Future Leaders of Britain

While the Tory Party leadership battle continued this week, we took shelter to run our own Future Leaders programme - a very busy four day event where 40 aspiring young students and professionals developed their inner entrepreneur, learned to understand their weaknesses and strengths better and create the right mindset to overcome barriers to performance. 

It culminated last night in a gala dinner, attended by the participants’ families and friends, at which the 6 teams presented a business concept and plan to a panel of 4 judges, Dragon’s Den style.  The dragons this year were Michael Pennington, a digital seed investor and co-founder of Gumtree.com, James Corsellis, managing partner at Marwyn Investment Management, Julien Sheridan, founder of one of the world’s leading retail design agencies Sheridan&Co, and Elliot Conway, Vice President of Pentland Group.

Our participants were divided into teams and were challenged to create a business that had some sort of subscription based model. They came up with some fantastic ideas and the winning team, “Have you Herd” (using an elephant logo), designed an app that allows you to identify eating places in your vicinity that offer the kind of food you specify (such as gluten-free, wheat-free or organic). You also get to receive push notifications of special offers from them. 

Sandy Loder, CEO of AH Loder Advisers, runs Future Leaders for CBAM.  I caught up with him this morning to find out how it has gone this year.

You’ve run our Future Leaders Programme for the last 4 years. Why did you come back for another year?

It’s great that, while you focus on adding value to your clients’ portfolios, you also believe it’s important to add value to the relationship you have with your clients. So, offering this opportunity to your clients’ children is an excellent – and, as far as I am aware, unique way of doing that.  It’s enormous fun and I get a lot out of seeing how much they change and grow in just 4 days, as do their parents, I’m sure.

What did you focus on this year?

I’ve designed the programme this year to help participants develop news skills and to inspire them to think about their future and how they can be influential in a fast changing world. They will have many opportunities going forward, but also face many challenges and this week is about giving them the skills, confidence and mindset to overcome them.

They have definitely learnt more about themselves; from understanding what their barriers to performance and judgment decision-making are, to what their key values are and learning how to utilise the skills we have taught them in their future lives and careers. I run another business called Peak Dynamics where we work with corporates, athletes and extreme adventurers.

In the sports and extreme adventurer world, many decisions are binary and, in some cases, can be the difference between life and death. I have brought the data and experience from these areas into this week’s Future Leaders Programme. For instance these young professionals have completed the same assessments as some of Red Bull's extreme athletes, England RFU and the US Navy Seals!

Lastly, in a world that is spinning faster and faster, where we are busier and busier and there is a glut of news, research and information to digest, I wanted them to learn how to speed read. So we had a fantastic morning with an associate teaching them to read a book in 20 minutes!

You’ve had some fantastic guest speakers; can you tell me more about them?

We heard from the inspiring young entrepreneur, Clare Doggart, who took the brave decision to set up her own events company last year after leaving uni. She shared her story and how she overcame the challenges and personal fears she faced. We also heard from the charming Nikki Owen, who has dedicated the past 20 years to developing the charismatic potential within leadership teams for improved engagement, resilience and results. Following research with thousands of organisations, Nikki has developed a cutting edge blueprint that enables individuals, teams, departments and organisations to transform their mindset from 'survival' to 'growth'.

All of the attendees did fantastically this year and the bar for next year’s participants is extremely high! CBAM runs the Future Leaders Programme annually and you can find out more about it here.

Week in review

Market volatility stemming from the Brexit vote continued this week. In contrast to the previous week’s four-day strong rally, this week was defined by markets fluctuating between positive and negative territory, with two days of gain equalled by two days of losses. The net effect was the main “100” index finishing within 0.5% of where it started on Monday. Across the pond, the markets were given an extra day’s rest as the American celebrated 4th July and the S&P 500 closed up 0.6% in response to Fed Chair Janet Yellen once again deciding to delay a hike in interest rates. The pound meanwhile plunged to its lowest level against the dollar in 31 years, hitting $1.28/£1, as investors priced in the long and short-term uncertainties unleashed by Brexit and the effect on Britain’s economic prospects. In fixed income, the 10-year UK gilt also set a record low yield of 0.743% on Wednesday as the rush for safe havens climaxed.

Against this backdrop, we have been assessing the economic and thus longer term market implications of the ‘Leave’ vote. The first point to note is that our global multi asset class approach has served us well, with our “defensive” equity positioning benefitting returns. We believe that quality companies with strong balance sheets, defensible yield and their own earnings and growth dynamic should prove to be more resilient over the medium term and these, therefore, remain our focus. Additionally, with further accommodative noises emanating from central banks, we believe yield will remain in high demand.

With significant volatility in markets and currencies, we are watching for opportunities to add to our favoured long-term positions on weakness, and are closely monitoring the broader short and medium term impact of the referendum outcome. Our investment outlook will evolve as the impact of developments in European political and economic stability, the future progress of UK trade negotiations and broader global growth issues unfold.

Read our complete market update here

Please be aware, the value of investments will go up and down and you may get back less than you invested. Any tax benefits or tax planning opportunities depend on individual circumstances and are subject to change.

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Penny Lovell
Head of Private Client Services