the lang cat’s roundup of 2015
So it’s the afternoon of 31 December, the lang kittens have been beaten over the head repeatedly until they agree to a nap so they can stay up to see the bells in, and I have a few minutes at the end of a tumultuous year to write this. This, being a self-indulgent round up […]
5 not out
So a big week for me and for the lang cat, although there’s no time to stop and reflect. Yes, this is one of those self-indulgent milestone blogs. Feel free to stop reading. It’s five years ago this week that I left corporate life and started out on what would become the lang cat. With […]
LETTER FROM AMERICA: ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
Big news today that BlackRock, which looks after more money than you can POSSIBLY IMAGINE, has bought the robo-adviser (and I might be sitting in New York but I’m still going to spell, adviser! correctly) FutureAdvisor for an undisclosed sum which the FT reckons is between $150m and $200m. OK, so a takeover, no biggie. […]
LETTER FROM AMERICA: MARKETS DOWN? TIME TO SUIT UP
As Bill Hicks once said, oops, did I leave a cigarette lit or something? As I write! Dow down 6.5%, over 1,000 points. FTSE 100 down 3.5% China down a shitload European indices down over 5% Twitter meme incidences of traders with head in hands up by 5 million percent. So the correlation of two […]
Drowning in the D2C value pool
Another week, another D2C platform’s details start to emerge. No names, no pack drill in deference to the journalist who’s writing it up, but by our count that’s the 33rd contender vying for the self-directed market. We’ll see another couple by the end of the year. Irrespective of the relative merits in terms of proposition, […]
What I learned at #langcatlive
Well, that was a blast. Our first ever solo event went pretty damn well, we exceeded our expectations on numbers, all the speakers were ace and Henry Cobbe of Birthstar stole the show with a blow-up doll joke. I say consider that day seized. As much for my remembrance as anyone else’s, here are a […]
the lang cat recruits Mike Barrett from Old Mutual Wealth
Yes, you read it right. Big news and great times for us. The below is the text of a press release that’s going out today. We are very excited, but we’re sitting down so you can’t tell… The lang cat, Leith’s leading[1] independent platforms, pensions and investment consultancy is almost childishly excited to announce the […]
It’s all getting real – Hargreaves puts its vest(ing) on
I’ve always liked those moments when big, abstract concepts become real and commercial. A-Day was like that – it was fun debating what was going to happen, but much more fun when you started to see how providers, advisers and clients were going to relate to it in real life. An important step towards this […]
The freedom to get screwed
We measure out our lives by different things. J Alfred Prufrock measured his out by coffee spoons. For many of us our lives are marked out by Christmases, Hogmanays, birthdays and anniversaries. But in financial services, our lives are marked out by two things: politicians dicking around with pensions, and mis-selling scandals. This being an […]
The lang cat’s albums of 2014
Another year passes, another trip around the sun, another year closer to our eternal reward, another blog about music that no-one will read. Time, as you know, is an artificial construct designed to explain the otherwise random passing of events, and an attempt to place order on a pointless and terrifying universe. 365 days is […]
