Category: Business

Investment Themes

I have been reflecting on my criteria for investing my savings and how they have changed over the years. To begin with I was a pure stock picker, choosing companies on the advice of friends, relations and a stockbroker. I then had a eureka moment when I realised that it would be more rational to… Continue reading Investment Themes

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A Tale of Two Banks

Martin Vander Weyer writes in The Spectator about Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. It comes close to the top of a few league tables: Italy’s third largest bank, Europe’s weakest bank, the world’s oldest bank.

Safety Play

It’s rather disagreeable to start the new year on a sour note but that’s the way the taxman likes to do it. In the UK the Inland Revenue likes its customers to settle up by the end of January.

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The Sloane Club

I have a friend who roosts at The Sloane Club when she is in London. It is conveniently located in Lower Sloane Street just a biscuit’s throw from Sloane Square and Peter Jones. Quick digression; Margaret Thatcher set great store by living near Peter Jones and for many years had a house in Flood Street.

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Are Brokers Human?

When I lived at Barmeath I was a young dabbler in the stock market using my grandfather’s broker, Dudgeon, in Suffolk Street, Dublin. They were an old-fashioned firm whose partners were all known to my grandfather as friends or relations. On important occasions such as the Irish Derby there would be no partner in the… Continue reading Are Brokers Human?

Latte Delivery

The post was delivered six days a week at Barmeath by a postman on a bicycle. He pedalled up the drive and sometimes got a nip on the ankle from an elderly, testy Labrador for his trouble.

Six to Follow

Robin Oakley, for many years BBC Political Editor and then, until 2008, European Political Editor for CNN writes a column, The Turf, in The Spectator. He recommends twelve to follow twice a year; twelve jumpers and twelve on the flat.

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Globalisation

Is globalisation good, bad or inevitable? It should be good. It should provide jobs and raise living standards in developing (euphemism for poor) countries.

Do You Remember … ?

Do you remember the Great Eastern Hotel beside Liverpool Street station? Not the swanky one that Conran opened in 2007 – the original one that opened in 1884.

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