Jon Little, founder and partner, Northill Capital
In the investment management industry we like to think of ourselves as an industry with a long tradition and history yet, in reality, the majority of asset management firms were established in the last 30 years.
In industry terms the period of 1980 to 2005 was, in retrospect a ‘golden era’ where talented fund managers liberated themselves from larger institutions. Armed often only with talent, self-belief and some contacts, small teams found it relatively easy to join an industry where there were few barriers to entry other than skill, common sense and some luck.
We now live in a very different world. For those trying to set up new asset managers the stakes have got much higher. Although there are jurisdictions which require a new asset management firm to have very little equity capital – most notably the US – in many...