Don’t mention the war, or the elephant in the room

hostplus/Outsider/

10 September 2018
| By Outsider |
image
image
expand image

Outsider, for reasons which he would rather not discuss, is familiar with the “dark arts” of spin doctoring and therefore believes that industry fund, HostPlus, must have received some “medical” advice when compiling its submission responding to the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

In particular, Outsider believes those advising HostPlus must have drawn upon what was always known as the “Fawlty Towers” or “Don’t Mention the War Technique” – essentially a strategy which involves not mentioning the rather large and noisy elephant in the room.

In the case of HostPlus, that elephant was the large sums of members’ money the Royal Commission heard had been spent on corporate hospitality, including boxes at the Australian Open tennis.

The HostPlus submission dwelt at some length on member communications but at no point did it mention corporate hospitality.

As Basil Fawlty said: “Don’t mention the war”.

Outsider is sure, however, that the Commissioner Kenneth Hayne, clearly espied the elephant in the room.

 

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

3 months 1 week ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

3 months 1 week ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

5 months 2 weeks ago

ASIC has suspended the Australian Financial Services Licence of a Melbourne-based financial advice firm....

4 weeks ago

A former Victorian financial adviser has been sentenced after stealing $4.4 million from clients, family and friends to feed his “raging gambling addiction”....

3 weeks 5 days ago

A financial advice firm has been penalised $11 million in the Federal Court for providing ‘cookie cutter advice’ to its clients and breaching conflicted remuneration rule...

2 weeks 4 days ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS

ACS FIXED INT - AUSTRALIA/GLOBAL BOND
Fund name
3y(%)pa
1
DomaCom DFS Mortgage
93.34 3 y p.a(%)
2
5
Plato Global Alpha A
28.83 3 y p.a(%)