City Cinderella

Book excerpt: When the author was appointed chairman of Warburg Investment Management in 1979, he was told by his boss, the legendary Sir Siegmund Warburg, that his first task was to get rid of it. Fortunately no one wanted it. By the mid-80s, it began to grow rapidly and, renamed Mercury Asset Management, it gathered astonishing momentum in the rest of that decade. By the mid-90s, MAM was the largest UK fund manager, responsible for 5 per cent of all investment UK equities. Under author Pert Stormonth Darling's leadership, it became the largest and most successful investment fund in British financial history. City Cinderella is a book about changing times in the city of London, about risk and innovation, and a great British success story.