Speaker 1: I'm David Merritt and I'm Francin Laqua and this is
Speaker 1: in the City, Bloomberg's podcast, connecting you to the stories
Speaker 1: and the voices at the heart of the City of London.
Speaker 1: This week a conversation with Luke Ellis, chief executive offer
Speaker 1: of Man Group, the world's largest publicly listed hedge fund firm. Luke,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming in. It's great to
Speaker 1: be here. So you're one of the most famous hedge
Speaker 1: fund chief executive not the hedge fundie, but actually you
Speaker 1: have quite an interesting career path. I'm not sure whether
Speaker 1: famous is a never been a goal and I guess,
Speaker 1: but look at it, given the public profile of Man,
Speaker 1: it comes with the job. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: we should as a firm take a leadership position on
Speaker 1: stuff because that's the position we have as an ability
Speaker 1: to do that type of thing. My career, well, I
Speaker 1: was one of those people who from a very very
Speaker 1: early age sort of love numbers and love patterns. And
Speaker 1: I was having a conversation with my grandfather about horse
Speaker 1: race betting when I might have been five or six
Speaker 1: and sort of worked out that the bookies were making
Speaker 1: money all the time and said I'd like to do that,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, we'd like to say, go and
Speaker 1: work in the city. So I just that was the point.
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to work in the city, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what the different jobs were. And
Speaker 1: of course I'm old enough that this is pre internet,
Speaker 1: so you know, I took the first job I could
Speaker 1: find working in the city, and things went from which
Speaker 1: it was within the mirror. It was as a graduate trainee.
Speaker 1: You know. Our introductory speech was from the Japanese head
Speaker 1: of the office who said, the Bank of England tells
Speaker 1: me we need more white faces in the office. You're
Speaker 1: my white faces. And then he walked out, you were
Speaker 1: a diverse higher. So we were a diverse high. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not going to claim that I have suffered in
Speaker 1: diversey at all, but but it's just an interesting perspective
Speaker 1: of the journey we've all come on, and that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And of course, back in that moment, Nomura in Japan
Speaker 1: was sort of a very dominant force in world finance.
Speaker 1: It sounds amazing when you look back and think so
Speaker 1: at the time, with one quarters profit, Namura could have
Speaker 1: bought Merrill, Lynch or Goldmen sex cash and when there
Speaker 1: there used to be an amazingly profitable business. Now I
Speaker 1: will admit I took the job without knowing it was
Speaker 1: a Japanese firm. Was there were three jobs that you
Speaker 1: didn't know it was a japan didn't know there were Again,
Speaker 1: it's like amazing this you couldn't look it up on
Speaker 1: the internet. Suppose no, you couldn't. So so I went
Speaker 1: into the careers office, which was a room full of books,
Speaker 1: and said I wanted to work in the city. And
Speaker 1: they said, there are the accounting jobs, and I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do accountants. And there were three
Speaker 1: books by three pamphlets about three jobs. I applied for
Speaker 1: the three jobs. The first one that offered me a job,
Speaker 1: I said, thank you very much. As I was sitting outside,
Speaker 1: having sort of signing the documents, having said yes please that,
Speaker 1: somebody said are you looking forward to the three months
Speaker 1: in Tokyo? And I slightly nonplus looked around, realized the
Speaker 1: decoration was a bit weird now you mentioned it. And anyway,
Speaker 1: I signed up to three months in Tokyo, which was
Speaker 1: a brilliant time. So Tokyo, then, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the big financial capit as well. It's still an important place,
Speaker 1: but very different. Then. Tell us about arriving as a
Speaker 1: sort of trainee in Tokyo and what that felt like.
Speaker 1: That really was being othered. Japan still doesn't like immigration.
Speaker 1: Back then, they had absolutely none. Back then they were
Speaker 1: masters of the world. And you know, the Japanese equality
Speaker 1: market was worth Remember we got to twenty seven percent
Speaker 1: or something amazing of the global index. And it was
Speaker 1: sort of in them build up to the bit where
Speaker 1: the Imperial Palace was worth more than California and real
Speaker 1: estate value. It was that sort of amazing time. I'm
Speaker 1: in the mid eighties and yeah, we were tolerated rather
Speaker 1: than anything else. But it was a really interesting experience
Speaker 1: learned some Japanese, learned to understand the Japanese, which has
Speaker 1: been something that I've sort of leveraged off throughout my career,
Speaker 1: I guess. So, look, when you look back at that time,
Speaker 1: is it more surprising the change I guess in Japanese
Speaker 1: finance that we've experienced I've lost thirty years, thirty five years,
Speaker 1: or the change in the city of London. So the second,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a classic bubble, and did I
Speaker 1: know when it was going to pop. No, But it
Speaker 1: didn't take very long to work out this didn't make sense, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there were all sorts of sort
Speaker 1: of things about you know, but a pineapple cost more
Speaker 1: than whatever, not quite a car, but that sort of
Speaker 1: thing in the west. You know, it was all sort
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, this doesn't make any sense. And the
Speaker 1: fact that that burst is not that so much of
Speaker 1: a surprise. And many of the things that amazing about
Speaker 1: Japanese society is how little it's changed. Yeah, the city
Speaker 1: here was so radically different back then to now and
Speaker 1: sort of obviously lots has changed in the UK, lots
Speaker 1: has changed in Europe, but that there's sort of I
Speaker 1: think the city back then had many of the worst
Speaker 1: aspects of the UK. And somebody was talking to me
Speaker 1: the other day about, you know, do you think there's
Speaker 1: no racism in the city or no misogyny, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: of course there is. But compared to a period where
Speaker 1: it was materially worse than the national average, I would
Speaker 1: say the city is now at least as good as
Speaker 1: the natural average and probably better. What happened back then, again,
Speaker 1: is it tied to banking culture more than the city
Speaker 1: of London. It's very hard to get one's head around
Speaker 1: how unglobal finance was back then. And while I did
Speaker 1: a job going and working in Tokyo, that was so
Speaker 1: weird and unusual. And you know, most people working in
Speaker 1: the city of London would never have been outside Europe
Speaker 1: for work and not really been outside the City of
Speaker 1: London for work in most cases, you know, and what
Speaker 1: was going on in New York was very, very separate
Speaker 1: to what was going on in London. Yeah, because this
Speaker 1: is obviously before any of the big banks. As it
Speaker 1: goes in the next couple of weeks, I'm about to
Speaker 1: be sixty, so I'm you know, this was a long
Speaker 1: time ago, but it was pretty big bang just before that,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was it was a different thing,
Speaker 1: but it was a very insular, insular environment which had
Speaker 1: a mixture of a sort of, if you like, a
Speaker 1: posh part of UK society that that looked down on
Speaker 1: anything other than posh white men. And we used to
Speaker 1: have that thing about barrow boys, which somehows. I mean,
Speaker 1: actually that got that's one area which hasn't really got better.
Speaker 1: But but you know, back then, well there was an
Speaker 1: awful lot of drinking. That was a very different thing
Speaker 1: in the culture. Going for lunch time, right, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean going going for four or five points at lunch
Speaker 1: was normal, not unusual, and still going back to your
Speaker 1: desk and working it was. I mean, it's amazing when
Speaker 1: you look back at those things. It's a bit like
Speaker 1: sort of obviously everybody smoked in the I mean not
Speaker 1: every but all offices had people smoking everywhere and so on.
Speaker 1: But but it was really just the attitude about being
Speaker 1: unpleasant to you know, pick whatever, you know, if you
Speaker 1: weren't a posh white male, the world was unpleasant to you.
Speaker 1: And and Britain as a whole has changed obviously normously
Speaker 1: in those times. And do you think the city has
Speaker 1: moved along with British society or is still lagging behind?
Speaker 1: You said there are still some issues here. How do
Speaker 1: you see the landscape today in terms of how people
Speaker 1: deal with these very British problems about class and looking
Speaker 1: down notes on people with less money. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is how are we doing now here in the city.
Speaker 1: So I think it's gone from being materially worse than
Speaker 1: the UK to being at least as good, and I
Speaker 1: would say probably better. In a number of aspects. So
Speaker 1: there is one thing in the city which you know,
Speaker 1: by the nature of dealing with money all day, every day,
Speaker 1: it is pretty impossible to have a totally balanced attitude
Speaker 1: to money, right, And it's not normal, right, it's not
Speaker 1: an average Yeah, you know, you move billions and trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars, pounds, yeend whatever, every day, every whatever. It's
Speaker 1: it's quite hard to to not say some things to
Speaker 1: do with money which sound weird in any other context.
Speaker 1: But I think the general thing of the culture has
Speaker 1: really come a huge long way, and there's lots more
Speaker 1: we can do, absolutely, but you know, and but there's
Speaker 1: lots more we can do in society if you sort
Speaker 1: of mean, but I think we're you know it is
Speaker 1: it is a healthy place to day and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of yes, but we should all keep working on
Speaker 1: trying to make it an even better place if we
Speaker 1: can open to as many people as possible, because that
Speaker 1: the whole point about the city is it is an
Speaker 1: intellectual boiling pot, right. I mean, it's about getting as
Speaker 1: much IQ together into yes, an individual, but then into
Speaker 1: a room and then into a building and then into
Speaker 1: the whole city. And you know, it's it is the
Speaker 1: dynamics of having all of this IQ bumping into each other.
Speaker 1: But you need diverse thinking in order to make that,
Speaker 1: you know, a benefit. It's it's that you know. It's
Speaker 1: like one of the favorite expressions in the city is
Speaker 1: where there's no the only thing that's a free like
Speaker 1: a free lunch is diversity is diversification. Right in a portfolio,
Speaker 1: you know, you diversify and that gets you improve returns,
Speaker 1: less risk. Every type of thing in finances about diversification,
Speaker 1: and it applies just as much in people. If you
Speaker 1: have ten people who are incredibly smart, but all have
Speaker 1: exactly the same background in different forms, they're not going
Speaker 1: to be much cleverer than one person. Maybe they'll be
Speaker 1: better than one, but they're not going to be better
Speaker 1: than five people, or probably not better than two. You
Speaker 1: get people who've got a different perspective. The collective is
Speaker 1: much smarter because that's how you get away from group think.
Speaker 1: But how do you and you've really championed right diversity
Speaker 1: in the workforce through indicease and initiatives at Man, how
Speaker 1: difficult is it to recruit diversly? Recruiting diversely for people
Speaker 1: coming in at the graduate at master's level, it's not
Speaker 1: that hard, right you have to you have to have
Speaker 1: an attitude shift, and once you have an attitude shift,
Speaker 1: it's really not that hard. At that level, there is
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And if you start by not
Speaker 1: saying what school did you go to and what college
Speaker 1: at Oxford are you at, but try and actually look
Speaker 1: at the individual persons capabilities and achievements and so on.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I think it's easy to hire in
Speaker 1: at the graduate level in a truly diverse way. That
Speaker 1: the challenges as you move up through the organization that
Speaker 1: you know, so our senior leadership, so that's sort of
Speaker 1: one level down from me and one level below that.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a big cohorted sort of a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred people. And we are in the current
Speaker 1: sort of high twenty percent for gender diversity there and
Speaker 1: as I say, compared to where the city would have
Speaker 1: been once upon a time, you know, that's amazing, but
Speaker 1: in reality it's still high twenties. It's not forties. It's
Speaker 1: not even as high as where we are at the
Speaker 1: overall firm, and it's hard moving the dial and sort
Speaker 1: of even as you dig into that, you know, funny enough,
Speaker 1: in the people talent side of our business. We have
Speaker 1: more senior female leaders than we do in the investment
Speaker 1: side of the business, and you sort of think, ah,
Speaker 1: but of course the average person leading one of our
Speaker 1: investment teams has been doing it for thirty years, you know,
Speaker 1: And so that that that bit of the funnel that
Speaker 1: came in means it's easy to do the right things
Speaker 1: about sort of senior positions, but it's hard to move
Speaker 1: the dial a long way? Is that the only reason? Though? Time?
Speaker 1: Or are that other barriers still meaning women aren't progressing
Speaker 1: up to the top ranks of big city firms. Still
Speaker 1: some cultural hurdles that we need to unpack. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like I'm I'm definitely sure that the dominant thing is
Speaker 1: the pipeline problem. But you know, it's not just how
Speaker 1: it was thirty years you know, fifteen years ago, people
Speaker 1: still used to celebrate the shouty, aggressive trading floor idea,
Speaker 1: right that was that, you know, and still frankly, you see,
Speaker 1: you know what, the BBC did a program about the
Speaker 1: city and it's you know, still got shouting dealing floors
Speaker 1: and you know, a sort of machismo and you know
Speaker 1: it sort of heroes women who are more machismo than
Speaker 1: you know, and that puts lots of people off, put
Speaker 1: lots of people off in the past. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you come on our dealing floor, you know, we trade
Speaker 1: you know a lot and sting none but I mean
Speaker 1: like none that the people complain it's too loud. But
Speaker 1: that's just people talking well part from me. We have
Speaker 1: the same in the newsroom. Yeah, it's not a prerequisite
Speaker 1: for success having that kind of you know, not at all.
Speaker 1: And the and yeah, but but the the first is
Speaker 1: broadening the pipeline of people coming in. The second is
Speaker 1: then making sure that you don't sort of celebrate the
Speaker 1: wrong type of culture. And that's where management comes in.
Speaker 1: And you know, that is where the good leaders are
Speaker 1: making a real difference and someplaces not so much. And
Speaker 1: you know, we could think of the coming back from COVID,
Speaker 1: and some firms tried to make us sort of look
Speaker 1: at us. You know, we're the first ones back in
Speaker 1: the office. We've told everybody they have to be at
Speaker 1: their desk every day and you're like, okay, but I
Speaker 1: didn't do that because it's a dumb way to manage people.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you want to get the best
Speaker 1: out of people telling them they all have to conform
Speaker 1: to some rule you learn forty years ago. It's pretty dumb, honestly.
Speaker 1: And so you know, what we try to do is
Speaker 1: to find the working process that gets the best out
Speaker 1: of each person. And so we've got people who are
Speaker 1: in the office five days a week from early to late,
Speaker 1: and we've got people who are you know, dotted all
Speaker 1: over the country and frankly the continent, don't come to
Speaker 1: the office very much. But that's how we get the
Speaker 1: best out of those people. Look, is that out of
Speaker 1: personal experience. So you left the city right at some point?
Speaker 1: Why why did you leave? And why did you come back?
Speaker 1: First point of earning money is so you can afford
Speaker 1: to live, and that is incredibly important, and we know
Speaker 1: there's an enormous number of people in this country and
Speaker 1: beyond who are struggling with just that every day, and
Speaker 1: especially now at the moment you get get there. The
Speaker 1: second stage is in order to have enough that you
Speaker 1: can look after your family and savings. And then at
Speaker 1: some point you have enough money that the money is
Speaker 1: supposed to create choices. And it's amazing how many people
Speaker 1: get caught up in well, I just want more money,
Speaker 1: which is a choice, doesn't seem a terribly brilliant choice,
Speaker 1: but it's a choice. And there are some people where
Speaker 1: you have done amazing things because they're driven purely by
Speaker 1: finance as a motive. Again, one of the reputations of
Speaker 1: the city is people only come into the city to
Speaker 1: make money, you know, But that's the thing of the eighties, right,
Speaker 1: It's not the world today. People come to work in
Speaker 1: the city. People succeed in the city because they love
Speaker 1: the intellectual challenge of what is like a brilliant if
Speaker 1: you've got a brain that likes complicated puzzles. Finances amazing, right,
Speaker 1: and it's always changing. And that's I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: got me excited. I was in a lucky enough position
Speaker 1: to have made enough money that I had choices, and
Speaker 1: I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and so I stopped to do And I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I mean, I stopped, and honestly I did
Speaker 1: if you'd asked me to guess. I didn't think I
Speaker 1: would ever come back to the city. I didn't think
Speaker 1: I come back to a full time work. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just I stopped because I had a choice.
Speaker 1: I had an option. You know, essentially my kid's life
Speaker 1: for my life was funded. And so was that hard decision?
Speaker 1: Did you agonize every about it or was it just
Speaker 1: not really? Because you know, it's one of the conversations
Speaker 1: I've had regularly over the last thirty or forty years
Speaker 1: with my wife of I worked really hard because I
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. But at the point, it's not good
Speaker 1: to go home and moan about I'm not to enjoy
Speaker 1: my work when like, you don't have to do it now.
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's entirely different if you've got to
Speaker 1: turn up at you know whatever, drive your truck every
Speaker 1: day in order to pay for guests and food. But
Speaker 1: I you know, once you're in a position where you
Speaker 1: it's you don't need the money in order to live
Speaker 1: a nice life. You know, of moaning about your work
Speaker 1: seems really dumb. So what load you back? So I
Speaker 1: came back for what was a new for me and
Speaker 1: look really interesting intellectual problem. So I got a built
Speaker 1: a business for JP Morgan. So I'd built a business
Speaker 1: for somebody else, I'd built a business. That was my
Speaker 1: first go around, if you like, first career, second career
Speaker 1: was to build a business with a partner, so for ourselves,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have an urge to do either of
Speaker 1: those things again. And what drew me back was so
Speaker 1: it was the time where man merged with GLG, brought
Speaker 1: GLG hover one wants to describe it. And I could
Speaker 1: see that this was a very complicated mess that they
Speaker 1: were creating, and the thought of how do you turn
Speaker 1: around a mess somebody else has created. I'd never done that,
Speaker 1: and it looked like a really interesting intellectual problem. And
Speaker 1: it's been a really interesting intellectual problem. And touchwood that's
Speaker 1: not necessarily you know, draws most people to cleaning up
Speaker 1: other people's mess. I mean, I'm fascinated by that, you
Speaker 1: know what, and you just because you you could you
Speaker 1: see the opportunity through the mess of what you might
Speaker 1: be able to build at the end of it. No, honestly,
Speaker 1: I mean that part of what made it really interesting
Speaker 1: was I could see the problems and at the time
Speaker 1: it wasn't at all clear whether there was a path
Speaker 1: through the mess. But but that's a like complicated puzzles,
Speaker 1: if you like, And this was a people and you know,
Speaker 1: finance and whatever puzzle, and that that was that was
Speaker 1: like a really I mean to me that that was
Speaker 1: like an irresistible but that's what brought me back. It
Speaker 1: was just an irresistible puzzle and fascinated by that. And
Speaker 1: we often in the newsroom talk about you know, deutter
Speaker 1: Bang went through four chief executive critic sweet is the same?
Speaker 1: Like what draws people to difficult jobs? Can you point to,
Speaker 1: I guess, characteristics in people that you want to hire
Speaker 1: that make them succeed? It? Is it the intellect? Is
Speaker 1: the drive? Is it that fire in the belly? Like
Speaker 1: what makes a good employee? The definition of believing indiversity
Speaker 1: is that there isn't a thing that makes a good
Speaker 1: employee right that? That is exactly part of the bit
Speaker 1: is you can't look at everybody on the basis of
Speaker 1: are they the best person for this thing right now?
Speaker 1: The big leap in mindset is three years forward. You
Speaker 1: could pick a longer die, but three years is sort
Speaker 1: at my attention span. So three years forward is this
Speaker 1: team going to be better for that person being part
Speaker 1: of it? And because if you start, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: Fred's left, I need to replace Fred. Who are the
Speaker 1: candidates that I can hire today, who are the most
Speaker 1: suited for Fred's job today, and I say Fred on purpose,
Speaker 1: The answer is, you're going to hire somebody who looks
Speaker 1: and sounds like Fred. You're going to hire exactly in
Speaker 1: the image of the person who left. You do that,
Speaker 1: you're never going to improve the diversity of thinking in
Speaker 1: the firm. If, on the other hand, you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: Fred's left, that's life. But we now have a chance
Speaker 1: to bring other skills into this team. You know, will
Speaker 1: accept a sort of some Jacob effect where we may
Speaker 1: not get the perfect fit for the immediate problem exactly today.
Speaker 1: But if three years from now we can bring somebody
Speaker 1: in that makes the team better, that, you know, you
Speaker 1: can get much more out of that than And so
Speaker 1: then you get to thinking about, Okay, I want somebody
Speaker 1: who thinks differently, who's got a different because they actually
Speaker 1: help the thought process. So you can pivot, in fact,
Speaker 1: the whole business or a whole team's work around that person.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned puzzles a few times, sort of fitting pieces together.
Speaker 1: But this kind of question of diversity in who you
Speaker 1: bring in and the skills, it's about reconfiguring the pieces,
Speaker 1: isn't it all around them, not necessarily fitting someone in? Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's that's a very good way of
Speaker 1: saying it. And look at the sort of if you
Speaker 1: like the bit everybody sees the rumberg celebrates of our
Speaker 1: job is the financial puzzles. But as you get into
Speaker 1: a management and then a leadership position, really what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with is people puzzles, and it's you know, people
Speaker 1: are really interesting and complicated and so on and so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about trying to fit those puzzles. So how do
Speaker 1: you get the best out of the team, How do
Speaker 1: you get the most going forward? And that sort of
Speaker 1: comes back to that. I definitely went off from one
Speaker 1: of your earlier questions. Why do we think it's important
Speaker 1: to embrace different working practices for different people in different ways,
Speaker 1: is because that's how you get that puzzle to be
Speaker 1: the best. People who feel good about what they're doing,
Speaker 1: People with a smile do better work. We've all had
Speaker 1: to do some report, something that you know you don't
Speaker 1: really want to do. It's amazing how long it can take,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're enjoying it, it's amazing how quickly this
Speaker 1: podcast is flying by. Right. I don't know what you mean.
Speaker 1: I love waking up at four am for some time
Speaker 1: London was the world capital of hedge funds, and whole
Speaker 1: areas of the city were given over to the funds
Speaker 1: in Mayfair Ands and James is. We've written a lot
Speaker 1: about a lot of funds moving or shifting people places
Speaker 1: like to buy post Brexit around Europe. Is London still
Speaker 1: the center of the world for this, You're effectively one
Speaker 1: should think of New York, except it's not really New
Speaker 1: York the center, right, And so one can claim some
Speaker 1: numbers for London relative to New York because of where
Speaker 1: people actually are in the States. Now, London has a
Speaker 1: massively dominant proportion of the non US based hedge fund people. Now,
Speaker 1: whether the business is somewhere X or Y, whether it's
Speaker 1: people working for a US firm but based in London,
Speaker 1: the you know, the sort of we all like the
Speaker 1: stories about somebody's moving to you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: it was Geneva, and then they all came back, and
Speaker 1: now maybe it's Dubai. But never Frankfurt, no phrase, not
Speaker 1: really Frankfurt, you know. And Brexit was going to spread
Speaker 1: everybody all over Europe, but it really didn't do that
Speaker 1: to the hedge fund business. It had a much bigger
Speaker 1: effect on private equity, right, But in actual hedge funds,
Speaker 1: London is I mean so dominant in non US center
Speaker 1: of gravity and the US. You know, it used to
Speaker 1: be all New York and then it was Inch and
Speaker 1: Connecticut and well maybe it's all becoming Florida or wherever
Speaker 1: the I mean, you know there there are people will
Speaker 1: do a trade for tax. That is human nature. I
Speaker 1: would say that the trade off between there's a different
Speaker 1: trade off between New York and Florida than it is
Speaker 1: between London and Dubai. And even if the tax pickup
Speaker 1: is really a lot, it's not very It's an expensive trade.
Speaker 1: If you still think that London's a good home for
Speaker 1: hedge funds, are you finding the right talent? Like what's
Speaker 1: your biggest concern actually on diversity employees and actually keeping
Speaker 1: them here unhappy? Yes, we're finding lots of really good talent.
Speaker 1: I think the trying to get the right phraseology so
Speaker 1: that there was a period let's call it eighteen months
Speaker 1: ago where but I've the dates wrong where everybody wanted
Speaker 1: to either go and work for a tech firm preference
Speaker 1: a startup, or they wanted to go and work for
Speaker 1: a crypto firm, and there was a period where it
Speaker 1: was hard to get you raw talent um. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a fascinating thing that somewhere in the second
Speaker 1: quarter of last year the both of those light bulbs
Speaker 1: went off and it's back to be you know, but
Speaker 1: they're sort of they you know, crypto blew up and
Speaker 1: then take people stopped hiring, and that means that there's
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of raw talent available. You know. Would
Speaker 1: I like it that it was easier to get visas
Speaker 1: into the UK than it is? Yes, but you know
Speaker 1: that's a political comment and there's nowhere in the world
Speaker 1: that isn't currently more difficult on immigration than it should be.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't it doesn't get in the way of
Speaker 1: hiring great talent and still very very diverse talent. You know,
Speaker 1: the number of nationalities we have continues to go up. Look,
Speaker 1: when you look at all the incentives, I guess you
Speaker 1: have a man group to keep that level of seniority
Speaker 1: with diversity right within your employees. Is there something that
Speaker 1: works better than others in terms of getting and building
Speaker 1: the broadest team we can get? My conclusion is there
Speaker 1: is no silver bullet to this. What you have to
Speaker 1: do is lots of things which move it a little bit.
Speaker 1: And you know, whether that's having supporting outside organizations, having
Speaker 1: lots of internal networks, so people, you know, you want
Speaker 1: people to feel like they belong right, and that's a
Speaker 1: very important part of it. And that's how you get
Speaker 1: people to stay. It's a good word, belong right. It
Speaker 1: does not just mean they fit in. It's like they
Speaker 1: actually belong. And so one of the ways of that
Speaker 1: internally is networks. And you know, that's people who have
Speaker 1: similar attributes whatever you want to say. And while we
Speaker 1: always make sure that they know they've got senior sponsorship,
Speaker 1: they're always organically done up from the bottom. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: had big success with a return of program. This is
Speaker 1: getting people who've had a ten year career break, and
Speaker 1: they could have had the career break for all sorts
Speaker 1: of reasons. But I think practically all of them have
Speaker 1: been women coming back from parenting. We've had fantastic people
Speaker 1: out of that program that they've both added greatly to
Speaker 1: the firm and been you know, I mean to do
Speaker 1: a great, great full that's a bad word, but whatever
Speaker 1: to have had you have people have faith in them.
Speaker 1: But you can't have fifty of those people every year
Speaker 1: because they just aren't that many people at that decision
Speaker 1: point in life, you know, the thing that we've always avoided.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I've watched a couple of firms
Speaker 1: who try to use their checkbook to go and run
Speaker 1: around and hire all the senior women they could find
Speaker 1: in the city so they could say, look at us,
Speaker 1: our stats have gone up, and you know, well that
Speaker 1: might let them stand up and say, look, my stat's
Speaker 1: gone up. It hasn't improved anything in the puzzles. So
Speaker 1: just throwing money at this doesn't fix the problem. Well,
Speaker 1: but it's look that money can help in different ways, right,
Speaker 1: So that's not a bad thing. But I mean the
Speaker 1: bit of if all you do is rob Peter to
Speaker 1: pay Paul or maybe rob Jane to pay Sharon, you
Speaker 1: aren't doing anything very useful, right, And so I think
Speaker 1: it's important that you know, what we're all trying to
Speaker 1: do is to bring people into the city and enable
Speaker 1: them to thrive and succeed. And you know, so we
Speaker 1: organize a lot of mentoring for sort of anybody who
Speaker 1: needs it and wants it, but you know, we make
Speaker 1: sure or there's a lot more encouragement to um sort
Speaker 1: of mid level women to take mentorship because you know,
Speaker 1: there is a thing about willingness to be pushy for themselves,
Speaker 1: and it's not really about being pushy, right, but you know,
Speaker 1: and we try to always adjust for the you know,
Speaker 1: just for the thing where a man shouts that they
Speaker 1: want the job and a woman says, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if I'm ready. But one of the ways you're trying
Speaker 1: to adjust in all the talent planning, but also one
Speaker 1: of the ways is in mentoring, helping people understand both
Speaker 1: as a man that's not necessarily helpful, but particularly as
Speaker 1: a woman. Yeah, it's okay to say I'd like to
Speaker 1: give it a go. We know that pay has not
Speaker 1: been equal, right, I mean, we've talked about it on
Speaker 1: this podcast, and one of the reasons that there's still
Speaker 1: some cultural and across gender problems in the city is
Speaker 1: because people aren't getting paid the same to do the
Speaker 1: same job. How much of a problem is that. Do
Speaker 1: you think there'll be places where it's a big problem
Speaker 1: and places where it's not much of a problem. In
Speaker 1: the effort of coming up with a simple stat that
Speaker 1: applies to every business in the country, the government stats
Speaker 1: on gender pay gap are not really very informative, so
Speaker 1: they don't compare like would like to do. They actually yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just yeah, exactly, It's just that the actually,
Speaker 1: the population differences drive everything with data, notts, right. So
Speaker 1: we have a lot of data about the people internally,
Speaker 1: and we work to come up with what we think
Speaker 1: is a true number. And the true number for us
Speaker 1: is a very low single digit number, which you could
Speaker 1: say doesn't really matter apart from it annoys the hell
Speaker 1: out of us because it's not a random number. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's a few percent one way each year.
Speaker 1: And we've keep doing things to try to get rid
Speaker 1: of it entirely, and you know, and it shows somewhere.
Speaker 1: Some of the residual bits are really difficult. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the good things that's happening is, you know,
Speaker 1: there are definitely you know, today a female sort of
Speaker 1: successful portfolio manager has a higher market worth than a
Speaker 1: male successful portfolio manager or of equal thing. Now you
Speaker 1: know that's not true in every job in every way.
Speaker 1: You know, Similarly, in the US, a successful you know,
Speaker 1: a performing successful black person has a higher market value.
Speaker 1: And you know there's a sort of twenty five to
Speaker 1: thirty percent premium in in comp today that way around,
Speaker 1: and like that's a good thing because you know, somewhere
Speaker 1: you start to move the overall averages in the right way.
Speaker 1: What happens to the Barrow boys that you were talking
Speaker 1: about from the eighties. So that's been a that's been
Speaker 1: one of the sad bits of you know that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, social mobility in the UK is a big problem.
Speaker 1: It's easy sitting in London to focus on the sort
Speaker 1: of some of the obvious diversity issues within London, but
Speaker 1: when you get to the UK, you know, white working
Speaker 1: class boys are the underperforming group out there, and it's
Speaker 1: a big group, right, it's not home, you know, it's
Speaker 1: whatever thirty percent type of thing. It's um and so
Speaker 1: you know, sort of something I believe in, we believe in,
Speaker 1: and so we've tried to find things and then we've
Speaker 1: been one of the sort of founder sponsors of an
Speaker 1: initiative for the City of London which is trying exactly
Speaker 1: to work on social mobility. And I would say that's
Speaker 1: the last bastion of open prejudice, that is, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of people need to break down right that that
Speaker 1: asking somebody what school they went to is not an
Speaker 1: interesting question, and yet it is still far too often
Speaker 1: a question people have, and people, yeah, I went to
Speaker 1: a comprehensive school. Do you want to know? The name?
Speaker 1: Probably not right and you know, so, you know, I
Speaker 1: think there is definitely more we could do. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's again the sort of the barrow Boys used to
Speaker 1: be a joke that was about separating two classes within
Speaker 1: the city. The joke may have gone, but you know
Speaker 1: that this further we can go on that look. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this week's in the City. We'll be back
Speaker 1: next week, but in the meantime, if you like our show,
Speaker 1: please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts. Great review and subscribe. This episode was
Speaker 1: hosted by Me David Merritt and me Francie Laqua. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Sammersadi, additional editing by Blake Naples and
Speaker 1: special thanks to Luke Ellis.