Friday 3rd of December 2004

It is clear the Stobo tax report has created a huge amount of interest amongst investors, advisers and fund managers.
My earlier Blog on the subject has drawn out a few questions - some of these I have run past Craig Stobo. Craig has kindly offered to answer these questions.
The Blog, the questions and the answers are here.

The other topic is adviser regulation. Someone posed the question today: Has the taskforce been set up to fail?
Time will tell the answer. What is clear is that there is still some major upset at the make-up of the taskforce. I understand that there is still some fierce lobbying going on behind the scenes to have a certain group represented on the taskforce.
For my money I was slightly surprised at the make up of the taskforce. But it is far better than some of the names which were bandied around while officials put the group together.
To date I have been totally underwhelmed with the taskforce's comms, and events this week showed MED have little idea about key players in the industry. This isn't a new theme. It surfaced during the establishment of the taskforce too.
Coming back to the question I posed at the start. No. I don't believe Margaret Wilson set the taskforce up to fail. However she is not the only stakeholder in this event.