Meanwhile, here’s a case of stuffed-up numbers making things seem worse than the bear market has already made them.

Unbalanced nearly choked on our tin of expired baked beans the other lunch time when Perpetual sent around an email “confirming” its financial year results.

It had already flagged profit was going to be down from 2006/07, but $118.3 million down?! Oh the humanity! Run for the exits, every man for himself! Say it isn’t true!

Thankfully for those in our immediate vicinity, a sheepish follow-up email from Perpetual soon arrived.

The operating profit after tax was only down $11.8 million to $133.5 mil, an 8 per cent drop (as opposed to 80-something per cent as they tried to tell us first time around). Can it be any coincidence that Perpetual’s Select suite of multimanager funds is one of two Australian clients for Bedlam Asset Management’s global equity fund?