Investment Committee
We established our investment committee in 2010, to provide us with additional investment expertise and provide our clients with independent oversight of our investment process.
The committee fulfils two main roles. It ensures our investment process remains prudent and appropriate, with suitable processes and risk controls. Its second role is to supervise our selection of investment managers. In both cases it does so with our clients’ best interests in mind.
The committee meets four times a year with further ad-hoc meetings and discussions as needed.
It is made up of two members of the HL & Co team and three independent external members. The current external members are Robert Mason (Chair), Ken Rayner of RSM Research, Eirian Jones of Wren Investment Office and Stuart Fox.
Robert Mason carries the deciding vote in the event of any split decisions.
The expertise and insight provided by the external members of the committee continues to be extremely helpful to us, and we believe the oversight they provide is also very reassuring for clients.
Hamish Leng
Chartered Financial Planner
Hamish started as a financial planner in 1980 and is now working with many of the grandchildren of his original clients. He holds the Chartered and Certified Financial Planning (CFP™) accreditation, is an Associate of the Personal Finance Society (APFS) and a Chartered Wealth Manager. He has qualifications in pensions, financial planning, tax and trusts, investments and long term care.
Natalie Burnand
Head of Investments
Natalie joined us in April 2015 to look after our clients' investments. Prior to this she worked at Cazenove Capital Management as an analyst on the multi-manager team and before that in corporate finance with J P Morgan in New York. After running a £2 billion international equity fund at SWIP she joined Aberdeen Asset Management as a fund manager on the multi-manager team. She graduated with high honour from the University of Virginia with a BA in foreign policy.
Robert Mason
Chair
Robert has worked in investment markets for over 37 years. He has been a Private Equity consultant with the same team managing multi-family offices since 2007; now Wren Investment Office. He serves as a trustee and adviser for several families and an investor and board member for start-up technology businesses. Robert graduated from Oxford after which he spent six years in the British Army, was Equerry to the Prince of Wales and was Adjutant of the Welsh Guards in the Falklands. Robert founded and ran a private equity fund investing in growth capital and small to mid-market buyouts in Europe from 1988 – 2006. From 1983-1988 Robert worked for JPMorgan where he was latterly head of the European leveraged transaction group.
Ken Rayner
Rayner Spencer Mills
Ken is a founding director of RSMR (founded in 2004), one of the UK’s leading fund research and ratings companies. He began his career in the investment industry in 1989, joining Bradford & Bingley where he became a fund manager for the firm’s PEP and ISA Discretionary Management Business. Ken graduated from Leeds University with a degree in Economics and Economic History. He is ACII and IMC qualified. Ken sits on the investment committees of several advisory firms and continues to spend much of his time in face-to-face meetings with fund managers.
Eirian Jones
Wren Investment (Office)
Eirian is Head of Investment Research at Wren Investment Office, a leading multi-family office. He was previously a Senior Portfolio Manager and member of the Investment Committee at Sandaire. Prior to this role, Eirian was at Lord North Street from 2005 until its acquisition by Sandaire in 2014. Eirian has been a CFA Charter holder since 2010 and holds a first-class degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Imperial College, London. Eirian also volunteers as an Investment Committee member of the CFA UK Investment Committee. In 2018 he was named one of the PAM Top 40 under 40 (PAM is a leading independent provider of wealth management analysis).
Stuart Fox
Grosvenor
Stuart is an experienced multi-asset Investment Analyst and Portfolio Manager who has worked at several leading multi-family investment offices in London. He is currently a Portfolio Manager at Grosvenor, where he helps oversee the group’s non-property investments. Before joining Grosvenor he worked at Eighteen48 Partners, a research-led multi-family office. From 2014-2020 he worked at Sandaire as a senior member of the Investment Committee, contributing to the firm’s overall investment strategy, and as a Senior Portfolio Manager. Prior to that he worked at Lord North Street, having started his career undertaking fund research at City Asset Management in 2007. In 2020 he moved to Vietnam, joining leading domestic asset manager SSI Asset Management, and was invited to the Ho Chi Minh City Economics University as a Visiting Lecturer, teaching Investment Management. Stuart graduated with a first-class degree from Cambridge University in 2006; he has passed all three levels of the CFA programme; and has been recognised in the ‘City Wealth Leaders’ list and the ‘City Wire Wealth Manager Top 100’.