Gulf Business Magazine Subscribe to Gulf Business and receive 1,000 FREE Skywards Miles, and the chance to win a further 100,000 in our quarterly draw. Charles Schwab delayed by 20 mins. In the remote UAE village of Hatta, entrepreneur Tony Armstrong is pinning his success on the idea that the best things come from little packages. Armstrong took early retirement from General Accident Insurance and has some interesting thoughts about reaching the end of a useful career.
Retirement is very stressful, and it's too easy for someone to retire, then vegetate.
I didn't want that to happen to me. I have some energy left and wasn't ready to sit in a deskchair and do nothing. After spending over 25 years with General Accident Insurance, retirement would have meant a modest pension and a return to Aberdeen in Scotland. That was not a very attractive proposition to either Tony Armstrong or his wife Dorothy. In some parts of the world, Armstrong would be described as a 'whittler' - give him a piece of wood and a knife and he creates something interesting.