Altor Views

In May 1983, eleven runners lined up outside a shopping centre in Sydney for the inaugural Westfield ultramarathon to Melbourne. The route ran 875 kilometres, give or take the drive from London to Inverness, and the field was exactly what you’d expect: lean, sponsored, dressed in the latest nylon, most of them young enough to […]

I used to advise a busy CEO, it was difficult to get a date in his diary to meet with him face to face.  He was one of the most wonderfully generous and people oriented individuals I have ever had the pleasure to meet.  Yet, his financial plan was an absolute disaster area.  His generosity

This is one of those blogs I have debating writing. The subject is not easy and it is emotive.  When it was announced that pensions would be liable to inheritance tax from 6th April 2027, I expected there to be a serious reaction to such a hard deadline. The problem with not phasing in such a

I had a very sad experience in London last week.  I went out for dinner one evening and sat a couple of tables down from me was an old man, with a scruffy white beard. He had a younger colleague with him who was trying to cheer him up and get him to re-engage with

In 1908, when Lloyd George introduced the first state pension, the qualifying age was 70. Average life expectancy for a man at birth was 49. You can see the appeal. Promise everyone a pension at 70 when most of them won’t see 50, and the Treasury looks generous without having to actually pay for very

In 1954, a milkshake machine salesman named Ray Kroc drove out to San Bernardino to find out why a single hamburger restaurant had ordered eight of his Multimixers. Nobody needed to make forty milkshakes at once. The restaurant belonged to two brothers, Richard and Maurice McDonald. Kroc watched them work and saw something he’d never

The extraordinary thing about us humans is that we were built for long distance running. Not me, you understand, but humans more generally.  The latest research into human history shows that humans are slower than most animals we hunted and so adapted to be faster over long distance.  We could pursue prey over several days

I saw a £2.5million car at my local pub a few weeks ago. That is to say I saw a car and when I went into the pub for a drink, the owner of the car was telling anyone who would listen how much he had just paid for it. I am not a ‘car

Life expectancy in the 1700s was shockingly short compared to today. Even more extraordinary was the fact that it was lower on average amongst sections of the British Peerage. Those who were the wealthiest often lived the shortest lives. Rich diets might have contributed, the diet of your average 1700s peasant was no fun, but

The employed workforce in the UK have been hugely helped by Auto-Enrolment. This was introduced in 2012 and has automatically opted 10million more staff into company pensions since it was introduced. The minimum is 8% of salary going into a pension for the majority of the employed workforce. The company pays 4%, the employee 3%