When Robyn Grew was working for Lehman Brothers in London in 1999, Japanese regulators raided the bank as part of an investigation into allegations that it and others had helped financial institutions hide losses.
Grown up he was quickly dispatched to Tokyo by Lehman’s top management to help deal with the bank’s response. He spent the next year flying back and forth between the two capitals, eventually moving there with his wife for a while.
The episode reflects several traits close associates say define Grew: a quick thinker and natural problem solver whose curiosity drives a desire to learn on his feet.
This week it was the gregarious ex-lawyer appointed incoming managing director of Manthe largest listed hedge fund manager in the world with $144.7 billion in assets under management.
By the end of this year – and for the first time since life began in the sugar industry in the late 18th century – Man will be led by two women.
Grew will replace longtime boss Luke Ellis in September and former Capital International executive Anne Wade will take over from investment banker John Cryan as chairman.
For 54-year-old Grew, who is currently chairman of MAN, the promotion marks the culmination of a 14-year career at the FTSE 250 group which she joined in 2009 as chief compliance officer. Since then she has held various positions, including Global Head of Legal and Compliance, Chief Operating Officer, General Coo, Group COO and Head of Environmental Social and Governance.
“I’ve seen her in various avatars. . . he is quite a force of nature,” said Dev Sanyal, managing director of Varo Energy and a former non-executive director of MAN. “He has a strong compass on who he is and what he does.”
Born in London to an NHS doctor father and a school teacher mother, Grew attended high school in Essex and had no idea the world of financial services existed.
She studied business law at Coventry University before qualifying as a criminal lawyer and then being tempted into the more lucrative world of finance.
In response to a newspaper ad, it joined Fidelity in 1994, followed by a move to the trading floor – then the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange – during its heyday as an open protest exchange .
He followed LIFFE with management positions at Lehman and Barclays Capital. Then a phone call from top executives at the Lehman-born hedge fund GLG Partners that he knew from his days there piqued his curiosity. She joined GLG and the hedge fund industry in 2009, and the following year, Man bought GLG for $1.6 billion.
Today’s man is a very different business than the one Grew was first familiar with. The deal was viewed as a reverse buyout by GLG and its aftermath was marked by a testing period of customer withdrawals, poor performance at Man’s flagship quantitative strategy unit, AHL, and one culture clash between GLG’s swashbuckling traders and Man’s PhDs. The GLG acquisition was later written down by more than $1 billion.
Then Manny Roman was named CEO of Man in 2013, followed by Ellis in 2016, kicking off a reboot of the company. Behind the scenes, Grew played a central role in the group’s turnaround and recovery, working with Roman, Ellis and then-chief financial officer Jonathan Sorrell. She was “the definition of calm, calm and collected” in navigating the egos involved, said one person there at the time.
“There were some pretty tough things we had to do to refocus the business,” recalled Sorrell, now president of Capstone Investment Advisors. “Robyn was someone you could always count on to do the right thing and move things forward.”
Kate Barker, a former non-executive at Man, said: “She’s really good at getting the gist of a problem out and distinguishing between big strategic issues and details.”
According to those who have worked with her, Grew is an empathic colleague and a vocal advocate for difference, not diversity in the box sense, but diversity of thought, talent and approach.
Though she has encountered sexism and homophobia at times in her career, Grew has approached it with customary candor, believing that “to just come and be myself and live who I am and talk about my wife and child is incredibly persuasive.” , as he told friends.
Grew inherits a company in good shape that has evolved from an isolated organization to a large technology-driven investment group. Today 60% of its resources come from its low-margin solutions business, offering tailored and tailored partnerships with clients.
But it still faces challenges, beyond the regime change of higher interest rates and higher inflation.
The man has decided to be an active investment group, an approach that faces the constant pressure of cheaper passive investments. It needs to expand into the US and remain relevant to investors in a world where the hedge fund industry is becoming increasingly concentrated. And it has to navigate an increasingly complex and politicized environment for ESG investing.
For Grew personally, he has to make his mark in the group after two high-profile CEOs. “Manny and Luke have been at the forefront of the industry,” Sanyal said. “What does Man Group look like under Robyn?”
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