ILT013 From Rothschild to James Hambro: A Journey in Investment Management with Nicola Barber (S2 EP05)

Speaker A: I found something very interesting this morning. I was looking back through some old paperwork and I actually found an email from a really good salesperson at Lehman Brothers on 15th September 2008. He said, I'm not quite sure how long the lines of communication will remain open here, so I'm sending my contact details now. In time, I hope. The event turns out to have been a capitulary contrarian buy signal for markets, but privately I fear there is still worse to come. Thank you for all your enormous support. Barb Debaudebar. I'm so sorry things have ended so abruptly. I know it's, it's here. It's, uh, I know how amazing is that I've had.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to season two of Investing for the Long Term, hosted by D. Downing, fund manager Judith McKenzie and Downing, investment consultant from Rosemary Barnyard. During season two, Judith and Rosemary continue to take you on a journey through their extensive network of fund managers, company founders, CEOs and key people from across the investment sphere. And today's guest is Nicola Barber. Nicola, who bypassed university, began her career at Rothschild, is an experienced equity investor and portfolio manager with over 35 years of investment experience, specializing with larger and more complex clients. Nicol is now a partner at James Hambrone Partners and head of charities there. And just before we get started, please remember that all opinions and information are for educational purposes only and do not constitute investment advice. Investing carries a high level of risk and is not right for everyone. Always do your own research and seek financial advice from a regulated financial advisor in your country before making any financial decisions. With that being said, let's get started.

Speaker C: Welcome today to our, uh, next podcast in the Investing for the Long Term series. And our guest today is Nicola Barber. Uh, I've known Nicola for about five years since her firm pitched to manage some of the endowment for HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship where I am a trustee. And so over the last five years, I've got to know Nicola and there are some interesting things today I think to talk about in respect of her, uh, role with charities, perhaps her style of investing and maybe what it's like to be working in a partnership.

Speaker D: Rosemary, that's a great introduction, but I know also that we spoken quite a bit about Nicola in the past, even before we started to think about this podcast. So I'm particularly looking forward to this one. And Nicola, can you share a little bit about your career journey? So starting with your, maybe your early career and to where you are now?

Speaker A: Thank you and very happy to be here So I left school and I think it's important perhaps for listeners to know that I didn't go to university. So I had a place to read German and business at, ah, Manchester. During the summer break, I suddenly had a moment where I thought, do I really want to go to university? I don't want to take a year out, I just want to get on with things. I mentioned it to my father, who I trusted him implicitly and said, I've always wanted to have a career in the financial services. He worked in IT and computing and he said, let's sit down and decide which companies you might apply to, but let's, in this situation just have three or four. Let's not go wild and let's see if something comes out that's so impressive that you can't turn it down. And whilst we, the famous, we were sitting down, he actually chose the company which was at the time Deutsche Bank Knatwest, it was actually Unilever in there and Rothschilds. So I duly sent off and I don't think this can possibly happen today, but I sent off my CV to the 5 and I had interviews at 4. I was offered three roles, but the one at Rothschilds was outstanding. Importantly, back in the day, they only took Oxbridge and I clearly wasn't Oxbridge material. I think in hindsight it was possibly a bigger challenge than I'd realized, but I wonder if that would allow me to move from back office to front office in very short order. And I wonder if I can prove myself and what have I got to lose? I could always go back to university. I accepted a role. I think they took only a handful of A level candidates and I duly started my career on 8 September 1987, a month before the stock market crash, which was quite memorable. I was doing everything that was mathematics, which wasn't my strong point, but they seemed to think I could do it, so I just plowed on.

Speaker D: In that early career, did you ever feel that you were missing out, uh, because you hadn't gone to university or because you're getting a bit of a head start because you were there earlier than maybe some of your peers that were coming from the Oxford universities? Did you get a head start?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think two things. I think, obviously Rothschilds now takes candidates from all universities. Things have changed quite measurably over some sort of 35 years or so. Everywhere in the industry, it's, I would say, quite noticeably different. I think being able to join Rothschilds as a school leaver gave me an enormous Insight. And I was at Rothschilds for 21 years, and I loved every minute. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned from how one conducts oneself. How appropriate you are, how respectful you are, how you just need to, whether you're a university graduate or not, be eager and inquisitive and try and think ahead and be most helpful to the people around you. It was two years at Rothschilds. I was told when I joined that women weren't able to become directors. It was extremely hard. There might have been one or two at the time. And, um, back in the day, it wasn't uncommon. My husband always said, my very formative years at Rothschilds, I was wrapped in cotton wool. It wasn't the real world. But I do think, just going back to your question, that it did give me a head start in the sense that I was able within two years to move into the front office. And I worked for two board directors on the North American and Canadian. U.S. and Canadian team. The North American team, they were so busy that they would be in Canada, they would be in Latin America as we were starting a new fund, that they would accept these incredible invitations at these livery companies in the city and then say, oh, can you go? It just was the most bizarre. If you've been into the livery companies, they're quite impressive. You sit down and quite honestly, I would say that if there was any other woman around, a table of 30 investors, that would be unusual.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Uh, that was certainly my experience for, uh, an awful lot of my career. Dare say it was for you too, Judith, huh?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: It might be worth explaining to listeners what a livery company is, because when I first came across it, I thought it was where put your horse to bed and board like your Nikolai came from a slightly different background into the city. Is it worth explaining what the good old livery system was?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it probably is. Livery companies are membership organizations, and from memory, I think there are over a hundred. There are very new and recent ones, such as the Worshipful. They normally start with the Worshipful Company of. And historically they go back hundreds and hundreds of years, so the grocers. And they represent, typically a trade or an industry where you become a member. They go back to the medieval times, but there are very current ones. So we became quite closely aligned to the Worshipful Company of Market Halls. I think that probably was established within the last 30 years. Definitely not in medieval times, but they continue to exist. They're charitable, they're educational, and they're typically social. Social organization. So they have amazing events. I know the marketers did, for example, as well as their charitable activities, they did the swan upping, where they count the Queen's swans on the River Thames. Every year there's lots and lots of opportunities to foster connections and to go to really impressive dinners, maybe at the Mansion House or at the liveries. And um, they are like little museums. I don't know Judith, if you've been into them, they're very beautiful, ornate, often with lots of silverware and very specific protocols and that sort of thing. But lovely people, like minded people that possibly you join and um, it becomes part of your social interactions throughout your career.

Speaker D: I uh, do remember going to a few of the Glasgow liveries and it being again I was probably at the start of my career and it was exceptionally traditional and exceptionally male at that point as well. But very welcoming and a great community.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, the reason for mentioning the livery was that within London many of the US companies in particular would, every time they had results, which would be quarterly or every six months, they would host their results presentations in one of these livery halls. So it just seemed to me to be surreal. Somebody that was born in Manchester from the north of England, hadn't gone to university, didn't come from a particularly gifted background, was suddenly exposed to this incredible and unknown secretive world actually that you didn't really know about. And certainly at my school, career departments would never have picked um, on investments or wealth management or asset management as an option to even learn about. What does that involve?

Speaker C: Yeah, you've got into Rothschilds, you're making your way, you're into the front office and you've told us you're there for over 20 years. So just tell us a bit more about how your career path developed within Rothschilds.

Speaker A: Yeah, to put it into context, I've been working now for 38 years and I've worked for essentially three companies, all old merchant banking companies, all I think of which I probably wouldn't have moved had there not been a deal or a transaction or a fundamental change within that business. So at ah, Rothschilds I was moved into the front office and I was in the institutional or team that looked after pension funds and large organizations and charities. And I initially started, having been interviewed, I'm feeling very pleased with myself as a utilities analyst. Some people would say that's a very boring sector. Certainly Rosemary, the sectors across, you know, there's retail and that's quite interesting and there's uh, pharmaceuticals and there's visits to see companies and their operations that you Would think, wow, I'd love to go and see Tesco's or Sainsbury's or meet the CEO.

Speaker C: Rolls Royce.

Speaker A: Rolls Royce, really interesting. Exactly. But utilities, hmm. Who wants to go to see a water treatment plant or sit inside a nuclear power station before it's commissioned? Which I did actually. Size well be. It's actually a very technical sector and it's obviously back in the day. So we're Talking the early 1990s utilities across Northern Ireland, Scotland and England that were privatized. Rothschilds did all of the privatizations I believe. And um, not that there was a particular connection there that. But they did used to come and try and look at my files and all the sell side research and I just fell in love with the sector and it was highly technical, very regulated. You really needed to understand the differences. There were obviously back in the day government run entities that were gold plated, so there was lots of cash. It was just fascinating how they developed their uh, different strategies. So something like Anglian water stayed very plain and vanilla. Thames Water clearly eventually made overseas acquisitions and became quite indebted. And the formulaic model that the regulator devised was fascina in terms of developing a model that meant that the balance sheets of these companies could be optimal from a capital allocation perspective and how he benchmarked against that. And back in the day when they were first floated, they used to actually change their reporting date. They always wanted to be the last so they could have the biggest dividend. It was so interesting and so nobody ever wanted to go first and there was lots of movement of dates and posturing. It was quite funny. But that's what I did and I did the utilities looked at, researched utilities, got to know them very well for 17 years. During that particular time a number of things happened. I was asked to go to the House of Commons to talk about the post privatisation financial position of the utilities, which Rothschilds very politely declined because of the political inference. I was asked by Stephen Bolks, who was then the finance director of National Grid, to present to about 100 of his below board senior managers around investment. Um, and I was quite young at this stage and it was one of those things I feel more confident today. But back in the day you say yes to everything. And then it was quite a big deal because you were talking about shareholder value. What is shareholder value? And the more you think about it, the more complex that question becomes. But also I was interviewed and I almost went to work at Credit Suisse with the number one rated electricity analyst at the time, who was incredible, very hardworking. Rothschilds countered, and I stayed and I stayed. But then that particular analyst went on to be more senior with less of a focus on electricity. He then became the electricity regulator. So I think my interest was certainly around maybe the maths again. Maybe it's coming back to the numbers and the strength and doing the detail. I think one of the influential things when I first joined is I had a boss who just took me through, reporting accounts, starting at the back, working to the front, looking at all the notes, not relying on external research entirely, formulating your own views. A company would report their results, you'd read the transcript and then you'd formulate all your own views completely without anybody trying to influence you in terms of taking those calls in the morning and initially just looking at other people's research. Just have your spreadsheets and understand what you're investing in and why you invest in something and what you expect it to return. Obviously that raised me has all changed in terms of the, uh, many phone calls you would receive, people trying to sell you things because of MiFID 2, the subject.

Speaker C: Yeah. So how did you come to leave Rothschilds? Where did you go next? And how did you get into charities?

Speaker A: Golly, yes, lots of questions there. Rothschilds looked after charities and the charities were managed out of the institutional department. The institutional department in itself, for a long period of time, had just two or three portfolio managers, of which I was one. And then we had a team of equity sector analysts, of which I covered a slightly smaller number because of my portfolio management responsibilities. What happened actually was that the business was sold eventually to Insight, which was Halifax bank of Scotland, Equitable Life. It was an amalgamation of different previous financial firms. The bottom line was that of the people that went across, I was the only front office person who eventually, through talks at higher levels, beyond me, was offered a job to stay within the private client department, which Rothschilds kept, or to move and have a role at insite. And I hadn't been successful in securing the head of the institutional team at Insight, so the decision wasn't as, ah, clear. And I decided to stay at, uh, Rothschilds because the private client department had, up until that point, piggybacked off the institutional team in terms of the intellectual property and the analytical inputs. So they expanded the analysts and, um, the asset class heads within the private client teams. They brought in somebody on the fixed income side. They brought in a good friend of mine who had previously been on the institutional team but wasn't going to Insite And I very happily was then in the private client department until Sir Eve Linda Rothschild retired. And that was a change. So at some points throughout one's career, something else happens that you can't control and you have to sit back and revisit and think, is this is what I want? There were a number of iterations and a number of different changes at senior level during that last five, six year period. I remember Sir Evelyn phoning me up and saying, with all the changes and with potentially all the decision making, moving over to Europe, do you want to stay? And I said, I don't think that's an option. I think, um, they want to reduce the team here because it's going to be run out of Zulric. And he said, no, no, but do you want to stay? And, um, I said, I don't think I can. And he said, oh, okay, okay. I was very fond of Sir Evelyn and he wrote a lovely letter as a reference, which I have downstairs in the thickest of envelopes in the most beautiful handwriting. And I left as that. The Rothschild team obviously reduced. They let a number of people go. I went to Barings and I went to Barings as a director of private clients and as a director of charities because at, uh, Rothschilds, I had managed within the institutional team most of the charities that we looked after. And so that's Barings. Barings then had a big decision to make after four or five years of being there, whether to. And this often happens. This is something that is, I think pivotal to every wealth management firm or asset management firm is the tech and the it. So Barings had to decide at a point after I'd been there whether they were going to change and upgrade. And these things cost tens of millions of pounds. And they decided to sell the private client business and they sold that to SG Hamros. So staying at Barings wasn't an option. It was made very clear. And I was then headhunted. I went momentarily to SG Hambroughs. Some fantastic people, completely different model, different way of doing things. But I was headhunted and I joined James Hambrough and partners in March 2012. I was at that point the 10th person to join. And my boss at SG Hambro said, I I don't think you understand the risk you're taking. And actually if you roll forward 15 years, we have just had our 15th anniversary. It has been extremely successful and enjoyable and fun and hardworking. It's very hard to break into industry. And we went from when I joined, I thought a very small pot of money that was, there was clients, I think it was some of the founders actually it was very small and we're now almost 8 billion of assets under management. We've got four offices and um, we have an amazing culture that people come into the business, work experience, come and trial for a week what we do. And I think 60% of our staff are under 27. We've got a really good diversity in terms of balance across many different areas. And I should just say that I lead on the corporate social responsibility committee. So the culture and the pillars that we've designed around charitable giving environment are down to. We are just spokespeople for the firm. Just to be clear, we are, it's very important that we represent the firm.

Speaker C: I recall that one of the factors when we at ah, HMS Victory chose James Hambrough was the fact that you were a partnership and that you had skin in the game and were a bit different from the larger corporate organisations in the charities sector. Uh, talk to us a little bit about how you think it makes a difference.

Speaker A: It's a very interesting question because there are two sides to every coin and we look after many charities across the spectrum and across sectors and by size, national charities, family charitable trusts. I think the partnership is really important because we are fully independent. So there are not many independent partnerships and we are over 85% now uh, owned by partners and staff. And I think one of the attractions of that is possibly that we have freedom and responsibility. We don't have a head office that's based in Europe. We design and develop our cultures and our values and how we want to operate and we're very hands on and own that process. But I think it gives you the motivation to offer a very superior service. So we try very hard to say to staff across the entire business, put yourself in the client's shoes. And it's really important because we're not the firm that will think oh so and so keeps coming up with not happy, different ways that they want to do things. Actually some of those ways just could be a more efficient process along the chain that gives a better outcome to clients. So we absolutely encourage people to bring those ideas forward and always to sit the client at the centre of what we do. We think very long term and we put the clients at uh, the very forefront of what we do. I think we keep it simple so we don't try and cross sell different products. Investment management is all that we do and I think the real differentiator is the ability for mid and younger people to earn, um, real equity in the partnership through a long term incentive plan. So we really want people to grow up in James Hanborough to stay. We now have a, after 10 years you can take a sabbatical. It's quite exciting. But we think that wider equity participation is a really good way to align people's long term interests. And I know this might embarrass, I won't say his name, but I took into my team a year after I joined in 2013, a young man who got a first in history from Oxford. And ordinarily my experience is that they might be there for a couple of years, learn everything very quickly, all the intellectual property, the processes, and then they go, this chap is still there. He's delightful. He's the epitomises everything about James. Hambro's got his own book of business. He's a lead equity analyst. He looks after a lot of our American clients and he spends time at conferences doing that fundamental research and finding ideas to go into client portfolios. I think it's quite special in terms of the front office. We've had four departures in 15 years and if you asked me six months ago, that would be two departures and those two people had retired. So it's so important if you have change. It's unsettling. It's unsettling for clients. We build teams where we're very proud to tell clients, here are the people involved in your relationship. It would be awful if those people left six months later because there was something that they were unhappy about. So we like to, um, empower people and give them clear responsibilities and, um, be a fun place to work.

Speaker D: It sounds, having created that, you must be tremendously proud. And just as you were chatting there, it made me reflect back a little bit. You talked about bearings and their decision to invest in it. And you know, as we're going through this whole AI crisis or opportunity of whatever way you want to look at it, we think that it's not happened before, but it's only when you were chatting I realized that we've been through Big Bang. We've been through lots of different regulatory issues over the years and actually it's just a different version of something that's already happened before. And looking back at it, what was the most challenging period in your career?

Speaker A: Golly. Well, I feel very blessed to have had the career I've had and I feel very privileged. And I think there's an element of luck and I think there's an element of hard work and the person that you are. There are always challenges along the way. I think if I always think in context to what the whole world presents, you would say there's probably no challenges compared to what people have to deal with. So I feel it might be slightly rude to suggest something that's a first world problem because we're so privileged and, um, blessed. Yes, there are always ups and downs and things that you have to deal with, but it's the way that you deal with those issues. But I honestly, I feel I shouldn't say anything because we're so blessed. Sorry. Not a perfect, Not a perfect response,

Speaker D: but I think it's a perfect response. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Say a little bit more about the world of charities and are there any special features of that compared with, uh, managing money for other institutions or maybe for private clients? Talk about that world and what the particular differences are, uh, the positives and perhaps some of the challenges there.

Speaker A: Uh, yes, of course, there's a lot that could be spoken about here. I think for charities and I think generally in this particular industry, it's very obvious if somebody is passionate about what they're doing. And we have, as a firm and I have individually a passion for charities, for giving back and for helping a charity to fulfil their mission and to protect their reputation. It's obviously the case that there are about 185,000 charities in the UK. As, uh, with most things in our world, the top few represent the vast majority of the income that's generated. So therefore there are a lot of charities that today are really struggling either to raise funding, given those contributions and their legacies have dropped, or to make a real impact. I am a trustee director of the Citizens Advice Bureau. It's the pension scheme. So I've kept my hand in the investment. I'm the investment consultant, um, but a trustee director. And it's that overarching responsibility to the fiduciary responsibility that trustees have and I think sharing knowledge. So at, ah, James Hanborough, we're much less likely to be at a conference with a stand and glitzy suites and prizes were more likely to write thought leadership pieces and to offer pro bono trustee training to charities. We might not be able to take them to the end where they write a policy. We would help them with find a charity lawyer to do that. But we're very keen to host lunches where we can support charities with perhaps a charity lawyer around their mission statements. All around ethical investing and the balancing act. We take every client very Seriously. But I think charity trustees really welcome, maybe not at your level, Rosemary, because you're a board of a national charity that gets it and has a very diverse and knowledgeable group of trustees. But there are others that feel, I think they're being pulled along a journey and they have skills and experience in different areas and perhaps on the investment side, which can be for some charities, one of the most important elements for them to get right is something that we're very happy to sit down, and we do sit down and have sat down with trustees to help them even starting to understand. Have they seen their governing documents, do they understand their responsibilities, have they got a conflict of interest? And so on. Very basic things are, uh, elements that they value. Private clients have moved and changed over the years. They absolutely now and with the regulatory changes are more likely than not to express some kind of ethical policy. And that's something that all managers have to get their head around in terms of being able to do it and cover and protect a client. Obviously with a private client they can have an ethical policy that expresses whatever their wishes are. With a charity, it's a little bit more nuanced in terms of meeting their, uh, mission and not necessarily preventing fundraising by investing in an asset that's contrary to their mission. There is in terms of the other part of that question, and if you imagine from an investment piece you've got a portfolio that has different assets, we call that a multi asset portfolio. So the common way to invest now is to have an element of bonds or fixed interest, gold, alternative assets, maybe property infrastructure, cash, and then equities, either through funds or directly owning the companies. So we have multi asset portfolios with different types of assets. And the objective is to, typically, if you're investing in equities in different proportions, you're taking some risks, therefore you're going to have some volatility. Therefore you probably want to aim for at least an inflation return. So you want to continue to make real returns and a bit more every year because you're taking some risk, fundamentally, that investment approach. And then you might measure against a peer group, you might measure against some market index returns, but fundamentally you're going to be basket of different assets. And a private client could have the same objectives. They want to invest 60, 70, 80% in equities and they want to earn an inflation plus a margin return so that they're not losing money. But sometimes a charity will say, what's your experience in the cathedral sector? And we go, yes, we have got some, but what's the relevance and sometimes that's quite a big weighting to the overarching decision. When from our perspective, we're thinking about risk adjusted returns, we're thinking about sectors or stocks that might be excluded, we're thinking about income targets, we're thinking about the fundamental attractions of a particular company, is it its return on invested capital, its debt levels, its cash generation, its barriers to entry, we're thinking about returns and money, not necessarily about knowing the cathedrals. And they can, I might just add, the reason I mention that is because we look after quite a number of schools across the country and um, knowing schools is interesting, but actually if I look at their four mandates and their exclusions and their requirements, they're completely different. So the educational piece is good to know their challenges and understand the industry as a bit of a research topic, but how they invest is quite unique to them. Does that make sense?

Speaker C: Yeah. Very interesting.

Speaker D: Given your journey and the job that you do and the business that you've grown and the people that you employ, what's the typical day?

Speaker A: That's really good. I hope I haven't sounded as if I'm all just one person within a team of people and I'm one of 14 partners and I'm certainly not the CEO or the head of the wealth or I'm not the cio. So the way that we operate is that we have partner led. I'm obviously on the investment team. I work out of London. We've got Bristol, Edinburgh and Leeds. They all have a head of Bristol, Edinburgh and Leeds. And then there are five other partners in London and we build a team for clients around each partner. So I go into work, I would typically get there just before 8 o'. Clock. I've started walking around because I have knee surgery and just need to get my knee going. So I get in maybe 10 past eight at the moment, quarter past eight. It's different. Every day is completely different. The beauty of our job is that, uh, the markets are always changing. Companies are always announcing different things. So on the train I'm reading maybe John Alther's piece from Bloomberg. I'm reading different Bloomberg. I'm looking at my emails, I'm reading research, I'm looking for emails that might have come in late the night before from a client. And I have a to do list which might include writing an article for a charity. It might be preparing to speak to the board as I did last week, for on an ethical piece around animal husbandry and intensity of farming. It might be that we are making some Asset allocation changes and I've got something on my blotter at the moment to send to the dealers to buy a new industrial automotive company. It could be that a client has queried something on um, performance. It might be that I need to prepare tomorrow for our monthly asset allocation meeting. So we have a pack of 80 odd pages to read on market positioning, timing dynamics, break even inflation rates, whole host of macro fundamental pieces, pieces of research. It varies from day to day and that's the beauty of the job really. So I'm going in this afternoon to listen to an analyst. If I just look at my diary now I met a ah, client yesterday to pitch to that client. Got a meeting on Thursday with another client who's in the process of deciding which jurisdiction she wants to live in. I've got a pitch with another charity on Thursday afternoon. I went to Jersey last week on Friday met a number of trust companies, lawyers, intermediaries that might be referring business. It really varies and every client is different. So I sat in last week to the work experience group of young people to listen to them present on a CSR project. A lot of that was they thought we should offer more training to young people in schools and universities around finance which was very interesting. Yes, I might be doing financial crime training with my money laundering officer, uh, um, might be having a partners meeting. It mainly falls into two buckets. It's looking at markets, reading research, attending all the investment meetings, meeting clients and trying to make money in a very safe, consistent, we like consistency and long term way. So I don't find it boring, I find it immensely interesting and you have to. The beauty of what we do is that you have to have a view. One of my first bosses said you might be completely wrong but you have to have a view. So read as much as you can and have the view. And I think that's very interesting. And obviously what's happened always there's something to worry about but the way the markets have reacted. What really interests me is the way markets react to Trump and the policies is fascinating. With just three weeks ago we had a high in bitcoin gold and the US market despite having post liberation day a 20% fall in the markets, it's completely gone back up and um, the bond market reaction is bizarre. Equities, Some equities, it's quite narrow. The leadership because of AI going back to Nvidia. So I think 2/3 of the stock market returns in the last two years have come from a very small group of AI related stocks. And the AI spend in the last quarter in the US was more than the whole consumer spending figure. So it's fascinating what's happened. And to your point about AI, it is an extension of technology, but it's transformative and it's an ecosystem that's not dissimilar, I would say, to what happened with the railroads or what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, we're at a pivotal point from an investment perspective. I don't think anybody quite knows exactly how to play it outside of the obvious tech names, but it will impact everybody.

Speaker D: Looking at, uh, the current landscape for the UK market, we've talked a little bit about the dominance of the US stocks there. What would you do to improve the UK market if you could?

Speaker A: I think that's a near impossible question. But what I would say is that from our perspective, we just want to invest in the best 30, 35 companies in the world. And apart from one UK retailer, the other names in the UK that we invest in are not really uk. So if you look at Relex or Ashted or Compass Group, they have, I think, more revenues outside of the UK than they do inside, although Ashted is looking to relist in the us. So I think there is a fundamental embedded problem with that association with the uk, because we're given the largest companies there, uh, the largest quoted companies become the weighting of the UK. The FTSE 350 still represents over 90% of the UK market. And the construct of it, the polarisation towards those sectors that are not in fashion are hard to remove or change. And quite often the valuations of companies in the UK are not as high as their peers be overseas. It's really hard to know how to make that more attractive because people are fundamentally investing in a company and they want to earn, uh, a more predictable, steady return. And I don't think if you compare like, for, like UK banks, is that regulation going to change? Probably not. Is it quite onerous with the capital ratios? And actually now they are starting to sell their buildings and bricks and mortar, which will make them probably more profitable and more efficient. But if you look at the US comparators and you look at the whole thing around deregulation, which is Trump's next thing, JP Morgan's going to probably continue to outperform Barclays or NatWest or Lloyds. If you look at the healthcare sector's a bad example because it's top performed well this year, but obviously the tech sector in the US is over 25% and, um, the UK doesn't really compete in that area. The miners, they're a big part of the UK index, but they've not been good allocators of capital. They got better more recently. But if you just look at Rio Tinto, it's always a competition for capital when you're trying to build a portfolio. And I think people are only patient for so long before something at the outer edge starts to be a bit more interesting and a bit more relevant and a bit more, perhaps through an AI lens, Interesting.

Speaker C: It's interesting that, Nicola, because a lot of conversations in the UK are, ah, happening around regulation or around incentives, let's call it that, in the widest sense. Whereas actually what you're looking at is international comparators at the company level and you're fundamentally saying that we're rather off the pace, which isn't something that can easily be changed. Sobering, but I can't but help take your point.

Speaker A: I found something very interesting this morning. I was looking, um, back through some old paperwork and I actually found an email from a really good salesperson at Lehman Brothers on 15th September 2008. He said, I'm not quite sure how long the lines of communication will remain open here, so I'm sending my contact details now. In time, I hope. The event turns out to have been a capitularly contrarian buy signal for markets, but privately I fear there is still worse to come. Thank you for all your enormous support.

Speaker C: Barb.

Speaker A: Debaudiba. I'm so sorry things have ended so abruptly. I know, I know it's here. It's, uh. I know. How amazing is that I've had. There are some moments that might not be repeated or can't perhaps, um, happen again because of the way the regulation has changed.

Speaker C: I can remember just around the run up to the tech bust, uh, in March 2000, that the only buyers were individual shareholders. And, um, we were trying to get out of it showed us something called Durlacher, which was somehow viewed as a tech company. I don't even remember why now. And I remember we had to put on about 40 trades to get out of.

Speaker A: The dealers were going, wow, yeah, yeah. No liquidity, no.

Speaker C: Anyway, so if you were to summarize, if we had to say, pick one thing, which is hard, what would you say is the proudest achievement of your career?

Speaker A: Golly, I'm not sure it's an achievement because it's been supported by the companies that I've worked for, but I think, and this raises a whole new topic, but I feel proud that I'M still here. I feel proud that after 38 years, I find it as interesting and as passionate as I was an inquisitive when I started. I feel thankful that the companies that I've worked for have allowed me to just press on because there are, uh, a lot of women that, for one reason or another, feel that they need to stop and they don't come back. There have been highlights along the way. Being asked to present in the House of Commons is a big deal for me. I did understand the utilities very well. I felt I was really granular about the analysis I used to do. I'm not the sort of person that really puts myself forward for awards or. Over the years, people have said, would you like to participate in this women's award? And I've always said no. I just know I just. A, it's a distraction and B, I just want to do a really good job for my clients. But I was nominated as the Spears number two wealth manager, I think, a few years ago in the country. But I take that with a pinch of salt. I have to be honest.

Speaker D: This is always a good one. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Speaker A: It is a good one and I've thought about it a lot because I have children who are in their early starts, early part of their career. I would honestly say, be yourself, be genuine and be relevant. I think it's a small world, so never burn any bridges. I think take it seriously and be persistent and don't give up and be the best version of yourself you can be. I think you need tenacity and I think you probably need to be a little bit humble and you need to be persistent. And there are ways to think maybe a little bit outside the box in terms of trying to get to where you want to be. But always be kind. Always.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: And, uh, finally, could you recommend to our listeners either a book or a podcast or both?

Speaker A: Golly. I'm reading a very boring book for your listeners at the moment because everybody, I think, will have read it and I feel I'm probably the last person in the world too, which as I'm just reading the Handmaid's Tale. And I'm reading it because my daughter read it and studied it as part of her A levels. She then went on to read English and philosophy at university. And actually it's a very short book, but it packs a lot in and it's very provocative and I'm already finding it quite moving and something perhaps I shouldn't be reading as a bedtime read. Because my mind's running very specific to me. I just. I don't know where it's come from. But I like investigative documentaries and books around World War II and the Cold War. So I've just finished a book which was called the Escape Artist, and I enjoyed it. It won't be for everybody. It's obviously non fiction. And I picked it up at a small bookshop in Berkhampstead where they. They're covered. They're all covered in either black or brown wrapping paper. And they just give you five words and you pick it and then you open it and it's a little surprise, like a blind date with a book. And it's great. And it actually just sparked my interest in something that I didn't really understand before. Around the knowledge that was present around certain things that happened around the concentration camps in terms of the Western world and how that was disseminated during the war. I just found that fascinating. Podcasts. While we listen to lots of podcasts at work, and in fact podcasts are taking over possibly from hard copy research now, and they're very interesting. And obviously the ones I like in particular are plain English. There's one called Will AI Usher in the End of Deep Thinking. And it talks to university lecturers and professors around because they just don't know what to do around young people writing their dissertations and articles that they think now they're all AI generated. How do you change that? It's very interesting. But there are others around, capital allocators that we look at and business breakdowns.

Speaker C: Yes, they're very good.

Speaker A: They're very good podcasts that are, uh. There is one in there, I think, for everybody.

Speaker D: I like that. Rich. Thank you.

Speaker C: Nicola, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. And, um, I've learned a lot and, um, hopefully our listeners will as well. Thank you very much for joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you so much.

Speaker D: Thank you.

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker B: Well, that's it for today. Thanks for listening. And in our next episode, Judith and Rosemary will introduce you to another key person from their extensive network from across the investment sphere. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave a comment. And to learn more about Judith, Rosemary and Downing, please visit www. Downingfundmanagers.co.uk. all the links are just below in the show notes. Thanks for listening and we hope you have a great day.