Global finance

Jane Sydenham Investment Director at Rathbones

Time to deglobalise?

Where are financial markets heading? Who better to hear from than the leader of the investment team looking after the Club’s investments? Charles Abel reports

EVER since The Farmers Club first met in 1842 debate has been a cornerstone of its activity. One hundred and seventynine years later the tradition is very much alive and well, with the first Monday Evening Lecture held in the Club last November – the first since January 2020.

Jane Sydenham, Investment Director at Rathbones, captivated an audience in the Club’s wonderful Farmers Suite with the latest thinking on financial markets, stimulating a vigorous round of questions, which extended into the Shaw Room and Bar over drinks and Chef’s treats.

Jane, a regular on Radio 4’s Today programme and Radio 5’s Wake up to Money, and a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, has managed the Club’s financial investments since pre-2000, with past-chairman Roddy Loder-Symonds re-engaging her services in 2003 through Rathbones.

That firm now manages £61bn of client funds, with 1800 staff across the UK, including 322 investment professionals and 30 analysts covering UK and overseas investments, with a whole-of-market perspective.

While the past 18 months had been difficult, it accelerated changes that had already started, with innovation coming at an unprecedented scale and pace, Jane said. Digitisation which was unimaginable five years ago is changing how people shop, bank, eat and work, with artificial intelligence and robots making real impacts, all against the rapidly changing politics of deglobalisation.

That reaction to over-globalisation was a key theme. “Production is moving back to the markets it serves, because countries are trusting each other less, which is a really important driver.”

The recovery had been incredibly sharp and rapid, with earnings showing a sharp bounce back supporting profit growth this year. The supply bottleneck was a risk to manufacturing, but should ease within six months, she believed.

Energy is a big variable, as tried and tested fossil fuel technologies are set to be replaced by a range of alternatives in just 30 years. Banks have already halved their lending for fossil fuel exploration, for example.

“We expect uncharacteristically high inflation to subside, but the risk of persistent inflation is at its highest for over 25 years. Corporate profit growth rarely fails to exceed the rate of inflation,