So, you want to be a chief investment officer…

The bathroom cabinet of a chief investment officer is not chockers with bottles of My-lanta and tubes of Quick-eze, says Macquarie Investment Management’s Greg Matthews. “If it gets to that stage, you should get out.”

Matthews should know. He has been chief investment officer at Macquarie Investment Management for just over two years, managing a staff of about 50 and responsible for about $22 billion in client funds.

The bathroom cabinet of a chief investment officer is not chockers with bottles of My-lanta and tubes of Quick-eze, says Macquarie Investment Management’s Greg Matthews. “If it gets to that stage, you should get out.”

Matthews should know. He has been chief investment officer at Macquarie Investment Management for just over two years, managing a staff of about 50 and responsible for about $22 billion in client funds.

While it’s a high profile position to be in, it’s also a position that is the culmination of more than 20 years spent in the financial services industry.

Matthews started his career in 1979 as an actuarial student, working at Prudential Assur-ance. In the first few months of 1980, as part of his training, he got his first real taste of the markets. This was at a time when there was a boom in silver and gold on the back of the Afghanistan war. He was hooked.

“It was all very exciting. I thought, ‘this is more fun than working out peoples’ death benefits as an actuary’,” Matthews says.

After Prudential Assurance came stints with Ord Minnett, Merrill Lynch and Mercantile Mutual. It is fair to say that he worked his way up the corporate ladder where he is now in the enviable position of being chief investment officer for one of the largest and most re-spected funds management groups in the country.

So what does a typical day hold for Matthews? Typical and chief investment officer are not two terms that sit together nicely, he says.

“A chief investment officer’s role can sometimes be an administrative role, or sometimes a chief investment officer will specialise in asset allocation. Sometimes they’ll run an as-set class. The chief investment officer before me did asset allocation. I love equities.”

Financial Recruitment Group’s managing director Judith Beck says roles for chief in-vestment officers are few and far between, and candidates are usually headhunted. Be-cause of the seniority of the role, there are only a small pool of candidates to pick from. Beck says most candidates considered are those working for larger institutions with more than 10 years worth of experience in the industry.

“You don’t find people in that background jumping from company to company. They wouldn’t be people with a year here and a year there. They need to build a track record,” she says.

Candidates for positions such as this need to fit the culture of the organisation they hope to join. “Culture is always important,” she says.

A chief investment officer is no Superman (or woman), according to Matthews.

“I have a full-time assistant and a business manager. And you have to make sure you’re happy with the structure of your staff and use their skills. You can’t be good at every-thing. I have a good team of senior people.”

Matthews argues that fostering a supportive environment for your investment team is one of the two most important functions of a chief investment officer. The other, he says, is targeting what you want to do with the business. Macquarie Investment Management aims to be part of the top quartile performers. This means taking the risk of not being a top performer all of the time.

“If you want to be in the top quarter of managers, that requires you to get right in there. It’s very hard. From time to time you’ll be in the bottom quarter. The market may zig zag. The important thing is that I’m supportive of my people. Inevitably, there’ll be a bad month and a bad quarter, but our clients are not employing us on a quarter by quarter ba-sis.”

These are reasonable enough words, but not many people would be game to utter them with $22 billion worth of expectations riding squarely on their shoulders. Obviously, chief investment officers need solid nerves and a strong personality. Matthews concurs.

“You do need to have a few attributes. You need to be smart - to have a bit of savvy and develop a feel for markets and know how they operate. There is an element of psychol-ogy in markets. You’ve got to be flexible, rather than standing in front of the tide. You need to be able to withstand the knocks. Even Warren Buffet has bad years.”

Beck says a prospective chief investment officer also needs to be “entrepreneurial and aggressive”.

But if you fit all of these qualities, salaries can be quite attractive. Beck says salary levels vary, depending on the organisation and the experience of the candidate. It’s not so much about salary levels, but finding the right person for the job, she says. Fortunately, for the right person, it’s a supplier’s market.

“There is no one set range. A company will pay for the right person. And they may have to pay a lot more than they thought.”