulation to ease the short-term pain,” the IMF said.

It said efforts should be made not just to facilitate consolidation of smaller banks but also to “limit excessive risk-taking and avoid a worsening of the too-big-to-fail problem”.

The IMF’s view that low interest rates might be here to stay was challenged by the ratings agency Fitch, which said borrowers should prepare for a significant shift in the global interest rate environment over the next few years.

Fitch said it expected US real interest rates to increase to levels that were more closely aligned with the country’s economic growth potential, taking them close to pre-crisis levels.

“With the Fed having now achieved its inflation and employment objectives, becoming more focused on the risk of labour market tightening and starting to discuss the unwinding of its balance sheet, we expect interest rate normalisation will take place by 2020 and that the Fed Funds rate will reach 3.5% to 4%,” said Brian Coulton, chief economist at Fitch.

Markets currently believe the Fed will need to make only modest adjustments to official US interest rates in the coming years, with the Fed Funds rate unlikely to rise much above 2% by 2020. Fitch said it did not accept that there had been a lasting shift to a new equilibrium.

The Co-operative Group’s chairman, Allan Leighton, has insisted the business was making “stellar progress” despite slumping more than £130m into the red.

The mutual revealed its first losses since its tumultuous year in 2013 – when problems at the Co-operative Bank nearly sank the whole business – as it wrote down the value of its remaining 20% stake in the bank to nil.

Leighton said the £140m additional writedown of the bank, which had already been written down twice in the past year, was “a piece of prudent accounting” while the bank was being sold by its hedge fund owners.

The bank put itself up for sale in February in an attempt to raise more capital and give greater stability to its 4 million customers, four years after it was rescued by hedge funds.

Ian Ellis, the finance director, added that the group was still hopeful that a sale of the bank would be successful and it expected “to get some value from the sale”.

An update on the sale process is expected by mid-April but could come as early as this week. It has been reported that the bank has plunged in value to as little as £45m.

Late last month, the bank said a number of “credible” potential buyers had expressed an interest. Virgin Money and CYBG, the owner of the Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank networks, are thought to be considering offers.

Despite the troubles at the bank, Leighton said the Co-op’s core food stores, funeral homes and insurance businesses had all gained customers and market share under the group’s turnaround plan.

“We have made pretty stellar progress,” he said.

Revenues for the group rose by 3% to £9.5bn in the year to 31 December and operating profit rose by 32% to £148m after lower restructuring costs.

Sales at food stores open more than a year increased by 3.5% despite a cut of about 1% in prices over the period.

The Co-op Group chief executive, Steve Murrells, who took over from Richard Pennycook last month, said the chain was benefiting from the trend towards shopping little and often in local stores and improvements in its food ranges and stores.

He said food prices were now rising by 1.5% to 2%. “This year is going to be different. We will have to work hard to keep a lid on prices.”

Part of the Co-op’s tactics will involve promoting the discounts available via the group’s relaunched membership scheme, which now expects to have 1 million new members by the end of this year, a year earlier than planned. The group’s 5 million members now account for 31% of food sales, up from 20% before the relaunch of the scheme last year.

The scheme encourages people to buy Co-op branded goods by offering a 5% discount, boosting sales of more profitable own-label rather than branded items.

Tom Berry, an analyst at GlobalData, said: “UK grocers have struggled for years to encourage loyalty among consumers since they are increasingly armed with price comparison tools, but the Co-op’s focus on its core customer has driven loyalty and subsequently like-for-like sales.”

Funeral care revenues rose by 3% as the business increased market share for the first time in five years by cutting prices alongside a 69% jump in sales of pre-paid funeral plans.

The Co-op’s insurance sales rose 28%, partly due to inflation in motor insurance premiums.

Leighton admitted that profits would remain under pressure as the Co-op continued to invest in improving its appeal to customers to ensure long-term growth. “We are interested in the operating profit in five years, not five months,” he said.