Guide to Analysing Companies

Money-purchase pension 
A pension scheme in which the contributions are clearly
defined and laid down but the benefits are not. The main differ-
ence between a defined-contribution scheme and a defined-
benefit scheme is that, with the former, the investment risk lies
with the beneficiary. So if the value of a money-purchase pension
plummets with the financial markets, there is no obligation on the
part of the former employer to top it up. When the beneficiary of
a money-purchase scheme retires, in many jurisdictions he or she
must eventually use the lump sum to buy an annuity.
Money remitter
Someone who transfers money, usually across borders, for
people who do not have a bank account or access to a
banking system. Money transfers are often used by immigrants
as a means to send money home, usually from a rich country to
a poorer one, to the family they have left behind.
Money supply
The amount of money circulating in an economy. In the United
States, for example, the narrowest measure covers the most
liquid forms of money in the hands of the public (notes and
coins, traveller’s cheques, deposits on demand and other ac-
counts against which cheques can be written); M2 covers M1
plus savings accounts, certain time deposits and money-market
mutual funds; M3 covers M1 and M2 plus big time deposits,
institutional money funds, certain liabilities of depositary in-
stitutions and eurodollars held by US residents at the
foreign branches of US banks. Most central banks
monitor the growth of the money supply carefully in the belief
M
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that it affects the level of prices and the speed with which an
economy either grows or shrinks. How direct that link is
deemed to be depends on the orthodoxy of the time.
Money talks … but all mine ever says is goodbye.
Anon.
Moratorium
A period agreed between a borrower and a lender in which re-
payments of the principal sum owed by the borrower to the
lender are allowed to lapse. However, a moratorium on inter-
est payments owed by the borrower to the lender is disliked by
banks because it forces them to provide for the shortfall in
their accounts.