Stewart Millar Relationship Manager in UK Shareholder Services Introduction and what your role is at EQ
I am a Relationship Manager within the UK Shareholder Services Team, with many Investment Trusts in my portfolio. Through this I work with my clients to support their corporate calendar, the ever changing regulatory and governance landscape, and deliver their shareholder and employee strategies.
What office are you located at?
I am remote based in Scotland, which is great as I have flexibility to be visiting my clients and Investment Trust Company Secretaries to ensure that they remain supported and informed.
Scotland has a very long and rich history in Investment Trusts and the first Scottish Trust was founded all the way back in 1873! (I wasn’t working on them back then though).
What’s happened in your career up to this point?
Having started in a Registrars department back in 1988, I can safely say that I have seen a lot of changes mostly technology and governance based. One of my first roles was on the Talisman team which was a settlement system before CREST. It involved checking EVERY paper transfer which came in from the Stock Exchange before they were sent to be processed. I moved into administering Investment Trust Savings plans which was very manual in those days and not like the online platforms we have now like Shareview and EQI. Several operational positions later and I found myself in Relationship Management since 2000 and I love the interaction with my clients and building strong partnerships and friendships. It’s also been the busiest 18 months I’ve ever seen in the Investment Trust world with a huge amount of corporate activity happening in this sector including many mergers and takeovers and more investor activism than we have ever seen previously. This continues to keep both EQ and our clients on our toes!
What do you like about EQ?
We have a great bunch in the Relationship Team and, wider afield, I have some great contacts within EQ of “go to” people – mostly sweetened with gifts of shortbread and chocolates when I am in Worthing and Birmingham. Anyone who knows me will tell you I love an AGM, and I have built up a very good knowledge and experience which is often called upon by my clients.
I like that EQ is ’client-obsessed’ and puts our clients at the heart of everything we do. For my Investment Trust clients, this means we really want to understand their purpose, goals and needs and we are flexible in how and what we deliver for them. Whether that be supporting delivery of CRS requirements or assist with AIFM and MAR obligations, providing access to our internal experts, processes and risk policies to ensure there is robust supplier governance or, reacting quickly to help them through investor activism challenges, we’re here to support in any way we can.
What's your biggest EQ achievement?
I have clients and a network of contacts from when I first started in Equiniti which I am very proud of as they are more than just a client to me, and to be honest, I thought they’d have asked to change by now... 😊
This network is not just made up of Company Secretarial contacts but also advisors, lawyers, industry experts and Board members that I have built up over many years.
What are you looking forward to in the future at EQ?
Even more technology advancements to make everything simpler, both for clients (EQ Insight is brilliant) and shareholders and employees to be able to digitise and self-service the simple parts of holding shares. As I say, “life shouldn’t be difficult, that’s why we have kids!”.
We are always looking at how we can improve and currently I am involved in a working party looking at a more efficient and digitised process for collecting and submitting CRS data, which will be a big benefit all round to our clients and help to ease the follow up queries from HMRC.
Outside EQ I would like to see more shareholder engagement especially around AGM time and voting. With increased focus on Investment Trusts and how they are structured, it’s more important than ever that shareholders consider and vote on any changes which may impact their Company and EQ can support our ITs with this.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I was once a World Record holder for playing a football match for 108 consecutive hours (not that I ever mention it), along with some others from EQ.
A big thank you to Stewart for sharing his thoughts with us.