InvestmentsJan 26 2015

“Everything I know I’ve learnt on the job”

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There are few in the investment management industry who can claim to have begun their career in scientific publishing but for T Rowe Price’s Oliver Bell, this is indeed the case.

Having studied chemistry at Exeter University, it is hardly surprising that his first job was pharmaceuticals and biosciences editor at a publishing company, or that he initially intended to pursue a career as a patent lawyer. What is more intriguing is how he ended up in investment and, specifically, specialising in emerging markets and frontiers.

Mr Bell says: “I’m from an unusual background. I came out [of university] in 1992 in the midst of a recession. Actually they were laying off patent lawyers at the time.

“It’s a very hard industry to get into anyway and it was just impossible to break into it, even though I knew a few people who could help.

“As a consequence I looked at the next best thing, which was I went to work for a scientific publishing company that had a monopoly in collating all the patents globally and using science graduates to put them on a database and then all the research firms dialled into this base to see what patents exist.”

He recalls that the database was a fairly manual process at the time he joined so he used his knowledge of computing, picked up during university, to take the company through the process of computerisation.

“They wanted to bring computers in and it was all fairly archaic,” he remembers. “I came in, knew a bit and sat between the IT department who were developing the software and the technology, and the people who were actually doing the job.

“From there, I became a project manager and started rolling the computerisation into other departments.”

It was through one of those departments that he met his now wife, but Mr Bell was keen that once they were engaged they would no longer work together. As far as he was concerned, he had reached his potential at the company anyway, having moved up rapidly to a project management role. So he left and stopped by a recruitment agency around the corner.

He explains: “I walked in there, had some very good interviews, I was looking for some project management type roles and I was offered, almost instantly, two jobs. One was to work in a rivet making company and the other was to work at Pictet, inside the emerging markets team. So that was my way in.”

Mr Bell describes Pictet as being at the forefront of emerging markets investing back in 1997 when he took up his role there as a research manager. He was tasked with setting up a database which collected data from companies in the emerging market region. To give some idea of the challenge that lay ahead of him at that time, Mr Bell says that Pictet had been sending diskettes out to countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan to collect information and only dial-up internet was available.

He points out: “They deliberately employed someone who knew nothing about finance because it was quite a prestigious place to get into, especially the emerging markets team, and what they were finding is that most people were coming in with a view to becoming a fund manager or an analyst.

“They wanted someone who knew nothing about finance just to do the job in hand, which was to get this database up and running, talk to the IT department, talk to the fund managers and sort this project out.”

The job was relatively straightforward, according to Mr Bell, who in spite of not having set out to establish a career in finance, subsequently found himself on the investment team.

“I remember my interview with Pictet by the head of emerging markets at the time and he asked me, ‘what investments do you make?’,” Mr Bell reveals. “And I said, I don’t have any spare cash to make investments.

“So everything I know, I’ve learnt on the job, which I think is quite different from a lot of people nowadays. Maybe I approach investment slightly differently because of that.”

From then on, his route through the company was far more logical. He came to head up the EMEA part of Pictet’s global emerging markets funds between 2003 and 2007, which he hails as “very good years” for that team.

“From that point I started going for more management roles, as well as managing the fund. So I was responsible for launching a Middle East and North Africa, and Middle East Africa funds for Pictet,” he notes. “Then I took over Pictet’s Global Emerging High Dividend Yield fund which grew under my tenure from about $300m (£198m) to $1bn by the time I left. That was really investing in emerging market companies that had high dividend yields.

“I was also managing the emerging markets research team there so I had four roles, if you like, by the end of my time at Pictet.”

The manager made the move from Pictet to T Rowe Price in October 2011. He was already a familiar face to the emerging markets team there though, as he acknowledges “there aren’t that many of us who have done my space for this length of time”.

He elaborates: “Chris Alderson, who is now the chief executive of international equity here, used to cover this region. He was head of emerging markets but he also launched the Africa and Middle East funds, which I now manage.

“This job came about because I was contacted directly by Chris. He just called me up and said, is there any chance I would consider moving? So the discussions went from there and I haven’t looked back.”

He was asked to join the firm to turn around the performance of its Africa and Middle East portfolio. Mr Bell notes that T Rowe Price had a larger asset base to manage, as well as the desire to commit more resources to the fund in an effort to help him run it, which was an attractive prospect for the manager. Last year, he launched the Frontier Markets fund in response to demand from clients.

He believes that with Africa in particular there is a perception gap. He goes on: “What’s happening is that these countries are, for structural reasons, starting to grow very quickly and many of them, I’m not just talking about Africa but also the frontiers, look very similar to the emerging markets of the late 1990s.”

The challenge for frontier markets, he says, is liquidity.

“So what’s an interesting timeline is that in 1988 when MSCI launched the emerging markets index, by 1995 seven years later there were 37 emerging market funds, of which one was T Rowe Price’s,” he observes.

“At the end of 2007, MSCI launched the frontiers index and seven years later there are 37 frontier funds. Eerily we’re on the same sort of path. Today, there are 1,500 emerging market funds.”

Mr Bell cautions: “Now I’m not necessarily suggesting we’re going to follow that path exactly but the reality is we’re still at the very early stages of this asset class.

“T Rowe Price likes to think very long term and we like to think that over the next 15 years we’re going to take our rightful share of this asset class like we have in emerging markets and the developed markets.”

Clearly, travel is a necessary part of the job but Mr Bell insists he is careful to balance it with family life. Afterall, he has four children, for whom he acts as a “glorified taxi driver”.

He remarks: “I’m exploring the next frontier of countries that are going to develop. I’m seeing them in the early stages of development and then going with them along the journey that’s ahead of them.

“Turkey is an example of a country that I covered for many years when I was at Pictet and that country went from crisis to crisis, to what is now a relatively stable country that is talked about as a mainstream emerging market.”

Mr Bell adds: “Now I’m going to countries like Mozambique or Vietnam, seeing them at relatively early stages and hopefully will enjoy the journey for the next number of years.”

CV

2011-present - Lead portfolio manager, Africa & Middle East and Global Frontier funds, T Rowe Price

1997-2011 - Latterly as head of global emerging markets research, Pictet Asset Management

1995-1997 - Project manager, business support group, Derwent Information

1992-1995 - Pharmaceutical and biosciences editor, Derwent Information