At Professionelle, we keep our ears open for stories that
shed light on how corporate and professional women" make it all
work". Sometimes that means we'll bring you news of companies that
support female employees strongly, as in Galia's recent piece about
Lisa's Hummus. Occasionally, we'll invite interesting women to tell
their own stories, and at other times - as now - we'll interview
them and bring back to you what we've gleaned.
In this article, we describe three women who have forged
their own path through career, flexibility and motherhood
tradeoffs. They call their company Liontamer.
I admit I was a little nervous about meeting the Liontamer team.
It wasn't only their confident company name. Their impressive CVs
and evident skill depth in an area I know next to nothing about
also added to a mild case of intimidation. However, when Galia and
I sat down with Laetitia, Janine and Vanja, our conversation first
roamed around the familiar topics of fashion and nannies. It was
clear the three Liontamers were making the most of the opportunity
to talk face to face (more on that below).
What do they do?
Liontamer is New Zealand's first specialist manager of retail
capital protected investments. As I understand it, these are funds
where the money you invest will hold its value (less inflation)
provided you hold the investment for its full term, usually four or
five years. They achieve this via the purchase of notes in
international financial institutions with a high credit rating like
Barclays, UBS or Deutsche Bank. What is at risk is the return -
which is driven by the nature of underlying asset eg a sharemarket
index. The benefit is that you can combine exposure to high
risk-high return financial assets with the peace of mind of knowing
your capital is protected. Their website provides a description of their products and how the money
flows.
Liontamer launched in 2003 and until recently brought four new
retail funds to the New Zealand market each year. Now, however, the
team is poised to push into Australia. Not only that, they have
also launched a customised fund structure, tailored to the needs of
a particular client, in addition to their broader, more
standardised retail products. "Otherwise we'd get in a rut…" they
say, half-ruefully.
How did they find each other?
Laetitia, originally from Belgium, founded the company after a
long career in banking, most recently as director capital markets
at the BNZ. Laetitia really enjoyed her work in the area and,
encouraged by others remarking that with her deep skills she could
develop her own business, she began preparations while still at the
bank. She points out that her boss was fully aware of this and that
his support eased the transition process.
Then serendipity lent a hand. Janine was in finance in the UK
and looking for a way back to New Zealand. She rang the one woman
in New Zealand whose name was listed on an industry website in the
structured retail products area to ask about job opportunities.
That woman, of course, was Laetitia, who thought Janine's work
experience sounded a great match for her new venture... As Laetitia
said, "You do the analysis about potential business partners, but
in the end it comes to your gut instinct. Intuition plays a
role."
Janine came onboard as a contractor at first and moved to being
a shareholder soon after. After the first fund launched, they
dispensed with contracts and worked on trust. "I sent her a bouquet
of flowers instead!" Laetitia remembered.
To develop the products, they needed specialist legal advisors.
Vanja was a senior associate with Bell Gully where she specialised
in offers of securities to the public and managed funds. While
still at Bell Gully she was seconded to Liontamer for six months.
The secondment worked both ways: the Liontamer team gained a
specialist inhouse resource, while for Vanja it was "a free look"
at the company and its people. After maternity leave, she returned
to Liontamer as an employee, initially working three days a week,
and now up to four.
What was the attraction of having their own business?
Janine is a natural-born entrepreneur. "Wages depress me," she
says, "I'd much rather have the chance to earn lots on commission."
Laetitia talks about her entrepreneurial skills kicking in once she
began to develop the idea. It was also quite simply an opportunity
to get a fairer share of the wealth she'd been creating for her
employer.
They pointed to a number of other pluses:
- They have all learned more through having to take on much more
varied and hands-on roles than they ever would have in the
corporate world.
- As principals in a boutique company they have access to the
most senior people in their industry. They believe these
opportunities would not have been open to them had they stayed as
specialists in their corporate roles.
- Full ownership and accountability: "We take full
responsibility, and we take big decisions." As one example, they
cited changing their sole distributor over the last twelve months
of operation, as they found their work styles were
incompatible.
How flexible are they?
They have no office and each uses her home as her work base.
This is partly pragmatic. They often have to call overseas in the
middle of the night. It's far more comfortable and safe to do that
in slippers at home than in a deserted downtown office. Also,
during the day they tend to be out and about visiting clients and
suppliers, which reduces the need for formal office space.
Vanja and Laetitia used to meet once a week but it's now more ad
hoc. Board meetings bring them all together four times a year in
Sydney, too, and conference calls help them stay connected. A full
meet-up doesn't happen that often, however, which is why they so
clearly enjoyed the opportunity over our lunch to reconnect and
talk about more than just work!
Given that having no office makes sense for their business, they
enjoy the obvious cost savings as well as the flexibility it
brings. Vanja and Laetitia have young families and working from
home in Auckland provides more opportunities to see them. Janine
lives in Christchurch to be close to her family, and with no formal
office to be at, the fact that she's further away becomes largely
irrelevant.
It's not just the no-office approach that shows flexibility,
however. Liontamer has always relied heavily on outsourcing to keep
things very fluid, and to have access to the best skills when they
need them. They're comfortable with flexible hours, too. A fourth
team member, Sean, works three to five days per week, shifting with
the needs of the business.
A View on Women's Groups in Large Firms
An interesting observation by one of the Tamers was that while a
women's support group had been available to her, she had felt a
career risk in joining. "The employer can just be paying lip
service to the issues by having these groups - they want to be seen
to be doing the right thing. But you can be marked as a whiner or
troublemaker if you actually take part. I stayed well away."
So do they have all the trade offs sussed?
Not entirely! It sounded like Laetitia is busier now than she
ever was in corporate. Her childcare arrangements currently include
two nannies… She and Janine both agreed, "You wouldn't do it all
again if you thought back on it all. Mad!"
And yet here they are, on the brink of extending into new
products and new countries. "We keep challenging ourselves." I
suspect the three of them always have, and always will. They
certainly looked as if they were enjoying themselves as they raced
off to their next meeting…
Stop Press!
…and that next meeting, in hindsight, could well have had
something to do with exciting changes that have occurred at
Liontamer in the time it's taken us to draft this article. The
company's local success and plans for growth attracted the interest
of a Belgian bank, KBC Group, Europe's 11th largest bank and #3 in
capital-protected products in that region. KBC has J.V. operations
in Asia, too. The bank's interest has not been of the polite and
passing variety, either. It's now official that KBC Asset
Management has bought 51% of Liontamer!
Laetitia and Janine will retain full management control. As
Janine is quoted in the Christchurch Press as saying, "This is a
vote of confidence in the business, which has more than $200
million funds under management." It's also a great home-grown
success story by professional women and we're thrilled for
them.
And just think - we knew them before they were rich and
famous!
&code; Professionelle Ltd 2007