ILT015 Quoted Companies Alliance (QCA) CEO James Ashton on Journalism, Economics & the Markets (S2 EP07)

James Ashton: Foreign. So I remember being at the, the Marconi agm, if I go right back, and I was quite a young reporter. I mean this was the moment that the shareholders vented their spleen. Uh, the, the, uh, QE2 Center. Um, this had been Weinstock's great empire. They'd piled cash high. This was the company you could trust. It had all been spent on the Internet infrastructure. The company was, had gone. And, and just to be in that room where there's so much fire and brimstone was a really memorable thing. That's where management being held to account by the smallest of shareholders.

Narrator: Hello and welcome to season two of Investing for the Long Term, hosted by Downing fund manager Judith McKenzie and Downing investment consultant Rosemary Banyard. During season two, Judith and Rosemary continue to take you on a journey through their extensive network of fund managers, company founders, CEOs and CFOs from across the investment sphere. And today's guest is James Ashton, the Chief Executive of the Quoted Companies alliance, who shares his diverse and illustrious career journey. This episode delves into the intersections of journalism, economics and business, highlighting the enduring value of the public equity market and the challenges and triumphs of the work done at the qca. And just before we get started, please remember that all opinions and information are for educational purposes and, 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.

Judith McKenzie: So today we are delighted to have James Ashton with us. And James is Chief Executive of the Quoted Companies alliance and that's the lobbying body for United UK smaller companies. James has had quite an interesting career that he's going to be able to canter us through. No doubt includes being a City Editor of the Times, City Editor of the Evening Standard, I think, and I've probably written for most publications in the UK and also a real embedded really in economics business and also has been a bit of a author in his time as well. So I think when we look at the whole ecosystem of how the UK economy and business works, I think James probably has touched each part of it in some way over his career. So looking forward to this one. And James, I ran into you in the nicest possible way when I became chair of the Quoted Companies alliance and at the same time you stepped in to be Chief Executive of the Quoted Companies Alliance. So I feel as though we both had a baptism of fire over the last three and a half years, albeit that I have stood down over the last month or so. So, James, why don't you tell us your own story from the start, uh, literally from the start. What's the route to, to where you are now?

James Ashton: What's the root of the qca? We've all heard a story about that, Judith. And so I say I'm a financial journalist for a lot of my career, and the QCA is the last three years. And people say, oh, you never stop being a journalist. I sometimes say I'm a. I'm a recovering journalist, but I got into journalism. I mean, it depends how really how far you want to go back. I inherited a, uh, curiosity, almost a nosiness, probably from my father. And there were things that I did at school and newspaper competitions and so on. I did generationally, not everyone gets this, but I did something called hospital radio. And when I was a teenager, and they always say, you should learn a skill and practice when no one's listening. And so I did several years of hospital radio. I did a show for the hospital in a town called Dewsbury, which actually was the hospital I was born in in West Yorkshire. And then when I went to university in St Andrews, there was no radio, there was no student radio. And there was a campaign to set one up. And I thought, come on, I've only got four years. And I did actually do a couple of stints when I went over to, to do, literally, work experience. Just, I think there's something quite good about just going into an office or a place of work and hanging around, and then good things can happen. So I went into radio, uh, tay, a couple of times over in Dundee, but I got quite lazy, as freshers do, because it was two bus rides away, so I didn't do that. And that switched me onto the. The student paper. And I probably spent as much time on the student paper as I did doing my degree. So it's that finding things out, curiosity, nosiness, writing stories that, that have stayed with me. And it just so happened that after I'd gotten gone through my English degree and gone through the postgrad, uh, diploma in Newspaper Journalism at City University in London, I went down the financial journalism route, which is not necessarily something I would have thought even a couple of years prior to that. My first job was at Reuters, not on the UK equities desk, because that's a very early start in the morning, writing the snaps. At 7am There was various theme desks and I was on one which was writing about the advertising industry and marketing and so on. So that was quite a. A nice intro into a great news provider. And then from there, you've mentioned some of the places I've been. Scotsman, Daily Mail, Sunday Times, Evening Standard, written for a number of others. I've never done the Daily Star, but there's still time. There's still time. There's still time. And then after I left the Standard full time, which actually is 10 years ago now, I did carry on journalism. I did lots of interviews for the Times. I did the Questa column, the investment column in the Sunday Tell for three or four years. But in that time when I was self employed, I had this idea, what else can I do? I would. I think journalism skills are great. So how do I lift my career off the page? Was something I had in my mind. So I had a podcast and I joined a board of an investment trust. I did various corporate work and consulting. I wrote a few books. And then something that brought me into the orbit of the qca. I did lots of events, facilitated conferences, and of course we did get to know each other as I joined the QCA. But I had interviewed you at a QCA event. I think it could have been 2017, 2018, thank goodness.

Judith McKenzie: Okay, look, there's a lot there to run through. So that tilt into financial journalism, when you hadn't necessarily had that bias before, was that just coincidence or was it deliberate? Did you think, okay, financial journalism, economics is what I want to go down, or was that an opportunity that just presented itself and you learned it as you went?

James Ashton: I think it's what made sense in that it just so happened that the first job I got from Citi was at Reuters. And I don't mind saying you, it was pinned on the notice board. So a few of us went for it. Citi was a place you went to for graduates. And when I left Reuters, because the contracts they were offering me there were getting shorter and shorter and I thought, okay, maybe someone's trying to tell me something. And when You've done your 18 months at Reuters, you think, okay, this is a financial brand. I've got to write to the city editors here. So this is the obvious next step. And then the next thing you know, you write in the interim news for whoever and going out and meeting people, and then suddenly you're in it and off you go. And I think financial news is. Some journalists would go, oh, it's all complicated. I really just think it is journalism with numbers in it. I mean, that you still have to tell a story as you would in in politics or sport.

Rosemary Banyard: So can you, reflecting on your journalism career, tell us maybe a couple of anecdotes? I'm thinking, what people have you interviewed that really stick in your mind? In the world of business, I think

James Ashton: there's always the kind of banner names, and I think for some of them, you invited me to drop names. So, uh, one I did towards the end of my time at the Standard. I think every business journalist should do an inaugural. And by an inaugural, whenever an air launches a new route, the first plane is a party plane. They fill it with journalists, uh, fill it with friends, celebs or whatever. I hadn't really done one of those, unfortunately, before I left the Standard, Virgin was back in expansion mode again. So I did the Virgin Atlantic inaugural to Detroit with. So Branson was on board. And so I'm on a plane with Branson 35,000ft. He could tell me what's on his shopping list and I'd still get 1200 words out of it. So I think that sort of thing is obviously very memorable because he knows what he's doing, but he's also a captive audience. And whenever I interview someone, I did gravitate quite early in my career to those profile interviews, the full page, the whether that's in the Mail or the. That lovely page in the Saturday Times, because I thought, okay, that's a great way of getting a byline and it's a lot of words. And so I. I always like doing those and targeting people and then a sense of kind of over preparing. And then when you're in the meeting, you don't want to come across as a stalker, but you want to know if you want to make good use of the time. I do remember being in rooms where you sit down with the CEO and the journalists have been there and essentially the question is, so what do you do then? And I think you're wasting your time and you're wasting their time. So with someone like Branson, there's so many different places to go because there's effectively 10 businesses in a business and he's very clever, so he can skate across the top of a lot of that. But also you can talk about, obviously he's been in the news with his family and the loss of his wife recently. But actually back then we were talking about Branson, the great entrepreneur, becoming a grandparent. So that's a lovely human way into quite a businessy story when you're talking about sustainable aviation fuel and other things as well. So he's a good example. He sticks in My mind as some of the ones. So Jeff Imelt was running General Electric at the time, big sponsor at the Olympics. And I said, well, you know, I'm the Evening Standard, I want to interview Jeff. And I think they gave me. It was either 15 minutes or 20. And I do quite like the challenge of, of what you can do with that limited resource and how much you can knock out there. And obviously there's no room for waste. So I think some of those are quite memorable that I actually wrote that up twice. So I got 3,000 words out of him there. And he'd actually missed the opening ceremony because as he said, and I've no reason not to believe him, he, uh, I think he fell out of bed and broke a rib or something. So there was this sort of. This slightly weakened captain of industry in front of me for 20 minutes. So they were fun. And then aside from the. I think aside from the profile interviews, I think sometimes you think of the news opportunities. So I remember being at the. It was the, the Marconi agm, if I go right back. And I was quite a young reporter. I mean, this was the moment that the shareholders vented their spleen. Uh, the, the QE2 center. This had been Weinstock's great empire. They'd piled cash high. This was the company you could trust. It had all been spent on the Internet infrastructure. The company was, uh, had gone. And just to be in that room where there's so much fire and brimstone was a really memorable thing. That's where management being held to account by the smallest of shareholders.

Judith McKenzie: But you also went into writing in terms of writing, uh, being an author. And one of the books that I found very interesting was the Everything Blueprint, which was the story of ARM from back in the day when it came from literally a chip manufacturer or designer in Cambridge. What suddenly urged you to do that? Because it's a story of a company from the very early beginnings, right the way through to the success that it is now, international success. So was it the journey? Was it, uh, just because it was an interesting story on a UK company, what drove you to look at that? Or was it pointed in your direction at one point?

James Ashton: No, I'd written some other books. I'd written, co written, Ghostwritten, and then I'd written a previous one of my own. And then I was thinking, what should I do? And I was casting around for ideas and I was being curious, but also, I suppose it's thinking about the readership thing, trying to be a bit commercial. So I think There are two sort of ideas books, maybe not quite the self help ones, but then there's also the corporate story. And I think I really wanted to write a great corporate story actually referencing the financial crisis. One of the best business books I've ever read is the bank that Lived a Little, which is this wonderful soap opera of Barclays. Is it kind of the struggle for the soul of Barclays? Is it a Quaker organization? Is it a um, rapacious Wall street organization? And so I was looking around for the, the best business story of, the best British business story of the last 30, 50 years. But it also needed to be a great success. It needed to be global, it needed to work in the US and it needed to be high tech and still pretty relevant today. And of course we always hear that there's all these old companies that dominate the ftse. And I'd written a bit about it, the Mail and the Sunday Times. There'd always been this story of how arm, um was given birth to out of the ashes of acorn, something quite biblical about 12 men in a barn in nine miles outside of Cambridge and so on. But there'd never really been that story that stitched it together from those early days, this 40 year relationship with Apple, how it made its real breakthrough, which was with Nokia. And then the story of how it broken into data centers. Then you have the changes in ownership and then the big challenge for me was, I mean I was writing this through Covid, so suddenly semiconductor shortages were everywhere and chip sovereignty and the chip choke in China was all coming through. So I had all this context to try and put in which, which like an ARM to the, these other essential providers in that supply chain, whether they're TSMC on the manufacturing side or ASML in the Netherlands producing the lithography machines. And, and it's a bit like, it's a bit like buying a house before you hand your money over. You've got to fall in love with the idea of it first. And, and so that's what drew me to it really. They were just, I think at that time being sold to Nvidia, which was never going to happen. I didn't want to speak to the company too early because that can just distract you. But I spoke, when I spoke to him, I said, you are making this last chapter very interesting, aren't you? And so it was fortunate the way when it came out, the last thing I wrote was the day the deal with Nvidia had fallen apart and it was the moment at which they said we are not listing In London, uh, I put that in and then we could press print and then the book came out in the May and then they went on NASDAQ, I think in the September. So actually through 23 there was quite a good story to tell. And actually in terms of whether the London market, it's a different side of the market to what we think about at the qca, but the issues are very similar and it was good to go on CNBC and plug the book and plug the QCA at the same time. Gotta keep the board happy.

Judith McKenzie: Indeed you do. So you had taken maybe, what did you say, six years out in terms of writing and writing your own books and ghostwriting, and then you were coming back into the corporate world, I suppose, in the qca. What prompted that decision? Why did you want to get back into a suit?

James Ashton: I think there's a bit of serendipity to it. So I'd had that time working with myself and spinning plates and that. I quite like the challenge of that. And there was a number of things happening and sometimes things present themselves. Judith so they chaired the QCA conference in June 22, and it's through that piece of work that my predecessor Tim told me he was retiring and there was a process and I got into the process and uh, started in the October. I think it was the draw of. I, uh, like the subject matter, the organization research. I thought there were things I could, I think things I could do with it. And I think it's nice to have the opportunity to be the boss of something.

Judith McKenzie: You talk about the corporate story from the ARM days, but you're in a way telling the corporate story to different stakeholders in the QCA as well. Now you're obviously lobbying, you're listening to the membership and you're trying to get the exchange and markets to hopefully be a little bit more energized. So you've got a range of different stakeholders. But quota is that corporate story really, isn't it?

James Ashton: Well, I think I said in the interview, this job must be about storytelling.

Judith McKenzie: You did, actually, yeah.

James Ashton: And, um, I'm glad I did because I thought I was misremembering that. But there's a lot of trade bodies and I'd encountered quite a few in the newsroom and I know there were some that were better at being outward looking than others. So I thought the QCA had absolutely had all the ingredients. And the bit that I didn't know until I looked into it was the standing it had with what I call the Big Five now. So the FRC the fca, the treasury, the business department and the Stock Exchange. The QCA was really well thought of and I thought, how can we pump that up a bit and make sure that we're not just being thought of at one level, we've been thought of at the top level. We have to tell people what happens under the bonnet, what does the QCA do every day? But also we have to tell the story of our companies and why they matter. And I think some trade bodies get a bit nervous about choosing one member over another. And I would say if you're just saying, oh, this body of companies, it's quite impersonal. Unless you're saying, this is why Volex really matters in Basingstoke. This is what this company is doing for its local economy. It's brought manufacturing back to the town, it's selling internationally, it's innovating. Here's how it's used the market to do M and A and here's what more it needs to really fulfill its potential. So that's what we've tried to do with pulling those out individually and that

Rosemary Banyard: would be possible from my perspective. I feel that the QCA has a, uh, much higher profile in the last few years. So I think your storytelling has been working well. I wonder, without getting too political, whether you could say what are the things, the really major things that you would like to see change in the UK corporate scene that would help in the current mantra to get growth going again? What are the things you think really need to happen, the big things?

James Ashton: There's lots of things that we've, we've been asking for, I suppose. I think the thing that has increasingly come onto the radar in the, and this is not just down to us and it's not actually just a, ah, public market issue. It is, I think we're absolutely okay, we can start things up, we're okay for VC money. It's washing through the streets of Cambridge. There is plenty of this about. I think it's actually getting those tiny little seedlings, the startups, to the scale up and how they can access that growth capital, first of all privately, but then leading onto the market. So there are some friction points to identify, but ultimately it is, it's the middle order that we need to be better at, uh, which is uniting the investors, incentivizing the investors to go looking for these companies and for these companies to realize that they don't need to leave these shores, they don't need to look beyond the UK to actually find the money. I think that would be. Be the number one thing. And there's all sorts of tax stuff and incentives and regulation, things you can change around that. So that would be one thing, I think the other one that we're pushing on now is, I broadly call it equalization. I think we must decide what is the balance between public and private companies now. The last data I saw, I think there were 14 times as many companies in PE and VC ownership as there are in the public markets. So that seems to me like an economic imbalance. And I think we have this. It's private capital, as they call it now. Things have changed a lot since the buyout barons were called into the, uh, Select Committee for carpeting in 2008. And I remember because I was in the room, but I think private capital is, does a lot for the uk, is really seductive. But I think we must remember the huge value of public equity, which I felt wasn't really being championed maybe three, four years ago when I was looking at the qca, what that means for ease with which, uh, a company should be able to tap a market because it wants to grow tomorrow. It doesn't need to do six months of meetings with potential VCs and so on. The transparency and visibility you get with stakeholders in the local community, wherever, and, um, that mechanism by which you are distributing the wealth as the company flourishes. So I think there's something about a rebalancing there. Some politicians think that growth is something that happens before you get to the market and then once you've grown, you deposit these companies on the market. And we know that's totally wrong, but I think this equalization point, and, um, we're making this with the Financial Reporting Council and others, is looking at some of the reporting restrictions and why we're holding this, unfortunately, still shrinking band of public companies to a level that is so much higher than anything we would dream of asking a sexy private capital company to disclose. Effectively, these are, uh, companies particularly now we're talking about private securities markets and private is so pervasive, we need to rebalance. The example is, I think, seven, seven Trent versus Thames Water. I can get into the pie regime of what they need to do, but I think we need to really think about that.

Judith McKenzie: And I suppose I learned through my time with you at QC that there's a fund manager, everything is quite transactional. You buy a company, you hopefully see its share price go up and then you sell it. But the issue, I think, with your job and where you do need to be quite resilient is that the job is never done. There's always something more to be done. It's not just the next fiscal event, it's the next challenge. When it comes to lobbying, to trying to achieve exactly what you've just talked about, there's always more to be done and I think I've found that a little bit frustrating at times. But how do you cope with it?

James Ashton: I think what's the positives would be. And Rosemary, you talked about politics. We've gone from the end of a Tory government to the start of a Labour government and what's been consistent and there's actually lots being consistent with both governments. There has been a focus on UK capital markets. There is a realization that things need to change, that these markets need to be future proof that they are of great value to the uk. And I hope with our help there's a realization that they need to stay open for companies of all sizes. I remember coming in here and someone said, oh, the qca, wonderful. It's unique. It's uh, I think the point being unique and it is without, almost without competition if you like. No one does what the QCA does. It's absolutely true. Politicians have two ears, unfortunately. This is a hugely competitive area. Everything that we argue for there are going to be bigger, ah, louder voices arguing the exact opposite. And I think we've seen that most clearly in the last two years on something like ISA reform, really hot topic. So I think we have to take what we can from the announcements that we get, cherish the victories and um, keep pushing. And I think if I think about the most recent budget and I know a lot of people, us included, are still working through what it really means, whether it's, it's a plus or a minus or somewhere in the middle. I think the VCT changes are uh, the most obvious example of that. Don't know how long the industry has been asking government to look at those limits and that how long those knowledge intensive companies have to invest and the follow on capital and so to get that, that's incredibly good. And of course that was the, that was what we heard in the speech and then the relief is changing. That's incredibly frustrating. So do you look at one and not the other or how do you deal with that? I know that there's another consultation looking at entrepreneurs tax structures which we'll, which we'll work on. I know that there's a woman called Alex Du Pledge in, in Treasury. All of this EIS VCT stuff is, has come from her and so it's incredibly Positive to have that focus. But we need to make sure that again this is about making sure that when people think growth companies, they think of AIM and Aquis are uh, the main market too and they still don't do that. So just because you have a positive initiative like Mansion House Accord, we still have to work hard to make sure that actual capital ends up in the hands of our companies. I think there's still a bit more to do in that area.

Rosemary Banyard: So do you have any things you could share with us about maybe the really sort of big events, the global financial crisis? What are your memories of reporting on that?

Judith McKenzie: Sorry John, did you not write a bit on the small cap split prices as well?

James Ashton: If I remember rightly, I think I did a bit. I can't.

Judith McKenzie: Not memorable.

James Ashton: So the financial crisis of I think 0708. I was at the Sunday Times then and I was probably the one trying to say haven't we got room for this great story on Vodafone this week? And my uh, boss would go actually another bank's just collapsed. So I was trying to. Because I think the re you clearly you've got to go where the big stories are. But I suppose because I wasn't the, the financial services person at that time, I think we'd had weeks and weeks of this stuff and actually we were looking around for new ideas and I said oh, I've, I've just interviewed this guy who's, who's launched this, it's new website for business and my uh, uh, editor read it wrongly. He said oh yeah, okay, let's have a piece on the guy from LinkedIn. I suppose in a way actually the coverage, the regulation of the financial services crash went on for years and years. One I do remember and this gives you a sense of how things can be a bit seat to the pants in a newspaper. So being on the Sunday Times. Never call a Sunday Times journalist on a Monday because their week is Tuesday to Saturday. And when governments needed to intervene, whether that was going right back to rail track or with the banks, they intervene on a Saturday because they don't want to disturb the market. So I do remember writing, I don't know, it was 2,000 words very quickly on Bradford and Bingley. And I think the key qualification my boss had decided was you're from up north, you put it on with that.

Judith McKenzie: Uh, you're giving us some good insights there into the level of journalism that happens on the spot.

Rosemary Banyard: What advice would you give to somebody who was maybe thinking about that as a career? What Would you say to them now?

James Ashton: I think they can be doing it already and I think it's much easier than it used to be. They can blog, they can podcast, and I think the benefit of many of these platforms, LinkedIn is a good example, is that it's so much easier to use the initiative now. You don't need to put pen to paper and write to someone and say, can I come in and talk to you? You can just send them a note on LinkedIn or whatever. And, uh, I think, yeah, I think they could be doing it. They could be doing it already. They could be asking those questions. I think newsrooms have changed a lot, but actually a lot of the news brands that are great today were probably the great ones from 20 years ago. FT, Bloomberg, Times, Telegraph. Yeah, I would just say get on with it.

Judith McKenzie: Yeah, nothing like doing it, is there? This one's a question I've been. Although it's a standard question for us, I can't wait to hear your answer because I'm quite sure it's going to be a little bit left field. Who's been your biggest influence and mentor?

James Ashton: I mean, I suppose there's a number of people I've gone back to and talked to a lot as I've met them. And particularly when I left the newsroom, there were people that I, that I rang up and say, can you give me some advice? Who would I pick on? Someone like Guy Lawrence, who used to run vodafone in the UK. He's been incredibly helpful. A good Scott, Brian McBride, who I've interviewed for the Scotsman, 100 years ago when he used to run T Mobile in the uk, which is an old mobile phone brand for younger listeners. And who else? And, uh, someone like Stevie Spring, who is. She's chairing prs for Music and she's done various. She used to be chair of British Council as well and she's, she's always been good.

Judith McKenzie: Okay, good selection.

James Ashton: And of course the whole of the QCA board.

Judith McKenzie: I can't believe you took so long to say that. Okay, thank you for following up.

Rosemary Banyard: So, from all of this, would you be able to pick out something that you think is your proudest achievement for your own career?

James Ashton: If I even think about a couple of things from this year, the. Some of this was reflected back at me. So I think, and I'm not just saying because it's QCA related, I think to be able to go into Downing street with a group of members and, uh, I know that was something that I don't think is an organization we'd done before. So that felt very good. And you don't really feel that in the moment, you think, how on earth do we make a conversation with 15 people actually valuable? So there was that. I was really thrilled to get the freedom of the City of London this week and this week, not this year. And I thought that was great. And then actually it was the reaction of my parents said, oh, we're coming, which is a really lovely thing. And then I suppose if I think about the journalism, this is not really one thing at all, is it? Um, it's always great pride to see your book on a shelf somewhere. And if you spoke to my daughter, she would tell you that I've certainly spent enough time wandering around bookshops looking

Judith McKenzie: for my books on the dusty shelf.

James Ashton: Yeah, I think I found, um. The cry went up from across the W.H. smith When I found myself at the airport.

Judith McKenzie: Brilliant. But we interview many people on this, uh, the backstory as to how they made a decision to follow whatever career that they did. It's all quite. It's an evolution through late school and university. Can you remember the first time when you wanted to be inquiring, asking questions and writing it down and representing it to people?

James Ashton: So the first journalism thing I did was the local paper is the Huddersfield Daily examiner, and they ran a contest. It was called the Junior Journalist Competition, sponsored by the West.

Judith McKenzie: Would you been.

James Ashton: That was middle school, so I was probably 12. You could enter as an individual or as a school group. And, um, they printed a blank grid. And essentially the competition was Fill it, which was a great thing to go around and interview, uh, people you knew, interview the neighborhood. I remember, uh, my pal from school, he'd been a great club swimmer and swam for the county, but he. He'd hurt his knees, so he'd given it up. So I interviewed him about that and the headline across the back page was retired at 13. I mean, we had a lot of newspapers in the house because we got the examiner. You know, I read it and thought, oh, that would be interesting to do. And then it just so happened that we. There was a school group put together as well. And I got. Maybe it's an ego thing, Judith. I quite like the idea and still do like to see my M byline in print, but I'm writing different sorts of things now. And actually that was with the thing with the books. There's a sense that you write the manuscript, press, send someone, edits, approves, all that sort of thing, and it's done. But very Much where publishing is today, that's half the job. Because then you go into. From the manuscript to the marketing. And part of the marketing is what are all the other pieces of content that hang off the book? If you've written 80,000 words, there's got to be 10 columns in there, hasn't there? Where do I put those? Sorry, I digress. But that was lots of different ways of. If a newspaper column is promoting a book, then you've got to sprinkle these things around. So you will recall, because we work together, I think I spent much of 2023 promoting the book. Here and there.

Judith McKenzie: The odd place. Yeah, I think so. The immediacy of. Of that. The journalism where it is very transactional. You see a story, you've got a time pressure to write it and then you've got the end result. Is that something that is a bit of a drug for journalists?

James Ashton: There is obviously something transactional and I was lucky enough to work through different cycles. That has changed a bit now because you can do. You'd be doing like a web version or an app version or something. But I had the daily cycle at the Mail, I had the weekly cycle at the Sunday Times, where the adrenaline really kicks in Friday morning into Saturday. Friday is when you rip pages up. Or actually. Or Saturday. And then with the Standard, the great thing there of you have the adrenaline rush of. You would be very old language now. You'd be off Stern at 12. So the old Standard newsroom, which was on Kensington High street, there are digital clocks all around the. The newsroom red. Always remember the numbers are red and effectively counting down to midday. You're off Stern, the addition's got to go. And the last pages would be used in business. So if you were the last page, you'd have the deputy editor stood behind you, really putting you under a little bit of pressure to get it done. Because the. You're going to hold up the print run. So there is the immediacy of that. But I think actually if you're doing it well, I think you're also thinking in the long term. So you've asked me about mentors and people I've talked to. Everything's relationships. And I think sometimes the CEO with the journalist gets it wrong because they think they have. There's one meeting and they think, oh, I've spoken now, and this journalist must scurry away.

Narrator: And, uh.

James Ashton: It's like passing tablets down from the mountain. They are now going to write that up. And I just wonder if they'd expect that same transactional relationship with any other person, with an auditor or with anything, an advisor. And I think actually you're there to build a relationship. You shouldn't just regard the journalist as someone there who's going to dutifully take down what you've said and report it in the way that you want to. I think it was William Randolph Hearst said that news is somewhat. Is what someone somewhere doesn't want to be read and all the rest is advertising. I think there's a balance there. I don't think you need to slam people for it to be good journalism, but I do think the there uh, needs to be good. Healthy respect can help. But I always thought you've got to be very sure if you want to burn a contact because there's more going back really. And so I think it's more useful to build relationships over the years as you would do in, in your work as well.

Judith McKenzie: Yeah, yeah, good advice.

Rosemary Banyard: How should we understand your. I think you said you were involved at some point in some ghost writing for other people. How does that sit with wanting your own name in print, which is something we understand as fund managers, analysts, we identify with that.

James Ashton: Do you have an ego as well, Rosemary? I can't believe it.

Rosemary Banyard: But ghost writing is. You're very much in the background and you're promoting somebody else pretty much entirely. Is that. Was that just purely that you needed a bit of income or is there some aspect to it that we need to understand?

James Ashton: Well, I think, look, we all need income so uh. Absolutely, I think so. I said co writing, ghostwriting. So there's, there's different things there. So I've written four books, two of mine and two are uh, effectively someone else's. There's one it's still a little bit hard to talk about which was a. And um, there's nothing suspicious there. It is. That's the nature of the contract. And I really was a ghostwriter there. The ghost it does not appear and the other one is Corinne. And really the difference is there is not a lot other than the contract dictates where your name goes, if anywhere. And um, so with the co written one, I wrote that on FTSE and that was with a chap called Mark Makepeace who was the first CEO of FTSE International, which was the company that launched in 95. It actually took 11 years to formally set up FTSE International, Even though the FTSE 100 launched in 1984 because there was, there was relations to resolve between Financial Times and the Stock Exchange. So what Mark agreed there And I forget I'll uh. Obviously this probably is the point where I should pay tribute to my agent. That was. I think that was Mark Mapes with James Ashton if you like. Whereas the other one I was nowhere in practice. I don't think Mark would mind saying or people would probably find it easy to guess. He did more of the talking, I did more of the writing. So it's the same process. So where your byline is pretty. Is pretty irrelevant in the way. And um, it's obviously professionally helpful to be on the front of that book which was. Came out five years ago. But the, but the process is pretty similar and what I'd be doing there is thinking about someone's experience, how that looks in book form and how it becomes a story that hangs together and has sufficient interest to engage the reader. The first thing is most of the best stories are not told in a linear way. And so you've got to think what is the best way? What's the setup. You've got to grab people in the first chapter and you don't necessarily do that with Mark. May piece was born in 19 Doobly Doo or whatever. So I think there's that. And actually some of that is going through your head because it was always described to me as an investment prospectus. This is the piece this is. And you will have seen plenty of those I'm sure. And the investment prospectus effectively the pitch document for the book is a. Ah, you write an overview of what the book's going to be and then you have a rough chapter summary. And I hated doing that because that meant that you're writing the book before you've written the book. For to give confidence to a publisher is probably never going to read this pitch document again. So they can give you a pitiful advance and you can go and get on with it. But it does actually help you think about the, the uh, structure and, and also if you're working with someone I think it's very rare that they will be the only person that you talk to because you want to be able to tell the story certainly from their perspective but also from around looking at it from other sides as well and just you. It's also useful check because some individuals memories can be faulty and one challenge with that book was Mark came to the LSE I think just before Big Bang. So he was there helping to prepare for that. So probably he joined probably 85 or early 86. And of course so much of the key of that story is how did FTSE come together? You'll have heard the expression success as many fathers. And I found many of them and there was a huge number of people involved. And this is the thing with storytelling and innovation so on. So rarely is something. This happened in this room on this day, at this moment, and as a result everything else happened. But what I had to do was talk to a lot of other people to actually get to the point of I think January 3, 1984, when the 100 launch, obviously not called the FTSE on day one because they hadn't agreed. So even you're. Even though you're writing with someone, you. It was my responsibility to. I suppose if you're at university, you'd call it reading around the subject.

Judith McKenzie: Fascinating. What do you like to read?

James Ashton: Since I stopped writing the on the Everything blueprint, I've really spent a lot more time reading fiction. So I just read a lot of fiction because it gets the heart rate down and it takes you away from, dare I say, the QCA and all the rest of your life. So I'm reading probably 25 novels a year.

Judith McKenzie: Okay, what was the last one you wrote? Red.

James Ashton: I'm currently reading. I'm getting its name wrong. It's Eduardo Mendoza, the City of Wonder. It's not a new book, but it's about, uh, a young guy and a mate that goes to turns up in Barcelona in the late 19th century just as the city's putting on the World Fair and his adventures and his building of a business and so on. And it's all right, it's warming up. It's not the, it's not the best I've read this year, but it's, but it's okay.

Judith McKenzie: Do you find you're a critique every time you read a book, you've got to have a view on it at the end?

James Ashton: No, not really. I would have a view on, I suppose some of the business books. I mean, something like I mentioned the bank that Lived a little, which I just thought was glorious. And I always think I'm looking at it and thinking the work you have to do to get into that room and to be able to tell that story credibly. And I think it was lovely. And similarly, another business one from a few years ago, Empire of Pain, the Patrick Radden Keefe book on the opioid crisis of the Sacklers and so on, because I know sometimes the kind of the battle you have to have there was something to jump back to arm and the chip designer that so many early years have become their uncontestable. But of course if you're going to write this book from scratch, you've got to contest them. And there was a part of the story, I forget what, the incident of the year, but it was something that some people involved with arm, um, because it was my book, not theirs, not an authorized book. There were some very senior people in ARM who didn't recognize part of the story and went as far as say, I don't remember, or that didn't happen. And I said, I've got three people in the room who said it did. And so I'm pretty happy to go along with that. So I think how you synthesize all of these faulty memories about. Not all faulty, but we remember and we misremember and the sort of chronology and so on is part of the challenge. So I think how the moments when I've been writing, thinking I've nailed that now writing, for example, the chapter how ARM and Nokia got together, absolute nightmare. But when you get there, uh, or you get there sufficiently, then that's a great moment. So to see that in other writers, it's a lovely thing.

Judith McKenzie: I think we've got a few instant tips and books there. Last question. What advice would you give your younger self? Keep going, keep going. That's good.

James Ashton: Don't worry.

Judith McKenzie: I think, yeah, some fantastic snippets there. I think we could go down each avenue of your career for more than 45 minutes, I'm sure. But you've blended business, economics, current affairs and storytelling, most importantly, together. So. Thank you, James. Very interesting.

James Ashton: Thank you. Thanks for your interest. Always good to talk to you.

Narrator: 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 uh, all the links are just below in the show notes. Thanks for listening and we look forward to speaking to you in our next episode.