June 2016: Poignancy and People Power

It’s easy to forget just how important people are to our industry, given the proliferation of new technology and the extent to which it underpins just about every business process and drives innovation across the capital markets. I was reminded of this recently at this year’s Buy-Side Technology European Summit in London, when I was chatting with SimCorp’s John Mayr, who I have known for the best part of a decade.

During that conversation, John informed me that he would shortly be retiring and that he wanted to thank me for our association and collaboration over the years. It certainly wasn’t a sentimental exchange—my colleagues would testify that I am anything but sentimental—but it was tinged with a smattering of poignancy when he reminded me of a short news piece I wrote about the late Marilyn Watson, who we both knew fairly well, given that Watsons, her PR agency, had represented SimCorp up until her untimely passing while on holiday in Cyprus. 

I had chatted to Marilyn the day before she left for her Mediterranean holiday, a trip she was particularly excited about, and, given the suddenness of her death, it seemed appropriate that we should at least say goodbye. The email she sent me on June 11, 2012, after our phone call is still in my inbox; I’m not getting sentimental, but it seems plain wrong to delete the final email one will ever receive from someone else. Anyway, the brief WatersTechnology valedictory was passed on to Marilyn’s family by John, who told me how much it had meant to them—hence the poignancy.           

Anyway, back to this year’s BST European Summit: This year, for the first time, we invited the day’s speakers to an early dinner at the Hilton Waldorf in appreciation for their time and participation. It was encouraging to see how many stayed for the dinner, an informal get-together intended as a networking opportunity allowing them to get to know their peers on a more human level. It proved popular, with discussions ranging from the upcoming US presidential election; Sadiq Khan, London’s new mayor; and the looming June 23 Brexit referendum. 

And so, while it’s important to focus on the technology that drives our industry and allows capital markets firms and their practitioners to run their day-to-day lives, it’s similarly important to acknowledge the human aspects, a theme discussed by Paula Walter, CTO of Newton Investment Management, in her morning keynote earlier in the day. She argued that building trust between technology users and producers is crucial for capital markets firms as one of the building blocks for delivering meaningful value through technology. And that relationship, like it or not, will never be replicated by the interaction between man and machine.