Robert Sutherland – Smith started his career in fund management and has seen numerous stock market and economic cycles and (as he likes to wryly comment) one or two short lived ‘new paradigms’ of stock market and economic possibility, like the dot com boom at the end of the 20th century. An economist by education, his first job was as trainee equity analyst with the long vanished broking partnership de Zoete & Gorton. After that, he worked as a fund manager for the Unilever Pension fund and subsequently as the head of financial and investment management research at Merchant Bankers Samuel Montagu, leaving as it merged with what is now HSBC. Appointed a director of County Bank Investment Managers, he managed both group and client funds going on to advise the Friends Provident to set up its first discretionary fund management business. He was a broker/analyst during and after the ‘Big Bang’ subsequently directing the research side of investment bankers Quartz Capital Partners which specialised in raising capital for new enterprises in the US, Europe and the UK. In recent years he has written for and edited publications devoted to equity investment in both small and large companies including t1ps.com, where he is Tom Winnifrith’s deputy editor.