Grin and bear it

The business year in pictures

There were ironies galore in the downturn of global markets. Not least was the one brought home on Tony Dye, the investment guru at Phillips & Drew Fund Management and the City's most famous bear.

Mr Dye moved heavily into cash in the wake of the Mexican peso crisis in the spring of 1995, only to suffer for two long years as the markets climbed and climbed.

His bearish stance is now far more mainstream. But it is a classic case of too little too late, and anyway PDFM's parent, the Union Bank of Switzerland, has, in effect, been taken over by Swiss Bank Corp.