For the past few years, Morningstar have been marking International Women’s Day by looking at how many fund managers in the UK are female and how that compares with funds run by men named ‘Dave’.
Why Dave?
It was a sad fact that some years ago, it was noticed that the number of male FTSE 100 CEOs named Dave/David outnumbered the total number of female FTSE 100 CEOs, which at the time was just six. I think that number has increased to 8 now, so Daves still outnumber the women CEOs.
Anyway, the good news is that there are now more women fund managers than fund managers called Dave:
- 184 female fund managers are running 329 funds between them (some run more than one mandate) – 17.8% of all UK funds.
- 59 fund managers with the name Dave or David ran 133 funds – 7.2% of all UK funds.
So great news that some progress has been made, but there’s still much more work to be done, to increase that 17.8%.
Anyway, what also interested me about the article was the most common names of fund managers:
Apart from James and Richard, that list of most common male fund manager names could have been taken from my school register!
Not that I’m saying that any of the boys I went to school with went on to become fund managers (fact – none of them) but the first names shared with the boys who were in my class is uncanny!
What this tells me is that these guys are probably of similar age group to me, Gen X, all with probably what you would now call ‘old-fashioned’ names.
Do you get babies getting called these names any more? I think I know of a recent baby James but that’s about it.
It’s a different story however when I look at the names of the women fund managers.
Only 2 of those share names with girls I went to school with (Amanda and Helen), with many having names I would have considered belonging only to the ‘posh girls’ who went to the all girls school.
So, posh girls who had better education/opportunities going on to run funds? Perhaps not implausible (I’m clutching at straws here of course!).
Most common girls’ names when I was at school were Lisa, Michelle, Sharon, Tracey/Tracy, Amanda and Helen (there were at least 2 or 3 of each in my school year).
Current Bunch
The company I work for has a young workforce (I’m one of the few oldies), the majority in between their early 20s and early 30s.
But even without knowing their ages, their names show that they are of a different generation.
Most common male names in the office? Jordan (3 of them), Jack (2) and Liam (2).
Most common female names? Lauren (3), Chloe (2) and Holly (2)
It will be interesting to see how the names on that fund managers list will change over the next 10-20 years, to see if more modern names creep in (in large numbers) and what name finally pushes Dave from the top spot!
