Positive thinking proves powerful

By Ian Fraser

Financial News

July 14th, 2008

FRANK Doyle, Investec Asset Management’s head of UK and Ireland institutional sales, is described by consultants as a positive thinker with an unusual gift for getting on with people.

One consultant said: “He is an extrovert who is just as able to get on with consultants as he is with their pension fund clients. He also has a remarkable ability to remain persuasive and upbeat even when people are saying no, no, no to him.”

Doyle has few qualms about being having the word “salesman” on his business card. He said: “Whether you’re selling asset management services or double glazing, the thing that sets you apart is your contacts and relationships with potential customers. One advantage of having been in this business for more than 20 years is that I have a good number of contacts.”

Doyle, 44, started his career with the investment consultancy Mercer in 1985. That gave him an insight into how investment consultants and what is likely to impress them. He said: “It gave me a bit of a head start.”

Doyle joined Investec Asset Management in 2006, initially working alongside Mark Samuelson who relocated from Cape Town to build a European institutional business for Investec in 2001, Samuleson has since moved to perform a similar function in Australia.

Doyle said Investec employs a “barbell approach” to the institutional market which means offering some “very good plain vanilla products” plus a suite of “higher alpha products”. It has added a diversified growth fund under the Trio brand. Doyle says this fund, a modern take on the balanced mandates of the 1990s, appealing to “low governance clients”.

Investec’s UK institutional sales team of three has free rein to market the firm as they see fit. Doyle said: “Investec has a very can-do entrepreneurial culture and is not over-burdened by bureaucracy,” says Doyle.

From a standing start in the UK market in 2001, Investec has built up £5.9bn (€7.4bn) of institutional assets under management.

However Doyle, whose modesty is another positive attribute, is reluctant to take credit for this. “All I am doing is building on the successes of Mark Samuelson. We are now reaping the rewards of the hard work that Mark put in place. In the last couple of years we’ve been getting on a lot more shortlists for a wider range of products.”

The son of Irish immigrants, Doyle was born and raised in Yeoville, Somerset and read economics at the University of Cardiff. After five years at Mercer, he jumped ship to M&G, then predominantly a retail player.

Soon after the £1.9 billion acquisition of M&G by Prudential in 1999. RCM where he worked alongside two people he describes as his mentors: Eilish O’Hagan, who joined Lehman Brothers Asset Management, for a year until May this year, and Andrew Benton, who now works at Schroders.

From 2003, Doyle had a short spell at Citigroup Asset Management which ended when the firm hived off its asset management business to Legg Mason in 2005-06. Yet Citigroup’s pay-off was sufficient to permit Doyle to spend six months outside the industry, getting to know his family better and improving his golf swing.

However he has since resigned from his golf club because three sons under the age of eight left little time for the game.

Each weekday he catches the 6.18 a.m. train from Winchester to Waterloo, before walking across the river to Investec’s offices at Gresham Street. His preferred route is via the Millennium Bridge. He said: “That’s a good way to start the day.”

This article was published in Financial News on 14 July 2008, to coincide with Frank Doyle being named best marketer in the magazine’s institutional client servicing awards. To read it on the Financial News website, click here

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