41: Global Investing, Public and Private Markets: A rare interview with Peter Davies of Lansdowne Partners

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The FT has described our guest on this episode as one of 30 most influential people in the City of London. Moreover in the world of public and private investing there is repeated acknowledgement of him being one of today’s great investment thinkers. The firm he joined back in 2001, Lansdowne Partners, is widely admired amongst the global institutional investment community, and his perspectives and performance have been widely sought after.

In this conversation, we discuss Peter’s investing career to date, his approach to evaluating companies, public and private, the exciting IP being developed around Oxford University and why he is so excited about the business and investing landscape today, along with other important perspectives.

Peter initially describes the formative early years at Mercury Investment Management, some of the lessons he learned about investing and building a successful investment culture. He then describes his decision to join Lansdowne in 2001 and why he wanted to exploit the long/short opportunity set.

He describes the analysis undertaken to identify Northern Rock as a highly vulnerable institution and how they established a potent short position that was immensely profitable for their investors.

He continues by discussing the work post the Great Financial Crisis that led them to invest in many global brands as well as being early investors in the major tech platform companies such as Google and Amazon etc.

Fast forwarding he describes the move to become long-only, the investment culture that they have created at Lansdowne. which incorporates an important need to calibrate and understand a wide range of possible outcomes for each investment they consider.

Peter then moves to talk about the UK investing landscape and the opportunities he believes exist in public and private markets. Specifically he discusses some of the opportunities emanating from Oxford University and why the vaccine success offers opportunities for significant leaps forward in medical and other productivity gains. He also explains why he feels UK political risk has been mispriced and the important investing opportunities he has identified.

He describes his involvement with world class sports men and women, and learning lessons about decision making under pressure. He also talks about balancing time pressures, improving his own productive capabilities and lessons he would share with others.