As the Money Management August edition is starting to land on desks, and we wave goodbye to July, we take a look back at August 2003 to see what was going on.
The August edition was still home to the financial strength of life offices survey. (This month’s is available to view here.) The survey spanned 11 pages, and saw with-profits to be strong, seeing £2bn of new with-profits in 2002 as a whole.
The magazine also looked at the top 100 unit trusts and Oeics. Topping the table over one year’s performance was the Threadneedle European Bond fund. Had you invested £1,000 on 1 August 2003 based on the research, it would now be worth £1,413, having seen a drop in performance in 2007 and 2008. Probably not the best investment choice, seeing an annualised return of 2.92 per cent.
Your investment would have been much better in the fund that topped the table for the best performers over five years – the Baring Korea Trust. The fund would have given you a return of £3,069 on your initial investment, 9.79 per cent annualised.
Back when now editor Jon Cudby was a humble staff writer, he wrote about misselling and what it meant – showing that not much has changed over the 12 years. At the time, the majority of complaints received by the regulator were for mortgage endowments and mortgage loans.
Skandia was the first of the larger platforms to relaunch as a wrap account. It was said approximately 12,000 IFAs will use the fund supermarket. You can read more about the current state of the wrap and platform market in this month’s Money Management.
Elsewhere, the magazine wrote about a Bill that was defeated, which hoped to convert at least 75 per cent of a pension fund into an annuity.
In other news...
At the start of the month, the Hutton inquiry was opened, investigating the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly.
Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his intention to run for governor of California.
Alastair Campbell resigned as Tony Blair’s communications director.
A heat wave over Europe occurred, with temperatures hitting 37.8 degrees at Heathrow airport.
And while deputy editor, Charlotte Richards, was a 16-year-old awaiting her GCSE results, Sean Paul and Blu Cantrall topped the charts with ‘Breathe’, and S.W.A.T, staring Colin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson topped the movie charts.
