I feel jubilant today marks the end of this bitter metrological winter. But the rain, biting winds and thermal vests under chunky sweaters has not stopped me from having a frantic February! Two more episodes of The Professional Investment Podcast have been released –...
The weather has been bitingly cold and the days often grey but there has been no winter lethargy this January! The first three episodes of the second series of The Professional Investment Podcast examined the impact of accelerating climate change and the implications...
This November marked the third anniversary of my sustainable networking events. To mark the occasion, we captured the latest discussion of how to make fixed income sustainable with some photos. The pictures show how comfortable I have become, mic in hand, on the tiny...
In October, the grey pavements of my London street gain a splash of colour when red and yellow leaves fall and cover them. This was another month filled with podcasting. Three new episodes of The Professional Investment Podcast went live this month. In the first,...
After the relaxed torpor of August, the liveliness of September came as a welcome change of gear. My latest sustainable networking event asking how the Labour government could make pensions more sustainable was a candid conversation of how policy makers and investors...
After a disappointing start to the summer, the weather gods rewarded us with plenty of August sunshine. I remained busy, even as my inbox filled with out-of-office replies. I wrote a blog post looking at whether Labour’s wealth fund would be a good idea. I also had...
At the end of May I acted as master of ceremonies for Candriam’s investment seminar in Madrid. What a career highlight! I love every minute of a day packed with fascinating speakers and great audience questions. Back in London, I moderated a panel session for SG...
After months of rain, May’s few warm days felt fabulous. Fingers crossed we’ll have more time in the sun once the summer season officially commences! I started the month chairing a session on role of private debt in financing the transition at Private Debt Investor’s...
After a quiet start to April, school holidays ended and our capital city sprang back to life. The tube filled, bars were once again rammed on a Thursday night and we all dashed from one event to the next. A cascade of articles was published this month starting with a...
The blooming of the cherry trees in my favourite local street heralded the arrival of spring − the picturesque froth of pink flowers signalling renewal. This month I wrote the latest in a series of blog posts looking at the challenges facing asset managers. It...
Glimpsing the sea at the bottom of the hill as you walk along George Street in Edinburgh never gets old. This year’s PLSA investment conference was the usual delightful confection of industry insight, gossip and jokes. It was a great way to end a busy month of...
The frosty yet sunny weather of early January felt like an auspicious start to 2024. Last year was filled with many professional successes – from winning awards to being asked to moderate events – and I’m curious to see what the next 12 months will bring! The first...
This month has been a blur of moderating panel sessions, attending events and taking part in awards ceremonies. It’s a miracle I’ve managed to squeeze in any writing between all those enjoyable in-person sessions! The month kicked off with my latest networking event...
At the start of October, I was enjoying the heat in Malaga, snacking on orange sorbet and admiring the views from the Giabralfaro castle. Back in London, my latest feature for MandateWire was published, which discussed whether it was a good idea to allow asset owners...
Photo credit: The Trouble Club and Alice Lubbock After the calm of August, there has been a strong back to school vibe this month. It’s been great to get back to chairing events with a record 43 people attending my latest sustainable networking get-together where we...
After the heat of June, the cooler and wetter days of July made it easier to write articles, work on corporate projects and attend events. I was delighted to win highly commended for defined benefit journalist of the year at the WTW Media Awards 2023. Ahead of the...
A busy PLSA Investment Conference at the start of June set the month’s frantic clip. Edinburgh was bonny in the summer sunshine with green trees and long days amplifying its romance. After shoe-horning as many meetings as possible into two and half days, I returned to...
At the start of May, I was admiring spring flower-filled olive groves and the sparkling seas off the Messinian coast in Greece. As soon as I got back to London, I chaired two conference sessions at PDI’s Europe Summit 2023. It was fun to be moderating a panel I didn’t...
After a busy first three months of the year, I expected April to be quieter as the Easter holidays kicked in. I was wrong: business continued at a rapid clip! My latest feature for Professional Adviser examined the future of the traditional 60:40 portfolio − this...
In contrast to February’s sunny brightness, March was four weeks of dripping umbrellas and wet shoes. It also rained articles! I had two pieces published for Professional Wealth Management – one looking at how data and regulation will make impact investing more...
With January in the rear-view mirror, the pace picked up this month. For the first time since the pandemic, the one-day conference has returned. I attended not one but two all-day London events. And I loved it! Getting paid to write up the key takeaways from one...
Today is the final day of January! Isn’t that delightful? It is the cruellest of months – dark and dingy but with none of the festive joy of December. Every year I seek succour in citrus. Seville oranges to be precise. I spend a happy two days juicing, slicing,...
Do you remember the dull grey days of last December? Thankfully the weather gods put on a much better performance this year with foggy mornings, frost under foot and even snow! This month marked a first. After 15 years of focusing on the institutional investor market,...
Wet weather plagued the penultimate month of the year but failed to dampen people’s appetite for socialising. The start of November marked the just over one-year anniversary of my networking events – sorry, pensions salons! And, despite it being a rainy evening, I had...
Timing is everything. At the end of September, I had an operation and wrote a Twitter thread about the impact of rising gilt yields on LDI collateral payments from my hospital bed. That social-media post proved prophetic and went viral! A day later and only hours...
September had an intense back-to-school vibe with a plethora of networking events, awards ceremonies and conferences. My third and final article for MandateWire outlining the impact of the current macroeconomic environment on UK’s closed defined benefit schemes was...
After an intense summer of heat and post-pandemic partying, I feel ready for the cool days and nights of autumn. Over August the pace of social activity slowed but the pace of publications did not. My first opinion piece was published for Professional Pensions arguing...
July is usually the month when corporate events wind down in the run up to the school holidays. Not this year. The fast pace of social activity continued as the temperatures cranked up. This month I enjoyed a fun, but somewhat sweaty, Headline Money Awards as well as...
You might have noticed there was no newsletter at the end of last month. I felt so happy to be back in Edinburgh in May for the first in-person PLSA conference in two years but I came home with covid, which put me out of diary-writing action. To make up for it, this...
At the end of March the streets of West London emptied. The first school holidays without covid restrictions sparked a mass exodus. Posting on LinkedIn was like shouting into the void. I decided if you can’t beat them, join them! So I headed to Greece to enjoy spring...
March is cherry blossom season in my part of London and the local streets fill with branches of delicate white and pink flowers. I was touched to find some trees also carrying blue and yellow ribbons in support of Ukraine. It’s hard to believe it’s been a month since...
At 4.30am on Thursday, 24th February my radio woke me up. I lay listening to the news of Russia invading Ukraine and knew I wouldn’t be needed for a business round-up on Times Radio that morning. It was a surreal end to a month which, up to that point, had felt like a...
I always feel happy when I get to the end of January – it’s good to have the most miserable month of the year in the rear view mirror! I feel particularly pleased the dreariness of the last four weeks did not slow down my productivity. I posted a blog taking a closer...
As 2021 draws to a close, I feel happy to have completed a second year of monthly newsletters. The deadline motivates me to write regular blog posts, which in turn have sparked interesting conversations on LinkedIn. In May this year, I started to write articles which...
I love autumn weather so the end of November with its bright skies, frosty roofs and piles of leaves has been delightful. At the start of the month, my latest article for IPE explaining how stewardship can help companies to adopt net zero targets was published to...
Halloween is always a frightening end to the month of October. With COP26 starting next month, many have spent the past few weeks looking at what we should fear from climate change. As well as writing sustainable investment articles for magazines, I’ve added to my own...
The weather gods do so love to toy with us: they give us the heat in September we should have had in August. It was so warm at this month’s Headline Money awards that pre-dinner drinks were held outside. I felt beyond excited to attend my first large event for 18...
Events. Remember those? I went to my first one this week since the pandemic started. It felt so good to sit once again in a room full of people. In the basement of The Ned, I listened to Otegha Uwagba discuss her latest book We Need to Talk About Money. It inspired me...
Were you secretly relieved when May’s heat wave turned into grey skies and rain? I was. I find it easier to spend time at the desk when the sunshine outside isn’t filling my head with thoughts of sun loungers and dips in the sea. I’ve spent the month writing a series...
Life started to feel normal in May. A couple of trips into the City to meet contacts provided the inspiration which had been so lacking during lockdown. Wandering around the Square Mile made me think of the challenges posed by the new world of hybrid work and inspired...
April has been a joyous month bringing a return to normal life after long lockdown. Pleasures might be constrained to a haircut, going back to the gym and al-fresco dining but I feel good – if a little chilly – to be out and about. This post details the five lockdown...
Recent blue skies have perfectly offset local displays of pale pink cherry blossom and heralded the start of a new season. The first month of spring brought the publication of two recent articles. One chartered how private markets have become a popular option for...
After the long, dark, cold, days of winter lockdown, the warm sunshine at the end of February heralded a more upbeat mood. The launch of my updated website marked a fresh start. The clearer layout makes it easier for people to find my UK Pension Landscape series,...
The new year started with the last post in my series explaining the UK Pensions Landscape. This addressed how unfunded public sector pensions work and whether the government is accurately valuing the cost of these benefits. January was also the time to start the next...
I stuck to my promise. At the start of this year I vowed to produce a monthly diary containing links to recent articles and blogs to give you an idea of the topics which interest me. And here we are in December! In 2020 I’ve explained the UK pension landscape. A...
This month I posted the last in the series chronicling the development of UK private sector pensions from World War Two to today. The final piece of the jigsaw explains how the government first ‘staged’ and then ‘phased’ auto-enrolment from 2012. November also saw the...
Exciting news! This month I’ve got together with Chris Dell, Tara McCorquodale and Caroline Brown to launch the The Scale Partnership – Financial. We’re pooling our experience at a time when we think the industry should be talking more. Over the last four weeks, I’ve...
September was a satisfying month. I continued my explanation of how UK pension policy has evolved by charting the rise and fall of the gold-standard private sector pension scheme. A discussion with people who have long pension memories on LinkedIn revealed how the...
July was an exciting month. I appeared twice on Times Radio's early breakfast show. In my debut we talked about the impact of Rishi Sunak’s summer statement on companies’ ability to retain staff. The second was an in-depth discussion of the impact of the covid crisis...
In June I looked at how the current covid crisis is accelerating current trends. One post discussed how working-from-home has become ubiquitous among professional services and a follow-up imagined how work patterns should evolve. It was also time to take a closer look...
This month I started to assess the economic impact of Covid-19. To help those struggling with the economic slowdown, a post shared some tips gleaned from the uncertainty of freelancing. A recently published article looks at how the current crisis is making it more...
Last month I noted the Covid-19 crisis is forcing us to be better communicators. To help those who want to write well, I recently shared my top tips gleaned from working as a journalist over the last 16 years. The pandemic has highlighted our attitudes to uncertainty...
Communication becomes a vital skill during a pandemic. Every professional has their role to play. Journalists document the challenges the virus poses for those managing pension schemes. Copywriters tell clients about the threats and opportunities which have arisen...
Well done! You survived the worst month of the year. February may seem like a rerun of January but take heart: the days are lengthening and it will soon be light before 7am. Despite the gloom, the last month has been productive for me – as illustrated below. If any of...
This year I'll be writing a monthly diary. It’ll be a round-up of interesting snippets from interviews I conducted for articles and conversations with contacts. I’ll also include links to recent articles and blog posts. I aim to give you a better idea of the topics...