Rochussen says this means managers have less incentive to grow the assets in their funds to ever higher levels, and instead are better off trying to make the funds perform better.
He says: “Each of the fund managers has a clear size in mind for how big their fund can get before it would stop performing. It is Polar’s view that volume destroys performance when it comes to fund management.
"Our current assets under management is £20bn, we believe that the combined capacity for the strategies we have is £60bn, but we think performance leads to inflows, so focus on that.”
In terms of what he looks for when recruiting a fund manager, Rochussen says: “All of the lead managers on all our strategies have at least a 10-year track record, and all were hired from other firms. So track record is important. All of the partners know what the others earn, so there are no egos; we don’t believe in star fund managers.”
One criticism market participants have of Polar’s business model is that it relies very heavily on performance fees, while the funds for which it is best known are in the technology and healthcare sectors, and so are growth equities.
Rochussen acknowledges this leaves the firm vulnerable when market sentiment changes, as it did in 2022, but says this is always made clear to clients. “We would usually say that we are probably not the core fund that people should have in their portfolio. Other funds can be the core, and we are the satellites around that.
"My job is to find the exceptional managers within those themes.“
It was while advising the Fleming family (one of their ancestors is the creator of James Bond) that Rochussen was invited to relocate to the UK from his native South Africa to help set up and grow the Fleming’s family office.
A feature of the asset management landscape in recent decades has been the disruption to the old City firms of the arrival of large US and European firms.
Rochussen is probably unusual in having worked for two of the old established city families, the Flemings, and the Hambros, whose City credentials can be traced back to 1839.
He says his South African roots made this easier because “they wouldn’t recognise the name of my school or university because those were abroad, so it sort of never came up”.
When JO Hambro was sold in the early 2000s, one of its founders offered to back Rochussen to launch a start-up firm, but instead he joined Polar, where the founders were looking to retire.
