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Female fund managers find success By Nina Montagu-Smith
Fund management is a man's world. Despite more women breaking through in many areas of business, only 3% of fund managers working in the UK today are women. Here, we meet five top female fund managers who True grit Determination and a refusal to be put off her chosen career path helped propel Kathryn Langridge to her position as Invesco Perpetual's head of international equity. She believes that everyone has to juggle multiple responsibilities, but adds that she has found it enormously helpful to work for a fund manager based outside London. She lives just 20 minutes from Invesco Perpetual's head office in Henley. "It's very difficult to do a high-level job, raise a family and spend hours commuting to work. I think you can do two of those things, but not all three." Langridge was the first woman from a British university to join the Hong Kong-based Jardine Group after reading English at Cambridge in 1983. After eight years in the Far East she spent a year in the US, before returning to the UK. She has been with Invesco Perpetual since 1990 and now manages more than £2.2 billion of investors' money. Langridge sees greater challenges in 2007, in particular for her Global Smaller Companies and Emerging Markets funds. A passion for business Having five children and co-founding a successful fund management business would have been impossible without the help of her mother, says Margaret Lawson of Edinburgh-based Scottish Value Management (SVM). Lawson grew up in Glasgow with a burning passion for all things business-related and studied economics at the University of Strathclyde. In 1981, she joined FS Assurance as an investment analyst and progressed to fund management in 1984. Lawson and her husband, Colin McLean, set up SVM, a boutique investment manager, together with Donald Robertson, in 1990. The business, which began managing institutional funds, is now geared towards retail funds and has £600 million under management across 14 funds. Certain female qualities can be advantageous, she says. "Women are more perceptive and not as aggressive as men… rather than just focusing on the margins, I try and see what opportunities companies see for themselves in the future." Lawson runs SVM's UK 100 fund and is second manager of the UK Opportunities fund, but her larger role is to develop ideas for many of the group's other funds. Her expertise is in UK equities. She says that although these have enjoyed a "golden age" in recent years, there will still be opportunities to be had in 2007, particularly for large-cap companies. Tortoises and hares When it comes to investment management style, women tend to be tortoises and men hares, according to Theo Zemek, manager of the fixed interest and managed distribution funds at New Star. She says women are prepared to do more homework before making investment decisions and tend to look at the big picture. Zemek is best known for the very successful range of fixed-interest funds she set up at M&G, Zemek, 51, joined the industry as a bond saleswoman with Lehman Brothers in 1983 and later moved from trading to fund management. After M&G was taken over by Prudential, Zemek hankered after a new challenge. She joined New Star in November 2002. She has managed New Star's Managed Distribution fund - now with £400 million under management - since its launch in early 2003, and the £1 billion Fixed Interest fund since it was bought from Aberdeen, again in early 2003. Zemek expects slightly higher interest rates in the short term to make it quite difficult to maintain capital value. On the other hand, default rates for corporate bonds are low, meaning it's safer to invest in lower-grade bonds which pay higher income. The human touch Combining a mixture of mathematical and social skills has propelled Elena Shaftan to success. While many fund managers tend to look at the headline figures first, Shaftan believes establishing trust and rapport with management is the most important thing a fund manager can do. She's reluctant to put this approach down to her gender, but agrees that "men and women are different, so their approach to fund management can be different". Her interest in the human element is what led Shaftan to the investment industry. After completing a degree in radio-electronic engineering at Riga Aviation University, Shaftan, who was born in Latvia, worked in publishing for a number of years. While working on a publication about investment opportunities in the former Soviet Union, she realised how interesting investment could be. Shaftan joined AIB Govett in 1995 and then moved to Jupiter in 2002. In 2004, she launched the Emerging European Opportunities fund which is now worth more than £536 million. Shaftan's fund has enjoyed great success since its launch, with her performance described as "red hot" by commentators. The fund has shot up 176% in value in the last three years making it the top-performing fund in global emerging markets over that period. She expects her fund to continue to flourish in 2007. Shaftan concedes that some women find combining motherhood with a high-flying career a challenge too far, but having a daughter last year has not hindered her. "It takes compromise," she says. Team player Gender isn't key to investment success, says Karen Robertson, manager of the UK Equity High Income and UK Equity Growth funds at Standard Life. She says it's all about working as a team and making the most of each member's abilities. Although the investment industry is male-dominated, there are more women lasting the distance these days, she adds. Robertson, 37, who lives in Edinburgh with her husband and three children (one aged 11 and twins aged nine) feels that being successful just takes commitment, regardless of sex. In the past, the demands of the job made it hard for women to work part-time, however, her employer was flexible when her children were small. Robertson was drawn to investment management while at university studying economics and finance. She began managing the Income fund in 1995, the UK Equity General Trust in 2000, and the Growth fund in 2004. She also manages the Standard Life Equity Income Trust (SLET), which was acquired from Deutsche Bank last year. In total, she has £2.7 billion under management. Both her funds have consistently beaten the index over one, three and five years. UK Equity High Income has done particularly well, rising by 87% over five years, compared with the average for equity income funds of 65%. Robertson believes the challenge in 2007 will be to find cheap companies that are improving, particularly as valuing companies has become harder with the emergence of new funds launching bids.
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