Who remembers Peter Young?

TBC15

While clearing out a pile of old financial papers I came across an old newspaper article dated 1996.

I was instantly transported back nearly 30 years. The private yacht I was on has just started transiting the Suez Canal. With little else to do I started reading a 4 day old Telegraph we had taken on at Port Said. There on the financial pages was a big spread on Peter Young the manager of one of my funds. Ah those were the days when fund managers were colourful.

eskbanker

I suppose that back in the days before the popularity of passive investing and vast quantities of readily-available online data to support DIY management, the conditions were ideal for personality cults!

flaneurs_lobster

TBC15 said:

Ah those were the days when fund managers were colourful.

Colourful, criminal and insane.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/jun/14/5

TBC15

eskbanker said:

I suppose that back in the days before the popularity of passive investing and vast quantities of readily-available online data to support DIY management, the conditions were ideal for personality cults!

Cult is one name for it. Insanity I think was the judicial view.

Malthusian

Young had made good profits on speculative investments in unlisted stocks in previous years, and he continued to ramp up the risk to maintain his run. To get around fund regulations that stated a fund could own only 10% of any company, Young created a mirror holding company through which to buy a major stake in a company he wanted. He proceeded to hold 10% of both the mirror holding company and the stock he originally targeted. Further, Young went on to use similar methods to circumvent the 10% limit on the amount of the fund that could be put into unlisted stocks. [Investopedia]

Thank goodness this could never happen today.

I wonder where she is now. It's good that she has managed to stay completely out of the public eye since 2003 as she was clearly extremely unwell, but I can't help being curious. Nick Leeson by contrast still pops up in the news every so often to promote his business ventures.

shortseller09

Of what relevance is the private yacht?

flaneurs_lobster

shortseller09 said:

Of what relevance is the private yacht?

Thirty years ago everybody who worked in the City had a private yacht (and a red Porsche Turbo and a Filofax).

TBC15

shortseller09 said:

Of what relevance is the private yacht?

Setting the scene, and without it I would have been very wet.