Aoifinn Devitt: Series 5 of the 2025 50 Faces podcast is kindly supported by Diamond Hill. Diamond Hill invests on behalf of clients through a shared commitment to its valuation-driven investment principles, long-term perspective, capacity discipline, and client alignment. An independent active asset manager with significant employee ownership, Diamond Hill’s investment strategies include differentiated US and non-US equity, alternative long-short equity, and fixed income.
Ian McKnight: What needs to happen in the UK is to encourage risk-taking. There’s been article after article lately saying downplaying the UK. I wouldn’t downplay the country. I think we’re just raring to go, but you need to take the shackles off, whether it’s regulation, incentives, blockages, barriers to mobility. And, you know, your podcast is about just that, taking down barriers to progress, whoever you are, and I couldn’t support it more. But I think that we really need to focus on that and prioritize. And it— this is a, a multi-generation game. It’s not a quick fix.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast., a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Ian McKnight, who’s a longtime CIO who currently holds a portfolio of roles including as Chief Investment Officer of Tontine Trust, Senior Advisor of Cartwright, Hinaney Capital, and Giants Shoulders Capital, as well as a series of other roles. He previously was Chief Investment Officer at Royal Mail for over 13 years. Welcome, Ian. Thanks for joining me today.
Ian McKnight: Thanks, Aoifinn, and thanks for having us on. It’s a bit of an honour. I’m a fan of your 50 Faces, and I’m excited to do it with you.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, long overdue, certainly on my side too. And yeah, as I said, I got to know you during your time at Royal Mail, or maybe a little before that, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked you about your— where you grew up, your early interests, and how you came to enter finance in the first place.
Ian McKnight: I can confirm we’ve never discussed it before, so it’ll be quite interesting. So, where did I grow up? I’m from village called Oswaldtwistle, which is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. They invented the spinning jenny there 100-odd years ago, many years ago. And it’s near Accrington, which is near Blackburn. Yes, the milk advert. It’s near Blackburn, which is north of Manchester in the northwest in Lancashire. So nobody has any clue where Oswaldtwistle is when you tell them, but that’s where I’m from. My early interests, gosh, I’ve had a, just a sequence of obsessions. Over my life, really. I fixate on something. So I remember my first film was E.T., that helps, and I was obsessed with Star Wars for years, the Pet Shop Boys. I started playing piano at 9 and obsessed about that pretty much ever since. So I’d studied mathematics at Warwick, the University of Warwick, and I loved it there. And it was a total bit of serendipity because I’ve been a bit bad planning in terms of what strategically I to wanted do. I’ve never had some strategy for a career or anything. I was like, what do you do with a maths degree? I’ll be an accountant. So I looked under A in the library. I think it was the second time I’d ever gone in there, frankly. And down at the bottom right, there’s this thing saying Watson Wyatt, and I recognized it from the maths common room wall. So I’ll do that, that sounds good. So I filled it in and applied, and I ended up getting the job, right? But I didn’t have a clue what it was. I thought it was an accountant. It’s an actuary. So an A was next to— it’s this.. Unbelievable, And so I went in, somebody dropped out, and they said, oh, can you make it today? So I went in, interviewed away there, and they said, we think you might be a little bit personable for pensions. Why don’t you try the investment team? Somebody drops out upstairs, go and speak to them. And I did, and the rest’s history. It’s complete blind chance, and I’m really sorry for anybody listening who plans their life and career better than me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, no, obviously you found your calling. You found your calling. And I suppose in terms of your preferences and your core investment beliefs, I think you at Royal Mail were known to have done some— I suppose be an early adopter of certain strategies, maybe around risk transfer. Can you talk about that?
Ian McKnight: Yeah, I get this a lot. Oh, you’re really innovative. Oh, you did those cool things. It just seemed obvious to me. I was very lucky and you felt, know, to get a CIO gig of that magnitude at 31, 32, I think I got the job, the big job. And because I got into strategy management and ended up as CIO, and, you know, we had fortunes to invest every year, and it just seemed eminently sensible what we’re doing in it. And so what I— you said core investment beliefs— other than, you know, buy it when it’s cheap and sell it when it’s high, is more common sense really, and very pragmatic. So my shtick is I’m good at— and I can say this objectively, sorry, I’m good at finding solutions to problems, and oftentimes they are seen as innovative, but it’s the obvious answer to me. And you get a lot of people, oh, you can’t do that, you can’t— yes, you can, you know. So I just made stuff happen with a sort of force of personality, and they all kept working out, right? So then you got more leeway to do more things. So it’s a fascinating experience, but it just seemed eminently sensible to me at the time. But I think it’s that feature of just having a strong mind. I don’t think like everybody else, so I don’t care what other people are doing, if that makes sense.
Aoifinn Devitt: And it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that that is your preference, to go your own way. I suppose I just wanted to— just let’s go back before we go forward, because I think that’s a really fascinating character trait and, and rare, I would say. Where do you think you got that ability to solve problems with such fluidity, as well as the sort of power and the resolve to go your own way? Did that come from your upbringing, from personality, that family?
Ian McKnight: It’s a very good question. So this— well, I’m just thinking there’s several aspects to that. Okay, so one of my recent obsessions I might have mentioned to you is about personalities and understanding how people think, what their cognitive stats are. So my personality is exactly the same apparently as Ricky Gervais, Lee Mack, fellow Blackburn fan, Robin Williams, you know, and I should probably be a stand-up comedian if I was funny at all, but I’m not, or an actor or something. And so that sort of brain tends to map laterally to just everything you know, right? And I love soaking up news and data and everything, so you just map to things that maybe other people don’t spot, if that makes sense. So I think there’s something about the way my brain’s set up, and it’s not a a type that tends into finance or actuarial science or risk management, which is what we are really, or even accounting. It’s something that should be in a totally separate world. But applied to this, it turns out it was very effective. So that, I think, is just innate in my character. But in terms of being strong-willed and doing my own thing, my mother probably instilled a great sense of self-confidence in me. She very much had the view that you can do whatever you turn your mind to. In fact, I remember her saying something like that. And my dad was a grafter, you know, he’s a paint and decorator. He worked every hour God sent. And so those two things together are quite powerful if you can spot things of this kind, because then you can make things happen. And that’s what I like to do.
Aoifinn Devitt: Lovely. I love that reference to your mother’s feel that the world is your oyster. And then moving now, taking that personality which clearly serves you well in finance into your current portfolio role?
Ian McKnight: No, actually, but go on.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, I mean, yes, I mean, that is a point. I mean, yes, it’s, as you said, it is unusual and sometimes it doesn’t necessarily fit a mold, but we all have war stories to tell from, from Times and Finance. Let’s move to the future, to the portfolio career now. Can you just give us an overview of what each of these different roles does? For example, what you do at Cartwright, what Tontine is?
Ian McKnight: Sure. So they’re all linked, right? So when I finished at the Royal Mail Fund It was, what’s the future? What can I do with all this experience and knowledge and how I am? And I think what’s clear is the two big themes of the world today coming into, you know, certainly in investment in the UK, it is decumulation, but this is a bigger problem. So decumulation and pension schemes are facing endgames, and there’s a move to digitization and tokenization and digital finance. And both of those are the big— that’s the story, right, in a nutshell. And we’ve separately discussed broader market reasons, but I think they’re with the big T. And all of the things I’ve done have been linked to these, and not surprisingly given what I said about my background. So Cartwright is a consultancy for pension schemes, charities, and funeral trusts as well, in fact now. But we help advise people how to invest their money, historically with smaller schemes, but of course my background, not just at Royal Mail. I’ve done smaller schemes, but medium-sized schemes, mega schemes. And it’s how can we get really good ideas for more clients that might not have the governance or might not have done it. And so a lot of my time spent thinking about solutions for that and educating people on stuff like Bitcoin, for example, or monetary premium, or just economic fees that they might not otherwise have had from a generic consultant where you’re getting me to junior consultants giving you stuff. We have an experienced team, and so you get that. It’s kind of our differentiator. Whether, you know, everybody in the team is kind of very innovative, you know, and so it suits my character to be surrounded by people. Tontines is one of the answers to the big question of decumulation. So you know what a tontine is, or do you want me to briefly explain it to the listener?
Aoifinn Devitt: I think it would be good to have an explanation.
Ian McKnight: Okay, so if you have a pot of money and you want to go and buy an income for life, currently the only option available to you is to go and buy an annuity, which is to say I give an insurer £100,000, say they give me, say, £5,000 per year for the rest of my life, and if I die they keep it. With a tontine, say there are 10 of you with £100,000 each and you take your £5,000 per year and then somebody dies, well then suddenly Instead of taking that as profit first, we’ll give you 100,000 divided by 9, so it’s 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. I think that was a university interview question. And then you get 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, and so on. And effectively, you’re paid to live, right? So you’re betting on yourself, but you’re getting that mortality risk premium usually harvested by the insurance industry and giving it back to the real economy. So the exciting thing about this is it’s good for the member. It’s good for the economy and it’s bad for the insurance industry. This effectively will, I think, be very disruptive to the lifetime income market, not just in the pensions market because a pension is just a tax wrapper, but also for non-qualified assets. Say you have a baby and you want to give it some money, well, you put it, say, 10, 20, 50 grand, whatever. And when it’s a baby, it compounds, which I think there’s discussion about in the US today, but it’s not a new idea. And when they’re 18, you switch it on, pay for college, switch it off, and you’ve also paid for their retirement. Remarkable, really. And it’s a benefit of compounding in a tax wrapper that’s simply offshore. So you can do onshore qualified, offshore. In the US, I expect— I think half of US households used to have one. They became an antiquity because insurers who ran them engaged in corrupt practice, shall we politely say, and reinvented the modern annuity market as we know it today, and threw this thing under a bus, and there it sat. As a student of actuarial science, we studied these and it was just a curiosity. However, it’s coming back. Tontine.com, have a look.
Aoifinn Devitt: Fascinating. And so now, of course, this is about communication and awareness building and education, and how do you propose to do that? I know you’ve been on the Naked Short Club just recently talking about it.
Ian McKnight: Oh, I did.
Speaker C: Yes.
Aoifinn Devitt: Is there a campaign that you will have to undertake given the lack of knowledge that you had to define this for us, for example?
Ian McKnight: There is, but yes and no, because this is something that the OECD are kind of mandating lifetime income. You’ve seen in the UK all the masses looking at lifetime income. Deferred annuities is the one the government like because, yeah, that’s all there is. But I think you’ll find everyone will very soon know what a tontine is and be talking about it. They’re the things that are bought, not sold. They’re interesting, they’re fair, they’re transparent. And I think that awareness is word of mouth to a degree, but they’re so interesting. I expect them to get a great deal of attention once we launch. Each market is different, so the US market is different to the UK, but half of people, 70% of people want an income for life and only 15% currently buy an annuity. So there’s a huge untapped potential in this area. I think given what we see certainly on the pension side with people rushing to buy in, unaware of the profits being extracted by the insurers, there’s a lot of excitement that could follow bringing this back to markets. It is Sharia compliant as well, so of course for Islamic countries that need to offer this under OECD, they can’t buy annuities that are haram, but tontines are naturally Sharia compliant, so there’s an interesting twist to them there. It really is very exciting.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, fascinating. And I think I’d love to then refer our listeners to— you have done a Markets Happy Hour podcast with me recorded on the same day as this. And you’ve always been a keen observer of macro trends and gatherer of data. But I’d love to ask you, given we talked about you being an early adopter, maybe a problem solver at the early days of being a CIO, and this is clearly another way of solving problems, I’d love to kind of step back again and look at the market landscape. What are your thoughts on the current evolution? And in particular, I think of kind of problems that may have been solved through LDI. What products do you think have kind of served their purpose and are no longer fit for purpose? And what excites you when you look around today? It’s a big question, so take it whatever direction you’d like.
Ian McKnight: It depends on which market you’re talking about. So in the UK, certainly, where there’s a massive trend towards winding up and insuring away or transferring risk at whatever And therefore, assets that have— that until very recently were very on-trend, illiquids, have been much less attractive to people with shorter time horizons. And so liquidity is massive there, really. But I also think— and you’ve seen as well, actually, on the active side, people— we mentioned, I think, in the market discussions we had earlier today that at the shorter end of the curve, you’ve got a lot of people hiding out and letting the backends roll. Maybe it’s normalized or maybe there’s something else going on. But I think shorter duration, people hedging their position against a potentially continued rising of rates, which links nicely to the debasement of currencies. And where I think there’s actually a very exciting opportunity is— but I met a chap once on a holiday in New Zealand, of all places, and he was out of Tassie. And he said he’d made a fortune in the ’80s. On FX. I was researching FX actually, it’s Ray Dalio. Hello, Ray. When he was just an FX salesman, no less, at Watsons. And it was easy money apparently in the ’80s, a bit of carry trade, a bit of PPP, job done. And it became very difficult as actually the differential between interest rates was sort of priced efficiently. And I think we’re in for a bit of volatility in global FX markets. Certainly there’s more fun to be had in the emerging currencies, but with the dawn of Bitcoin, if you threw that in the mix and if you consider, say, Swiss franc or Singapore dollar is historically quite cool hedges for a tail risk, there’s a really interesting trade there on a basket of monetary premium unwind tail risk hedge baskets. Let’s call it for the sake of argument. I think you liked gold. That could be in there too. But there’s something there I’d probably consider. If you don’t like the options pricing for put spread collars, maybe That’s something to consider. It’s pretty sophisticated. It would take a lot of explaining to most people in most cities, but I’d be looking at that. And I think that’s exciting because bond vol as well, you know, bond vibes, some hedge funds love that. Who’s good at that? You know, who’s good in this sort of environment? I always tend to think he’s— with history echoing as it does, can we find somebody who’s seen this before? And it’s difficult because none of us have for a very long period of time.
Aoifinn Devitt: It is a crystal ball. I suppose to take you off some of the— we certainly don’t have a crystal ball. We’re going to take a short break to hear from the sponsor of this series, Diamond Hill. I sat down with Heather Brilliance, CEO of Diamond Hill, and asked her how she thinks about the primary stakeholders of the firm.
Speaker C: We talk a lot about our three primary stakeholders as being our clients, first and foremost, as we discussed, and then secondarily, but also critically important, our employees and our shareholders. We are a public company, and so that is an interesting dynamic in terms of making sure you’re looking after your shareholders as well. But we ultimately believe that we can do the best job of delivering for all stakeholders by focusing our effort primarily on our clients. In order to do that, of course, we have to make sure that we are attracting and retaining great talent, both on the investment side of things as well as across all of our teams. And so we put a lot of effort into how we think about recruiting. Over the last few years, we’ve made a number of changes to making sure that we’re looking in new areas to attract talent that comes from diverse backgrounds. And I think that’s really helping make us a stronger firm.
Aoifinn Devitt: And now back to the show. But just in terms of some of the other areas, perhaps to get less attention, such as maybe venture capital, I think we mentioned on our macro podcast discussing some of the innovation, and that is really worthy of capital in the UK. Yeah, um, that’s maybe being overlooked.
Ian McKnight: Oh, completely right. So I could go all day on this. I think we’re going to enter into a period of history that will be a just remarkable change, and the pace of change, and remarkable opportunities. So on the one hand, I’m quite cynical, thinking, oh gosh, you know, there was a great thing in that book Capital in the 21st Century. I think we discussed it a few weeks ago, and I said they started there saying, oh gosh, if only Marx had written his second book, you know, we’d have had his complete view because he’d got to the end of the first, started the second, thought, no, that doesn’t quite work. Let’s go to this one. And what happened, unfortunately, is the Russian Revolution and the First World War. We never found out what 7 big companies ruling the world looked like and whether or not they were regulated or all-powerful and abused their position, but we’re about to find out. Right, because there’s this rush, as you said, into this Wild West of massive tech ruling the world. Set against that, what gives me kind of hope and excitement is the dawn of AI alongside it. The irony is that the tech firms leading these, right, these sort of currently somewhat unregulated and morally ambiguous areas enable in extremis and in not a great deal of time people with absolutely no coding knowledge whatsoever to design an app. And my friend, I heard, has done this, right, using— and he is actually very technical, but asking it just the questions and checking that it was giving the right answer at each point, designed an app without inputting one line of code himself, even though he kind of knew how to do it. Remarkable. Now imagine if a kid out of college could do this. That puts the barrier to social mobility, which given my background, I’m a large proponent, much lower than it has been historically. Now, isn’t that a curiosity? So I think we’re in for a real treat, and venture capital of course becomes part of that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely, and it does. And I think one of the things I was just going to ask you is what seems to be missing. But it’s not the will to invest, it seems to be the ecosystem in the UK is not as supportive, as established as promising perhaps as the US ecosystem. But people like you could change that, right? I mean, with people like you being on boards, advisory, providing that kind of support, as well as the capital. How far do you think we are from that?
Ian McKnight: They’ve got enough entrepreneurial spirit, and I love it. And I think there’s a cultural problem, just candidly, in the UK where, I saw this actually once visiting Blackburn, and somebody drove past in like a lovely car, and somebody shouted abuse at them. And I’m thinking in the US, where I just come back from actually, and they said it’d be like, wow, well done you, I want that too, and I’ll work hard and do it. And we sort of have, oh, look at you, who do you think you are? And I think there’s just this legacy cultural attitude that’s kind of wrong. We need to reward success and social mobility and entrepreneurship. And unfortunately, I, I just get the sense that is kind of dead right now from my lens. In the UK, and that has to fundamentally change. I’m a Thatcher’s child, right? I wouldn’t be sat here if it weren’t for a food chain of kind of working-class lads hiring somebody a bit like them. Thanks, Stephen Bebban and Nick Fitzpatrick, right? There wouldn’t be this me sat here. And so who’s the next me doing that with that gung-ho lateral thinking spirit? And are we encouraging those people? And I don’t think we are. And in fact, the tax system is set up to preclude you becoming wealthy unless you’re entrepreneurial or you leave the country. It’s remarkable.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I suppose bearing in mind that being an entrepreneur in this country has probably a lower risk in the sense of, you know, health insurance is not an issue, I’m always amazed at the entrepreneurial spirit in the US given some of the barriers to it.
Ian McKnight: Well, you have to be. You have to go for it because you might end up with a big social care bill at the end that we don’t have. As you say, there’s still the concern that, know, you what if I lose my house and I Yeah, but you’re going to get looked after, aren’t you? You’re out on the street or your kids get the billing in the Midwest, right? So it depends which country you’re in. But yes, I think there’s something about what needs to happen in the UK is to encourage risk-taking. There’s been article after article lately saying downplaying the UK. I wouldn’t downplay the country. I think we’re just raring to go. But you need to take the shackles off, whether it’s regulation, incentives, blockages. Barriers to mobility. And either your podcast is about just that, taking down barriers to progress whoever you are, and I couldn’t support it more. But I think that we really need to focus on that and prioritize it. And this is a multi-generation game, it’s not a quick fix.
Aoifinn Devitt: True, but I do think that— well, I don’t believe in deglobalization, and I certainly don’t believe in deglobalization of ideas. I think if anything, the spread of ideas, the spread of culture is faster now than ever, and it— that train has left the station, there is no reversing forcing that kind of flow across borders. And what I think is going to be the impact of that is there has been a suggestion that, you know, this attitude towards failure is different, say, in the US, it’s more celebrated, it’s seen as a stepping stone, that there may have been some kind of a shame attached to failure. I think that that entrepreneurial doctrine is changing the world over. And I think in the UK with the venture capital industry, we can change that fear of failure. By bringing some of the international attitudes to that.
Ian McKnight: The best entrepreneurs I know in the UK had several failed businesses before flying on the next attempt. And that attitude— my cousin’s one, right, actually, but she didn’t do the failing bit. God bless you, Angie. You should have her on your show. She’s one of the most remarkable people I know, and that’s saying something, right? But being an entrepreneur in the UK, you need a certain grit and resilience that is not perhaps bred in our school system, certainly the state system, as it might be. Whereas in the US, my partner is American, the show and tell, it starts in nursery, right? And you are loud and proud and you get out there even if you’re shy, you know how to sell, you know how to sell yourself, you know how to make stuff happen. And it’s this, you can do it. I love that. I love it. I want more of that. Because England’s conservative with a small team, stiff upper lip. But fundamentally, we love winning, right? And we need to get that back. I absolutely love winning, but I’m not afraid to fail and cock up and embarrass myself, which, as we said before, sometimes splits the crowd, right? I don’t care. Let’s just go on and win again next time.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love the energy. Well, let’s wind this up with a few quick reflections. You’ve spoken quite candidly about career highs and lows. I’d love to know, like, what you’ve learned from some of the lows, some of the challenges and setbacks.
Ian McKnight: If something goes wrong, just win again tomorrow. Just start again. It’s compartmentalizing, you know. You learn from everything, right? You’ve got to just keep going. And I’ve had a lot of people, especially given, I don’t know, my accent or whatever, they underestimate you. And it’s a joy to watch them wrong. And it’s that determination to prove people wrong And especially when this is a trait of our industry— oh, you can’t do that, you can’t do that, oh, you’re never going to do that— and you do it, and they do it again, and it’s like, you can’t watch me, you know. I absolutely revel in it.
Aoifinn Devitt: Seems like that’s the lightning rod, being told you can’t do that.
Ian McKnight: Yeah, if you tell me I can’t do something, you might as well have just told me to do it, right? It’s resistance to authority, I think.
Aoifinn Devitt: Coming through loud and clear. Then just on the people side, you know, you mentioned some people who took a chance on you and that why you’re here. And it’d be great if— this is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, so no need to listen all, but any one or two that were a particular mentor to you and why.
Ian McKnight: You did very kindly tell me you were going to ask this, and I thought, gosh, I’m going to upset lots of people if I do. So forgive me if you’re one of them and I didn’t. But I mean, Steve Bebban and Chris Hawdy took a chance on me at Watsons, and Roger, and he’s been brilliant. Everything— I love that business at Watsons there. It was such a great place to be. And a special mention to Patrick McCoy, who— one of the great lows of my career, actually. After Morgan Stanley in the financial crisis very kindly made me redundant, along with half the you team, know. It was heartbreaking. And he picked up off that. I stood in for one of his colleagues who was away for 8 months. And then Heath Mottram, who took me to Royal Mail, the biggest thing that could have happened to me. I would describe Heath as finishing school. He’s absolutely magnificent. And I realized then, you don’t know what you don’t know until you work with him. I can’t explain it. Huggy, Chris Hogg, and I worked together. We grew up together. We had an absolute ball. Bev Dustin. Then I worked with Stephen Bebban again. Right now I’m working with two absolute titans of the change of the future of the industry, right? Sam Cartwright, and Dean McClelland of Tomte, absolutely remarkable individuals driving forward change and innovation in their own way. But I did think back to one person you said, you know, who influenced you. And the best piece of advice professionally I had, and this is my mentor, Tammy Belshear, she was called Tammy Battersby. And on my first day, second day in the office, she texted me to one and side said, I was like, I think I asked her that question actually, but what advice did you give me? And she just said, network, network, network. And I am, whether you know this or not, slightly down the spectrum, right? So I was like, okay, I’ll do that. And I did. And pretty much everything that followed is a massive vindication of her advice. And thank you, Tammy, I love you.
Aoifinn Devitt: More great advice. And it’s funny, that’s been resounding advice and resonating with listeners, I think, for 5 years on this podcast, because one of my first very first podcast that came out, and it’s still something that’s not being taught in schools or universities, and it’s still something that has been taken for granted.
Ian McKnight: Well, do you know, I’m going to plug my friend here, my friend Will Kintish. I turned up cockily to his training session at LCP, who I should thank for putting it on, and, and he comes in, he’s from Oldham, he goes, hello, Kintish here. We’re friends to this day, and he teaches you how to work a room, to network Know, like, and trust. Follow up. Be polite. Wonderful. And I recommend his courses to people who want to have their staff and teams network effectively. Sorry, I couldn’t help that.
Aoifinn Devitt: I just thought— well, I’d be happy to promote a skill that our listeners could learn from.
Ian McKnight: And understanding people’s personalities is the best thing I’ve done recently. How people work, their cognitive stack, how they interact. How to build a team using that. I’ve done that twice now. And that’s one of the most powerful things. Paul Craven, who’s the magician, ex-Goldman, is becoming a friend. I love it. And he’s a massive proponent of this, that the finest of his art at understanding people. Very powerful.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely.
Ian McKnight: Not to be used for ill, by the way.
Aoifinn Devitt: No, apparently those schematics cannot be used to hire people, they say, because they are too idiosyncratic, but they can be used to analyze an existing team.
Ian McKnight: But I can, you know, guess what people are from talking to them. And that is a talent.
Aoifinn Devitt: Indeed, one of your many. Well, my last question is around any piece of advice besides the network, network, network, and some of the exhortation around backing talent and innovation. Is there anything you can leave us with in terms of either advice for your younger self or a creed or a motto that you live by today?
Ian McKnight: Yeah, well, a creed or a motto is a good one. So my auntie told me, actually, and she repeated it several times as she’s got older and reminded me, It’s that whole, nobody’s better than you, but you’re not better than anybody else. And I loved that. But the advice I’d give to myself is don’t listen to anybody telling you you can’t do something. Just watch me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, a great place to conclude, Ian. You are a legend in the industry and your reputation goes before you. It’s been great to capture your wisdom twice in succession today on our Markets Happy Hour, which I’ll link to in this podcast if anybody wants to hear more from you. That will have been a few months ago by the time this podcast is launched. And thank you for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Ian McKnight: Oh, thanks so much, Tessa. Always an absolute pleasure to see you and speak to you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors on their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. And all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Aoifinn Devitt: Series 5 of the 2025 50 Faces podcast is kindly supported by Diamond Hill. Diamond Hill invests on behalf of clients through a shared commitment to its valuation-driven investment principles, long-term perspective, capacity discipline, and client alignment. An independent active asset manager with significant employee ownership, Diamond Hill’s investment strategies include differentiated US and non-US equity, alternative long-short equity, and fixed income.
Ian McKnight: What needs to happen in the UK is to encourage risk-taking. There’s been article after article lately saying downplaying the UK. I wouldn’t downplay the country. I think we’re just raring to go, but you need to take the shackles off, whether it’s regulation, incentives, blockages, barriers to mobility. And, you know, your podcast is about just that, taking down barriers to progress, whoever you are, and I couldn’t support it more. But I think that we really need to focus on that and prioritize. And it— this is a, a multi-generation game. It’s not a quick fix.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast., a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Ian McKnight, who’s a longtime CIO who currently holds a portfolio of roles including as Chief Investment Officer of Tontine Trust, Senior Advisor of Cartwright, Hinaney Capital, and Giants Shoulders Capital, as well as a series of other roles. He previously was Chief Investment Officer at Royal Mail for over 13 years. Welcome, Ian. Thanks for joining me today.
Ian McKnight: Thanks, Aoifinn, and thanks for having us on. It’s a bit of an honour. I’m a fan of your 50 Faces, and I’m excited to do it with you.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, long overdue, certainly on my side too. And yeah, as I said, I got to know you during your time at Royal Mail, or maybe a little before that, but I don’t think I’ve ever asked you about your— where you grew up, your early interests, and how you came to enter finance in the first place.
Ian McKnight: I can confirm we’ve never discussed it before, so it’ll be quite interesting. So, where did I grow up? I’m from village called Oswaldtwistle, which is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. They invented the spinning jenny there 100-odd years ago, many years ago. And it’s near Accrington, which is near Blackburn. Yes, the milk advert. It’s near Blackburn, which is north of Manchester in the northwest in Lancashire. So nobody has any clue where Oswaldtwistle is when you tell them, but that’s where I’m from. My early interests, gosh, I’ve had a, just a sequence of obsessions. Over my life, really. I fixate on something. So I remember my first film was E.T., that helps, and I was obsessed with Star Wars for years, the Pet Shop Boys. I started playing piano at 9 and obsessed about that pretty much ever since. So I’d studied mathematics at Warwick, the University of Warwick, and I loved it there. And it was a total bit of serendipity because I’ve been a bit bad planning in terms of what strategically I to wanted do. I’ve never had some strategy for a career or anything. I was like, what do you do with a maths degree? I’ll be an accountant. So I looked under A in the library. I think it was the second time I’d ever gone in there, frankly. And down at the bottom right, there’s this thing saying Watson Wyatt, and I recognized it from the maths common room wall. So I’ll do that, that sounds good. So I filled it in and applied, and I ended up getting the job, right? But I didn’t have a clue what it was. I thought it was an accountant. It’s an actuary. So an A was next to— it’s this.. Unbelievable, And so I went in, somebody dropped out, and they said, oh, can you make it today? So I went in, interviewed away there, and they said, we think you might be a little bit personable for pensions. Why don’t you try the investment team? Somebody drops out upstairs, go and speak to them. And I did, and the rest’s history. It’s complete blind chance, and I’m really sorry for anybody listening who plans their life and career better than me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, no, obviously you found your calling. You found your calling. And I suppose in terms of your preferences and your core investment beliefs, I think you at Royal Mail were known to have done some— I suppose be an early adopter of certain strategies, maybe around risk transfer. Can you talk about that?
Ian McKnight: Yeah, I get this a lot. Oh, you’re really innovative. Oh, you did those cool things. It just seemed obvious to me. I was very lucky and you felt, know, to get a CIO gig of that magnitude at 31, 32, I think I got the job, the big job. And because I got into strategy management and ended up as CIO, and, you know, we had fortunes to invest every year, and it just seemed eminently sensible what we’re doing in it. And so what I— you said core investment beliefs— other than, you know, buy it when it’s cheap and sell it when it’s high, is more common sense really, and very pragmatic. So my shtick is I’m good at— and I can say this objectively, sorry, I’m good at finding solutions to problems, and oftentimes they are seen as innovative, but it’s the obvious answer to me. And you get a lot of people, oh, you can’t do that, you can’t— yes, you can, you know. So I just made stuff happen with a sort of force of personality, and they all kept working out, right? So then you got more leeway to do more things. So it’s a fascinating experience, but it just seemed eminently sensible to me at the time. But I think it’s that feature of just having a strong mind. I don’t think like everybody else, so I don’t care what other people are doing, if that makes sense.
Aoifinn Devitt: And it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that that is your preference, to go your own way. I suppose I just wanted to— just let’s go back before we go forward, because I think that’s a really fascinating character trait and, and rare, I would say. Where do you think you got that ability to solve problems with such fluidity, as well as the sort of power and the resolve to go your own way? Did that come from your upbringing, from personality, that family?
Ian McKnight: It’s a very good question. So this— well, I’m just thinking there’s several aspects to that. Okay, so one of my recent obsessions I might have mentioned to you is about personalities and understanding how people think, what their cognitive stats are. So my personality is exactly the same apparently as Ricky Gervais, Lee Mack, fellow Blackburn fan, Robin Williams, you know, and I should probably be a stand-up comedian if I was funny at all, but I’m not, or an actor or something. And so that sort of brain tends to map laterally to just everything you know, right? And I love soaking up news and data and everything, so you just map to things that maybe other people don’t spot, if that makes sense. So I think there’s something about the way my brain’s set up, and it’s not a a type that tends into finance or actuarial science or risk management, which is what we are really, or even accounting. It’s something that should be in a totally separate world. But applied to this, it turns out it was very effective. So that, I think, is just innate in my character. But in terms of being strong-willed and doing my own thing, my mother probably instilled a great sense of self-confidence in me. She very much had the view that you can do whatever you turn your mind to. In fact, I remember her saying something like that. And my dad was a grafter, you know, he’s a paint and decorator. He worked every hour God sent. And so those two things together are quite powerful if you can spot things of this kind, because then you can make things happen. And that’s what I like to do.
Aoifinn Devitt: Lovely. I love that reference to your mother’s feel that the world is your oyster. And then moving now, taking that personality which clearly serves you well in finance into your current portfolio role?
Ian McKnight: No, actually, but go on.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, I mean, yes, I mean, that is a point. I mean, yes, it’s, as you said, it is unusual and sometimes it doesn’t necessarily fit a mold, but we all have war stories to tell from, from Times and Finance. Let’s move to the future, to the portfolio career now. Can you just give us an overview of what each of these different roles does? For example, what you do at Cartwright, what Tontine is?
Ian McKnight: Sure. So they’re all linked, right? So when I finished at the Royal Mail Fund It was, what’s the future? What can I do with all this experience and knowledge and how I am? And I think what’s clear is the two big themes of the world today coming into, you know, certainly in investment in the UK, it is decumulation, but this is a bigger problem. So decumulation and pension schemes are facing endgames, and there’s a move to digitization and tokenization and digital finance. And both of those are the big— that’s the story, right, in a nutshell. And we’ve separately discussed broader market reasons, but I think they’re with the big T. And all of the things I’ve done have been linked to these, and not surprisingly given what I said about my background. So Cartwright is a consultancy for pension schemes, charities, and funeral trusts as well, in fact now. But we help advise people how to invest their money, historically with smaller schemes, but of course my background, not just at Royal Mail. I’ve done smaller schemes, but medium-sized schemes, mega schemes. And it’s how can we get really good ideas for more clients that might not have the governance or might not have done it. And so a lot of my time spent thinking about solutions for that and educating people on stuff like Bitcoin, for example, or monetary premium, or just economic fees that they might not otherwise have had from a generic consultant where you’re getting me to junior consultants giving you stuff. We have an experienced team, and so you get that. It’s kind of our differentiator. Whether, you know, everybody in the team is kind of very innovative, you know, and so it suits my character to be surrounded by people. Tontines is one of the answers to the big question of decumulation. So you know what a tontine is, or do you want me to briefly explain it to the listener?
Aoifinn Devitt: I think it would be good to have an explanation.
Ian McKnight: Okay, so if you have a pot of money and you want to go and buy an income for life, currently the only option available to you is to go and buy an annuity, which is to say I give an insurer £100,000, say they give me, say, £5,000 per year for the rest of my life, and if I die they keep it. With a tontine, say there are 10 of you with £100,000 each and you take your £5,000 per year and then somebody dies, well then suddenly Instead of taking that as profit first, we’ll give you 100,000 divided by 9, so it’s 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. I think that was a university interview question. And then you get 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, and so on. And effectively, you’re paid to live, right? So you’re betting on yourself, but you’re getting that mortality risk premium usually harvested by the insurance industry and giving it back to the real economy. So the exciting thing about this is it’s good for the member. It’s good for the economy and it’s bad for the insurance industry. This effectively will, I think, be very disruptive to the lifetime income market, not just in the pensions market because a pension is just a tax wrapper, but also for non-qualified assets. Say you have a baby and you want to give it some money, well, you put it, say, 10, 20, 50 grand, whatever. And when it’s a baby, it compounds, which I think there’s discussion about in the US today, but it’s not a new idea. And when they’re 18, you switch it on, pay for college, switch it off, and you’ve also paid for their retirement. Remarkable, really. And it’s a benefit of compounding in a tax wrapper that’s simply offshore. So you can do onshore qualified, offshore. In the US, I expect— I think half of US households used to have one. They became an antiquity because insurers who ran them engaged in corrupt practice, shall we politely say, and reinvented the modern annuity market as we know it today, and threw this thing under a bus, and there it sat. As a student of actuarial science, we studied these and it was just a curiosity. However, it’s coming back. Tontine.com, have a look.
Aoifinn Devitt: Fascinating. And so now, of course, this is about communication and awareness building and education, and how do you propose to do that? I know you’ve been on the Naked Short Club just recently talking about it.
Ian McKnight: Oh, I did.
Speaker C: Yes.
Aoifinn Devitt: Is there a campaign that you will have to undertake given the lack of knowledge that you had to define this for us, for example?
Ian McKnight: There is, but yes and no, because this is something that the OECD are kind of mandating lifetime income. You’ve seen in the UK all the masses looking at lifetime income. Deferred annuities is the one the government like because, yeah, that’s all there is. But I think you’ll find everyone will very soon know what a tontine is and be talking about it. They’re the things that are bought, not sold. They’re interesting, they’re fair, they’re transparent. And I think that awareness is word of mouth to a degree, but they’re so interesting. I expect them to get a great deal of attention once we launch. Each market is different, so the US market is different to the UK, but half of people, 70% of people want an income for life and only 15% currently buy an annuity. So there’s a huge untapped potential in this area. I think given what we see certainly on the pension side with people rushing to buy in, unaware of the profits being extracted by the insurers, there’s a lot of excitement that could follow bringing this back to markets. It is Sharia compliant as well, so of course for Islamic countries that need to offer this under OECD, they can’t buy annuities that are haram, but tontines are naturally Sharia compliant, so there’s an interesting twist to them there. It really is very exciting.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, fascinating. And I think I’d love to then refer our listeners to— you have done a Markets Happy Hour podcast with me recorded on the same day as this. And you’ve always been a keen observer of macro trends and gatherer of data. But I’d love to ask you, given we talked about you being an early adopter, maybe a problem solver at the early days of being a CIO, and this is clearly another way of solving problems, I’d love to kind of step back again and look at the market landscape. What are your thoughts on the current evolution? And in particular, I think of kind of problems that may have been solved through LDI. What products do you think have kind of served their purpose and are no longer fit for purpose? And what excites you when you look around today? It’s a big question, so take it whatever direction you’d like.
Ian McKnight: It depends on which market you’re talking about. So in the UK, certainly, where there’s a massive trend towards winding up and insuring away or transferring risk at whatever And therefore, assets that have— that until very recently were very on-trend, illiquids, have been much less attractive to people with shorter time horizons. And so liquidity is massive there, really. But I also think— and you’ve seen as well, actually, on the active side, people— we mentioned, I think, in the market discussions we had earlier today that at the shorter end of the curve, you’ve got a lot of people hiding out and letting the backends roll. Maybe it’s normalized or maybe there’s something else going on. But I think shorter duration, people hedging their position against a potentially continued rising of rates, which links nicely to the debasement of currencies. And where I think there’s actually a very exciting opportunity is— but I met a chap once on a holiday in New Zealand, of all places, and he was out of Tassie. And he said he’d made a fortune in the ’80s. On FX. I was researching FX actually, it’s Ray Dalio. Hello, Ray. When he was just an FX salesman, no less, at Watsons. And it was easy money apparently in the ’80s, a bit of carry trade, a bit of PPP, job done. And it became very difficult as actually the differential between interest rates was sort of priced efficiently. And I think we’re in for a bit of volatility in global FX markets. Certainly there’s more fun to be had in the emerging currencies, but with the dawn of Bitcoin, if you threw that in the mix and if you consider, say, Swiss franc or Singapore dollar is historically quite cool hedges for a tail risk, there’s a really interesting trade there on a basket of monetary premium unwind tail risk hedge baskets. Let’s call it for the sake of argument. I think you liked gold. That could be in there too. But there’s something there I’d probably consider. If you don’t like the options pricing for put spread collars, maybe That’s something to consider. It’s pretty sophisticated. It would take a lot of explaining to most people in most cities, but I’d be looking at that. And I think that’s exciting because bond vol as well, you know, bond vibes, some hedge funds love that. Who’s good at that? You know, who’s good in this sort of environment? I always tend to think he’s— with history echoing as it does, can we find somebody who’s seen this before? And it’s difficult because none of us have for a very long period of time.
Aoifinn Devitt: It is a crystal ball. I suppose to take you off some of the— we certainly don’t have a crystal ball. We’re going to take a short break to hear from the sponsor of this series, Diamond Hill. I sat down with Heather Brilliance, CEO of Diamond Hill, and asked her how she thinks about the primary stakeholders of the firm.
Speaker C: We talk a lot about our three primary stakeholders as being our clients, first and foremost, as we discussed, and then secondarily, but also critically important, our employees and our shareholders. We are a public company, and so that is an interesting dynamic in terms of making sure you’re looking after your shareholders as well. But we ultimately believe that we can do the best job of delivering for all stakeholders by focusing our effort primarily on our clients. In order to do that, of course, we have to make sure that we are attracting and retaining great talent, both on the investment side of things as well as across all of our teams. And so we put a lot of effort into how we think about recruiting. Over the last few years, we’ve made a number of changes to making sure that we’re looking in new areas to attract talent that comes from diverse backgrounds. And I think that’s really helping make us a stronger firm.
Aoifinn Devitt: And now back to the show. But just in terms of some of the other areas, perhaps to get less attention, such as maybe venture capital, I think we mentioned on our macro podcast discussing some of the innovation, and that is really worthy of capital in the UK. Yeah, um, that’s maybe being overlooked.
Ian McKnight: Oh, completely right. So I could go all day on this. I think we’re going to enter into a period of history that will be a just remarkable change, and the pace of change, and remarkable opportunities. So on the one hand, I’m quite cynical, thinking, oh gosh, you know, there was a great thing in that book Capital in the 21st Century. I think we discussed it a few weeks ago, and I said they started there saying, oh gosh, if only Marx had written his second book, you know, we’d have had his complete view because he’d got to the end of the first, started the second, thought, no, that doesn’t quite work. Let’s go to this one. And what happened, unfortunately, is the Russian Revolution and the First World War. We never found out what 7 big companies ruling the world looked like and whether or not they were regulated or all-powerful and abused their position, but we’re about to find out. Right, because there’s this rush, as you said, into this Wild West of massive tech ruling the world. Set against that, what gives me kind of hope and excitement is the dawn of AI alongside it. The irony is that the tech firms leading these, right, these sort of currently somewhat unregulated and morally ambiguous areas enable in extremis and in not a great deal of time people with absolutely no coding knowledge whatsoever to design an app. And my friend, I heard, has done this, right, using— and he is actually very technical, but asking it just the questions and checking that it was giving the right answer at each point, designed an app without inputting one line of code himself, even though he kind of knew how to do it. Remarkable. Now imagine if a kid out of college could do this. That puts the barrier to social mobility, which given my background, I’m a large proponent, much lower than it has been historically. Now, isn’t that a curiosity? So I think we’re in for a real treat, and venture capital of course becomes part of that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely, and it does. And I think one of the things I was just going to ask you is what seems to be missing. But it’s not the will to invest, it seems to be the ecosystem in the UK is not as supportive, as established as promising perhaps as the US ecosystem. But people like you could change that, right? I mean, with people like you being on boards, advisory, providing that kind of support, as well as the capital. How far do you think we are from that?
Ian McKnight: They’ve got enough entrepreneurial spirit, and I love it. And I think there’s a cultural problem, just candidly, in the UK where, I saw this actually once visiting Blackburn, and somebody drove past in like a lovely car, and somebody shouted abuse at them. And I’m thinking in the US, where I just come back from actually, and they said it’d be like, wow, well done you, I want that too, and I’ll work hard and do it. And we sort of have, oh, look at you, who do you think you are? And I think there’s just this legacy cultural attitude that’s kind of wrong. We need to reward success and social mobility and entrepreneurship. And unfortunately, I, I just get the sense that is kind of dead right now from my lens. In the UK, and that has to fundamentally change. I’m a Thatcher’s child, right? I wouldn’t be sat here if it weren’t for a food chain of kind of working-class lads hiring somebody a bit like them. Thanks, Stephen Bebban and Nick Fitzpatrick, right? There wouldn’t be this me sat here. And so who’s the next me doing that with that gung-ho lateral thinking spirit? And are we encouraging those people? And I don’t think we are. And in fact, the tax system is set up to preclude you becoming wealthy unless you’re entrepreneurial or you leave the country. It’s remarkable.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I suppose bearing in mind that being an entrepreneur in this country has probably a lower risk in the sense of, you know, health insurance is not an issue, I’m always amazed at the entrepreneurial spirit in the US given some of the barriers to it.
Ian McKnight: Well, you have to be. You have to go for it because you might end up with a big social care bill at the end that we don’t have. As you say, there’s still the concern that, know, you what if I lose my house and I Yeah, but you’re going to get looked after, aren’t you? You’re out on the street or your kids get the billing in the Midwest, right? So it depends which country you’re in. But yes, I think there’s something about what needs to happen in the UK is to encourage risk-taking. There’s been article after article lately saying downplaying the UK. I wouldn’t downplay the country. I think we’re just raring to go. But you need to take the shackles off, whether it’s regulation, incentives, blockages. Barriers to mobility. And either your podcast is about just that, taking down barriers to progress whoever you are, and I couldn’t support it more. But I think that we really need to focus on that and prioritize it. And this is a multi-generation game, it’s not a quick fix.
Aoifinn Devitt: True, but I do think that— well, I don’t believe in deglobalization, and I certainly don’t believe in deglobalization of ideas. I think if anything, the spread of ideas, the spread of culture is faster now than ever, and it— that train has left the station, there is no reversing forcing that kind of flow across borders. And what I think is going to be the impact of that is there has been a suggestion that, you know, this attitude towards failure is different, say, in the US, it’s more celebrated, it’s seen as a stepping stone, that there may have been some kind of a shame attached to failure. I think that that entrepreneurial doctrine is changing the world over. And I think in the UK with the venture capital industry, we can change that fear of failure. By bringing some of the international attitudes to that.
Ian McKnight: The best entrepreneurs I know in the UK had several failed businesses before flying on the next attempt. And that attitude— my cousin’s one, right, actually, but she didn’t do the failing bit. God bless you, Angie. You should have her on your show. She’s one of the most remarkable people I know, and that’s saying something, right? But being an entrepreneur in the UK, you need a certain grit and resilience that is not perhaps bred in our school system, certainly the state system, as it might be. Whereas in the US, my partner is American, the show and tell, it starts in nursery, right? And you are loud and proud and you get out there even if you’re shy, you know how to sell, you know how to sell yourself, you know how to make stuff happen. And it’s this, you can do it. I love that. I love it. I want more of that. Because England’s conservative with a small team, stiff upper lip. But fundamentally, we love winning, right? And we need to get that back. I absolutely love winning, but I’m not afraid to fail and cock up and embarrass myself, which, as we said before, sometimes splits the crowd, right? I don’t care. Let’s just go on and win again next time.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love the energy. Well, let’s wind this up with a few quick reflections. You’ve spoken quite candidly about career highs and lows. I’d love to know, like, what you’ve learned from some of the lows, some of the challenges and setbacks.
Ian McKnight: If something goes wrong, just win again tomorrow. Just start again. It’s compartmentalizing, you know. You learn from everything, right? You’ve got to just keep going. And I’ve had a lot of people, especially given, I don’t know, my accent or whatever, they underestimate you. And it’s a joy to watch them wrong. And it’s that determination to prove people wrong And especially when this is a trait of our industry— oh, you can’t do that, you can’t do that, oh, you’re never going to do that— and you do it, and they do it again, and it’s like, you can’t watch me, you know. I absolutely revel in it.
Aoifinn Devitt: Seems like that’s the lightning rod, being told you can’t do that.
Ian McKnight: Yeah, if you tell me I can’t do something, you might as well have just told me to do it, right? It’s resistance to authority, I think.
Aoifinn Devitt: Coming through loud and clear. Then just on the people side, you know, you mentioned some people who took a chance on you and that why you’re here. And it’d be great if— this is not supposed to be an exhaustive list, so no need to listen all, but any one or two that were a particular mentor to you and why.
Ian McKnight: You did very kindly tell me you were going to ask this, and I thought, gosh, I’m going to upset lots of people if I do. So forgive me if you’re one of them and I didn’t. But I mean, Steve Bebban and Chris Hawdy took a chance on me at Watsons, and Roger, and he’s been brilliant. Everything— I love that business at Watsons there. It was such a great place to be. And a special mention to Patrick McCoy, who— one of the great lows of my career, actually. After Morgan Stanley in the financial crisis very kindly made me redundant, along with half the you team, know. It was heartbreaking. And he picked up off that. I stood in for one of his colleagues who was away for 8 months. And then Heath Mottram, who took me to Royal Mail, the biggest thing that could have happened to me. I would describe Heath as finishing school. He’s absolutely magnificent. And I realized then, you don’t know what you don’t know until you work with him. I can’t explain it. Huggy, Chris Hogg, and I worked together. We grew up together. We had an absolute ball. Bev Dustin. Then I worked with Stephen Bebban again. Right now I’m working with two absolute titans of the change of the future of the industry, right? Sam Cartwright, and Dean McClelland of Tomte, absolutely remarkable individuals driving forward change and innovation in their own way. But I did think back to one person you said, you know, who influenced you. And the best piece of advice professionally I had, and this is my mentor, Tammy Belshear, she was called Tammy Battersby. And on my first day, second day in the office, she texted me to one and side said, I was like, I think I asked her that question actually, but what advice did you give me? And she just said, network, network, network. And I am, whether you know this or not, slightly down the spectrum, right? So I was like, okay, I’ll do that. And I did. And pretty much everything that followed is a massive vindication of her advice. And thank you, Tammy, I love you.
Aoifinn Devitt: More great advice. And it’s funny, that’s been resounding advice and resonating with listeners, I think, for 5 years on this podcast, because one of my first very first podcast that came out, and it’s still something that’s not being taught in schools or universities, and it’s still something that has been taken for granted.
Ian McKnight: Well, do you know, I’m going to plug my friend here, my friend Will Kintish. I turned up cockily to his training session at LCP, who I should thank for putting it on, and, and he comes in, he’s from Oldham, he goes, hello, Kintish here. We’re friends to this day, and he teaches you how to work a room, to network Know, like, and trust. Follow up. Be polite. Wonderful. And I recommend his courses to people who want to have their staff and teams network effectively. Sorry, I couldn’t help that.
Aoifinn Devitt: I just thought— well, I’d be happy to promote a skill that our listeners could learn from.
Ian McKnight: And understanding people’s personalities is the best thing I’ve done recently. How people work, their cognitive stack, how they interact. How to build a team using that. I’ve done that twice now. And that’s one of the most powerful things. Paul Craven, who’s the magician, ex-Goldman, is becoming a friend. I love it. And he’s a massive proponent of this, that the finest of his art at understanding people. Very powerful.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely.
Ian McKnight: Not to be used for ill, by the way.
Aoifinn Devitt: No, apparently those schematics cannot be used to hire people, they say, because they are too idiosyncratic, but they can be used to analyze an existing team.
Ian McKnight: But I can, you know, guess what people are from talking to them. And that is a talent.
Aoifinn Devitt: Indeed, one of your many. Well, my last question is around any piece of advice besides the network, network, network, and some of the exhortation around backing talent and innovation. Is there anything you can leave us with in terms of either advice for your younger self or a creed or a motto that you live by today?
Ian McKnight: Yeah, well, a creed or a motto is a good one. So my auntie told me, actually, and she repeated it several times as she’s got older and reminded me, It’s that whole, nobody’s better than you, but you’re not better than anybody else. And I loved that. But the advice I’d give to myself is don’t listen to anybody telling you you can’t do something. Just watch me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, a great place to conclude, Ian. You are a legend in the industry and your reputation goes before you. It’s been great to capture your wisdom twice in succession today on our Markets Happy Hour, which I’ll link to in this podcast if anybody wants to hear more from you. That will have been a few months ago by the time this podcast is launched. And thank you for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Ian McKnight: Oh, thanks so much, Tessa. Always an absolute pleasure to see you and speak to you.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors on their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. And all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
