Editor's Profile

This page is where you will find details of three things:

1. My career and personal background;
2. Current directorships and consultancy arrangements;
3. More about my books, newspaper columns and publishing activities.

There is a separate page on my investment philosophy.

Career and Personal Background

My professional career began in 1975 when I graduated from Cambridge University with an Master’s Degree in History and joined the Westminster Press graduate trainee scheme for journalists. After two and a half years working on local papers in Durham and Oxford, during which I gained my professional qualifications, I joined the City office of the Sunday Telegraph. For the next 10 years I worked as a senior financial journalist on The Times, The Economist and The Independent, covering mainly energy, privatisation and the City as a news reporter, feature writer, commentator and leader writer.

After two years working for Enterprise Oil, a FTSE 100 oil company, in charge of its investor and media relations, I spent a formative year at MIT’s Sloan School of Management in Boston, where I wrote a thesis on the investment methods of Warren Buffett, developed my quantitative analytical skills and obtained a Master of Science degree in Management. This was the period during which investment became my main professional interest.

Since returning from the USA in 1991, I have continued to write regularly for leading national newspapers in the UK, with a regular column about investment in The Independent (1995-2007) and the Financial Times (2007-present). I have written, edited or co-published six books on investment. I am the author of Money Makers (Orion, 1998) and Investing with Anthony Bolton (Harriman House 2007). In 1995 I was the first City Editor and a founding director of the innovative weekly news digest The Week, the most sucessful new current affairs publication of the last generation.

In addition to my writing, I have continued a separate career as a consultant and investment professional, working on and with a number of diverse businesses. For six years, from 2002-2008, I was chairman of the Savile Club in London, overseeing a turnround in the fortunes of this historic members’ club (founded 1868). In 2010 I was chosen as a Trustee of the club. In 2007 I helped to found and develop a Brazilian farmland fund, Agrifirma Brazil and in 2008 was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Hargreaves Lansdown plc (see below). In June 2010 I agreed to become a Director of Victoria Capital (UK) Ltd.

Directorships and Consultancy

I am fortunate enough to work with a number of different organisations in the investment business that I admire and respect, as described below. My involvement is typically advisory and based on the understanding that my contribution is independent in nature. Nobody has ever tried to influence my opinions or restrict what I can and cannot say.

Agrifirma Brazil

My involvement with Agrifirma began in 2007 when I was commissioned by Ian Watson and Jim Slater, the founders, to travel to Argentina to investigate the potential for farmland investment there. Following my report, which confirmed the attractions of farmland in South America, but highlighted the risks in Argentina, the company decided to concentrate its efforts on buying and developing farmland in Brazil.

Being convinced by the strength of the arguments for investing in the agricultural commodity cycle, and believing that Agrifirma’s land transformation strategy was an excellent way to put money to work, I subsequently became a director and shareholder in the Agrifirma group. In that capacity I have helped to implement the business plan and raised a significant proportion of the $180m of equity capital that has been raised to date.

You can find out more details about Agrifirma Brazil by visiting its website. The company is incorporated in Jersey and remains privately held. The board’s intention is to list the shares in due course. I remain a significant shareholder and consultant to Agrifirma Brazil, as well as a Non-Executive Director of Agrifirma Services, its UK subsidiary. My day-to-day involvement amounts to around one day a week.

Hargreaves Lansdown

I have known Peter Hargreaves, the co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, for many years through my work as an investment commentator, and subsequently became a client of the firm’s online Vantage service. When he invited me to join the board of the company as an independent Non-Executive Director in 2008, I had no hesitation in accepting. Since its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2007, the company has continued to grow and prosper. It remains one of the most profitable and successful companies in the FTSE 250 index.

As a client of many years standing, I am happy to recommend HL’s online platform as an excellent solution for self-directed investors (those who are comfortable in making their own investment decisions). It offers investors substantial rebates on initial fund fees, competitive dealing rates and a wide range of regularly updated research and information on shares, funds, ETFs and investment trusts. The Internet-based Vantage platform is exceptionally user-friendly, which is the secret of its success.

My role as a Non-Executive Director is to challenge the executive team and ensure that the interests of shareholders remain paramount. I serve on the company’s audit, remuneration and nonimation committees. While I periodically share ideas and information with the Hargreaves Lansdown research team on an informal basis, their views and mine remain completely separate. I have no say in their recommendations, and vice versa.

Consultancy Arrangements

From time to time I enter into consultancy or project arrangements with third parties, which can include established investment firms and individual funds. My decision whether or not to enter into these arrangements depends on how interesting the projects are and how highly I regard the firms in question. Quite often this kind of confidential work provides me with valuable ideas and insights that I might not otherwise be able to obtain. As a matter of professional integrity, I only embark on third party arrangements that are capable of improving the quality of material that Independent Investor provides and (if relevant) where I am happy to invest my own money. All arrangements are disclosed as appropriate.

Books, Newspaper Columns and Publishing

Financial Times and Spectator

I have been contributing a regular fortnightly column to the Financial Times since 2007. It appears on the back page of the Ftfm section every other Monday. In addition I contribute regular pieces on investment topics to The Spectator and its sister publication Spectator Business. From 1995 to 2007 I wrote a regular weekly column on investment for The Independent. If I had to choose just two publications today to contribute to, the FT and Spectator would be at the top of my list.

It may be worth emphasising that by their nature the pieces I write for these two publications tend to be shorter and more polemical, as well as appear less frequently, than the material I produce for Independent Investor. Many of the ideas that eventually surface in the newspaper columns will already have been aired in Independent Investor, where I can write in more detail and with more supporting evidence than is possible in a published newspaper article. At the same time the newspaper columns are helpful in establishing contact and dialogue with the many leading professional investors whose ideas and insights I have come to respect.

Books and Publishing

The best way to learn about a subject, it is often said, is to write a book about it. The first full length title I produced was Money Makers (Orion 1998, paperback 1999), a study of the ideas and methods of seven prominent professional investors, whose conclusions I believe continue to hold valid today. The book, which was loosely modelled on John Train’s two Money Masters titles, is currently out of print, but available second hand. A new updated edition is on the cards, and in due course I hope to produce a second volume of essays on the best of the current generation of professional investors.

My second relevant book is Investing with Anthony Bolton (first published 2004, with a revised second edition in 2006). This is the first and only full-length study of the methods and performance of a man who by common consent has been the most successful investment manager of modern times in the UK. £1,000 invested in Anthony Bolton’s Fidelity Special Situations at its launch in 1979 was worth more than £140,000 by the time he relinquished control of the fund in December 2007. The book tells the story of the fund from the beginning, analyses how it came to be so successful and draws out the lessons for investors generally.

In addition to these two titles, I have also commisisoned and edited other books and reports, published in conjunction with Harriman House. These titles include:

1. Fundology by John Chatfeild Roberts, a primer for would be fund investors by the award winning head of the multi-manager team at Jupiter Asset Management:

2. The Coming Credit Crunch?, a far-sighted report by the financial historian Edward Chancellor which predicted the global crisis that he argued was bound to follow from the extravagant debt build-up in the United States and other developed economies;

3. What Warren Buffett Thinks Now, a series of reports on what the great American investor Warren Buffett and his business partner Charlies Munger had to say at recent annual meetings of their company Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting is one of the most extraordinary events in the annual financial calendar, a three-day event in Omaha, Nebraska at which the two men dispense widom and advice to more than 20,000 enthusiastic shareholders.

Copies of all these books and reports can be bought in the Independent Investor bookshop on this site, or through Amazon. More titles are planned in the future. Subscribers to Independent Investor will have access to my detailed lists of the best investment books, publications and websites, a work in progress that will also in due course be published.
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