Being Invested

Hello and welcome to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. For Ep2 of Season 2 we have something really special, finishing off the year strong. I’ve chosen and carefully wrapped up a conversation with one of the most influential investors in the world, Lee Spelman, JP Morgan’s chair of global equities. Now advising on trillions of dollars of assets, Lee grew up in a family that  didn’t even own stocks. Yet when she was told there was no way she’d get a job on Wall Street, that’s exactly what she did. She discovered it was her passion, combining a journalist’s skill for finding the story and a love of competition that sizzles in the performance-driven culture of public markets.  She graduated from the Wharton School of Business, and has been an active alumna for decades, including serving as a Trustee. She started her career at Martin Simpson & Co, a brokerage specializing in tech research. Lee joined JP Morgan in 1989 and rose through the ranks. As a Senior Research Analyst, she covered computer hardware and software sectors in the US at the start of the digital age – sitting in the front row as the PC and the internet emerged, and on first-names with the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. She became MD and led JP Morgan’s US Equities group for many years, until starting her current global role in 2024. She’s married with two grown children, lives in Manhattan, adores art and travelling, and has never lost her love of the ‘newsroom.’ For years Lee has leant her time and influence to open doors in the investment industry for women and under-represented people, and she’s not done yet - now actively involved in JP Morgan’s Project Spark, a new initiative providing capital to funds managed by diverse, emerging alternative managers. With the pod's Season 2, I am shining a light on some of the many brilliant women in the US investment world. Lee truly emanates her own radiance, and I am thrilled to share our conversation with you. Stay tuned in the new year – we have a line-up of cracking episodes with the personal stories of extraordinary investors. Thank you for your support in 2024 and see you in 2025!WHAT'S IN STORE:I'm a competitive person. I like to win. And in investing there's a scorecard.So I think to be a good investor requires two … opposing characteristics. One is you have to have the courage of your convictions so that you can actually invest. But at the same time, you have to have the humility to know when you're wrong and to move on.You know, predicting the future is impossible. Let's start with that. I've ordered my crystal ball a long time ago. I'm still waiting for its arrival.I struggle with why more women aren't interested in investing. I think some of it comes down to risk. … women tend to do very well in school, outstanding students because they study and get the A. And then you come into investing and you could do all the work you want. It doesn't necessarily mean the stock you're going to pick is going to work.I try to keep an even keel and.. I try not to get angry when something goes wrong. … after a day or two goes by you say, you know, okay,… I can live with it. And you move on.The key as, as you're beginning your career ... is to become an expert at something. So when you're a junior .. try to just add value. Become an expert in some aspect of your job where you know it better than just about anybody else, because that …is how you get recognized.FAVESFilm: Love ActuallyBook: Anna Karenina, Lev TolstoyMusic: Thomas McKean (singer-songwriter)Quote: “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful” – Warren BuffettYouTube: Roger Federer speech at Dartmouth - https://youtu.be/pqWUuYTcG-o?feature=shared

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. I’m your host, Susannah Nicklin, and I’m hugely excited to launch Series 2 of the podcast with today’s episode. For Series 2, I’m taking you on a trip across The Pond. We will meet US-based investors who have lived fascinating lives, sharing hard-won lessons and insights from their own journeys and the coal face of the markets. But I’m not bringing you just any US investors. You are going to hear from the top women investors in the US. It has been more than 25 years since I started in the industry, and despite much progress, I still see many all-male panels at investment conferences and not enough women running investment businesses or occupying senior investment roles. This series will celebrate and expand awareness of the brilliant women across the industry - and it’s for men as much as women. Research shows that men have historically been less likely to read books by or about women, while women read agnostically. If you’re a man looking for an information advantage, here’s a great place to start. My first guest is Yrenilsa Lopez, the MD of Investments for the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations, which includes mission-driven lenders such as Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance. Yrenilsa has over 14 years of experience in private equity and debt investments globally, focused on impact and sustainable assets. At Momentus Capital, she leads a team focused on making impact investments, including an innovative form of non-dilutive investments specifically for businesses in the growth-stage and which create social impact within the communities they serve. Prior to joining Momentus Capital, Yrenilsa spent eight years with Women's World Banking Asset Management as its Portfolio Manager and Principal Investment Officer, where she led private equity transactions into gender-focused financial service institutions, fintech, and insurance companies in global developing markets. She has held board directorships in investment companies in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Financial Inclusion Equity Council (FIEC). Yrenilsa is based in New York and is an avid cyclist who has completed several 100-mile day rides. We touch on the game-changing power that comes from your family’s belief in your abilities, standing up to implicit bias, badass women bosses, and structuring great win-win investments by taking the time to understand the needs of underserved communities. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did, and thank you so much for listening to Being Invested. Please stay tuned and spread the word!  WHAT’S IN STORE: It’s very important to not believe someone when they try to tell you you can't do something.One, you can't take it for granted that people will know you are worth what you are, so you can't stop working hard. Two, you have to believe and stand up for yourself when you know you can do it.High standards, being earnest and having a high level of trustworthiness are key. It makes others want to work for you and it makes others want to follow your example.There's no magic. It's just hard work and precision.Don't ever try to shoehorn yourself into a space that is not you. It's important to understand what value you bring, where you bloom and where you do your best work and place yourself in situations where that's valued.  FAVES:Music: Juan Luis GuerraBook: The Good Earth by Pearl S. BuckComedian: Janine GarofaloDinner companion: Lucille Ball THANKS to the team:Tom McKean, Sophie Hardy, Alexander Russell

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. My guest today is the brilliant and indomitable Diana Noble. We talk about how motivation changes everything, how success can vary at different life stages, how going to Harvard for an executive MBA gave her the confidence to step into leadership, and what it takes to go from investor to business builder. Diana started in the vanguard of PE/VC in the UK and later was at the forefront of international development, taking bold career moves at each stage. She is now Deputy Chair of the Bank of England Court of Directors, a Board member of Wellcome Trust, Non-Exec Director of Brookfield Asset Management, and Chair of The Children’s Society. She also advises leaders of PE firms as the founder of Kirkos Partners. From 2011-17, Diana was CEO of CDC, the UK’s £5bn development finance institution (now called BII) where she led significant transformation and growth. Earlier, she was a partner at Schroder Ventures (now Permira) and founded e-Ventures and Reed Elsevier Ventures. She also led Operations for the Clinton Foundation’s Health Access Initiative, responsible for 43 countries and the scale-up of a global program giving children access to HIV/AIDS care. Diana has a first-class Law degree and was awarded a CBE in 2017. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did!Thank you for listening to Being Invested and making Series 1 a success. We will be back after a summer break for Series 2 in the autumn – with a timely angle and amazing guests. See you then!WHAT'S IN STORE·       “Two lessons I take from that time: one is motivation is everything. If you're motivated, you can do so much. If you're not, you're just going to bumble along. And the second thing is: we all need a little help at different times. And … you can be really lucky to have the right people in your lives to sort of steer you a little bit, not necessarily tell you what to do.”·       “I wanted to learn as fast as I possibly could and be put in scary situations and test myself. So, it was sink or swim, but I swam.”·       “Parenting is super, super hard … It's about leaning in, leaning out, being there, always being there, always listening, but holding back a bit on the direct advice.”·       “I like (investment managers to have) scars. I like failures - when (they) can really talk well about why it happened and why it won't happen again. I think if you hire people who've already got scars, someone else has paid for their learning curve and you're benefiting from it.”·       “For career changes, make sure you've got the right balance between the things you already know - because that's going to give you confidence on day one, and the things that you don't know - because that's the stretch.”·       “Flattery (should) play no role in your career decisions. Fine, be flattered, accept it because it's nice, but put it aside. Do not shortcut your due diligence about whether the role is going to be right for you, whether you can succeed.”·       “I was reasonably well known, I was making lots of money, but no one else was benefiting, really. And that just felt wrong for me.”LINKSUnleashed – Frances Frei and Anne MorrissFAVOURITESVideo: George Saunders speech on Kindness - https://youtu.be/ruJWd_m-LgY?feature=sharedQuote: “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Flannery O’ConnorComedy: Flight of the Conchords GRATITUDESound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKean

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. My guest this time is Nick Kirrage, co-head of the Global Value Team at Schroders, and it’s a really fun conversation. Nick is one of those people who takes on difficult things with a light touch. He has a contagious enthusiasm and openness about how human emotion – his own included – can be the curse of the investor but how acting with awareness of this can generate reliable returns time and again. Nick and I explore how AI might change this pattern, the investing rules he follows and which ones he’s left behind, as well as how an unexpected turn into the marketing department early on in his career has helped him succeed in running a market-leading investment team. You will take away thoughtful insights into the enduring tenets of value investing and what it takes personally to remain a contrarian. Nick studied aeronautical engineering at Bristol, but got hooked on investing during university and started his career at Schroders as a graduate, ultimately co-founding the Global Value Team in 2013. He and his team now manage more than GBP11bn in assets for clients in the UK and around the globe. Alongside value investing, Nick has embraced other endurance challenges – including the Marathon de Sables, cycling the length of the country, and now participating in ÖTILLÖ Swimrun. When he’s not holding his nerve in the markets or on a chilly starting line, he might have drumsticks in his hand, as he has recently taken up drumming. Nick cares deeply about the future of the UK as a dynamic global financial centre and is actively involved in a number of initiatives, including the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, to encourage regulation and policy to support the continued strength and growth of the investment industry here. I hope you enjoy the podcast. WHAT'S IN STORE“Don't fall in love with stocks because they can't love you back.”“(CEOs) are …the most compelling salespeople in their business: they've made it up the pyramid. They're good at telling a story. I've been in thousands of management meetings, and no manager ever said to me, “Nick, I just want you to know, this is a terrible business, and or our stock price is horribly overvalued.” … And both those things have been true many times. So, you've got to understand what that meeting with a CEO is.”“I don't think for any role, you need to change who you are, but what you do need is a very, very healthy dose of self awareness.” “It is a superpower to not have assumed wisdom, to not come with legacy bias and views.”“When you understand what might go wrong, you can in some ways ameliorate that with contingency. You can think: is that a risk worth taking to achieve our objective? So, red teaming is built in as part of our process.”“If you go and ask people to pick the 20 worst investments in the stock market, it can be quite embarrassing. This is a game where the process is disproportionately important, because it's a game of fine margins.” FAVOURITESBook: Amy Edmondson’s books – including ‘Right Kind of Wrong’ ‘The Fearless Organization' and ‘Teaming'Music: 'Hold the Line' by Toto, anything AerosmithQuote: “When a management with a reputation for great execution in an industry with a reputation for terrible returns meet, it's the industry that leaves with its reputation intact.” Warren BuffettPodcast: The Value Perspective by Schroders GRATITUDESound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKeanI'd love your feedback, and if you'd like to suggest a guest, please message me on LinkedIn.

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets.For our first podcast of 2024, I am joined by a true pioneer – Michele Giddens, one of the ‘founding parents’ of impact investment globally and Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Bridges Fund Management. Our conversation goes deep, exploring how shyness as a child cultivated a purposeful orientation to contribute and perform. Born in Leicester, with early years in Canada and California, Michele has always embraced new frontiers, and woven purpose into her hugely successful investing and business-building career. Undeterred by extreme conditions in the Gobi Dessert nor sceptics in the City, Michele has been a leader in helping to create a new model of investing, designed to deliver both financial returns and positive, measurable impact for society. We cover fascinating ground, including reflections on the many hats worn in building a leading private markets investment firm and the mainstreaming of impact investing.  As battles and tensions flare around the world, I want to shine a light on people finding ways to direct investment to create more equitable, sustainable and peaceful life on our beautiful planet. Michele is one of these people. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!Michele co-founded Bridges in 2002 and the firm has since raised approaching £2bn across multiple asset strategies, with investments across Europe, the US and, recently, in emerging markets. She has also served on and chaired numerous boards: including as adviser to the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force, chair of the CDFA, chair of the UK National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, chair of a Global Working Group on Policy for the G7 Impact Investment Taskforce, member on the BVCA Council, and NED on the board of CDC (now BII). Michele is a Trustee for the Bridges Impact Foundation. Her early career was in the charitable sector and then international development finance. Michele studied PP&E at Oxford University, earned an MBA from Georgetown University and was awarded an OBE for services to international development and social finance in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. She is married, has two children and enjoys playing the piano, yoga, music and dancing.WHAT'S IN STORE “I think my reaction to shyness...was determination to fight back by doing the thing that felt to me the absolutely scariest that I could do.” “After about 30 minutes, we drove off the road. I asked why? And they said, well, there is no road between here and there. So we just started striking out across this completely white wilderness of snowy Gobi desert.” “I saw...business not just as a way for some shareholders to make money, but as an exciting mechanism for solving problems in the world.” “A lot of pioneers end up building the plane as they fly."“What really changes the world is collective intelligence, not any one individual's activities.”“I'm just not quite clear whether a life has been well lived if you don't write a book, so who knows?” FAVOURITES: Book: ‘Collective Intelligence' - Jennifer Sundberg & Pippa Begg; ‘Anna Karenina’ - Lev Tolstoy; Music: Beatles; Quote: “A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” – Eleanor Roosevelt; Podcast: Empire; Comedians: Monty Python GRATITUDE: Sound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKeanPlease leave a review or message me on LinkedIn!

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. My guest for Episode 8 is Mike Reid, founder and senior partner of Frog Capital, based in London and investing across Europe. We get into critical, thorny and transformational aspects of scale-up investing, emphasising effective processes and human interactions as the engines of great returns. Frog invests growth capital in software scale-ups that have a clear net positive impact on society, high growth potential, and proven revenues and profitability. I have the pleasure of working with Mike as a non-executive director on the Frog board, and can vouch that Mike walks the walk - he is relentlessly curious about innovation and tech, understands the scale-up phase and ingredients for success like few others, focuses on people and team dynamics, and always makes time for the important in-person conversation and getting to the heart of the matter. Mike lived in five countries before the age of 14, and this comfort with rapid, unpredictable change has set him in good stead for a career in venture and growth investing. He graduated from Bath University and subsequently spent 13 years at 3i before founding Frog. I thoroughly enjoyed this open and illuminating conversation, and I hope you will, too.Thank you for listening. Please stay tuned for future episodes - and I love to hear your feedback! If you'd like to suggest a guest, you can find me on LinkedIn.WHAT'S IN STORE"I think number one is … self awareness, both at the individual level, but also at the team level.”“Be calm about your successes because, yes, they were great, but don't let it get to your head…In the technology arena, with such ups and downs in the market, you see some extraordinary exits … where, literally, if the business had been going six months later, it probably would have gone bust…from Hero status to … probably the end of the firm.”“The more experience you have, the more challenging it can be because you've got too much information, you've got too many memories and it can affect your ability to take risk.”“One of the pieces of content we put into our papers is a deliberate devil's advocate section … typically filled in by people in the deal team who are not so close, to actually argue against the deal in the paper. Why shouldn't we do this deal— really succinct? It is a really simple but really interesting way to ensure there's a diversity of thought.”“I was very lucky at 3i, where there was a huge focus on soft issues around relationship building, influencing and winning trust. … Entrepreneurs are marrying investors and it's a long term relationship. So whilst the price of the deal, et cetera, is really important, ultimately when they wake up or go to bed at night, they'll be thinking, who do I want to have to call when the quarter didn't quite go so well? They want to be ringing people they get on with and can trust. That whole softer piece is less easy to teach but is a really key area to keep honing the whole of your career.”Book Recommendations: Philip Kerr novels and ‘Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It” by Chris VossFIND MIKE: https://frogcapital.com/profile/mike-reid/HUGE GRATITUDE TO:Sound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKean, Photo: Dom Rodgers

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. Today’s episode with my brilliant guest Robin Hindle Fisher packs a punch: it’s a story about the power of self-belief and tenacity, bold lifelong learning and reinvention, and how great investment firms need leaders who know how to invest, and how to lead. I have known Robin since he became the Non-Executive Chair of Big Society Capital last year. He brings to his leadership the lived experience of social inequality, having been born with disabilities caused by the drug Thalidomide. Our conversation is wide ranging across personal and professional terrain. We hear how being told not to bother applying for a top City job simply whet Robin’s steely determination and competitive edge, and why he thinks the best place to be in asset management now is in impact investment. I enjoyed it immensely and I hope you do, too.Robin's career has spanned executive and non-executive roles in the investment management industry. He has been a charity sector trustee for over 20 years, and has practiced as a business coach to Exco level corporate executives for the last 14 years. Along with chairing BSC, he is a Governor at the Motability Foundation, a non-exec director at Oldfield Partners and a founding partner at the business coaching firm Hay Hill Partners. Robin received a Masters in Management, Leadership and Strategy from LBS, has an MA in Coaching Psychology and an MSc in Executive Coaching. He was awarded an OBE in December 2018.Thank you for listening. Please stay tuned for future episodes and spread the word! WHAT'S IN STORE"The experience of having been a leader in my earlier life gave me the confidence in organizations to put my neck on the block and to take responsibility for getting things done when others were perhaps happier to go with the status quo." “It's a reality that having arms that are less than half the size of other people's does make me different. I do have to cope with some aspects of life that other people find easy. And I can understand why people give me a second look, because you don't see people like me... on a day-to-day basis. But at the same time, I absolutely expect, and indeed, I am happy to fight for the right to be treated as an equal.""Any investor who says that dealing with failure is not part of what they do is either kidding themselves or trying kid their client. Dealing with portfolio decisions that don't go the way that you want them to go is absolutely fundamental to being a fund manager.""I think there's too much investment management in the world, ... too many companies doing it. And while I think investment management should have processes and rigor, I think it's best pursued in relatively small entities that are owned, run and led by investors.""I don't think the current Western iteration of capitalism is sustainable if there isn't a fairer allocation of the returns that come from enterprise."IMPACT INVESTINGhttps://bigsocietycapital.com/https://www.impactinvest.org.uk/https://thegiin.org/FAVOURITESMusic: Springsteen, Elton John, Van Morrison, JS Bach's Six Cello suitesFilm: Dr Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, When Harry Met SallyBooks: Charles Handy's writings and "The 100-Year Life'" by Lynda Gratton and Andrew ScottI'd love your feedback, and if you'd like to suggest a guest, please message me on LinkedIn.GRATITUDESound: Alexander Russell, Design: Sophie Hardy, Music: Tom McKean

Welcome back to Being Invested, where we explore the personal stories of the people who make the markets. We take a fun, fascinating summertime detour in Episode 6, for a conversation with one of the world's top investment coaches, Lawrence Evans. We all know the value of coaches in sport and other walks of life. But like me, you may not have heard of an investment coach - they are not standing by any sidelines and their names don't appear in headlines. But they can be game changers, integrating lessons from high performance sport and other fields, and shining a light on what investing skill is, and how to elevate it. Lawrence has worked with the world’s top investors for over 15 years, coaching using his own proprietary methods grounded in multi-disciplinary research and practice. He's helped them raise their game, recover from tough patches, hone their skills and communicate successfully - with a grounding in self-awareness and discipline. Lawrence and I talk about how he does this, what he’s learned over the years and how we all can improve our craft – investing or perhaps any craft - through identifying the rules we use, and knowing when to change them. I was thrilled to have Lawrence join me as a guest and found it a very stimulating conversation. I hope you enjoy it and thank you, merci, muchas gracias for listening!WHAT'S IN STORE: “Strength maximization gives you a chance to be Mozart.” “I see no link at all between being a great investor in terms of skill and having a massive IQ. In fact, I actually think it might be inversely correlated. The more intelligent you are, perhaps the more troublesome it is to be a skillful investor.”“What are you trying to improve as an investor? …Almost everybody tells you, I'm trying to improve Alpha or my benchmark plus returns. But you don't control that. So I would ask the question again, give me something you're trying to improve that you control.” “What is it about you that you're really naturally good at as a human being? And let's do more of that in your strategy. ... A lot of people who come into this investing world who are super smart and super intelligent, they think they have to be good at everything. Well no, that's not investing. …you have to wait, as Buffett calls it, for the fat pitch, and if everything makes sense, then go in. But if it doesn't, wait.”“Some of the best investment teams in the world that I've met are consciously risk diverse. Some of the worst investment teams I've ever met are risk non-diverse, and are clustered around the risk personality of the boss. But they are unaware that happens.” “There are a lot of people with entrenched views and I'd much prefer them to have entrenched hypotheses.” “You've got to be prepared to be self aware. Self awareness wins. Not smartness, but self awareness wins. And you have to be prepared to work super hard at discipline.” “Most people struggle with discipline … it's within us all to be somewhat complacent, some more than others. But part of what I do in this process is introduce the humble notion of a checklist. A checklist is outsourced discipline. It's a … tool that outsources complexity to a framework that you follow.”Lawrence can be found:https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-evans-9a72588/?originalSubdomain=frhttps://www.salomon-partners.com/people/Thank you for tuning in! I'd love your feedback, and if you'd like to suggest a guest, please message me on LinkedIn.GRATITUDESound: Alexander RussellDesign: Sophie HardyMusic: Tom McKean