AMNT Summer Conference 2014 - Stephanie Flanders

I was only able to attend the first two sessions at this year's AMNT Summer conference before having to dash off to a represent a union member in a meeting out of London.

Our first speaker was Stephanie Flanders, who is now the Chief Market Strategist for JP Morgan but much better known as being the former BBC Economics Editor.

She has been told that she has 20 minutes to speak and is reminded of the advice that G.B. Shaw gave to an orator who claimed that he couldn't possibly say all he knew in 20 minutes. Which was "talk very slowly".

Stephanie pointed out that we have had a terribly long period of recession. UK growth is now ok and near its long term trend but we need to do recover faster to make up for the past 5 years. Risk asserts have struggled to find momentum. While it pays to be a risk taker it may not pay as well as did in the past.

Money is cheap still by historic standards, there will be less austerity in the next 3 years than the last 3 years. National Debt is levelling out. The unemployment rate has crashed in the UK and even Spain has managed to increase employment . Deflation is falling prices not reduced inflation, which is something she had to constantly explain to John Humphrys on the Radio 4 Today Programme. WDIAM use to be her favourite 6pm BBC News spot - "What does it all mean?". 

Long term growth and recovery is now so slow that the recent recession could be more damaging to the economy than the First world war or even the Second world war.

We are overdue a correction on equity markets but loose money will not cause a crash. Diversification matters.

My question to her was that the USA and EU recovery may be more genuine and sustainable than the UK due to our over heated house prices and soaring household debt. Stephanie agreed that there was a fear of a bubble in UK housing market but more confident about UK growth which is now far more balanced.

Happy 1st Birthday Association Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT)

On Thursday I went to the first anniversary meeting of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT) at JP Morgan in Moorgate.  The AMNT is a national forum and network for member nominated pension trustees and representatives. I missed the AGM in the morning but was able to attend the afternoon session.  The new AMNT web site (see right) was also launched.  Join here for free if you are a member nominated trustee or rep of any pension scheme.

In the afternoon we had report backs on our AMNT working groups. 

I chair the Defined Benefit Working Group and gave a brief presentation on our work to defend and promote DB schemes.  I was probably the first person ever to offer trade union fraternal greetings and invite people to join a pension picket line to such an audience at such a location.

We then had a presentation on "Is shorter-term equity investing an issue for our Pension Schemes?" by Professor Paul Sweeting who works for JP Morgan and the University of Kent.  I asked him about the problem that short term investors (by definition) cannot act as owners and make sure that the managers of companies act in their owners' interests and not their own.  Paul recognised that this could be a problem but thought that the advantages that such investors bring to the market in terms of liquidity out weigh this (hmmnn - I'm not convinced).

                                                                                                        Next we had the MD of Pitmans, Richard Butcher brief us on "Should Master Trusts incorporate MNTs? I think that there was a consensus that Master Trusts should be legally obliged to have MNTs on their boards. We then spilt into work groups, debated various burning trustee issues and reported back to the main meeting.  Afterwards we retreated to the "Red Herring" pub to properly reflect on and celebrate the first anniversary of the AMNT and our plans for the year ahead.