Your Money: Headache for BT sell-off

ACCORDING to Paul Simon, there are 50 ways to leave your lover - but there are no fewer than 151 ways to buy a slice of BT3.

As well as the share information office, every one of the 150 designated share shops will be touting their entry as the best way into the latest privatisation. There is nothing so vulgar as a tariff to guide you to choose one over another. So the dealing charges, cost of transferring shares into a personal equity plan, and such like remain a mystery.

The whole thing has been arranged to suit the Government's doctrinal push towards wider share ownership. It does not want to encourage the notion that these shares are for selling on at a quick profit. So you cannot choose your share shop for a 'fast-buck deal'.

Indeed, there is no advantage in registering with a share shop at all, unless the demand for shares from the public is so overwhelming that applications are scaled back. If that happens then those who registered for BT3 details via the share information office will be disadvantaged as the share shop applicants get a bigger slice of the cake.

Add to this the fact that the public have to apply for shares without knowing the price, and the whole thing will be timed to coincide with the beginning of the holiday season, and you can imagine that there may not be a great penalty for registering with the share information office.

But when it is so little trouble to key a PIN into a Barclay's cash machine or call endless freephone numbers, the temptation will be to register over and over again, so that if - and of course there is a still a question over whether it will be sensible to go for the shares - you do want to apply you can pick the deal that suits you best at the last moment.

The waste of paper, time and effort for investors, banks, brokers and the others who have set up share shops at the Government's behest does not bear thinking about.

MY recent comment that it was about time the friendly societies got their own ombudsman naturally annoyed the quartet of friendly societies that have joined the Insurance Ombudsman scheme. Large societies such as the Royal Liver and the Liverpool Victoria thought it was worth paying the pounds 500 fee to join. But for smaller societies, the fee seemed to outweigh the benefit to policyholders. Friendly societies run tax- free policies with premiums of up to pounds 200 a year. That does not leave a lot of margin for joining a scheme that should never have to be used. All Lloyds brokers and underwriters are members of the Insurance Ombudsman's scheme through a block membership taken out by Lloyd's Council. Perhaps a similar umbrella scheme for the friendly societies should be devised.

ON the subject of Ombudsmen, the Investment Ombudsman, who deals with complaints against investment managers, delivered his annual report last week.

Richard Youard will not let managers shuffle off all responsibility for the poor performance of portfolios under their control.

While they cannot be expected to have a crystal ball and foresee all the ups and downs of the stock market, they have to behave professionally and use reasonable care, and suit the investments to the investor.

He believes that more realistic expectations would help clients get along with their managers.

Lesson one, he says, is that equities are usually best for long-term growth, but you have to remember that they will not necessarily grow.

This view is not exactly fostered by those trying to flog their wares. Mr Youard found a PEP brochure on his doormat one day which said on the cover: 'The Easy Way to Achieve Income and Growth'. It may have been trying to say that it was easy to fill in the forms and write out a cheque. But any normal reader would have thought that achieving the income and growth was not only certain, but easy.

All the qualifications about what could go wrong were tucked away inside. These included the one which warns that you may not get back all you invested. But Mr Youard says, quite rightly, these inconsistent messages are part of a cynical game.

He believes these leaflets should be written in clear English so that a first-time investor can understand them. But first the belief that you can get high rewards without taking risks needs to be stamped out. If greed takes a back seat, perhaps fear could join it.