Hamish Buchan, in snug semi-retirement at The Old Parsonage in Edinburgh's golden suburb of Barnton, can afford to laugh at the quip that he found being an actuarial student too interesting so he became an investment trust analyst.
''I know a lot about a little,'' says the guru in his field, whose job with 150-year-old stockbrokers Wood Mackenzie was bought and sold five times in 15 years, but without a single golden hello, handcuff or handshake. ''You may have been the top gun in your sector (he was) but as the whole business gets bigger, nobody is indispensable From 1969 to 2000 I never changed employment, the company I worked for just kept changing ownership.''
After working in turn for Hill Samuel, County NatWest, NatWest Securities (as chairman of Scottish operations), Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank (both as consultant), the affable, tartan-trousered Buchan was finally able to step down at 55 and consider a pile of pressing invitations to become an investment trust director. His golf handicap (he was captain at Gullane a decade ago) is having to wait: he now sits on seven boards in Scotland and London, each with a different management company and in a different investment sector, from Standard Life European Private Equity to JP Morgan Fleming American, which he chairs.
Trust boards, at one time appointed on the golf course, are these days supposed to demonstrate an arm's length independence from their managers. ''They are going to have to justify every year in the accounts why they are continuing to employ the manager,'' Buchan says. ''If you have had five bad years in a row, that is going to be quite a difficult paragraph to write.'' He says boards must now be constantly aware of whether a trust even has a raison d'etre, or ''should we be throwing in the towel and handing our money back to shareholders''.
Buchan is also a board member of Scottish Community Foundation, deputy chairman of Stewart Ivory Foundation, and involved with finance education in Scottish schools.
His own school was Dollar Academy in Clackmannanshire. He arrived at 12 as a boarder after growing up in Santiago, Chile, where his father had been posted as a Lloyds banker, and went straight from there to actuarial training with Scottish Widows. At Wood Mackenzie he shared in the firm's growth under the energetic John Chiene from an old-fashioned regional broker with 40 people into a buoyant business employing 800 at the time of ''big bang'' deregulation.
With younger colleague, the colourful Robin Angus who turned trust analysis into a branch of literature, the Edinburgh-based team was consistently ranked top (or near top) in industry surveys over 25 years, and refused to budge. ''For about 15 years we were under some pressure,'' Buchan recalls. ''Sales, marketing, and corporate finance had all moved to London and research was the only bit in Edinburgh.''
On the independence of research, he adds: ''I was never under an awful lot of pressure. I was lucky in some ways to be covering the trust sector, with 300 companies. A lot of sectors had 10 to 15, oil had two The whole investment trust sector combined has a lower market capitalisation than Royal Bank of Scotland.''
His long view encompasses the growth of investment trusts in the early 1970s followed by a big shake-out and a slide in share prices to create huge discounts (to trust asset values) in the early 1980s, and the subsequent cyclical tides which have seen discounts roll in and then roll out again. ''In 1993-94 the average discount had come down to 4%, so everyone went out and raised money by launching new trusts at the worst time for investors, just like the mad rush in 1999-2000 and the debacle that followed. But it is an ebbs and flows sector, it reflects capitalism, and market demand.
''At the moment it is in a mood of contraction, but that doesn't mean despair - there will be other phases where people will see opportunities to raise money, in sectoral specialism, country or style specialism. One hopes that some of the lessons from the splits will be learned.''
Buchan's own market timing was good. He stepped down from active service just before investment trusts moved swiftly from anonymity to notoriety thanks to the split-capital debacle, but stepped into a clean-up role as deputy chairman of the Association of Investment Trust Companies.
''I didn't predict the sheer enormity of the collapse, but I was worried.'' Buchan went to see the Financial Services Authority early in 2001 to point out the danger signs, but admits: ''How could they react to something which appeared to be working until there was a crash? All they could do was tighten up on information, but it would not have stopped the damage that was in train. The biggest regret I have is that we didn't as an industry pick up the fact that securities which had changed, by virtue of having bank debt ranked ahead of them, had still been allowed to be called 'zeros'.''
However, the FSA's well-intentioned move to alert investors to the importance of debt on the balance sheet of an investment trust, by flagging it up in alarming warnings, might be overdone, Buchan says. ''Gearing might add or subtract 2%-3% in performance. The idea that if you are not careful you could lose all your money, because Alliance or Foreign & Colonial could go bust, has to be very carefully handled.''
Buchan believes there will be a settlement between the FSA and the industry within weeks, but says: ''We are still living with the stigma and some people will never come back to the sector, whether it is individuals, IFAs or whoever. But we are living in a capitalist world and where there is value, and where managers are doing a good job not everyone is rushing off to be a hedge fund manager, look at John Walton, Max Ward, Ian Rushbrook or Jeremy Tigue - there are people out there who develop followings and who have their own money invested in their funds.''
Buchan sits on the boards of the Rushbrook-managed Collective Assets and (with Angus) Personal Assets. He is also a director at Aberforth Smaller Companies, the boutique which has grown its funds a hundredfold to (pounds) 1.5bn.
However, as a former director of Scottish Financial Enterprise, he admits to being ''gloomy'' about the sector's future, believing that spin-off and start-up success stories are unlikely to compensate for the loss of major financial operations to Scotland, as the consolidation which swept him along, in the rosy years of the bull market, marches on to a sterner tune.
INSIGHT
Marital status: Married to Lynne,
four stepchildren, nine grandchildren.
Hobbies: Apart from golf, hobbies include curling, travel, and antiques.
Biggest break: Joining Wood Mackenzie, I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
Worst moment: Shock announce-ment of the 1989 takeout bid for Globe.
Childhood ambition: Something to
do with maths.
Current ambition: To do what I can
for the trust industry, the charities I work for, and my health.
What do you drive: Range Rover.
What drives you: My interest in
the City. No two days are the
same.
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