Man Group's CEO Says Stop Asking People Where They Went to School

have quite an interesting career path. I'm not sure whether famous is a never been a goal and I guess, but look at it, given the public profile of Man, it comes with the job. And you know, I think we should as a firm take a leadership position on stuff because that's the position we have as an ability to do that type of thing. My career, well, I was one of those people who from a very very

early age sort of love numbers and love patterns. And I was having a conversation with my grandfather about horse race betting when I might have been five or six and sort of worked out that the bookies were making money all the time and said I'd like to do that, and he said, well, we'd like to say, go and work in the city. So I just that was the point. I knew I wanted to work in the city, but

I didn't really know what the different jobs were. And of course I'm old enough that this is pre internet, so you know, I took the first job I could find working in the city, and things went from which it was within the mirror. It was as a graduate trainee. You know. Our introductory speech was from the Japanese head of the office who said, the Bank of England tells me we need more white faces in the office. You're my white faces. And then he walked out, you were

a diverse higher. So we were a diverse high. Now I'm not going to claim that I have suffered in diversey at all, but but it's just an interesting perspective of the journey we've all come on, and that's fascinating. And of course, back in that moment, Nomura in Japan was sort of a very dominant force in world finance. It sounds amazing when you look back and think so at the time, with one quarters profit, Namura could have bought Merrill, Lynch or Goldmen sex cash and when there

there used to be an amazingly profitable business. Now I will admit I took the job without knowing it was a Japanese firm. Was there were three jobs that you didn't know it was a japan didn't know there were Again, it's like amazing this you couldn't look it up on the internet. Suppose no, you couldn't. So so I went into the careers office, which was a room full of books, and said I wanted to work in the city. And they said, there are the accounting jobs, and I'm like, no, no,

I don't want to do accountants. And there were three books by three pamphlets about three jobs. I applied for the three jobs. The first one that offered me a job, I said, thank you very much. As I was sitting outside, having sort of signing the documents, having said yes please that, somebody said are you looking forward to the three months in Tokyo? And I slightly nonplus looked around, realized the

decoration was a bit weird now you mentioned it. And anyway, I signed up to three months in Tokyo, which was a brilliant time. So Tokyo, then, you know, one of the big financial capit as well. It's still an important place, but very different. Then. Tell us about arriving as a sort of trainee in Tokyo and what that felt like. That really was being othered. Japan still doesn't like immigration. Back then, they had absolutely none. Back then they were

masters of the world. And you know, the Japanese equality market was worth Remember we got to twenty seven percent or something amazing of the global index. And it was sort of in them build up to the bit where the Imperial Palace was worth more than California and real estate value. It was that sort of amazing time. I'm in the mid eighties and yeah, we were tolerated rather

than anything else. But it was a really interesting experience learned some Japanese, learned to understand the Japanese, which has been something that I've sort of leveraged off throughout my career, I guess. So, look, when you look back at that time, is it more surprising the change I guess in Japanese finance that we've experienced I've lost thirty years, thirty five years,

or the change in the city of London. So the second, I mean, it was a classic bubble, and did I know when it was going to pop. No, But it didn't take very long to work out this didn't make sense, right, I mean, you know, there were all sorts of sort of things about you know, but a pineapple cost more than whatever, not quite a car, but that sort of thing in the west. You know, it was all sort of like, Okay, this doesn't make any sense. And the fact that that burst is not that so much of

a surprise. And many of the things that amazing about Japanese society is how little it's changed. Yeah, the city here was so radically different back then to now and sort of obviously lots has changed in the UK, lots has changed in Europe, but that there's sort of I think the city back then had many of the worst aspects of the UK. And somebody was talking to me the other day about, you know, do you think there's no racism in the city or no misogyny, and it's like, well,

of course there is. But compared to a period where it was materially worse than the national average, I would say the city is now at least as good as the natural average and probably better. What happened back then, again, is it tied to banking culture more than the city of London. It's very hard to get one's head around how unglobal finance was back then. And while I did a job going and working in Tokyo, that was so

weird and unusual. And you know, most people working in the city of London would never have been outside Europe for work and not really been outside the City of London for work in most cases, you know, and what was going on in New York was very, very separate to what was going on in London. Yeah, because this

is obviously before any of the big banks. As it goes in the next couple of weeks, I'm about to be sixty, so I'm you know, this was a long time ago, but it was pretty big bang just before that, and you know, it was it was a different thing, but it was a very insular, insular environment which had a mixture of a sort of, if you like, a posh part of UK society that that looked down on anything other than posh white men. And we used to

have that thing about barrow boys, which somehows. I mean, actually that got that's one area which hasn't really got better. But but you know, back then, well there was an awful lot of drinking. That was a very different thing in the culture. Going for lunch time, right, yeah, I mean going going for four or five points at lunch was normal, not unusual, and still going back to your desk and working it was. I mean, it's amazing when

you look back at those things. It's a bit like sort of obviously everybody smoked in the I mean not every but all offices had people smoking everywhere and so on. But but it was really just the attitude about being unpleasant to you know, pick whatever, you know, if you weren't a posh white male, the world was unpleasant to you. And and Britain as a whole has changed obviously normously in those times. And do you think the city has moved along with British society or is still lagging behind?

You said there are still some issues here. How do you see the landscape today in terms of how people deal with these very British problems about class and looking down notes on people with less money. I mean, it is how are we doing now here in the city. So I think it's gone from being materially worse than the UK to being at least as good, and I

would say probably better. In a number of aspects. So there is one thing in the city which you know, by the nature of dealing with money all day, every day, it is pretty impossible to have a totally balanced attitude to money, right, And it's not normal, right, it's not an average Yeah, you know, you move billions and trillions of dollars, pounds, yeend whatever, every day, every whatever. It's it's quite hard to to not say some things to do with money which sound weird in any other context.

But I think the general thing of the culture has really come a huge long way, and there's lots more we can do, absolutely, but you know, and but there's lots more we can do in society if you sort of mean, but I think we're you know it is it is a healthy place to day and you know, sort of yes, but we should all keep working on trying to make it an even better place if we can open to as many people as possible, because that the whole point about the city is it is an

intellectual boiling pot, right. I mean, it's about getting as much IQ together into yes, an individual, but then into a room and then into a building and then into the whole city. And you know, it's it is the dynamics of having all of this IQ bumping into each other. But you need diverse thinking in order to make that, you know, a benefit. It's it's that you know. It's like one of the favorite expressions in the city is where there's no the only thing that's a free like

a free lunch is diversity is diversification. Right in a portfolio, you know, you diversify and that gets you improve returns, less risk. Every type of thing in finances about diversification, and it applies just as much in people. If you have ten people who are incredibly smart, but all have exactly the same background in different forms, they're not going to be much cleverer than one person. Maybe they'll be better than one, but they're not going to be better

than five people, or probably not better than two. You get people who've got a different perspective. The collective is much smarter because that's how you get away from group think. But how do you and you've really championed right diversity in the workforce through indicease and initiatives at Man, how

difficult is it to recruit diversly? Recruiting diversely for people coming in at the graduate at master's level, it's not that hard, right you have to you have to have an attitude shift, and once you have an attitude shift, it's really not that hard. At that level, there is a lot of people. And if you start by not saying what school did you go to and what college at Oxford are you at, but try and actually look at the individual persons capabilities and achievements and so on.

You know, yeah, I think it's easy to hire in at the graduate level in a truly diverse way. That the challenges as you move up through the organization that you know, so our senior leadership, so that's sort of one level down from me and one level below that. So it's a it's a big cohorted sort of a

couple of hundred people. And we are in the current sort of high twenty percent for gender diversity there and as I say, compared to where the city would have been once upon a time, you know, that's amazing, but in reality it's still high twenties. It's not forties. It's not even as high as where we are at the overall firm, and it's hard moving the dial and sort of even as you dig into that, you know, funny enough,

in the people talent side of our business. We have more senior female leaders than we do in the investment side of the business, and you sort of think, ah, but of course the average person leading one of our investment teams has been doing it for thirty years, you know, And so that that that bit of the funnel that came in means it's easy to do the right things about sort of senior positions, but it's hard to move the dial a long way? Is that the only reason? Though? Time?

Or are that other barriers still meaning women aren't progressing up to the top ranks of big city firms. Still some cultural hurdles that we need to unpack. So I mean, like I'm I'm definitely sure that the dominant thing is

the pipeline problem. But you know, it's not just how it was thirty years you know, fifteen years ago, people still used to celebrate the shouty, aggressive trading floor idea, right that was that, you know, and still frankly, you see, you know what, the BBC did a program about the city and it's you know, still got shouting dealing floors and you know, a sort of machismo and you know it sort of heroes women who are more machismo than you know, and that puts lots of people off, put

lots of people off in the past. I mean, if you come on our dealing floor, you know, we trade you know a lot and sting none but I mean like none that the people complain it's too loud. But that's just people talking well part from me. We have the same in the newsroom. Yeah, it's not a prerequisite for success having that kind of you know, not at all. And the and yeah, but but the the first is

broadening the pipeline of people coming in. The second is then making sure that you don't sort of celebrate the wrong type of culture. And that's where management comes in. And you know, that is where the good leaders are making a real difference and someplaces not so much. And you know, we could think of the coming back from COVID, and some firms tried to make us sort of look at us. You know, we're the first ones back in

the office. We've told everybody they have to be at their desk every day and you're like, okay, but I didn't do that because it's a dumb way to manage people. And you know, if you want to get the best out of people telling them they all have to conform to some rule you learn forty years ago. It's pretty dumb, honestly. And so you know, what we try to do is to find the working process that gets the best out

of each person. And so we've got people who are in the office five days a week from early to late, and we've got people who are you know, dotted all over the country and frankly the continent, don't come to the office very much. But that's how we get the best out of those people. Look, is that out of personal experience. So you left the city right at some point? Why why did you leave? And why did you come back?

First point of earning money is so you can afford to live, and that is incredibly important, and we know there's an enormous number of people in this country and beyond who are struggling with just that every day, and especially now at the moment you get get there. The second stage is in order to have enough that you can look after your family and savings. And then at some point you have enough money that the money is

supposed to create choices. And it's amazing how many people get caught up in well, I just want more money, which is a choice, doesn't seem a terribly brilliant choice, but it's a choice. And there are some people where you have done amazing things because they're driven purely by finance as a motive. Again, one of the reputations of the city is people only come into the city to make money, you know, But that's the thing of the eighties, right, It's not the world today. People come to work in

the city. People succeed in the city because they love the intellectual challenge of what is like a brilliant if you've got a brain that likes complicated puzzles. Finances amazing, right, and it's always changing. And that's I mean, that's what got me excited. I was in a lucky enough position to have made enough money that I had choices, and I reached a point where I wasn't enjoying what I was doing, and so I stopped to do And I didn't know. I mean, I stopped, and honestly I did

if you'd asked me to guess. I didn't think I would ever come back to the city. I didn't think I come back to a full time work. But I don't know. I just I stopped because I had a choice. I had an option. You know, essentially my kid's life for my life was funded. And so was that hard decision? Did you agonize every about it or was it just

not really? Because you know, it's one of the conversations I've had regularly over the last thirty or forty years with my wife of I worked really hard because I really enjoy it. But at the point, it's not good to go home and moan about I'm not to enjoy my work when like, you don't have to do it now. I mean again, it's entirely different if you've got to turn up at you know whatever, drive your truck every

day in order to pay for guests and food. But I you know, once you're in a position where you it's you don't need the money in order to live a nice life. You know, of moaning about your work seems really dumb. So what load you back? So I came back for what was a new for me and look really interesting intellectual problem. So I got a built a business for JP Morgan. So I'd built a business

for somebody else, I'd built a business. That was my first go around, if you like, first career, second career was to build a business with a partner, so for ourselves, and I didn't have an urge to do either of those things again. And what drew me back was so it was the time where man merged with GLG, brought GLG hover one wants to describe it. And I could see that this was a very complicated mess that they were creating, and the thought of how do you turn

around a mess somebody else has created. I'd never done that, and it looked like a really interesting intellectual problem. And it's been a really interesting intellectual problem. And touchwood that's not necessarily you know, draws most people to cleaning up other people's mess. I mean, I'm fascinated by that, you know what, and you just because you you could you see the opportunity through the mess of what you might

be able to build at the end of it. No, honestly, I mean that part of what made it really interesting was I could see the problems and at the time it wasn't at all clear whether there was a path through the mess. But but that's a like complicated puzzles, if you like, And this was a people and you know, finance and whatever puzzle, and that that was that was like a really I mean to me that that was like an irresistible but that's what brought me back. It

was just an irresistible puzzle and fascinated by that. And we often in the newsroom talk about you know, deutter Bang went through four chief executive critic sweet is the same? Like what draws people to difficult jobs? Can you point to, I guess, characteristics in people that you want to hire that make them succeed? It? Is it the intellect? Is the drive? Is it that fire in the belly? Like

what makes a good employee? The definition of believing indiversity is that there isn't a thing that makes a good employee right that? That is exactly part of the bit is you can't look at everybody on the basis of are they the best person for this thing right now? The big leap in mindset is three years forward. You could pick a longer die, but three years is sort at my attention span. So three years forward is this team going to be better for that person being part

of it? And because if you start, you know, okay, Fred's left, I need to replace Fred. Who are the candidates that I can hire today, who are the most suited for Fred's job today, and I say Fred on purpose, The answer is, you're going to hire somebody who looks and sounds like Fred. You're going to hire exactly in the image of the person who left. You do that, you're never going to improve the diversity of thinking in the firm. If, on the other hand, you go, Okay,

Fred's left, that's life. But we now have a chance to bring other skills into this team. You know, will accept a sort of some Jacob effect where we may not get the perfect fit for the immediate problem exactly today. But if three years from now we can bring somebody in that makes the team better, that, you know, you can get much more out of that than And so then you get to thinking about, Okay, I want somebody who thinks differently, who's got a different because they actually

help the thought process. So you can pivot, in fact, the whole business or a whole team's work around that person. You've mentioned puzzles a few times, sort of fitting pieces together. But this kind of question of diversity in who you bring in and the skills, it's about reconfiguring the pieces, isn't it all around them, not necessarily fitting someone in? Yes, I mean, yeah, that's that's a very good way of

saying it. And look at the sort of if you like the bit everybody sees the rumberg celebrates of our job is the financial puzzles. But as you get into a management and then a leadership position, really what you're dealing with is people puzzles, and it's you know, people are really interesting and complicated and so on and so yeah, it's about trying to fit those puzzles. So how do you get the best out of the team, How do you get the most going forward? And that sort of

comes back to that. I definitely went off from one of your earlier questions. Why do we think it's important to embrace different working practices for different people in different ways, is because that's how you get that puzzle to be the best. People who feel good about what they're doing, People with a smile do better work. We've all had to do some report, something that you know you don't

really want to do. It's amazing how long it can take, whereas if you're enjoying it, it's amazing how quickly this podcast is flying by. Right. I don't know what you mean. I love waking up at four am for some time London was the world capital of hedge funds, and whole areas of the city were given over to the funds in Mayfair Ands and James is. We've written a lot about a lot of funds moving or shifting people places

like to buy post Brexit around Europe. Is London still the center of the world for this, You're effectively one should think of New York, except it's not really New York the center, right, And so one can claim some numbers for London relative to New York because of where people actually are in the States. Now, London has a

massively dominant proportion of the non US based hedge fund people. Now, whether the business is somewhere X or Y, whether it's people working for a US firm but based in London, the you know, the sort of we all like the stories about somebody's moving to you know, first of all, it was Geneva, and then they all came back, and now maybe it's Dubai. But never Frankfurt, no phrase, not really Frankfurt, you know. And Brexit was going to spread everybody all over Europe, but it really didn't do that

to the hedge fund business. It had a much bigger effect on private equity, right, But in actual hedge funds, London is I mean so dominant in non US center of gravity and the US. You know, it used to be all New York and then it was Inch and Connecticut and well maybe it's all becoming Florida or wherever the I mean, you know there there are people will

do a trade for tax. That is human nature. I would say that the trade off between there's a different trade off between New York and Florida than it is between London and Dubai. And even if the tax pickup is really a lot, it's not very It's an expensive trade. If you still think that London's a good home for hedge funds, are you finding the right talent? Like what's your biggest concern actually on diversity employees and actually keeping

them here unhappy? Yes, we're finding lots of really good talent. I think the trying to get the right phraseology so that there was a period let's call it eighteen months ago where but I've the dates wrong where everybody wanted to either go and work for a tech firm preference a startup, or they wanted to go and work for a crypto firm, and there was a period where it

was hard to get you raw talent um. You know, it was a fascinating thing that somewhere in the second quarter of last year the both of those light bulbs went off and it's back to be you know, but they're sort of they you know, crypto blew up and then take people stopped hiring, and that means that there's an enormous amount of raw talent available. You know. Would I like it that it was easier to get visas

into the UK than it is? Yes, but you know that's a political comment and there's nowhere in the world that isn't currently more difficult on immigration than it should be. But it doesn't it doesn't get in the way of hiring great talent and still very very diverse talent. You know, the number of nationalities we have continues to go up. Look, when you look at all the incentives, I guess you have a man group to keep that level of seniority

with diversity right within your employees. Is there something that works better than others in terms of getting and building the broadest team we can get? My conclusion is there is no silver bullet to this. What you have to do is lots of things which move it a little bit. And you know, whether that's having supporting outside organizations, having lots of internal networks, so people, you know, you want people to feel like they belong right, and that's a

very important part of it. And that's how you get people to stay. It's a good word, belong right. It does not just mean they fit in. It's like they actually belong. And so one of the ways of that internally is networks. And you know, that's people who have similar attributes whatever you want to say. And while we always make sure that they know they've got senior sponsorship, they're always organically done up from the bottom. Yeah, we've

had big success with a return of program. This is getting people who've had a ten year career break, and they could have had the career break for all sorts of reasons. But I think practically all of them have been women coming back from parenting. We've had fantastic people out of that program that they've both added greatly to the firm and been you know, I mean to do a great, great full that's a bad word, but whatever to have had you have people have faith in them.

But you can't have fifty of those people every year because they just aren't that many people at that decision point in life, you know, the thing that we've always avoided. And I you know, I've watched a couple of firms who try to use their checkbook to go and run around and hire all the senior women they could find in the city so they could say, look at us, our stats have gone up, and you know, well that might let them stand up and say, look, my stat's

gone up. It hasn't improved anything in the puzzles. So just throwing money at this doesn't fix the problem. Well, but it's look that money can help in different ways, right, So that's not a bad thing. But I mean the bit of if all you do is rob Peter to pay Paul or maybe rob Jane to pay Sharon, you aren't doing anything very useful, right, And so I think it's important that you know, what we're all trying to do is to bring people into the city and enable

them to thrive and succeed. And you know, so we organize a lot of mentoring for sort of anybody who needs it and wants it, but you know, we make sure or there's a lot more encouragement to um sort of mid level women to take mentorship because you know, there is a thing about willingness to be pushy for themselves, and it's not really about being pushy, right, but you know, and we try to always adjust for the you know, just for the thing where a man shouts that they

want the job and a woman says, I'm not sure if I'm ready. But one of the ways you're trying to adjust in all the talent planning, but also one of the ways is in mentoring, helping people understand both as a man that's not necessarily helpful, but particularly as a woman. Yeah, it's okay to say I'd like to

give it a go. We know that pay has not been equal, right, I mean, we've talked about it on this podcast, and one of the reasons that there's still some cultural and across gender problems in the city is because people aren't getting paid the same to do the same job. How much of a problem is that. Do you think there'll be places where it's a big problem

and places where it's not much of a problem. In the effort of coming up with a simple stat that applies to every business in the country, the government stats on gender pay gap are not really very informative, so they don't compare like would like to do. They actually yeah, and it's just yeah, exactly, It's just that the actually, the population differences drive everything with data, notts, right. So we have a lot of data about the people internally, and we work to come up with what we think

is a true number. And the true number for us is a very low single digit number, which you could say doesn't really matter apart from it annoys the hell out of us because it's not a random number. It's you know, it's a few percent one way each year. And we've keep doing things to try to get rid of it entirely, and you know, and it shows somewhere. Some of the residual bits are really difficult. You know.

One of the good things that's happening is, you know, there are definitely you know, today a female sort of successful portfolio manager has a higher market worth than a male successful portfolio manager or of equal thing. Now you know that's not true in every job in every way. You know, Similarly, in the US, a successful you know, a performing successful black person has a higher market value.

And you know there's a sort of twenty five to thirty percent premium in in comp today that way around, and like that's a good thing because you know, somewhere you start to move the overall averages in the right way. What happens to the Barrow boys that you were talking about from the eighties. So that's been a that's been one of the sad bits of you know that I think, you know, social mobility in the UK is a big problem.

It's easy sitting in London to focus on the sort of some of the obvious diversity issues within London, but when you get to the UK, you know, white working class boys are the underperforming group out there, and it's a big group, right, it's not home, you know, it's

whatever thirty percent type of thing. It's um and so you know, sort of something I believe in, we believe in, and so we've tried to find things and then we've been one of the sort of founder sponsors of an initiative for the City of London which is trying exactly

to work on social mobility. And I would say that's the last bastion of open prejudice, that is, you know, sort of people need to break down right that that asking somebody what school they went to is not an interesting question, and yet it is still far too often a question people have, and people, yeah, I went to a comprehensive school. Do you want to know? The name? Probably not right and you know, so, you know, I

think there is definitely more we could do. And you know, it's again the sort of the barrow Boys used to be a joke that was about separating two classes within the city. The joke may have gone, but you know that this further we can go on that look. Thank you so much, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks for listening to this week's in the City. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, if you like our show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you

listen to podcasts. Great review and subscribe. This episode was hosted by Me David Merritt and me Francie Laqua. It was produced by Sammersadi, additional editing by Blake Naples and special thanks to Luke Ellis.