NewSmith Capital - An Invaluable Experience

NewSmith Capital is a fund management business based in the West End of London, managing around $7bn of money for various institutional and high net worth clients. As is very typical in any financial services business, a number of skills and talents are required to create a successful business. Consequently our Partners come from a broad range of academic backgrounds and professional qualifications, but have spent much of their careers in money management and/or investment banking.

Sam Swadling (B'07) joined NewSmith for three weeks, during a particularly interesting time for debt and equity markets around the world (they were falling, dramatically!). Conscious of the fact that Sam didn't have any professional expertise, but nor did we want him to just "make the tea", we decided to put him to work on a specific project and also allowed him to "shadow" me on any meetings and ‘phone calls where appropriate.

The project was to update and collate all the very many proposals we had rejected in relation to unlisted investments, and log the reasons why they had been rejected.  I hope we managed to give Sam some insight into our thought processes and why the proposals were unsuitable (some parallels with TV's Dragon's Den alluded to by Sam, are true).  In return I now have an up-to-date record, which is very useful to show to both our current and prospective clients who invest in our funds.

I think giving work experience is invaluable to any student, and I always have a policy of trying to give a good flavour of what the fund management and the broader financial services business is about. Equally I believe that any firm should offer specific projects so that both parties get something out of it - rather than just a good cuppa!

Martin Green (C'76)