Opinion

I was looking at some HM Revenue and Customs figures recently and they quite surprised me. They were forecasting that the annual receipts for capital gains tax for 2006-2007 would be over £4bn. This compared to £3.5bn for inheritance tax.

For what is essentially a quango, the FSA has managed quite a feat in boosting its budget by not just twice but more than thrice the CPI target cited by HM Treasury in every other form of Whitehall negotiation.

Let's face it - advising someone on whether they should transfer their deferred benefits out of a final salary scheme is one of the trickiest things for pensions advisers.

There are rumours in the protection industry the Treasury may reach a middle ground on pension term assurance and allow a watered-down version of the product to continue.

So, having had two perfectly fine goals disallowed last weekend, Sir Alex Ferguson says he would like to see video technology introduced to help referees make the right decisions in football matches.

There seems to be a quiet rumble of noise across the industry about the way in which regulation is changing. With the move towards principles-based financial services regulation there appears to be a shift of responsibility on other bodies whose role...

I watched the television last week to see Bill Gates talking to a newscaster about the launch of Microsoft's new software, the ‘Vista' platform. This clearly is going to offer us all a new ‘vista' on the future of how we use both technology and our computers...

The government has announced a service that will be aimed at providing consumers, including those on low incomes, with "quick, easy and simple access" to good quality advice on financial products.

Although I agree with the regulators move to lighter touch and principle-led compliance, I sometimes miss the old style heavy-handed compliance regime with thousands of pages of rules and guidance to read.

In the first of a two part series on investing in commodities, Nick Dewhirst takes a look at trading and analyses the lessons learned from two successful traders in futures