SJP’s Onuekwusi: investment industry has seen demise of ‘star fund manager’

It is more important than ever to “kick the tyres on culture” because of the longer-term relationships involved in private markets, the new chief executive of investments at St James’s Place has said.

Justin Onuekwusi, who assumed his position yesterday (September 8) having previously been chief investment officer, said: “One challenge we have with private markets as a whole is there is a lot more longevity in the relationship.

“So it’s not a two to three year, three to five year relationship. This is a 10 to 15 year relationship,” he said, adding that cultures change and evolve over time.

“It is actually almost more important now than ever to really kick the tyres on culture and think about the risks that this changes or evolves because you are in a strategy for a significant period of time,” he said.

Speaking to Bev Shah, co-chief executive of City Hive, Onuekwusi said one of the big changes he had seen in fund management was the “demise of the star fund manager”.

“Nowadays I would say it is less prominent, less popular, for one manager, one person to dominate an investment process,” he said.

“So what does that mean? It means that the team is more important and therefore the organisation around them is more important.

“And I think this is where culture is actually really important.”

Shah added that even during the time of star managers, “the reality was the fund manager was very rarely working in a silo”.

When it came to trying to build an investment team, Onuekwusi said incentivisation, hiring, retaining talent and achieving the right level of investment debate were “all really important to generating that output in the future”.

Asked by Shah about the risks of asset managers not taking culture seriously, Onuekwusi said: “If you do not take culture seriously, it is really hard to hire and retain the best talent. Really, really difficult.”

Onuekwusi added the industry was in an era of great transparency, where asset managers would be “rewarded for sharing and having more transparency over time”.

However, Onuekwusi said he wanted to dispel the myth that just because a company fails or has a tough time, its culture is necessarily bad.

“It could just be that the decision that was made was wrong,” he said.