How Hughes put the heat on when profit figures came to naan
VETERAN fund manager Colin Hughes celebrated his retirement after 46 years in the City with a bash at Piccolino in Exchange Square this week.
Guests included media banker Lorna Tilbian and corporate broker David Poutney, whose firm Dowgate is advising Sir Martin Sorrell on his launch of S4 Capital.
Hughes got his first job in the City aged 17 and stayed at the same firm through subsequent incarnations to become co-manager of Henderson Opportunities Trust.
He was known as a wily operator who turned down the chance to work with Poutney and Terry Smith at stockbroker Phillips & Drew in the go-go 1980s.
When it came to stock-picking, Hughes never forgot a duff recommendation. “Colin gave me the most elegant skewering in my time as an analyst,” Numis Securities’ Paul Richards confesses.
“We went for a curry one Friday and as we were breaking into our poppadoms, he brought out a sheet of paper which compared my [overly optimistic] estimates for Chime Communications’ profits with the actual outcome. It was not my finest hour!”
BUCK Rogers to the rescue? Interestingly the Bank of England’s chief information security officer shares a name with the science fiction h e ro. P re s u m a b ly h e ’s b r i n g i n g 25th century know-how to tackling those cyber-attacks... FAREWELL to Harvard Business School president Drew Faust, right, who has steered the venerable US institute so beloved of FTSE chiefs for 11 years. She leaves this month with what looks a decent record in the fundraising stakes. Back in 2015, alumnus and hedge fund billionaire John Paulson offered $400 million
(£306 million) to the school. Thanks, but no thanks, came the reply from the school’s dean Nitin Nohria, Bloomberg reported, with Nohria suggesting the funds go into its engineering school. Paulson duly wired the cash. But analysis of Harvard’s $37.1 billion investment fund, the biggest in higher education, showed less fortunate times, with its performance lagging other Ivy League schools. The university has missed out on an estimated $6 billion in investment gains over the past decade. Ouch! There was obviously no Faustian pact with the dollar devils…
THE bookies have had a pretty good World Cup so far but VAR is giving them a thrashing on penalties. Before the replay system was introduced, the typical odds on a spot kick being awarded were 3/1. But there have been a record number at the tournament and punters are still able to snap up the less generous 6/4.