Financial planning

“Our fiduciary mindset as an asset manager is to help clients navigate the complexities of investing as they plan for retirement, save for education costs and sidestep the pitfalls inherent in volatile markets. Stephanie’s experience and objective approach uniquely qualify her for doing this,” said George Gatch, Chief Executive Officer and Head of Global Funds Management, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, a trading name of J.P.Morgan Asset Management Marketing Ltd, part of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

It looks like Stephanie Flanders has made essentially an investment decision to move from the BBC after eleven years; she will at least have trebled her salary, and there will undoubtedly be further perks now frowned on at Auntie. She has two children with the possibility of considerable "education costs" still in front of them, and a freelance journalist husband. She'll have to bash across from W6 occasionally to HQ, based in the brutalist Finsbury Dials, but joins a small team, one suspects as an extra - there's no record of a previous Chief Market Strategist, UK and Europe. But then JP Morgan, the biggest bank in the States by assets, can probably afford an extra post or two, whereas the BBC's Business Unit is looking for 20% cuts over five years.

It is enormously worrying for the BBC that key staff, who know what they are talking about, feel other employers are now more attractive. In recent moves, Matt Frei, Jackie Long, Michael Crick, Liz McKean and Paul Mason have gone. James Harding will want to make a good signing to replace Stephanie. I've already been lobbied to mention Jenny Scott, once BBC Economics correspondent, and occasional sidekick to Andrew Neil, now working as an advisor to the Governor of the Bank of England...