Hedge fund broker Argyll & Buchanan has partnered with a financial services education specialist to help rookie financiers get started in business.
The agreement with Inflection Point Intelligence (IPI) adds to the services on offer to clients of the Glasgow-based firm which gives small-scale fund managers access to investments normally available only to large institutions.
It means start-up and emerging hedge fund managers can use IPI’s Henley Executive Hedge Fund Programme, a collaboration with Henley Business School, to learn how to do the job, what their responsibilities are and how to avoid pitfalls.
Experienced industry practitioners provide a programme which is taught mainly online at participants’ own pace.
IPI founding partner Anna Stephenson said: “We are excited to partner with A&B to provide the knowledge that their emerging clients need. This programme was designed specifically to help new managers understand their responsibilities and avoid making costly mistakes at a time when they can least afford it.
“Our alumni understand that, even if they outsource technical knowledge to world-class service providers, they are still ultimately responsible to their investors for the whole business. Just like all entrepreneurs, they must be able to manage all aspects of business operations, from asset management to HR management, technology to accounting, capital raising to tax reporting.
“Getting the right practical education ensures a robust, well-managed infrastructure and also generates investor trust, the two bedrocks of business growth.”
Argyll & Buchanan was founded by Mel Sutton, who himself took an unconventional route into hedge fund management. He left school without qualifications and worked in a Clydeside shipyard before becoming a mortgage advisor and entering the banking trade with BNY Mellon in Edinburgh.
His firm offers hedge funds access to ‘bulge-bracket’ execution, custody, financing and technology without the minimum revenue thresholds or minimum asset levels normally required. It recently partnered with executive search site Matchbook to help clients with potentially costly recruitment and also offers ancillary services to help with fund incorporation, capital raising and business launching.
Sutton said: “The Henley Executive Hedge Fund Programme is the perfect course for our start-up and emerging hedge fund clients. I like that this course reminds start-up and emerging mangers that they must think like entrepreneurs; they are business managers as well as portfolio managers. The questions I hear most are answered and the mistakes I see most often, could have been prevented.”
