This week we speak to award-winning freelance finance journalist and communications consultant Charlotte Moore! We discuss how the media covers finance and investing, things asset managers tend to get wrong and right with their communications, and how the changing media landscape impacts the industry. We finish with an array of top communications tips from a media expert that listeners won’t want to miss.

This week we’re joined by Deb Clarke. These days, Deb is a NED following a long career in the City spanning asset management and fund research. We discuss – what Deb thinks the consulting and fund management industry have got right and wrong over the years. We dive into some of her principles for fund research, as well as some of her worst research meetings. We talk about some of the most important and underrated questions to ask fund managers and things managers do wrong. We cover principles for investing in general and thoughts on fund research in today’s world. Whether you’re a consultant, asset manager, or fund investor, we think you’ll take a lot of useful insight from this great conversation.

This week we’re joined again by LCP’s head of Real Assets research Andy Jacobson. During a difficult year for investors, Real assets are in the spotlight for all sorts of reasons: potential portfolio diversifiers, protection from higher inflation, and also risks from decarbonisation and changes to energy strategy. At the same time, we’re seeing a rotation into newer styles of real asset investing including global property, digital infrastructure and renewables. We cover a huge range of terrain in the conversation which is a must-listen for any investors interested in real assets.

Have you heard the term microaggression? Today we’re speaking to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion consultant Mamawa Turay who is taking us through the topic of microaggressions in the workplace. We cover what they are, the significant (and often underappreciated) negative impact they can have, how to spot them, what to do, and why giving them a label has helped. Mawa draws on her own experiences to help listeners understand the potential impact these can have. We hope this episode offers some challenge and food for thought to all listeners to re-evaluate some common workplace situations from a different perspective.

This week we speak to Matt Gibson, head of Manager Research at LCP. Matt’s been asking some interesting questions about passive investing of late, which we debate, including: does the success of passive (ironically) rest on a belief in active management? And, should the onus be on passive managers as opposed to active managers to justify their approach?

This week we speak to Ludovic Phalippou professor of Financial Economics at the Saïd Business School. Ludovic found himself at the centre of a storm 2 years ago following the publishing of his paper: Inside the billionaire factory which took a critical look at private equity and many of the questionable practices which take place in the marketing and allocating to these funds. We recap the paper and cover some of the core ideas including the concept of IRR and why this is such a flawed and potentially misleading way to measure returns.

This week we speak to independent trustee director Graham Jung from Ross Trustees. We cover Graham’s advice to consultants and asset managers working with trustees, including key things they miss, and the questions trustees should be asking right now. We discuss why Graham believes trustees are not the impediment to better decision making they are sometimes seen as, and reflections on what’s changed over Graham’s career in investment.

In this episode, Dan and Mary reflect on many of the learnings that have come from the podcast so far, including some frequently asked questions including building and targeting an audience, the practicalities, and some of the trade-offs involved like time, depth, breadth.

They go behind the scenes on the process involved in putting out the podcast each week and talk about some potential directions in the future of audio content. If you’re a fan of podcasting, you will find this interesting – we get a lot of these sorts of questions when we speak to longtime listeners, so it was great to be able to answer them.

This week we speak to Allison Schrager, author, Bloomberg columnist, and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Allison specialises in the intersection of economic policy and finance, leading to some fascinating recent insights into behavior and risk. We discuss some of Allison’s recent work such as: why Americans should be more like Europeans, do people actually make reasonably good risk decisions if given the right information, why the biggest risk in investing is risk-free assets and should people even be allowed to do stock picking.

This week we speak to Gurpal Ruprai, Consultant in our Energy Consulting Team, about all things batteries – the thesis, the impact of 2021 and current events, and what the future could hold for battery storage investment.