AM Director: some less standard path
I am Director at a 3bn USD AM boutique shop covering a niche growing sector, located in Europe.
I am having a strong quant background (phd). I spent 4 years doing applied research in academia (stochastic modeling with applications to finance) and then joined the shop I am currently working at.
We were 6 people in the beginning and there was about 200 m USD AUM. Now. About 40 emploers and USD 3bn. so why the hell did I join this firm whereas I got other quant offers from IB?
Because I did not listen to anyone's advises and just followed my intuition. I got a quick promotion after a year and can probably make into a partner in short due course.
While formally being AM (sounds more comforting for some institutional clients) we do all kind of stuff as HF and PE shops are doing; so labels do not matter much.
I was not a guy seeking for formal training. I am happy to be thrown to the fire and try overcome the obstacles. I was doing from back office trade settlements and filling trmplates to quant analysis, trading, portfolio management, origination of risk, structuring it and to pitching and RPFing to institutional investors in less than 2 years.
I have concerns about my future and as I am getting older I start analyzing various As IF scenarios. So I am grateful to this forum and will be asking questions frequently.
Welcome! As an incoming first-year analyst in AM, I would love to hear more about how you made each jump at your firm. It sounds like it would be pretty instructive.
Are you working at a big/established firm? I went for a start-up: 1. Whatever I did do had more impact than in a big firm (we were 6 people in the beginning) 2. I have always had a partner attitude 3. I had live in the beginning with role in BO, MO and FO at the same time.
Jumps came mainly via soft factors/gneral good performance proving to the senior management my commitment to the firm. Apart from this I have always been innovative - bringing completely out if the box investment ideas, but also outspoken and straightforward from a political viewpoint. Last and not least, I have always delivered.
Am happy to elaborate more
Yes, it's a pretty large fixed income fund. My role is rotational across various desks, so I'll get a wide range of experience across products.
I'm interested in how you knew when to step up for projects vs avoid them. Was it risky to accept the BO/MO assignments? From the managing your career perspective, you wouldn't want to be pigeonholed as a specialist of those roles.
Thanks for doing this! Its helpful to hear an experienced viewpoint
You're probably better off giving advice here than receiving it.
1)how useful is higher level mathematics and your PhD for your day-to-day. Most on WSO argue it is useless, however most also don't have a PhD and lack experience using quant tools - so I doubt many actually understand these models and how they work/ are properly applied.
2)How long did it take to go from 200M to 1B? to 3B?
3)Was the back-office experience helpful at all? I imagine it teaches you to be independent in your research so you can manage people on top of just front-office work?
1) phd in what i did is useful. Short term - enhanced technicality is appreciated on AM, it gives you competitive advantage compared to peers. Also in IB, I came up with quite exotic and beneficial structures that worked for the protection buyers via my technical competence and knew how to price it. It also helps with sakes to clients and gives an easier way to sit in some boards or becoming and adjuncted professor as a hobby in due course. Last and not least - do what you like, if you don't feel found research fur 3-4 years don't do it...
2) 8 months. 1 to 3, 14 months. It was tremendously fast, much faster than anyone has expected.
3) was very useful, it gives a great stat up experience as once opening your own shop, some BO exposure is unavoidable. Also when working with BO now, I understand much better their work.
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