Carmignac sets its sights on the UK

THE ALCHEMIST

When you hear the words "French asset manager", what springs to mind? There is at least one very good such manager, and before long, financial advisers in the UK will get a chance to meet it.

Carmignac Gestion (founded 1989) is coming to the UK, and even if you are a secret standard bearer of traditional British attitudes towards all things Gallic, this is perhaps an opportunity to challenge those views. For one, Carmignac’s style – not to mention hospitality – recalls a previous era. Only last week, 800 excited French financial advisers crammed into the bawdy Parisian music hall that is the Théâtre Mogador to marvel at ice sculptures, quaff champagne, and join a somewhat unseemly stampede for fantastical canapés, pots of chicken, fish and mussels, rounded off by platters of ...