I joined the Global Investment Specialist team in 2015, responsible for all macro fixed income products, from vanilla government bond funds to absolute return products. Investment Specialists form a link between portfolio managers and sales, having the technical skills of investors but also client facing skills and considerations for the wider business. It was an opportunity to leverage the presentation and communication skills I had developed with a more intensively client facing role.This role required a great deal of pragmatism, in dealing with portfolio managers who had rigid ways of viewing their products, which might not be the way a client sees them. There are many stakeholders in such a business, and managing these relationships is a crucial part of the role. This requires diplomatic skills, both within and without the company. I worked with clients, suppliers and colleagues all over the world, including helping to establish a key strategic partnership with a client in Asia Pacific.An important part of the role was the gaining of market intelligence, talking to clients about their needs in the future as well as the present. This information would be brought back to the company to aid the product development and business planning processes, and help to inform prioritisation of new products.

In 2014 I was asked to become lead manager of the Ignis Absolute Return Government Bond Fund at a very difficult time. Performance had taken a sharp dip and the leaders of the portfolio management team had resigned precipitately. This presented major challenges in stabilising the portfolio and its performance, dealing with heavy client outflows and coping with a team who were under tremendous strain. This role required all of my portfolio management skills, a considerable amount of presentational and client facing skills, but also a lot of people management. Keeping the remnant of the team engaged and focused through this period was difficult but very rewarding. Performance did indeed stabilise, and I was able to pass the portfolio on to the new permanent managers in Autumn 2015.

The company was beginning a major evolution when I joined in 2002, seeking to become an asset manager for external clients instead of simply for its own life insurance arm. I was tasked with delivering this transition for the inflation-linked portfolios. Given that this is quite an illiquid asset class, this required both pragmatism and lateral thinking. By developing a series of global products, we created innovative vehicles to differentiate ourselves from our competition, and grew strong performance track records.We built the third-party client list, initially in the UK, but later selling worldwide, to clients from individuals to sovereign wealth funds. This required working with many other parts of the business, seeking the touch points where we needed help in setting up new portfolios and products. Here I began to hire and build a team, bringing in people with complementary skills to mine and keeping them motivated and engaged. I have never had a resignation from one of my hires, though some have moved on to other roles within the company. During this time, I was became involved in thought leadership, at a difficult time for markets. A crucial part of this is to offer non-consensual views, and to challenge norms. For example, I was the only investor to be invited to speak at the Bank of England Monetary Policy Forum, on my views for the end of the Quantitative Easing programme. Here we proposed a more radical outcome than many had expected, which stimulated much debate. I was also a major participant in the 2012 consultation on the methods of measurement of the Retail Price Index (known as the CPAC debate). I highlighted that it was not just a matter of whether RPI is a good measure of inflation (it is not), but that there are huge contracts priced from it, and change to this could be seen as reneging on these. This view prevailed at the time, and we had positioned portfolios for this, meaning that we performed strongly as well as leading the debate.

The move to AMP allowed me to manage multiple portfolios, both for smaller investors in unitised investment funds, and for large investors in specialist, dedicated portfolios. This was a time of strong growth and success for the company, with the range and number of clients growing rapidly. We had considerable success in winning mandates for corporate and local authority pension funds, as well as a large government-related mandate. I played an active role in growing the business, pitching frequently for new business and being the lead portfolio manager for a number of key clients. Presentation and communication skills were key in this period and continue to be so.

The fascination for markets that my time in the dealing room had given me led me to seek a role in fund management. At the KIO I was the sole manager of the gilt-edged portfolio, and built some early portfolio analytics to the company for the first time, as well as introducing a more modern means of performance measurement. Working with Kuwaiti colleagues required a further level of diplomacy and empathy, helping them to run their country’s assets more effectively. It also required me to be pragmatic, when portfolio structures did not allow for some techniques to be used, so we had to find new ways to operate.

Joining as a graduate trainee in 1988, I started working in the gilt-edged dealing room. This was a fast paced, sometimes harsh environment, in which I learned a great deal and built significant resilience skills. I was dealing with people from very different backgrounds to me, so it built my people skills as well.I moved to the International Division in 1990, working as a markets and economics analyst on Japan, an area of strong topical interest as the Japanese markets had recently crashed. There I learned strong analytical skills, also dealing with senior Japanese officials, which required a level of diplomacy to be learned. I continued to brief senior Bank of England officials such as Robin Leigh-Pemberton, Eddie George and Mervyn King, advising them on matters Japanese and on market developments.