Black Dog and Bleeding Heart

Caught up with Jack Gilbert, Senior Reporter New Model Adviser at the Black Dog pub close by their office. Neither of us could get our heads around the Aberdeen Standard press release announcing the 1825 advisers would be providing advice to the Phoenix Assurance customers. 1825 has less than 100 advisers; Phoenix has around 10 million customers. This does not compute! We also talked about the market generally – DB to DC transfers, contingency charging, vertically integrated firms and shoehorning. The Black Dog is featured in the book I have just finished; it is close to the National Crime Agency offices and it seemed appropriate for two of the characters to meet there. Authenticity!

Next stop was the Bleeding Heart restaurant in Bleeding Heart Yard and a “Vampire Squids” dinner hosted by Lucian Camp and Phillip Martin. (They tell me the title is ironic; sometimes I’m not so sure). The event was in the Wine Cellar and, as usual there was an interesting bunch of people including the irrepressible Bella Caridade-Ferreira, CEO of Fundscape and the amazingly smart Mark Polson, the top cat at The Lang Cat. As usual , there was a speaker to get things going. This time it was James Dunne, Head of Digital Investing at Santander. As usual we listened to a success story. I look forward to the evening when we hear about “When it all went wrong” Having said that it was a most enjoyable evening and a great venue.