Company: Hawksmoor Investment Management
Personal AUM: £1.5bn
Company AUM: £5bn
Career history
Ben started his career researching and broking Japanese equities in London and Tokyo to institutional clients. He left the City in 2008 to set up an energy consultancy in Sydney, Australia. Ben spent two and a half fantastic years there before he decided to settle down back in the UK to start a family.
Determined to join a boutique fund manager outside of London, serendipity led Ben to Hawksmoor who had recently started up, and he is still there 16 years later. He joined John Crowley, Richard Scott and Daniel Lockyer managing multi-asset portfolios in a tiny office in an attic in Exeter.
Hawksmoor has since grown to over 100 people and Ben now heads up the fund management team, running a suite of multi-asset funds and segregated mandates.
Key areas of focus
As part of the Cost Disclosure Campaign Group, I continue to drive for correct treatment of investment company expenses, along with industry professionals and Baronesses Bowles and Altmann.
In December 2025, the FCA released its Policy Statement on the new CCI regime ensuring that these expenses would not be erroneously aggregated into the cost figures of funds that own them.
The Group is keeping a watchful eye on the replacement for the MiFID regime and fighting for investment companies to be included in the Pension Schemes Bill. This will enable the assets held in investment companies' portfolios to count towards the Mansion House Accord minimums.
Along with my team, I continue to write the Crescendo blog, which aims to help improve the investment company ecosystem, as well as putting the case for active fund management at a time when passive management grows relentlessly in popularity.
The team remain one of the few fund management teams that combine a sizable allocation to investment companies with actively-managed, open-ended funds to create truly multi-asset funds.
We believe investment companies continue to be the UK asset management sector's crown jewels: giving holders exposure to private markets in an appropriately liquid wrapper.
