London’s Telegraph recently profiled five “young guns” of the hedge fund world whom industry experts have pegged as rising stars. It’s worth taking a quick look at their hedge fund career trajectories. They include:
Richard Staveley, 36, of River and Mercantile Asset Management. Staveley cut his teeth as a chartered accountant, worked for a hedge fund, headed the small companies team at another firm, all before becoming a founding partner of R&M. Today he runs R&M’s UK Equity Income fund, which has earned returns in the neighborhood of 24% since inception in 2009.
Thomas Moore, 36, Standard Life. Moore started at Schroder Investment Management Limited as a graduate in 1998. He worked as an analyst on the Emerging Markets team before moving to the equivalent unit at Standard Life in 2002. In 2006, he moved to the UK equities team, and assumed responsibility for two UK institutional funds. He is credited with turning around the performance of the firm’s “Income Unconstrained Fund” from laggard to leading the sector in 2009.
“Thomas has only been running the Unconstrained fund for a few years but he took it on after a couple of years of poor performance and turned it around,” said Mark Dampier of Hargreaves Lansdown. “What’s most impressive is he didn’t go in and throw the whole portfolio out, rather he bravely kept a lot of it – and it paid off.”
Leonard Charlton, who runs the Melchior European Absolute Return Fund. Charlton started his career as an equity trader for Goldman Sachs before moving to co-manage the hedge fund, GLG European Opportunity, in 2003. He moved to Melchior in 2006 and launched the Absolute Return fund in 2010, which has had returns of 11% in the past year.
Philip Matthews, who manages the Jupiter Growth & Income Fund, first joined the firm in 1999 as an assistant fund manager. He rose through the ranks to manage his own fund in 2006. He also acts as deputy manager of Jupiter’s Income Trust.
And finally, there’s Rupert Brandt, who followed his mentor James Findlay when he set up his own money management company, Findlay Park. Brandt took over Findlay Park’s Latin America Investment Trust, turning it into the top-performing Latin America closed-ended fund in the world from 2003 to 2006.
What would you say is the ideal hedge fund manager career path? From investment banking to fund manager? Latching onto a mentor and following in his or her footsteps? Add your comments below.
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