Introduction to the column

I will not be tipping stocks and shares, or making claims of top level investment acumen and inside knowledge. Rather my role is as a financial planner, working with collective investments - mutual funds, bank accounts and unit trusts - to help clients build their wealth over the longer term.

This column is designed to spread the message of responsible financial planning and to highlight the good stuff and to spotlight the bad that is out there. It will also examine topical issues of the day as they arise from the perspective of the small to medium sized investor.

This is intended to be solely for the elusive 'High Net Worth' individual who all large financial institutions are intent on pursuing and wooing. Instead it is aimed at the normal hard-working expatriate saver, who is astute enough to know the only way to reasonable wealth is by hard work and persistent saving, not by trusting get rich quick schemes or by believing the wild claims of some investment performance promises. If you like to make informed investment decisions with the benefit of reasonable knowledge and common sense I hope that you will find some useful information here in future months.

So let's start with a recent event, Enron. There have been reams, acres of newsprint devoted to Enron and its collapse, comment on almost every aspect, from the accounting standards, audit complicity, governmental involvement and regulatory negligence, but what are the implications for the small investor?

Well if you hold any American Equity funds or funds with 'International' in the title or almost any 'world wide managed' fund, the chances are you were an Enron investor, albeit a small one probably and you will have now lost money. The extent of the loss you will never know exactly, not even if you are one of the very few who read the fund managers' annual report. We just hope that with the losses, the managers are also building gains. That after all is the big selling point of collective investments - spreading the risk.

But let's just think for a moment of how fund managers manage our money. We rely on their superior analytical and research abilities. But do we know how they work, how and why they make their decisions, and how often do they use any common sense at all?

Do they get caught up in the enthusiasm of a large corporate body's power? How often do they become seduced by boardroom attention and influence and ignore the sort of behavior which would deter someone less 'expert'?

Just take one of Enron's transactions. I know that Enron was based in Houston, and that they probably wished to support and promote their home town. But would you invest in a company that bought the rights to name, a local sports stadium, yes only name the stadium, not own the stadium itself, but merely to be able to name the stadium for the next 30 years for the staggering sum of $100 million?

But that's the deal that Enron's management struck with the Houston Astros. $100 million for a stadium to be named after a company whose name is familiar to all who use it! But how many times I wonder was the corporate hospitality box full of fund managers and investment analysts, as well as regulators, senators and accountants, being wined and dined and persuaded that here is a company, well run and worth investing in?

Just as a final word, the Houston Astros have recently bought back the naming rights, for a more modest $2.8 million. But what is just a staggering it is now rumored that Conoco and Phillips, would like to see the name of their new proposed venture - ConocoPhillips - .on the stadium at a price speculated to be another $100 million.

Corporate madness or am I missing something?