Popular green investment fund JLEN Environmental Assets (JLEN) wants shareholders to back plans for an expanded investment strategy. The rough £630 million investment trust hopes to widen its remit so it can target new technology assets in the clean, green space, such as battery storage projects, low carbon farming and bioenergy supply chains. The new rules would also allow it to invest in ...

UK stocks closed well into the red on Thursday as the Government set out strict restrictions once lockdown ends on 2 December. Most of England will have tough measures to follow, with just the Isle of Scilly, Isle of Wight and Cornwall in the lightest tier one of the Covid tier restrictions. There was also no direction for investors from Wall Street, as US stock markets were closed due to ...

UK stocks tumbled throughout morning trading on Thursday as the Government announced England’s new regional Covid tiers. Tougher tier restrictions will see more people in England placed under the highest tier, though cities like Liverpool and the capital London have avoided the harshest measures. The new system will come into effect once lockdown ends on 2 December. By lunchtime the ...

The FTSE 100 made modest declines in early trading on Thursday in what is likely be a quiet-ish day with markets across the pond closing for the Thanksgiving holiday. At 9am, the benchmark FTSE 100 had slipped around 0.2% to was 6,376.64, led by falls for banks, construction and oil stocks, with tobacco firm Imperial Brands (IMB), Lloyds (LLOY) and house builder Persimmon (PSN) topping the FTSE ...

Yesterday saw the latest FTSE Russell quarterly index review, resulting in significant changes to the composition of both the FTSE 100 large-cap index and the FTSE 250 mid-cap index. Four stocks left the FTSE 100 – cruise ship operator Carnival (CCL), utility group Centrica (CNA), low-cost airline EasyJet (EZJ) and aerospace firm Meggitt (MGGT). Travel related stocks bore the brunt of the ...

Power prices over the next few years could fall by 25% as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to some forecasts, forcing FTSE 250 investment trust The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) to cut its own estimates. TRIG said today that the coronavirus pandemic has led to a reduction in demand for electricity and caused gas and carbon prices to fall. The repercussions are expected ...

The quest for income is a challenging one in an environment of low interest rates but there are still plenty of assets which offer an attractive and reliable yield. In this article we take a look at where some of the experts are finding income opportunities. A DIVERSIFIED APPROACH TO FIXED INCOME The £170m Henderson Diversified Income (HDIV) has a flexible mandate to generate a high ...

There was good and bad news for infrastructure investors over the past week, depending on where in the sector they invested. On the plus side, an infrastructure boom could be about to hit the UK after the government gave the green light to build the £106bn High Speed 2 (HS2) rail project, spelling good news for stocks in the space. But for those investing in renewable energy, another area ...

Last Friday (20 Sep) saw coordinated demonstrations around the world by young people angry at what they see as a lack of progress by governments and businesses in tackling climate change. This topic is becoming increasingly important to investors. The latest data from the World Meteorological Organization shows that the five-year period from 2014 to 2019 is the warmest on record. The amount ...

Like when a little-known band comes out with a banger and then everyone likes it, John Laing Environmental Assets (JLEN) is looking to tilt its portfolio as its biggest exposures, wind (43%) and solar (25%), have become too much of a scene. Citing ‘competitive pressure’ in the sectors, JLEN is looking to add more positions to its portfolio in areas like anaerobic digestion ...

Companies must now demonstrate they are being run responsibly and have adopted policies to address environmental issues. More and more people want to know about the provenance of foods they purchase, labour practices, whether products are tested on animals, if the manufacturing process contaminates the local rivers and so on. One place to find out if a company is environmentally-friendly is ...

Ethical investing is not a fad. It is becoming increasingly mainstream with figures from the Global Sustainable Investment Alliance showing global sustainable investment topped $30trn in 2018. Given that regulatory and political pressure is helping to push the environmental agenda, anger is growing over the gap between executive pay and that of ordinary workers, and shareholders continue to ...

Anyone who has picked up a newspaper or tuned into the news in the last fortnight will have noticed that climate change has managed to topple Brexit as the hot topic of discussion in the UK. Just a week ago, a group of environmental protesters glued themselves across the entrance to the London Stock Exchange while others staged a ‘die-in’ at the Natural History Museum and thousands more ...

Several renewables investment trusts could issue a flood of new shares over the coming months, speculate analysts, after a blitz of project funding. Greencoat Renewables (GRP), Greencoat UK Wind (UKW) and NextEnergy (NESF) are in the frame, while Foresight Solar (FSFL) is expected to refinance circa £70m of existing debt facilities by the end of June. ‘We have reviewed commitment and ...

The summer’s sweltering temperatures may have played havoc with tour operators’ holiday bookings but it has done wonders for the UK’s growing solar power industry. The three months to 30 September was the sunniest third quarter in the UK since 2006, according to data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The period enjoyed an average of 6.5 hours of daily ...

The spotlight has fallen on infrastructure investment trusts after two separate closed-end funds have come under fire from analysts at investment bank Stifel. It is negative on the immediate prospects for NextEnergy Solar Fund (NESF) and John Laing Environmental Assets (JLEN) largely because of declining power price assumptions that act as a drag on net asset value (NAV). Long-term power ...

The global stock market sell-off that started in the US on 2 February could linger for a while, judging by the way markets have behaved since that event. There was a glimmer of hope on 7 February when the UK market, along with many other parts of the world, started to bounce back. Yet hopes have since been dashed as markets fell back into the red. The widespread decline in share prices has ...

This year is set to be the best on record for Britain’s renewables electricity network, according to data provided by National Grid (NG.). Thirteen different clean energy records have been broken in 2017 as demand for solar, wind, hydro and biomass-sourced power soars. Achievements during the course of the year include the greenest summer ever; the first full day since the Industrial ...

Investing in renewable energy does not mean sacrificing gains to ease one’s conscience. It’s a growing sector that appeals as much to the red blooded capitalist as it does to the hardened environmentalist. While the ESG (environmental, social and governance) tag gets bandied around quite often lest not forget that one of the reasons to invest is to make money. These funds are great for ...

The UK votes today as millions of Brits hit polling stations up and down the country to select their next government. Latest polls predict a Conservative win, but the margin of victory is very much unknown. Read on for Shares in-depth coverage (initially published on 1 June) of how today's election result could affect UK plc, its companies, financial markets and the pound. Election ...