Dan Sherville gives an insight into a week at MRM, giving all the gossip from his working week while highlighting what news has interested MRM over the past seven days
As another freezing week comes to an end, much of the conversation at MRM headquarters has revolved around the weather, with temperatures reportedly reaching a biting -9C on Tuesday night. Unfortunately though it looks like we might be suffering for a while longer with the mercury due to sink to as low as -13C, and the ‘big freeze’ expected to last well into the weekend.
However, despite the grumbles it’s actually been quite an interesting week for news. Even those who aren’t football fans at MRM have been following the Harry Redknapp tax evasion trial, which came to an end on Wednesday after five years of what he described as “a nightmare”. Attention has now turned to the England manager job following Fabio Capello’s resignation, with Redknapp rumoured to be in the running.
Looking at the week’s economic news, the Bank of England announced yesterday that it has agreed to inject another £50bn into the economy taking the total amount of Quantitative Easing to £325bn. Despite this being used as a mechanism to boost the economy, experts warned that the plans could be a blow to pensioners by adversely affecting annuity rates.
In client news, research from the John Lewis and Waitrose partnership card has revealed that tough economic conditions have in fact encouraged a “lipstick effect”, with a rise in shoppers buying small beauty treats to cheers themselves up. As reported by The Scotsman and MSN News, among many other publications, analysis of the spending habits of the card’s 553,000 customers found that beauty and skincare spending rose by 48 per cent between October and December 2011, compared with the same period in 2010.
Yesterday and today, Nucleus has been hosting their IFA Annual Strategy Event at the Belfry in Wishaw, which Jon (@jonnyatkins) has had the pleasure of attending. This year’s event included a number of adviser workshops to discuss upcoming developments for the platform, and even included a day of golf – providing there weren’t too many sore heads this morning! You can follow all the news on twitter at #nucleus2012.
Finally, if you were looking for a bit of light-hearted news this Friday afternoon, a Tokyo zoo has been simulating a rhino escape this week in order to prepare its staff for a possible emergency. How they decide to go about the training has to be seen to be believed.
