Thurleigh Investment Managers LLP ('Thurleigh') is an independent investment management firm dedicated to providing a highly personal and responsive service to its clients.
Thurleigh was founded in 2003 by David Rosier, who was Chairman of the private client and charities division of Mercury Asset Management and subsequently of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers from l988 to 2002 and Charles MacKinnon, who was an Executive Director of Goldman Sachs International from l985 to 2000. Between them they have nearly 50 years of investment experience.
The partners of Thurleigh have specialised for many years in looking after private clients and charities and their focus is to achieve consistent, positive returns for their clients within clear risk parameters.
Our clients' portfolios are managed either for total return or for a specified level of income. We can incorporate ISAs and PEPs, and can also manage personal pensions. These may be managed on a stand alone basis or within the overall investment objective.
Thurleigh is an owner-managed business whose partners have their personal assets invested alongside those of Thurleigh's clients.
LATEST NEWS
January 2010:
Thurleigh Investment Managers are looking to hire a sales and marketing assitant/executive. Please contact Luca Serino at luca.serino@thurleigh.com for more information.
December 2009:
Edward Allen, CFA speaks to Telegraph TV. You can see the interview at the following link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/yourmoneytheirhands/
David Livingston is named as one of Financial News’ Top 100 Rising Stars for 2009.
November 2009: David Rosier and Charles MacKinnon are named in the Citywealth Honours List for Private Bankers and Investment Managers.
October 2009: Thurleigh Investment Managers have moved offices to:
Foxglove House, 166 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9EF
Tel: 020 7016 3040, Fax: 020 7016 3059
October 2009: David Livingston wins Best Investment Adviser at the Financial Times New Breed Adviser awards.
September 2009: Thurleigh win the Spear's Wealth Management Boutique Asset Manager of the Year
September 8th 2009: Charles appears on CNBC
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1244965973
August 2009: Reuters features Charles MacKinnon in the Investor Profile section (highlights below)
LONDON, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Wealth manager Charles MacKinnon interpreted "gardening leave" rather literally when he left Goldman Sachs in 2000.
Having helped build up the bank's private client services business, MacKinnon was looking for a different challenge, and decided to convert his hobby into his profession by taking up landscape gardening.
"I had always been a passionate gardener and when I was at Goldman I used to garden by floodlight. It was my relaxation," he told Reuters. The garden got so good he used to open it to the public once a year for charity via the National Gardens Scheme.
Now chief investment officer of independent firm Thurleigh Investment Managers, which runs 175 million pounds ($289 million) for private clients and charities, he finds gardening provides a level of certainty missing from his day job.
"In investment there are many things outside of your control. But if I sow some lettuce seeds I know that in three weeks' time I will eat those lettuces," he said.
The route from wealth management to gardening and back again is a winding one. Although the 54-year-old showed his green fingers early, studying botany at Pembroke College, Oxford, before switching to human sciences, he became a reluctant reinsurance broker after leaving university.
To open new doors he went to business school INSEAD for an MBA, and joined Goldman Sachs in 1985, eventually becoming an executive director. But he still took the time to cultivate his garden, and in 2000 passed the Royal Horticultural Society general certificate of horticulture.
"So when I was thinking about leaving Goldman it was a logical thought to convert my hobby into my occupation," he says. "But it's rarely successful. It took me about a year to work that out."
On leaving the bank he earned a postgraduate diploma in garden design, before taking a 30 percent share in a landscaping business, Landmark Design and Build.
"Unfortunately, landscaping is a very bad business because it has no barriers to entry, and the majority of designers are not living off their design fees, they are living off their husbands," he said.
MacKinnon's firm had high points -- building gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show and at Kew, and winning prizes -- but he found that once he had taken up gardening as a career, he no longer enjoyed it so much. "Plus we didn't make any money."
On reflection, he decided to found Thurleigh in conjunction with David Rosier, now the firm's chairman. Rosier was a founding director of Mercury Asset Management on its flotation in 1987, and later headed Merrill Lynch's private client investment management businesses.
The theory was that Rosier knew how to run the company while MacKinnon knew how to run money, and together they worked out the guiding principles of the firm -- one of which was: no product.
Instead the firm builds portfolios for each client, using tactical asset allocation and hedge fund techniques to manage volatility. It targets absolute returns rather than benchmark-relative performance, making investment decisions through a strict cycle of meetings, then formalised in the "Green Book".
"If you don't have a product you are intellectually free to take asset allocation decisions," he explains. "If you have funds you will always want to use them, regardless of market conditions, because you've put a lot of cash and intellectual capital into developing those products."
Another principle the firm adopted was to be open with clients about performance swings. "We try to warn our clients when we think we have made more money than we should have done for the risk we have taken, because sooner or later the other side of the coin will turn up," he says.
MacKinnon has no desire for Thurleigh to become a product house but is open to a merger with a similar business, or to significant shareholders who could offer access to new areas.
The firm continues to grow its charities business and is debating whether to run pension fund money. MacKinnon says the investment process is scalable up to about 5 billion pounds -- capacity is more a question of how to handle an increase in the number of relationships. These currently number 65-70.
MacKinnon has also recaptured his love of gardening now that he no longer has to earn a living at it, and says he is back to gardening by floodlight, building raised beds for an "epic" vegetable patch.
July 2009: Charles MacKinnon speaks on Telegraph TV Your Money Their Hands. You can see it at the following link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financevideo/yourmoneytheirhands
May 2009: Charles MacKinnon, Thurleigh's CIO, wins the 2009 Outstanding Individual of the Year at the Citywealth Magic Circle Awards. Thurleigh Investment Managers was also Runner up in the Wealth Manager of the Year category at the Citywealth 2009 Magic Circle Awards.
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May 2009: Edward Allen is named as one of Wealth-Bulletin's 40 Rising Stars in European Wealth Management.
March 2009: David Livingston, an investment analyst at Thurleigh, has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing. His book Blood Over Water is available to purchase at the following link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Over-Water-David-Livingston/dp/0747595151
March 2009: David Rosier is named in the top 10 Leading Private Bankers and Investment Managers by CityWealth.
January 2009: Charles MacKinnon, CIO of Thurleigh is featured in Citywire. Please find the article on our publication page.
November 2008: Edward Allen, CFA, a portfolio manager at Thurleigh won the Best Investment Adviser award at the Financial Times New Breed Adviser Awards.
September 2008: Thurleigh Investment Managers win the 2008 'Asset Manager of the Year for High Net Worth individuals' award at the Spear's Wealth Management Awards.
http://live.spearswms.widearea.co.uk/awards/
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March 2008: Thurleigh win PAM award: Thurleigh Investment Managers won the Investment Performance Defensive portfolios award at the 2008 PAM awards and was shortlisted for the Investment Performance Balanced Portfolios category.
