Shortly before Christmas 1997, Tracy Blackwell found herself in New York with just two suitcases and a sinking feeling that she needed to start anew. At 30, she had just moved from London to London with her employer, Goldman Sachs. While she safely arrives in the United States, a transatlantic cargo ship capsizes off the coast of the Azores, and all her worldly possessions are taken away.
“I can look back and laugh, but at the time…I don’t know where to start,” Blackwell said. But starting from scratch wasn’t enough for the American-born man. Returning to the UK from the turn of the century, she was promoted to chief executive of the London-based Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC), a City company that helps companies de-risk their final salary pension schemes.
Since its establishment in 2006, PIC has become a leader in the defined benefit pension purchase market, managing the retirement plans of more than 339,900 policyholders employed by companies such as M&S, De Beers and Cadbury.
As Chancellor Rachel Reeves aims to raise money for the National Wealth Fund (NWF), Mr Blackwell, who is a major investor with £46.8 billion of assets under management, is expected to join the PIC and Labour’s UK Infrastructure Council in the new government. are listening. , released last week.
This is a kind of power that Blackwell never expected to have. Born in the Rust Belt of the United States to a single mother aged just 18, she didn’t have an easy start. However, Blackwell did not intend to stay in Rockford, Illinois, for long.
“I was in a catchment area with the best high schools, but one of the poorest high schools there,” Blackwell says. “I wanted to do something, but I realized I wasn’t going to be successful living in Rockford.”
So with the money she saved from an after-school job scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, she hopped on a plane and took a trip to Europe. It was a transformative experience for the 17-year-old, whose only previous travel experience was a trip to Hawaii five years ago when he won a breakfast cereal contest.
Danny Tuell, a former colleague at Goldman who died in 2019, drew Blackwell back into the financial industry. Photo: Graham Turner/The Guardian
In 1985, to keep her options open, she enrolled in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. But while working 80 hours a week, including as a magician’s assistant, to fund his studies, Blackwell was inspired by a finance professor to pursue his interest in financial markets.
“I love markets because it’s everything. It’s how individual businesses operate, it’s geopolitics, it’s national politics, it’s news, it’s the living embodiment of what’s going on in the world. And that’s what I found appealing.”
After earning her MBA, she landed an interview with Goldman Sachs in London. Blackwell, who was removed from her investment banking post (later said she didn’t have the right “pedigree”), turned to the burgeoning derivatives industry – futures contracts, options, I was offered a job in the swap trading industry. Previously.
Blackwell, 56, lights up when he talks about his early days at Goldman, where he eventually moved into asset management. But then, in 1999, the bank’s IPO took place.
“The whole culture has changed. It’s become more ruthless and less family-like,” Blackwell says. Considering her next move, she left the City completely and moved to Norfolk with her husband.
In 2004, she was invited back to the financial industry by her former Goldman colleague Danny Tuell. Tuell later became chief investment officer of Wellcome Trust.
Danny and his brother Eddie watched the UK’s 2004 pension reform with great interest. Companies suddenly have to make iron-clad guarantees regarding the payment of final salary pensions, which they had previously paid only when financial conditions allowed. With pension plans becoming hard liabilities on their balance sheets and requiring more money each year, companies began closing these plans and moving their money to professional investors who could better manage their funds. The Tuell family saw an opportunity.
They pitched the idea to Goldman, who turned it down, but a year later they went on to form their own rival, Rothesay. Intrigued, Blackwell joined what would become PIC, a company that made money through excess returns on long-term investments, including infrastructure such as universities, renewable energy and social housing.
Getting growth back on track is essential. There’s no question that the planning system supports that Tracy Blackwell
After the 2007-2008 financial crisis, PIC first began entering into pension contracts with an engineering firm called Swan Hill. Other notable acquisitions include a £660m deal with Cadbury and a £1.2bn deal with EMI, which saw Blackwell’s team take on Goldman.
Mr Blackwell rose to the top of PIC and now manages nearly £50bn of assets. She has invested around £12bn in Britain’s infrastructure and she and Labor want to increase this figure.
The newly appointed ministers will cut red tape through planning reforms and spread risk through Reeves’ NWF, which aims to raise £3 of private finance for every £1 of public spending on projects, including ports. By doing so, we hope to stimulate investment. , gigafactory, hydrogen, steel.
“If it works, great,” Blackwell said. “Getting growth back on track is essential, and I have no doubt that the planning system is keeping it that way.”
There are also widespread bureaucratic issues, particularly the way the project requires approval from a wide range of independent public bodies, she says. Her solution is for all such institutions to adopt a “growth philosophy” and provide businesses with an easy way to notify central government of frustrating delays.
“There are a lot of really good ideas,” Blackwell said. “Some of these issues need to come to the government’s attention sooner and they need to respond more quickly. If you’re an investor, you’re not going to wait three years to do something. . We can invest globally, so you’re going to go somewhere else.”
resume
56 years old
Family: Married with one son.
Education: Studied business at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Payments are not disclosed.
Traveled to Cyprus on my last holiday to take shelter from the rain.
Best advice she’s received “It’s hard to remember the advice I’ve been given over the years, but the advice I would give is to be yourself.”
Biggest Career Mistake: “Trying to be something I wasn’t. It wasn’t until I decided to be myself that I really started to succeed.”
She uses the word “basically” too much, probably because her teenage son uses it “all the time.”
How she relaxes when she’s outside: hiking, sailing, swimming, etc.
