Category: Business

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.

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

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.

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.

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.