Investment Community #12

Rowan Williams-Short, head of fixed-income at Vunani Fund Managers, was my special guest on the Investment Community podcast.

In this episode (part 3 of 3), Rowan tells:

* How he finds the selective amnesia of fund managers to be nauseating. Too often they make claims of investment skill when an outcome is really due to luck.

* How the sell-side is incentivised to create an impression in the mind of the buy-side that the news is more urgent and important than it really is.

* How being humiliated, rather than merely humbled, can be a catalyst for investment enlightenment.

We also discussed:

* That when members of a team don’t fully buy into a shared investment philosophy, it is an invitation to investment accidents and interpersonal problems.

* That confidence should never be conflated with competence, especially in the asset management industry.

* That it’s disingenuous to claim that performance fees serve to align the interests of manager and client - these fees shift the risks to the client and the rewards to the manager.

Rowan Williams-Short is head of fixed-income at Vunani Fund Managers. He began his investment career in 1989 at Old Mutual as a fixed income and equity-derivatives analyst, and became a fixed-interest portfolio manager and head of derivatives. In 1994 he co-founded Prudential Portfolio Managers (SA), which is now M&G Investments. As CIO, he was responsible for all equity, fixed-income, and balanced funds. He joined African Harvest in 1999, where he was CIO and later CEO. In 2004 Rowan joined Nedgroup Investments in London as their global CIO. Then in 2007, he founded Orthogonal Investments, where he was CIO and responsible for all equity, fixed-income, balanced, and hedge funds. Orthogonal was taken over by Peregrine Quant, which later became Vunani Fund Managers.

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