Expense Account, Mint
At the Financial Planning Standards Board’s annual congress last week in Mumbai, in which Mint was a media partner, the theme was consumer protection. Panellist Nilesh Shah of Axis Bank began his comments with this horse tale. In emperor Akbar’s stable there was a horse that preferred to eat grass over oats. No amount of cajoling could get him to eat the more nutritious meal. Then trusty Birbal comes up and says give me a month and I will ensure the horse eats the oats. Akbar says OK. A month later the horse is eating oats. How did you do that, asks Akbar. Each time he ate grass, I hit him on the head, smiles Birbal with some satisfaction. Now he’s learnt to eat oats. In Shah’s story, the investor is the horse who’s learnt to eat grass (real estate and gold) because each time he tried to eat oats (market-linked financial products), he was hit hard on the head