Who Is GAM's Tim Haywood?

Star GAM fund manager Tim Haywood has been overseeing bond hedge funds for nearly 20 years. finews.asia tracks the man at the center of the Swiss asset manager’s storm.

In March of last year, Zurich-based GAM singled out veteran portfolio manager Tim Haywood in its annual report for leading a stable team with a long track record of managing absolute return bond funds.

In 2017, the Haywood-run team of 18 investment specialists was responsible for more than one-quarter of GAM’s 44.1 million Swiss francs ($44.7 million) in performance fees.

One year later, the firm suspended Haywood under murky circumstances. The move sent clients running for the doors, forcing GAM to first gate and then later begin liquidating Haywood’s funds.

MBO from Julius Baer

GAM has since elaborated on why it suspended the long-time portfolio manager and detailed its own investigation, but Haywood himself has kept quiet (he told finews.asia he isn’t allowed to comment at this time).

Who is he? Haywood joined Julius Baer’s U.K. boutique arm nearly 20 years ago. The idea was to sell the Swiss bank’s wealthy clientele on specialized and then quite novel absolute return products they couldn’t draw elsewhere.

That all changed in 2005, when Julius Baer bought hedge fund boutique GAM as well as three private banks from Swiss giant UBS. Two years later, Haywood and CEO Edward Dove led a management buyout from Julius Baer. They named the new firm Augustus, for the first emperor of Rome.

Unviable in Crisis

The two firms continued in a partnership which was «very fruitful» for both sides, a former executive for the Swiss bank recalls. Julius Baer kept a 10 percent stake in Augustus, which in turn continued to advise the bank on hedge funds.

However, the MBO timing couldn’t have been worse: Lehman Brothers’ collapse the following year forced the fledging asset manager back into Julius Baer’s arms on the cheap. CEO Haywood said at the time that Julius Baer’s importance to the boutique asset manager «grew dramatically» during its 15 months of independence.

To be sure, Augustus managed to come through the financial crisis better than some of its rivals – meaning it survived, profitably. The following years brought more stability: Augustus disappeared into GAM, which has very little fixed income expertise. Thus, Haywood's bond business was a welcome addition for the Swiss asset manager, which had been spun off from Julius Baer later in 2009.