The Big Interview: AIC CEO Richard Stone's next big challenge is sorting out the retail platforms

Details first time he spoke with Saba

Sitting down for lunch on one of London’s seemingly rare sunny days, Richard Stone, CEO of the Association of Investment Companies, reviews one of the busiest years he’s had in the job, and his next big target: the retail platforms and their shareholder voting system.

Stone joined the AIC in 2021 after more than two decades working as a chartered accountant, during which he rose to the chief executive role at Share, which interactive investor acquired in 2020. He stepped into the top AIC job at a time when the decade-long bull market in US equites that had helped many of the trade association's members run on healthy premiums, but that was brutally upended by the pandemic. A series of compounding macroeconomic events and regulatory headaches have seen the sector largely struggle to comeback from it, in this regard. Friday Briefing: If we can't e...