‘I have no particularly good reason for coming into wealth management in the first place,’ jokes the statesmanlike Rupert Caldecott. One of the most experienced investment managers in the business, he was one of the few who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming and cut equity to 10 per cent, ensuring his clients didn’t lose any money.
Starting out in 1974, Caldecott had stints at Schroders and Cazenove before joining Andrew Dalton at his eponymous firm in 2006. In 2017 he set up RM Caldecott and Partners with a group of esteemed investors from across the financial world, with an approach that he calls ‘delightfully unconstrained’. ‘Portfolio allocation is a set of opportunities and you just have to use your judgement to put money in the right pot,’ he says.
The firm is proud of its ‘contrarian’ mindset, and is guided by three main principles: the belief that smaller teams create more powerful results, that experience counts, and a strong focus on investments aimed at outperforming the mean on a risk-adjusted basis. It isn’t afraid to challenge the accepted wisdom and look beneath the surface to uncover smarter and more effective decisions. ‘Out-of-theordinary thinking can create extraordinary results,’ it posits.