Brown puts his trust in cosmos

SOME days Venus moves into your first house of harmony, the stars line up in your favour and the universe smiles on you. And some days they don’t.

Just ask Alan Brown, the group chief investment officer for State Street Global Advisors.

Brown had just given a rousing speech on global investment trends at this year’s IFSA conference focusing heavily, as you would expect, on the accounting scandals plaguing the US market.

Brown’s final message to IFSA delegates: “There should be a greater separation between the auditing and consulting industries and the financial services sector.”

It was greeted with rapturous applause…until of course everyone remembered the logo of the conference’s main sponsor on the wall, high behind him.

And who was that sponsor? No less than accounting giant KPMG, of course. Blame the stars Alan, blame the stars.

At least the conference moderator, David Koch, took it all in his stride.

He thanked both Alan, and the sponsors, and presented him with a small gift that he told the Brit was a DVD compilation of all the gold medals Australia had won at the Commonwealth Games.

Sensibly Alan didn’t say anything else.