28: Simon Hallett, former CIO of Harding Loevner and owner of Plymouth Argyle Football Club

Money Maze Podcast

Business, Investing, Management, News, Business News

4.8 • 216 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2021

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn Simon Hallett, former CIO of the $80 billion Asset manager, Harding Loevner, describes his journey from Plymouth, England, to Oxford University and then to Finance. Starting at Midland Bank, Simon moves to Jardine Fleming in Hong Kong, and he describes an amateurish investing world that was transforming, and his decision to swap continents and join Harding Loevner, then a start-up in 1989. Harding Loevner’s impressive 30 year track record in managing global equities is examined, with a discussion that covers behavioural biases, the need to restrict portfolio managers’ freedom, to the increasing reliance on quantitative disciplines to enhance the investment process. He describes the challenge of staying with winners and the difficulties of dealing with losing companies, in a portfolio context, and what happens when a firm’s assets halve three times in 30 years during bear markets and the challenge of swimming against the current. He explains why top-down thinking should be strictly limited in building an equity portfolio, why their firm has only 2 Bloomberg terminals and stock-price watching is actively discouraged. He also discusses the merits of being partially owned by Affiliated managers Group, AMG. He then explains his decision to buy Plymouth Argyle Football club – heart over logic, possibly, but why the management of a football team and player selections have more in common with selecting stocks than you might think. Finally he gives some great advice to “keep your nose clean” and “ stay the course” – applicable for both football and investing.

Transcript

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1:35.4	There are only two people I know who were brought up in Plymouth and then studied at Oxford.
1:40.2	One is my guest today, and the other is my wife.
1:43.1	And since I was born 100 miles up the M5 in Bristol
1:46.1	and was rejected by Oxford, to quote Aretha Flanklin, respect. And after a journey through
1:51.9	Midland Bank, Jardine Fleming and Hong Kong, he spent 30 years living in the US and helping build
1:57.7	Harding Lovener into the $80 billion equity manager it is today with a preeminent
2:03.2	reputation.
2:04.4	He's recently stepped down as their chief investment officer, but I'm delighted today to have Simon
	...

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