The biggest financial stories of 2019

Does Woodford trump Brexit and the election, were you more concerned about the wealth gap, or do all those pale into insignificance next to the challenges of climate change? On this week’s podcast, Simon Lambert, Georgie Frost and Tanya Jefferies discuss the money stories that shaped the final year of a tumultuous decade. Fallen star fund manager Neil Woodford dominated the financial headlines after his fund was frozen at the start of June, with investors still waiting to find out how much they will get back as it is wound down. That saga was enough to push Brexit and politics out of the main headlines for a while, but they loomed large over the whole year.  January triggered a period of fretting over no deal, March saw the Brexit deadline come and pass, summer saw Theresa May out the door of Number 10 Downing Street and Boris Johnson in, only for the new Prime Minister to miss his own Brexit deadline and gamble on an election that he won handsomely. Where does that take us next – and will the set of negotiations we are about to enter into with the EU, after Brexit finally happens on 31 January 2020, prove even tougher. The election also brought campaigning on wealth and inequality – and this topic has also never been far from the agenda in 2019, whether it’s the gap between rich and poor or young and old.  Should we worry more about it? What is triggering the problem? How much do high house prices have to do with it? The team discuss that and the defining global issue of the year: climate change. How will countries stepping up their attempts to reduce carbon emissions shape the next decade – and does it present an investment opportunity? We hope you enjoy this final podcast of 2019, thanks for listening, and have a very merry Christmas. We’ll be back in the next decade.

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