In the Hot Seat by Miles Nolan

It’s a windy day in mid-September but I arrive at the London office of finnCap to meet Sam Smith, a lady I have known for many years. She greets me with a smile but is quick to admit ‘it’s very tough out there’.

Nevertheless, the institutional broker is winning new clients at a rate that has forced its competitors to stand up and notice. As the only female boss of a London-based broking firm, its a far cry from her roots in leafy Selsey, West Sussex. She admits, ‘I always wanted to support myself.’ So, with this determination, Smith studied accountancy at Bristol University before moving to KPMG in 1998, at which she qualified as an accountant.

She then joined long-established private client broking firm JM Finn to help establish a corporate finance team. From here, the business grew steadily to a point where she led a buy-out of the Capital Markets arm – valuing finnCap at £5 million.

In the black
The business provides sales and sales trading, research, corporate finance and broking and has consistently stayed in the black. In the year to April it achieved a 56 per cent hike in sales to £12 million, as pre-tax profits soared 130 per cent to £1.5 million (after bonuses).

With 82 clients, it is ranked as the number two broker on AIM. It is also the number one adviser and broker in technology, life sciences and industrials.

FinnCap raised £140 million for corporates last year, and in the past three months has secured a further £16 million for clients that include Lansdowne Oil & Gas, ILA and Silverdell. Smith boasts that ‘there is still cash out there, so we very rarely fail on a deal’.

The average size of client is on the increase, and Smith reckons that with its current capacity finnCap could stretch to having nearer 110 clients.

FinnCap produces research on more than 130 companies, but it is likely to avoid leisure, banks and property. Buoyed by a proactive sales team, secondary business jumped 40 per cent last year as many peers witnessed a blood-bath in commissions.

On recruitment Smith says there are 'a lot of crap people out there'. FinnCap is also unlikely to be caught up in costly acquisitions. Instead it will cherry-pick those that can deliver a contribution.

In what has also been a major coup for Smith, well-known venture capitalist Jon Moulton recently joined as chairman, having assessed more than 200 job offers.

Ongoing downturn
On the current market Smith is very cautious, expecting ‘more redundancies to come’, largely due to excess capacity in the industry. She says the market feels ‘as bad as it did in 2008’.

But Smith is not about to rest on her laurels. As part of a plan to think more globally, this year she has been on ‘fact-finding’ trips to China, as well as to Perth for the Mines and Money mining conference.

With 50 loyal staff, there is also a ‘fun ethic’ to going to work – in the office is a bar, table tennis table and table football machine.

Smith is also a founder of ‘Modern Muse’, which was set up to help women seek role models in the business world. The plan is to push up the number of females running companies by 100,000 in the next ten years.

When not working 12-hour days or networking, in her ‘down time’ she can be found in the gym, playing tennis or running. Earlier this year Smith sustained a broken arm while indulging her other passion – skiing.

Smith lives in Fulham but also has a home in Dorset, where she has a trusty Land Rover known as Lara that helps her to escape from the stress of City life.