My first audit job was John Brown Engineering. Sadly no longer with us, in the eighties the company made gas turbines. It used to make ships. The QE2 was built in the John Brown yard in 1967. The leader of our audit team had been taken to the launch as a little girl. When I
When I was an undergraduate, I used to argue with my engineer pals about the social usefulness of Finance. They compared it with the work of a factory and described financial services as ‘just moving money around’. They accused it of adding no value. My defence is that moving money around creates value and is
When I was a kid growing up in the seventies, there was a TV show that the whole family enjoyed called It’s a Knockout. It consisted of teams playing silly games like trying walk across a pole suspended over water while players from the other side turned a handle, or filled a vessel with water
I used to play rugby for my school. Before each game, my friend and I would find the muddiest part of the pitch. We would kneel down, grab handfuls of mud and cover our bare arms, legs and face. Praying to the God of Rugby we called it. In fact, we were giving each other
I am hopeless at chess. This isn’t false modesty. I am really bad. I was bad as a child and as an adult I keep coming back to it but have never been able to move beyond novice level. I can however easily diagnose my biggest problem. I forget I’m playing against someone else. If