Aberdeen AM's Anne Richards: 'You cannot manage fund managers… you herd them gently'

Reveals her tips for investors

After more than a decade as CIO of Aberdeen Asset Management, Anne Richards is set to move to M&G Investments as chief executive this year. In an extract from Intelligent Investors, she reveals why she abandoned engineering for fund management, and how she has dealt with the corporate challenges that come with being a CIO.

You started off as an engineer, and later joined fund management. Why? I was working on the predecessor for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It was very exciting and I would pass Nobel Prize winners going up and down the corridor. But I gradually realised there was a very long time horizon involved in this career. Once, I asked a colleague how long he thought it would take us to find what we were looking for. He said, in all seriousness, about 30 years, which was pretty spot on actually. I realised then I did not have the focus on one single driving mission which most people I was...