Private Portfolios

Interviewer: Gareth, why did you start an investment management company in the first place?

Gareth Morgan: Because I was managing my own money, and it takes a lot of time to do it properly by yourself. It was quite obvious that if I was going to keep doing it, then to make it worthwhile, I should get others to invest alongside me.

Interviewer: Why weren’t you using an investment manager yourself?

Gareth Morgan: Because of the lack of transparency. With them I never knew what my money was in, they would always just say it was in "units". But that doesn’t mean anything to me; I’ve got to see what I own, and that’s why we do it ourselves. This is one of our founding edicts – make sure the investor can see what is they own, for goodness sake.

Interviewer: How are you transparent to your clients?

Gareth Morgan: Every month we give our clients investment reports that tell each client exactly what securities they own, and in what quantities. We tell clients what we have done with their investments – whether we have increased their holdings of particular securities. What the prices have done, what the contributions to performance are, what our strategy is, what’s driving our head at the time and why we’re not fully invested or why we are invested fully. Our clients can see all this important stuff – a knowledgeable client is a stable and a rational client.

Interviewer: What personal values do you bring to the business?

Gareth Morgan: Well on a fundamental level from me, in anything I do, is that I try to treat people the same way that I expect to be treated myself. So when it comes to client portfolios it is the same; I’ve got a whole set of criteria that I would expect to be met with my money, and I just make sure that all our clients get exactly the same.