Res angusta . . .
I PLAN to launch the Hindsight Invest- ment Trust. Certain to head the perfor- mance tables, it will be allowed to job back- wards. This should earn me a favourable notice from Robin Angus of County NatWest, or, as I prefer to think of it, Wood Mackenzie. Mr Angus, who writes lovingly (sometimes in verse) on investment trusts and around them, has collected his commentaries into a book called Haec Olan — Aeneas's way of saying that by the stan- dards of disaster to come, things the way they arc now will look good. Here he is on joining the ERM: 'Like a fat lady being forced into her corsets, a triumph of hope over experience ... reflecting the seedy bravado of a 50-year-old businessman who takes up squash as a New Year resolution.' That passes the hindsight test, and, with the five big general insurers about to admit that they have lost more than a billion pounds, Mr Angus can refer back ten years to his definition of an insurance company: 'An investment trust with an expensive hobby.'
Previous page
