Crisis Wasted? Leading Risk Managers on Risk Culture

3 Sir Michael Hintze

London, 8 December 2014

Behaviour and probity are very important, though you do need a thorough understanding of the trades themselves, and to keep operations running smoothly.

Sir Michael Hintze is the founder CEO and Senior Investment Officer of CQS, one of Europe's leading multi-strategy asset management firms. Before starting CQS in 1999, Michael was at Credit Suisse where he was Managing Director in the Leverage Finance Group and at Goldman Sachs where he was Head of UK Equity Trading and where he established and built up Goldman's Euro Convertible and European Warrants business in London.

Michael Rummel, who joins him in the interview, is Head of Communications at CQS.

He describes what sustains a good risk culture throughout the organisation.

Sir Michael Hintze:

Whether we talk about risk or we talk about development, the point is you are always a function of your training, of your background, of your mind-set. It comes down to all sorts of things, the probity, risk-taking and just skills in general. If I look at the experience that I have had, I went to Harvard and I studied physics, mathematics, engineering and electrical engineering. I was in the army, which was great. Out of Harvard Business School I went into a training program at Salomon Brothers, which was very important to me, and which was critical because it gave me a good context for the business.

From there I traded fixed income at Salomon Brothers and saw some of the best traders in ...