Gold fingers

INVESTORS jaded with the stock market now have a racier option.

Online marketplace WhiskyInvestDirect, where investors buy barrels of maturing Scotch stored in bonded warehouses and later sell them to distillers, has been created by the team which devised BullionVault, the world's largest online gold market.

Last week BullionVault said one of its customers had set a new record for a trade via its smartphone app. When he pressed the button on his Android phone, he bought 21 kilogrammes of gold and his account was debited by £500,310.

Now the same opportunity is open to whisky lovers.

This app is not recommended for unsupervised children.

Steaming again

FURTHER evidence has reached The Bottom Line of the accountancy profession and its love of being steaming.

ICAS, the professional body for bean counters, hosted another evening for members aboard the Waverley, the world’s last sea-going paddle steamer.

After a trip down the Clyde earlier this summer, the latest jaunt saw ICAS take no fewer than 500 chartered accountants down the Thames on the fabled vessel.

ICAS president Jim Pettigrew, who supports the campaign to preserve the Waverley, said:

“We might not have shipbuilding in the heart of our economy anymore but the 500 Chartered Accountants who sailed with us last night are iconic of our economic future.”

No pressure, then.

Unlikely sideline

FOR a moment it looked like an unlikely form of diversification.

A press release heralding the employment growth at EY talked about the “new joiners” who joined the accountancy firm last year.

What next, we briefly wondered, accounting plumbers?

Drink of friendship

BACK on whisky… they may be at loggerheads over minimum unit pricing, but the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and the SNP are content to share a dram or two.

The SWA is holding a fringe event at the party’s autumn conference in Aberdeen on October 16.

Christina McKelvie MSP and SWA chief executive David Frost will take part in a panel discussion which will look at the challenges and opportunities for Scotch in the export arena, and what can be learned from whisky’s success in markets around the world.

Clearly the power of whisky to forge friendship cannot be underestimated.

Life’s a beach

THE power of technology means many of us no longer need to work in an office. But that doesn’t mean we are any less accountable, as Paul Webb of Glasgow funeral business Anderson Maguire reflected.

Recalling his time at the Midlands Co-operative Society, which had offices in seaside towns such as Blackpool and Lytham, Mr Webb, said: “Many years ago I remember my boss said to me: “if you are sitting on the beach all day, and your market share is improving, I have no problem with that at all.

“But if I find you on the beach and the market share is in decline we might have a meeting without coffee!”