Gosling's Grouse: Time to praise St James's Place?

GOSLING'S GROUSE

I genuinely think St. James's Place is one of the top firms operating in the financial services industry today.

I know that might sound like heresy to some, especially those who view the firm as all that is bad about the industry, just as they viewed its previous incarnations – Allied Dunbar and Hambro Life. It was the easiest gag in the 1980s and 1990s to talk about Allied Crowbar – conveniently forgetting the likes of Cannon Lincoln, the MI Group or General Portfolio among others who probably had worse reputations, but did not have a company name that could be made fun of as easily. In the ‘heady’ days of personal pensions it was salesmen from General Portfolio who tricked their way into NHS ...