If that happens it is a virtuous circle
"If that happens, it is a virtuous circle." As he argues, good performance brings in clients, which increases profitability, which leads to a higher share price along with higher gains on share options and higher bonuses, which would help F&C attract better people, which should lead to better performance.To achieve this, Grisay has shaken up the structure of the company. "We are a service industry - we need to show good performance in our funds," he says. So the fundamental picture doesn't look too healthy.Grisay realised that he had to act quickly to streamline the company and get it performing. Although there was a good reason - Resolution had bought Britannic, which had its own fund manager - and F&C received £27m in compensation, it was still a bitter blow.F&C funds under management may have grown from £118bn at the merger to £131bn by the end of December.
But that figure included £20bn which Resolution had yet to take away, and around £25bn placed with F&C by Friends Provident, which owns 51 per cent of F&C's shares. While by some measures the merger has worked - this week Grisay will be able to announce the group is achieving the £33m of cost savings it promised at the time of the deal in 2004 - by others it is struggling. The group was hit by the decision of Resolution, a group that manages closed pension funds, to remove £22bn of funds from F&C's care. "And yet we are still British."Having spent most of his working life in either the US or the UK, mostly with American bank JP Morgan, Grisay says he is an Anglophile. He has emphasised that by having an ashtray made out of the top of a piston from a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine - which famously powered the Spitfire fighters in the Second World War. Grisay, who races a 1931 Invicta classic sports car as a hobby, talks wistfully about the time he flew in a Spitfire.
"For someone who loves speed and agility, it is a fantastic experience," he says.Speed and agility are two of the qualities he will need if he is going to make F&C into the fund manager he thinks it could be. "We have an American chairman, a Belgian chief executive, our head of investment is Portuguese, our head of retail is South African," he points out. Howard Carter, the rather unfusty Yorkshireman who was the architect of this new £130bn City giant, has retired. In his place is Alain Grisay, a 51-year-old Belgian.Grisay smiles at the suggestion that he sticks out at such a traditional firm. And now a completely different beast is emerging.This beast, now named F&C Asset Management, will start to show its true colours on Wednesday. And then it merged with a firm created by putting together Edinburgh investment stalwart Ivory & Sime with the fund management arm of Friends Provident, the former mutual. If the upcoming Universal versions live up to the results from Apple's early tests, it will be easy to justify investing in a MacBook Pro.For general office or graphics work, though, the lack of Universal applications means there is no rush to upgrade..
