High Five
Finance boss takes top rank
Last year he won the accolade of Entrepreneur of the Year in the Ernst & Young competition, but now Gilbert’s popularity may be in danger although only on the golf course.
After a decade of struggle he believes is now in a position to earn some cash off his competitors.
Over the past quarter of a century his outstanding business acumen has ensured that Aberdeen has flourished, in spite of the near disaster of the collapse of the split capital sector in 2001-02.
Some of that success has been down to his ability to spot an opportunity and capitalise on it. He sees such an opportunity now, with a handicap he believes can give him a winning edge.
Even as he built Aberdeen into a major global success its chief executive retained a golf handicap of five, which he clearly did not feel made him competitive, but now it has crept up to 13 which he describes as “absolutely perfect.”
“I don’t want it to go up or down,” he told Business Bulletin. “It has taken me 10 years to get it up to a level at which I can make money.”
In spite of his enthusiasm to compete on the golf course Gilbert’s appetite for business remains undiminished and he was speaking during a hectic schedule just before welcoming more than 150 delegates from around the world to the company’s international investment conference which is held in Aberdeen every two years.
“We want to remind people of the company’s roots, that we are based here and it is still our headquarters. It also differentiates us from the rest of the asset managers in the UK because we are the only big asset manager north of Edinburgh. It is nice just to remind people that the largest independent asset manager in the UK is based here in Aberdeen.”
Although the history of Aberdeen Asset Managementcan be traced back to 1875 – and has been in a newly published book - it is now 27 years since Martin Gilbert, Ronnie Scott Brown and George Robb broke away from solicitors Brander & Cruickshank to found Aberdeen Fund Managers which became the enterprise which has taken the city’s name around the globe.
Football, and Aberdeen FC in particular, is one of Gilbert’s passions – he is a club director - and the company started trading on June 1, 1983, three weeks after the club’s finest hour when Captain Willie Miller lifted the European Cup Winner’s Cup in Gothenburg.
As the city enjoyed sporting success Aberdeen Fund Managers got off to a slow start and in its first full year the company made a gross profit of £87 which turned into a loss of £687 after the deduction of tax.
Things in 2010 are a little different both in football and financial terms.
“We have had a really good year and are looking forward to good results,” he said. “The market is expecting us to make £192 million this year so it is a big turnaround for a company which started in this very room in Queen’s Terrace 27 years ago.
“I remember our first year’s turnover was around £192,000 and here we are making about £192 million profit.
“Our target, which took us about 10 years to achieve, was to get to £1 billion assets under management and now we are at around £165 billion (give or take a billion).
“We never envisaged it would be the global asset management business it is.”
Aberdeen now has 31 offices in 24 different countries and more than 1800 employees.
Gilbert still lives in Aberdeen, where his wife Fiona is Professor of Radiology, although the bulk of his working week is spent away from home. The city is also the home of executive directors Bill Rattray and Andrew Laing.
“It is a lovely place to be based with transport links the only issue.
“There used to be a flight to London City and if there was one now it would make a huge difference because trooping out to Heathrow is a real pain.
“It is ludicrous that Dundee is better served than we are. Dundee airport is great – you can park right outside the front and it takes about two minutes to get through security – it’s fantastic.”
Aberdeen has a policy of developing its own staff and Gilbert says that while it would have been easy to stop recruiting graduates during the downturn they continued to do so.
“We take on about 40 interns a year and out of those we choose about 10 graduates to whom we offer positions
“We grow our own talent. Hugh Young is Global Head of Equities and Head of Asia and every single one of his team started as a graduate trainee so we have really tried to build from below.
“We take them from all over the world. Last year we took on three grads in America, 10 here and another three in Asia.”
He sees a bright future ahead with expansion in America one focus.
“One of the big problems we in the financial service industry had was that when the crisis hit everyone was over-leveraged and undercapitalised. There is a big push on in banking, insurance and asset management to make yourself financially stronger and that is our aim.”
“We have no bank debt and we have one bond outstanding which we want to repay so all in all we are in the strongest financial position we have ever been in.
“Our aim is to be bigger in the US, not in terms of managing US assets, but in terms of managing assets for US institutions.
“We have about 150 people in Philadelphia and we want that office to be bigger.
“We are very small in US terms. In Asia we are very big and in Europe we are very big, we have market dominant positions in those two regions, but in the US we are quite far behind. Of course the US is much bigger than anywhere else; it is three times bigger than the next market.”
He tries to squeeze in as many games as golf as possible during his travels including attending, as chairman, the two annual board meetings in America for First Group.
“One is in Cincinnati and one somewhere else - the last one was in Dallas which is where Greyhound Bus Line, which is owned by First Group, is headquartered.
“Philadelphia, where our office is, has two of the best golf courses in America, Merion and Pine Valley.
“Pine Valley is number one in the world so I try to play that as often as I am lucky enough to be invited.”
Gilbert’s other passion, which is shared by his wife, is sailing and they spend three of four weeks every summer on their yacht which is moored in Genoa.
However while hoping to make a few fast gains on the golf course Gilbert has no intention of easing up on his workload with Aberdeen.
“I love it,” he said. |
