Abstract
From 1700 to 1960 in Britain, the people and institutions in this book shaped the asset management profession and demonstrated how asset management could operate effectively, practically and accessibly for insurance companies, pooled funds, pension funds and endowments. By 1960, these early British investors created an asset management profession with strong foundations and firm values. Important lessons can be learned from this formative period for asset management about portfolio construction, time-horizons, benchmarks, organisational culture, stewardship and social usefulness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Andrew Haldane, The Age of Asset Management? 4 April 2014 (www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2014/speech723).
- 2.
The Library of Mistakes in Edinburgh exists to help people learn from financial follies. It is an admirable institution and has been established with the specific aim, according to its website, ‘to allow students, professionals and members of the general public to study financial history to understand how finance has worked, rather than how it should work if key unrealistic assumptions are made’.
- 3.
This is not a statistically robust sample and ‘survivor bias’ is a factor with the small selection of investment funds that form the basis of this analysis. Inevitably, luck or good fortune, may also have played a part in allowing these particular investment strategies to succeed when others, equally worthy, may have failed.
- 4.
The seventh investment strategy is the Independent Investment Company (Appendix, section A1) which did not perform well.
- 5.
This quotation is widely attributed to Sir John Templeton but I was unable to reference it.
- 6.
George Ross Goobey, Running Profits and Cutting Losers, undated memorandum (LMA/4481/a/2/21).
- 7.
John Bogle, The Clash of the Cultures (Wiley 2012) 310.
- 8.
Detailed performance figures on the Discretionary Fund are given in section A2 of the Appendix.
- 9.
John Maynard Keynes to the Estates Committee, A Measuring Rod for Investment Policy, undated memorandum but probably 1934/35 (Kings College Archive, KCAR/3/1/10/32).
- 10.
Danny O’Shea, M&G Head of Research, An introduction to M&G, Its History and Its Management (M&G memorandum, 24 May 1994).
- 11.
George Ross Goobey, Address to the 1956 Conference of the ASPF, 2 November 1956 (www.pensionsarchive.org.uk/27, website accessed 16 June 2016).
- 12.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Vol VII, ed. Donald Moggridge (Cambridge University Press 1973) 149/150.
- 13.
Duncan Crow, A Man of Push and Go (Rupert Hart-Davis 1965) 55.
- 14.
Anecdotally, Ross Goobey was both very well known and extremely well respected in Bristol and Somerset (telephone conversation, Peter Dunscombe, 7 June 2016).
- 15.
1990: the Scottish American was re-named ‘Dunedin Income and Growth Trust’ (DIGIT) quite reasonably because as the chairman stated in The Glasgow Herald, on 1 March 1990, ‘The inappropriateness of the name of the company that now holds no shares in America is self-evident, and indeed for a company with a policy of income growth which is almost entirely invested in the UK the name is positively misleading’.
- 16.
See Annex to Chapter 7.
- 17.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Vol VII, ed. Donald Moggridge (Cambridge University Press 1973) 155.
- 18.
Geoffrey Clark, Betting on Lives (Manchester University Press, 1999) 200.
- 19.
Foreign & Colonial Government Trust, Prospectus 1868 (Guildhall Library).
- 20.
Nicholas Davenport, Memoirs of a City Radical (Willmer Bros 1974) 47.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Guildhall Library, London, is an excellent source of data such as information on company prospectuses, including the following:
– Foreign and Colonial Government Trust, Prospectus, March 1868.
– Foreign and Colonial Government Trust, Plan of Consolidation, March 1879.
Kings College, Cambridge, Archive Centre Holds the Extensive Papers of John Maynard Keynes.
London Metropolitan Archive for The Papers of the George Ross Goobey Collection.
Books
John Bogle, The Clash of the Cultures (Wiley 2012)
Geoffrey Clark, Betting on Lives (Manchester University Press 1999)
Duncan Crow, A Man of Push and Go, The Life of George Macaulay Booth (Rupert Hart-Davis 1965)
Nicholas Davenport, Memoirs of a City Radical (Willmer Bros 1974)
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes Vol VII, ed. Donald Moggridge (Cambridge University Press 1973)
Articles, Journals, Pamphlets, Websites, etc.
Andrew Haldane, The Age of Asset Management? 4 April 2014 (www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2014/speech723)
John Maynard Keynes to the Estates Committee, A Measuring Rod for Investment Policy, undated memorandum but probably 1934/1935 (Kings College Archive, KCAR/3/1/10/32)
George Ross-Goobey, Address to the 1956 Conference of the ASPF, 2 November 1956 (www.pensionsarchive.org.uk/27, website accessed 16 June 2016)
George Ross Goobey, Running Profits and Cutting Losers, Undated Memorandum (LMA 4481/A/01/21)
Danny O’Shea, An Introduction to M&G, Its History and Its Management (M&G memorandum, 24 May 1994)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morecroft, N.E. (2017). Observations from the Past. In: The Origins of Asset Management from 1700 to 1960. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51850-3_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51850-3_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51849-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51850-3
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)