How do you start an asset management business with just £15m and build it up to £38bn? How do you do that when few people are listening to your investment idea and you have already got a previous business failure under your belt? Enter Ian Simm, CEO of Impax Asset Management, who, in his own words, ‘pioneered investment in the transition to a more sustainable global economy’.

Citywire Amplify took Ian and put him together with another highly successful fund CEO who, in this case, had inherited a tarnished asset management brand. John Ions is the former distribution chief who walked into Liontrust in 2010. Like Simm, Ions had also built the business up to over £38bn, but in a very different way.

‘For seven years, every time you picked the phone up people were redeeming or complaining,’ says Ions. In his first meeting with a large investment consultant, he was greeted with the opening line of ‘Liontrust – why bother?’

Amplify brought these two quite different chief executives together for the first time for an interview in our London TV studio. We explore what kept them going – after seven years, Impax only had £69m under management – and what it took to create success.

Not that it is plain sailing even now. Curiously, after a tremendous run, both companies have experienced falls in their share prices of more than 60% year to date. You can see how they feel about this in the short film above, or view the full interview at the bottom of the page.

Building a business from scratch is tough. As is rescuing a tarnished brand and turning it into a remarkable success. In Simm’s case, it was his sense of vocation that kept him going. Ions talks extensively about injecting ‘self-belief’ in the business and ‘relentlessly focusing on the basics’.

You can tell from the interview they believe that their competitive advantage comes from doing some things that other asset management firms do not. These include creating a unified culture, bringing sales and investment management close together, getting the right data in, sharing it and making it accessible, understanding clients’ needs thoroughly and having the processes in place to satisfy them.

Curiously, both businesses have around 250 employees and face the task of integrating new teams or businesses. How have they done this?

We hope you enjoy hearing from Simms and Ions and learn a thing or two on the way.

Agenda

• Getting the business going [00:00:00]
• Building distribution and marketing [00:10:12]
• Sustainable investing [00:27:23]
• Company culture and personal management style [00:37:56]
• Response to the share price fall [00:48:28]
• Handling acquisitions [00:58:44]
• The future of asset management [01:03:07]
• Private assets and alts [01:07:09]
• Lessons learned along the way [01:11:03]

Can’t watch now? Read the full transcript of the interview here.