Ian King, The Times, 13 January 2025:
By tradition, young financial journalists learning the ropes have done so by covering the smaller companies sector.
For the past 30 years they have learnt rapidly that the sector’s doyenne is Katie Potts, fund manager at the £1.2 billion Herald Investment Trust, now the target of a fierce campaign by the US activist investor Boaz Weinstein..
To oust Potts, though, would be a monumental error. Had she achieved what she has in say, sport or showbusiness, she would be fêted as a national treasure.
Barely known outside the Square Mile, Potts, 65, has been a stalwart supporter of scores of fledgling companies over the past three decades. Herald has provided some £677 million in primary capital to small businesses since its inception..
That long run of success highlights the extent to which the cricket-loving Potts, who eschews publicity and describes herself as “pretty shy”, is steeped in the sector.
Having read engineering science at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, on a scholarship funded by the aerospace engineer GKN, for which she worked on graduation, Potts switched careers two years later and went into the City with Barings.
Later joining SG Warburg, she became one of the City’s most respected analysts, covering the electronics sector.
However, after five years, she moved from analyst to fund manager, telling the Quoted Data website last year: “I chose to leave at the end of 1993 because I believed that in the UK, large companies were uninteresting but there were a raft of interesting small companies.
“And I was aware it was difficult for professional investment managers and retail investors alike to invest in small companies because there is more stock-specific risk and not much liquidity — so why not offer a collective vehicle that means people can get reduced risk exposure to risky assets?”
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