Wealth Manager Profile: Charles MacKinnon

He said: ‘People who had accounts with Goldman Sachs could have bragging rights, just like saying they did their shopping at Harrods. That’s not why they come here. And while investment performance is important, I can’t guarantee it – and it is less important than getting a clear message to clients with clarity of performance, charging and reporting.’

Forsaking the airline industry for the railways, MacKinnon says clients want ‘simple clear information, like knowing just why they have stopped at a red light in the middle of nowhere and when they can expect to be on the move again’.

With the Thurleigh name now twinkling, if not quite yet shining in the wealth management limelight, MacKinnon can at last give some thought to where the company will be in five years’ time or so.

As the joint owner of a company without any sales function, it is hardly surprising there are no growth targets. He said: ‘If nobody walked through the door next year that would be fine by me.’

Thurleigh is a slim operation with four investment professionals – apart from the proprietors – and the same number of administrative staff.

 MacKinnon reckons Thurleigh could handle having 100 family clients and £600-£700 million under management in five years’ time, while expanding the office to 15 employees, enjoying what he describes as a ‘relatively steady pace of growth’. It also implies a shift up-market in terms of average family wealth.

‘I think what’s happening in the current market is that many people are realising they were sold a product and didn’t focus on the cost of the product being sold’ he says. ‘The brokerage model is going to be gradually replaced by the fee-based advice model. I think it’s going to become a simpler business.’

On behalf of all the wealth management firms that take his approach, MacKinnon tips his hat to the bulge-bracket investment banks, which are shedding private wealth management clients explicitly or through neglect.   

‘They are creating clients for us all the time,’ he says. ‘Their model is very difficult for private clients. They are in such internal turmoil and many clients feel so betrayed – not by the people they deal with – but by the structure of the firm. They have a massive problem to re-establish confidence and credibility and a business model for managing people’s wealth.’

Whether or not such clients come to his firm, MacKinnon’s immediate task is to raise Thurleigh’s performance game after last year’s trauma. He sees some opportunities in debt, which he predicts will outperform equity, and is spending more money buying high yield and corporate credit.

He recognises that following such unprecedented market turmoil, even veterans such as he cannot consult the playbook for what happens next. ‘We need to be humble,’ he says. ‘It is a new world, and the past is a poor guide to the future.’