Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/97183
:saving ourselves "It doesn't matter how prepared you were beforehand, a loss is a loss and nobody enjoys it - especially when you need to rely on the market to recover in order for your investment to recover. It takes patience and you do your woulda, coulda, shouldas. The worst thing to do is to take your money and put it in a bank. People hate hearing this but only time will help a bad investment. "The one thing we've learnt over the past five years is that diversification is absolutely vital. If you have five investments in various markets e.g. the New Zealand share market, the Chinese share market and one of them is in property and the other in fixed interest, you would do far better than if you have all your money in one market because they all perform so differently. The New Zealand share market has been one of the best performing markets over the last two years, but three years prior to that it was one of the worst. But you never know what is going to happen. No one rings a bell to say it's time to move into the next market now. The best way to cover yourself is to have your finger in several different pies." Carmel also learnt early on the differences between calculated investing and gambling. "There are certainly investors who I would describe as speculators because if you literally don���t do any research on an investment, be it on the share market, real estate or anything else and don���t have a basic understanding of what you���re buying, you are a gambler. You���re hoping that luck will be on your side. I can honestly say that every investment I have made I���ve understood, and through research I���ve decided to go ahead." One investment she didn���t have to do much research into was marrying Hugh Fisher, an IT specialist from Stokes Valley. The couple married in 1986 and would later move to Auckland in 1994 where Carmel took on a job at Sovereign Assurance as a portfolio manager. When her first daughter, Devon, came along in 1998, it became evident that managing a team of investment professionals as well as being a full time mother would not be possible. "Women in our industry are few and far between. That was the case 25 years ago and it remains the same today. It can be a tough industry for women to get into as it isn���t as flexible as other careers. If you���re an analyst and a company comes out with a profit result and you have to analyse that and make a recommendation to buy, sell or hold, you have to do that when the results come out, but if 12 | www.h e rmagaz i n e . c o. n z you���ve got a sick child or other commitments you can���t drop everything and go. "Hugh and I were married 14 years before we had our first child and after waiting that long I refused to be a part time mother. As I was thinking about what I was going to do, Sovereign came to me with a proposal to manage a sum of money. From there I developed a business around this idea of managing a fund which I could then offer to sell to the general public and grow the pool over time." Fisher Funds was born in 1998 from the Fisher family's Devonport home. Not long after, Hugh gave up his job at Telecom to join his wife in the business, and by word of mouth Fisher Funds quickly grew. "Before we knew it, we had $50 million under our management." Fourteen years later, Fisher Funds now manages more than $1.2 billion for over 130,000 investors. Carmel manages NZX listed investment companies Kingfish, Barramundi and Marlin and her working relationship with her husband can been described as enviable. "I think our relationship works because he knows the business as well as I do and his passion is the same as mine. It was harder when it was just the two of us because we talked as husband and wife and you���re not always as polite as you should be, but when there are others around, you have to talk as colleagues! He is at the other end of the office to me so that helps too." In 2001 when her second daughter, Aden, was three years old and staff numbers had grown to exceed what was allowed in their residential address, the Fisher Funds team moved into their current office in Takapuna that enjoys stunning views of Rangitoto. "I said from day one, if we were away from our competitors then we could achieve independent thought. We���re not bumping into our competitors who are telling us what they���re buying or selling and investors like the nonintimidating feel of our office. It���s a great place to work." Fisher Funds is one of the only companies to run an international equities book from New Zealand and Carmel is unsure why more don't do the same. "It's a costly exercise because to have my team based here, every time they want to visit a company, there are obviously travel and accommodation costs. Based on our investment philosophy where we need to know our companies, we prefer to have our team here and travel around to visit our companies and then come back and share their knowledge with the rest of the team. Everyone in our team that presents a new business idea must be reviewed by their peers. We had two members based in San Francisco but we found the distance problematic in terms of the team culture. Also we found we missed out on a lot because they weren't here to talk about their investments. Investors love the fact that they can call us from New Zealand and talk about their stocks in whatever market, whether it be China, the US or wherever." With 28 Auckland-based-staff going into the New Year, Carmel ensures that her key management are shareholders in the business - this way they���ll think and act like owners, therefore headhunting is less of an issue. "I look for honest, caring people. We���re dealing with people���s money here so you need to have a good set of values that earn the trust position that people put us in." Trust is something that is essential in Carmel's line of work, yet is so hard to attain. "I was working at home with my husband��� why were people going to trust me to give their money to when they could put it safely in a bank? There was nothing we could do to make people trust us but we were absolutely honest in all that we did and delivered what we promised so there would be no reason not to be trusted." By developing transparency in her business, Carmel who recently celebrated her 50th birthday also developed a public profile��� a position that came with its benefits but also its downfalls. A quick Google search reveals numerous media mentions, some related to Carmel���s business affairs and some hinting at more