Category: Business

The Crunch

The phoney war’s almost over, in a few days we will face the crunch. I am realistic about the complexity and pessimistic about the effect of the UK’s departure from the EU.

Scam Time

I hope you won’t mind if I share some scams with you. If you haven’t come across them it may save you embarrassment and dosh.

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Other Men’s Flowers

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

Mr Boddy’s Rag-Bag

  No doubt about it, going to Eton makes you grow up fast. Aged thirteen you choose what newspapers and magazines you want delivered, open a bank or, in my case, a Post Office account and pick a tailor.

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Right or Wrong?

Do you have a moral compass? If so, who set it? Is it an innate wish to do the right thing or was it imbued in childhood? We know the answer.

Admiral

For about seven years in the early 1990s I was a Name at Lloyd’s. It conferred privileges and obligations. Among the former, being able to use the Members’ Writing Room to sleep in at lunchtime. A tedious obligation was to write a cheque annually in my first few years to pay my losses.

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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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