As the economic crisis has deepened, many have turned to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes to provide a route map out of recession. But less attention has been paid to Keynes equally important prescriptions for the investment industry, derived from his time in the City as investor and insurance executive.

Writing in the depths of the 1930s depression, Keynes observed from bitter experience that “it is the long-term investor, he who most promotes the public interest, who will in practice come in for the most criticism wherever investment funds are managed by committees or boards or banks”.