Key Takeaways From In the Lead EMEA 2024

April 17, 2024

We recently convened more than 100 women at our In the Lead event in London, where we heard from thought leaders across topics ranging from investing, to entrepreneurship, to sustainability, and more.

Here are several key takeaways.

Creating and achieving your legacy

What is the purpose of your wealth? What is your legacy? These are not easy questions and there’s not one right answer.

Getting clearer on your answers, however, can help you deploy your energy with greater intention and make decisions that align with your broader legacy goals, says Carra Cote-Ackah, head of Philanthropy Engagement and Legacy Planning at Goldman Sachs.

Whether in the context of yourself, your business, your family, or your community, she shares the following three-step process to refine your approach and opportunities:

Know what you do: Is the existing culture an undermanaged and underutilized asset? How can you be more aware of the vulnerabilities and undetected areas that may work against your goals?
Know what to value: What is the purpose of your wealth or your “ikigai?” Which shorter-term performance indicators could you set and revisit when you are off course from your goals?
Do what you value: What are the small but important habits you can model and activate so you are prepared for life’s unexpected turbulence?

With more clarity and understanding, you can take a more proactive approach toward maximizing your impact and creating the legacy you want.

“Legacy is not just something you leave behind,” says Cote-Ackah. “It’s something you actively, intentionally build together.”

Writing is a powerful way to connect generations

When Francesca Cartier Brickell’s grandfather asked her to search the cellar for a special bottle of champagne for his ninetieth birthday, she stumbled upon something surprising: an old trunk packed with hundreds of long-lost family letters.

When she and her grandfather started reading them, they realized the letters traced the entire history and origin of Cartier, founded in Paris in 1847, by her great-great-great grandfather. Since 1974 was the last year Cartier was managed by a family member, Cartier Brickell, who was never involved with the business, saw the letters as an opportunity to connect herself to her family legacy in a new, unique way.

She set to work reviewing the letters and traveling all over the world in search of hidden history. The result is her book: The Cartiers: The Untold Story. After learning how her ancestors built the business, Cartier Brickell says she attributes three things to their storied success: their bond, their talents, and a family motto passed down the generations: “be very kind.”

It was the founder’s three grandsons who turned the small family business into an international success in the early twentieth century. For decades, the brothers worked in lockstep together, each with their own unique skill that complemented the business. And they emphasized the importance of treating every single person they met or did business with, with kindness and respect.

When growing a business, don’t compromise your vision

Entrepreneur Ella Mills founded Deliciously Ella out of the need to revolutionize the food industry after a lengthy chronic illness forced her to investigate plant-based alternatives.

A decade later, Mills and her business partner and husband, Matthew, have launched a roster of plant-based food staples currently populating stores. Despite the risk of investing in a niche market, Mills was determined to make her brand an alternative lifestyle that could be effectively marketed.

Mills noticed that many popular foods, especially ones marketed to children, were ultra-processed. She saw a trend and took it as a challenge.

“The question is how do you fundamentally shift a broken landscape when it comes to food? The premise of Deliciously Ella is trying to show there is a different way of putting products on the shelf,” she says.

Her determination helped her overcome clashes with invested partners who didn’t share the same vision of using less additives and preservatives.

“There was a belief that it didn’t matter what ingredients you used. We spent over three years developing one product because our partners would never make it without a host of other additives,” she says. “The biggest challenge was finding the right manufacturing partners who were willing to try and do it a little bit differently.”

The pushback from partners encouraged Mills and her husband to buy out their investors and become 100% self-funded. They secured team members and expanded the brand in an increasingly receptive market by leveraging the power of social media, which created a matrix of different avenues for growing their consumer base.

Ten years later, Mills learned the most valuable lesson about building a business from the ground up.

“If you have the right people around you and a vision that won’t be compromised, you don’t need huge amounts of capital or massive marketing campaigns to be successful in the entrepreneurial space,” she says. “The bigger we are, the more impact we have, the more we’re able to push change across the system.”

There’s no good time to enter the market

Lately, two seasoned investment strategists at Goldman Sachs have heard the following concerns from clients:

“I want to build more equity, but valuations are so high.”

“What if there’s a pullback? There’s no good time to enter the market.”

Yes, there are many geopolitical risks facing the market right now, as well as anxiety around interest rate cuts, recession, prolonged inflation, and political partisanship. These issues tend to make investors question their market timing.

But Global Head of Managed Strategies Jean Altier Bohm says the challenge of when to enter the market is a consistent, evergreen issue. When you’ve managed investments and portfolios for decades, it becomes easier to tell when market conditions are truly anomalous and one-of-a-kind versus a pattern.

“Regardless of what’s on the front burner,” Altier Bohm says, “it never feels like a great time to buy equities.”

Mariam Kamshad, a managing director within the Wealth Management Investment Strategy Group, says while her team is remaining vigilant on the risks, none of them are elevated enough to merit staying out of equities entirely.

“We encourage clients to stay invested at their strategic asset allocations. These allocations account for systematic market risks – meaning market-wide risks – but also your personal time horizons and risk tolerance,” she says.

For clients with excess cash sitting on the sidelines, Kamshad and Altier Bohm help them figure out disciplined plans to enter the markets, such as averaging in over a period of nine to 12 months or using an options strategy to receive a premium while buying shares on days when the market dips.

For clients interested in leveraging a fluctuating interest rate environment, Global Head of Private Bank Lending and Origination Anne McCosker points out there are opportunities in lending that allow investors to restructure existing loans and purchase additional assets at attractive valuations.

Maximizing your impact by leveraging all your capital

The global challenges we face today are complex and therefore require equally complex, holistic solutions. Individuals can maximize the impact they seek to have on today’s most pressing environmental and social issues by leveraging multiple types of capital.

Abigail Pohlman, global head of Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth Management Sustainable Solutions Group, outlines five different types of capital at an individual’s disposal:

Consumer: Aligning your purchases and lifestyle with brands and businesses that share your impact goals
Social: Advocating via your personal network and offering your time and talents to advance a cause
Business: Leading or leveraging a business to drive impact
Philanthropic: Donating money or offering concessionary financial products to support a common good
Investment: Influencing positive environmental or social outcomes while achieving risk-adjusted returns

“Individuals who use multiple types of capital can better maintain momentum toward their impact goals and channel more resources to these goals throughout their lifetime,” Pohlman says. “We encourage our clients to leverage their capital opportunistically.”

If you’d like to learn more, explore our Leveraging Your Capital to Drive Impact paper.

For more information on any of these topics, reach out to your private wealth advisor or request an introduction..
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