Opinion

I know Christmas is coming when my desk starts to creak under the mass of government papers scattered over it. Civil servants are clearly incentivised to clear their desks before the year end, and they do that by covering mine.

News revealing Royal London has headhunted a boss from outside to head up its new IFA division - handling life, pensions, offshore and protection business lines - raises significant questions about brand intent going forward.

Taxi drivers listen to TalkSport all day - well they've got to do something in between ranting about immigrants to their fares - but proper football supporters listen to radio Five's SixOsix.

This was going to be a nice one to write. December's blog. It's been a decent year. Pension term has been a big success. Loads more advisers getting onto the benefits tele-underwriting can bring to them.

So it seems Newcastle are set to become the latest club to fall into foreign hands - if you can call a bid fronted by UBS, on behalf of a US investment fund, as ‘foreign hands.'

Whether or not it was down to over ambitious bonus rates in the late 90s, bad investment decisions, high charges, regulatory costs, long term liabilities or the requirement to meet free asset ratios, the simple fact is that with-profits bonds have been...

News out this week investment banks may be lowering their forecasts on average oil prices through 2007 should spell good news for anyone considering investments of any kind.

The expression ‘big clubs' is banded around much these days. You know the sort of teams - Newcastle, Aston Villa, Everton in the Premiership, Leeds United in the Championship.

Better regulation. Our own government has adopted this grand European idea to regulate smarter rather than harder.

Two years ago I was running a weekly football newspaper, Football First, and at Christmas 2004 we asked this question of our readers.