Home truths about home ownership

The mythology surrounding home ownership nearly destroyed the economy. In a new position paper we explain how this one big decision affects all the other lifetime benefits families value.

The lessons of Japan and its lost decade April 2008

A popular theme today is that the scale of the credit crisis and its resistance to normal corrective mechanisms means we should dust off our history books and study the Depression economy of the 1930s.

Absolute return investing: time for clarity

Fans of absolute-return investing claim it represents ‘the future of asset management’, its attackers that it is just a fad. Most investment fads are intellectually lazy: they describe concepts but appeal to emotions. The most appealing of investment concepts are versions of the free lunch: the ‘something for nothing’ culture.

Anticipating the Retail Distribution Review

Click here to download a pdf version of this paper.
Insights from a firm that knows about alternative (consumer-friendly) business models
Key points

The background to the RDR is economic. There is a ‘market failure’ in the distribution of long-term savings products (FSA, Treasury, HOC Treasury Committee, Myners, Sandler). Three aspects: i) the business model for firms involved [...]