by Paul Sweeting | Jun 11, 2010 | All, Industry News
It has been announced that Barack Obama is to meet the chairman of BP. Given the different roles that the chairman and chief executive of an organisation have, it is interesting that the US President wants to meet the former rather than the latter. The role of the...
by Paul Sweeting | Jun 9, 2010 | All, Industry News
There is a well-known theory that if you give an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter each, then eventually one of them will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Would they also produce the complete works of John Maynard Keynes (or Adam Smith,...
by Paul Sweeting | Jun 7, 2010 | All, Pensions
Duration is often thought of as important concept for pension schemes. It is generally known that pension scheme liabilities can have very long durations, and that if the durations of their assets and liabilities differs then it is exposed to duration risk. But what...
by Paul Sweeting | Jun 3, 2010 | All, Industry News
In his evidence to the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Warren Buffett has rejected criticism of Moody’s, saying that they made the same mistakes that everyone else in relation to the housing market crash. This ignores the nature of the mistakes made by...
by Paul Sweeting | Jun 1, 2010 | All, Longevity
By acting on a patient’s own cells rather than an infectious agent, the successful trials of a new breast cancer vaccine in mice offer an important possible development in cancer treatment. Vaccines are usually used to prevent infectious diseases. They do this...
by Paul Sweeting | May 28, 2010 | All, Industry News, Investment, Pensions
A letter in the Times yesterday stated that the new Government will remove the requirement to buy an annuity at retirement, resulting in pensioners running out of money. It also implied that the sole reason for making this change was to increase the Government’s...
by Paul Sweeting | May 20, 2010 | All, Industry News, Investment
The UK’s new Government has put forward plans to privatise parts of Royal Mail, and has suggested that there will be opportunities for employee ownership. This could be a sensible move to help make any privatisation a success – but only if it is done...
