Sir Alan Sugar, founder of Amstrad and the UK's equivalent of Donald Trump in the TV show the Apprentice, writes in the Sunday Mail about how he got burnt in the 1980's by City brokers.
In his own inimitable style he recounts how he gave a broker from Nomura carte blanche to manage his money and "it transpired he was buying and selling everything in sight and, of
course, taking a buying and selling commission each and every time. I
had signed away total discretion to him. He was buying, for example,
Japan Airlines at 9 o'clock and selling at 10 o'clock."
As a result, Sir Alan advises with regard to financial experts to: "trust me when I tell you they know naff-all. If they did have some
magic way of making money legally they wouldn't be dealing with you,
they would be off making it for themselves ...
"The good news is, for sure the boom times will return again. The same
mistakes will be made, a new wave of graduates now 20 years old will
get jobs in five years' time completely oblivious to the recent
financial disasters and will dream up new instruments and coups
representing their West End and City firms. The punters will fall for
it all over again. If you do get sucked in again, make sure you deal
with that top City firm Wee Noeff All."
Something I don't necessarily agree with but, as usual, Sugar is not all saccharine.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
