With 22 years in the fixed-income space under his belt, it is hard to imagine TwentyFour Asset Management’s Chris Bowie as anything other than a bond man.
But when he first started out, as a programmer for Murray Johnstone, desperately trying to break into the asset management side of the business, he almost turned down his first fixed-income role, convinced he wanted to be an equities manager.
Whether intentional or not, Bowie has developed a distinct pattern of switching employers as soon as they change corporate profile. He left Murray Johnstone after it was acquired by Aberdeen in 2000; Aegon, before it became Kames Capital in 2011; and most recently in 2014, he left his post as head of credit at Ignis Asset Management after Standard Life Investments bought the firm.
For the past two years, he has been spearheading the outcome and investment driven division at TwentyFour AM, a platform he launched upon his arrival.
Master builder
The opportunity to build a business from the ground up is one of the things that attracted Bowie most to TwentyFour AM.
He says: “TwentyFour’s chief executive Mark Holman told me, ‘You can join another big company and they can back you with their money or you can come here and back yourself.’ He basically asked, ‘Do you have the balls to back yourself?’ which I thought was a perfect question really.
“I spent days thinking about it and eventually realised it was the right time in my career to go for this. The upside is I get to build my own business and do it in the style I want; the downside meant there was no money to manage on day one, so I had to work very hard to bring money in.”
