Yahoo Finance ‘We need to be able to afford to pay people well’, says Helena Morrissey
Baroness Helena Morrissey’s time is precious. A Conservative peer, mother of nine, gender equality advocate, Foreign Office lead non-executive director, and now chairman of fund shop AJ Bell. Her stamina and progressive thinking leaves many high-fliers in the City looking like layabouts.
She rises at 5:30am every day – it used to be 5am but Morrissey admits an extra half hour is necessary “in my old age”. Her week consists of balancing speeches in the House of Lords and on the City’s speaking circuit, whipping executives into shape on diversity issues and trips to Manchester where AJ Bell is based.
The FTSE 250 investment firm is a good fit, she says. Founded by Andy Bell as a pensions business in 1995, it has grown into a platform managing almost £79bn of investors' money.
On the surface, the pair might appear an odd match: Bell, who sees himself as a City outsider, versus Morrissey, a consummate insider and one of the best known voices and figures in the Square Mile.
“I have admired Andy from afar,” the 55-year-old says. “He’s a strong personality who is clear about what he wants to achieve.”
Morrissey left her role as a non-executive director at rival wealth manager St James’s Place (SJP) after just 14 months to take up the role. Despite raising some eyebrows by criticising SJP’s fee structure before even taking her seat on the board, she says her departure was amicable.
“There would have been a conflict with AJ Bell and it was obviously exciting to be offered the chair role. I think St James’s Place is a very strong company and is targeting a slightly different group of individuals – more wealthy individuals. I just feel very culturally aligned with AJ Bell.”
This time around, there was no such early dissent from Morrissey, who is instead full of praise for the company Bell has built. But as someone who is not shy about speaking her mind, and brimming with ideas about what she can achieve as chairman, the boardroom can no doubt expect some energetic debates ahead.
Morrissey has been known to generate some controversy too. Earlier this year, Labour politicians urged Boris Johnson to sack her as a government adviser after she posted a tweet arguing “the data shows we are not in a pandemic”, adding that Chinese “fake videos” were to blame for triggering fears about the virus.
“I do regret that out of context of the rest of the conversation on Twitter at the time the tweet in isolation seemed extreme but the intent was not,” she says. Morrissey adds that she opposes a return to draconian restrictions and states that we “need to start living with this virus”.
I do not and have never denied the existence of the pandemic; I have always called for proportionate reactions and a balancing of the risks for different parts of the population. I believe that the data shows the pandemic is now over and we should be opening up more quickly.
— Helena Morrissey DBE (@MorrisseyHelena) April 4, 2021
Taking on Beijing and backing Brexit
China is one topic she continues to be vocal about. Earlier this month the Baroness said HSBC bosses are sacrificing democracy to “ingratiate themselves” with the Chinese Communist Party, by backing a crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong.
When it comes to AJ Bell, Morrissey says she thinks it can improve on making investors more aware of Chinese companies with links to human rights abuses, including the country’s brutal treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province.
“Our environmental, social and governance (ESG) policy is a good piece of work which touches on some of the issues around human rights, but I would like to see that go further,” she says.
She is also critical of Legal & General, another former employer, for wanting to move into the Chinese wealth management industry. While she has “a lot of admiration” for its chief executive Nigel Wilson, Morrissey finds the move difficult to reconcile with his mantra of “inclusive capitalism” and some of the pension and insurance giant’s other work.
“Knowing Nigel and knowing he’s very principled and very thoughtful, I find that hard to square with this big move into China.”
Morrissey comes into her own when tackling issues of global significance. Leaning forward, elbows on the table, she segues into another topic she has been a vocal advocate for: Brexit. “Clearly we haven’t quite got to where we want to get to,” she smiles.
Yet, she argues, the financial services industry is leading by example: “The City is less focused on access to European customers and more focused on how we can benefit on the global stage. We have a clear advantage of not having to negotiate with 27 other neighbours to proceed with some innovation, but it’s taken a while for the penny to drop.”
Morrissey warns, however, against ministers adopting a “Singapore-on-Thames” regulatory environment that would damage the City’s global reputation. “I don’t think we should be racing to the bottom. I’m not talking about a revolution.”
Instead she believes incremental reforms, like changes to listing rules, are the way forward. “Lord Hill’s listing reforms show that London can do it’s own thing, not selfishly, but with its own interests at heart and to make sure we’re attractive,” she says.
Elevated to the House of Lords by the Prime Minister in September 2020, Morrissey pulls no punches when it comes to Johnson’s latest feud with big business over labour shortages, particularly his attack on Next boss Lord Simon Wolfson – a fellow Brexiteer.
“A Conservative government should be very unequivocally pro-business, pro-aspiration and should be working with businesses, and I would like to see some more positive messages coming out of the Government.
“I’m a great admirer of Lord Wolfson. I think it’s a shame and seems a bit abrupt to knock down someone as thoughtful as him and saying ‘it’s an excuse after not having invested in high wages’.”
She argues Johnson’s recent push for a “high wage, high skill” economic landscape lacks nuance and detail: “We need to make sure we can afford to pay people well, and rushing to say ‘we’re going to pay everybody more’ is not a proven economic strategy.’”
If taking on big City and political beasts is par for the course with Morrissey, so is encouraging other women to rise up the ranks.
Boardroom diversity
She is staggered about how successful her advocacy to improve boardroom diversity has been. In 2010, Morrissey launched the 30% Club - a campaign to get more women into top corporate jobs. Women only made up 10pc of board directors in the FTSE 350 at the time, since increased to nearly 35pc.
Morrissey is also thrilled one of her daughters has followed her into finance. “People will say ‘she’s had enough of them, there’s bound to be one to go into the City’,” she laughs.
Before her appointment, AJ Bell’s board was criticised for its lack of gender diversity, leading to proxy adviser Glass Lewis accusing it of hiding behind “boilerplate language” and making “no progress” since listing in 2018. Morrissey notes that the company has since added another woman to the board, but admits it is “still a work in progress”.
Already she is spearheading a new project called “Money Matters” with the aim of getting more women to invest. On average women have less than half the levels of savings and investments of men, according to research carried out by the firm. The project will include podcasts and a dedicated Instagram account – the latter of which Morrissey is already proficient in.
On a daily basis, she posts pictures to her near-10,000 followers about her outfit of choice, having started the page after being asked by women what they should wear in male-dominated environments. “One review said it’s like having a senior female colleague giving the chat to you in the ladies loo about something, which I took as a compliment.”
On that note, and exactly an hour into the interview – the exact allocated slot – off she runs to the House of Lords to move an amendment on the police, crime and sentencing bill. There’s no time to waste.
