The Real Message from the latest Coutts / AIG £748M bailout ?

gadgetmind

2sides2everystory wrote: »

What about my £300,000 pension fund that is only £150,000 now?

What on earth did you invest in to achieve this?

2sides2everystory

ukmike wrote:

or even the American International Group

Well there have been so many iterations ukmike, American Insurance Union, AIU, AIG, now Chartis, and goodness knows how they were all woven/intertwined/separated (even their current website runs two for the price of one on the frontpage!), but thank you for your rigorous correction for the 2008 effect was truly International.

gadgetmind wrote:

2sides2everystory wrote:

What about my £300,000 pension fund that is only £150,000 now?

What on earth did you invest in to achieve this?

Sorry gadgetmind, I was using a bit of poetic license based on what it was conservatively projected to be by now, a bit like investing in some AIG exotic product and blindly expecting it to be safe ?

Linton wrote:

A bit of an ignorant rant I think...

Goodness, I am honoured. Linton feels obliged to enter the fray because of something I said! That's a first! I'd better update the firewall and go bolt the door !

... but rather that Coutts sold the fund as an alternative to a building society deposit, which as events showed it wasnt.

Oh, wasn't it? AIG not a cuddly building society? Now who'd have thought to question that? :rotfl:

Uncertain

2sides2everystory wrote: »

I was using a bit of poetic license based on what it was conservatively projected to be by now......

Well you wouldn't want the facts to get in the way of a good story!

2sides2everystory

Facts like your Coutts customer with £25,000 in life savings ? :rotfl:

I tell you Uncertain, my pension fund is actually on my books at about [STRIKE]£50K [/STRIKE]£37,500 at the moment because that's all I can foreseeably be sure that I can get out of it in cash before the whole house of cards collapses. And by forseeably I'd give myself odds of about 3:1 that the next 10 months is just about safe enough for me to pull it off.

gadgetmind

2sides2everystory wrote: »

I tell you Uncertain, my pension fund is actually on my books at about £50K at the moment because that's all I can foreseeably be sure that I can get out of it in cash before the whole house of cards collapses.

If you consider that to be certain, why not move to cash and bonds?

Uncertain

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Facts like your Coutts customer with £25,000 in life savings ? :rotfl:

I tell you Uncertain, my pension fund is actually on my books at about £37,500 at the moment because that's all I can foreseeably be sure that I can get out of it in cash before the whole house of cards collapses. And by forseeably I'd give myself odds of about 3:1 that the next 10 months is just about safe enough for me to pull it off.

No, I said "suppose......"

Anyway, if you think the "whole house of cards is going to collapse" it doesn't really matter what anybody is worth on paper.

2sides2everystory

I don't know enough about it gadgetmind (I already had to change my £50K to £37,500 between my original post and yours because of course I can't get 33% out in cash, only 25%).

Bonds? Do you mean AIG type bonds or sovereign government bonds? Which? Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, Ireland, UK, USA ?

I think I could do worse than invest in Chinese Yuan/Renminbi actually - I mean really - I never signed up for this mess.

Anyway, if you think the "whole house of cards is going to collapse" it doesn't really matter what anybody is worth on paper.

Well quite, it depends what one is worth in harder assets, doesn't it, whether they come in shiney ingots or black balaclavas.

Uncertain

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Well quite, it depends what one is worth in harder assets, doesn't it, whether they come in shiney ingots or black balaclavas.

Anything is worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it - and not a penny more.

gadgetmind

2sides2everystory wrote: »

I don't know enough about it gadgetmind (I already had to change my £50K to £37,500 between my original post and yours because of course I can't get 33% out in cash, only 25%).

I don't really follow your working, but I don't suppose it matters.

Bonds? Do you mean AIG type bonds or sovereign government bonds? Which? Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, Ireland, UK, USA ?

What fixed interest do you currently hold in your pension? I'd have thought it would mainly be UK gilts (various dates and also maybe some index linked) and perhaps also some corporate bonds. You can also hold cash in there if you want.

However, your question does flag the fact the word bond is now so over-used that it's not a useful term unless qualified.

I think I could do worse than invest in Chinese Yuan/Renminbi actually - I mean really - I never signed up for this mess.

None of us signed up for it but we need to keep our heads and ensure our portfolios stand the best chance of making it through in good shape.

My pension is looking in fairly OK as I got three payments in Aug/Sept/Oct and there has been a good recovery that has lifted the first two nicely, so I'm only about 5% down from the peak.

Regards renminbi, perhaps this will interest you.
http://citywire.co.uk/money/chart-of-the-day-only-two-currencies-worth-holding/a540655

2sides2everystory

feesarefare wrote: »

For the record the following needs to be made clear- ... The fund that was recommended was SOLD by the IFAs as no risk , which it wasn't.

Oh come on ... you financial services types do love to spin ... So this no risk product offered by ahem ... a girt big nasty insurance company was not as cuddly as Coutts or their dastardly financial adviser team made out? And punters with 3M each could safely get a building society type return but were sadly let down? Oh the poor things ... of course they couldn't have had a clue could they? Especially since so few of them actually worked in the City and had ever heard of AIG and its weird and wonderful ways.

This reminds me of a kind of very concentrated Equitable Life argument - few people realise that a large proportion of Equitable Life clients were City types with quite a few bob to tuck away and that it was a kind of non-advertised club for many years. If I recall correctly they even had a very fancy almost Royal crown logo on their letterhead (or did I dream it - I must dig out a quote I got from them back in the 90s - what happened to that logo I wonder - quietly hauled down in disgrace?) I would be willing to accept that there might be a few little old ladies who had lost their life savings in Equitable Life, but 247 investing in strange products from AIG an average of 3 mill apiece ... do you take us all for fools? They greedily invested in a strange product believing they had some club status type forcefield around them that the little people just wouldn't understand.

And to an extent from today's news, it appears they were right.