‘I am…’ — The interview
An in-depth discussion on my career in finance, and the importance of diversity and inclusion and soft skills
A recent article of mine covered my reaching a 20-year milestone in my career in finance, at a time when the industry is focusing ever more strongly on making the profession more inclusive. I recently caught up with Harsha Boralessa — my colleague on a soft skills volunteering group for those in the industry — to discuss my story in more detail.
As much as I would usually hesitate to talk on tape about myself for half an hour, we both agreed that it would be helpful to other people — particularly those from non-traditional backgrounds considering a career in financial services — to hear about my experiences.
We talked about*:
- my unusual route into the industry, having not studied for a university degree;
- the influence of ethnicity and economic background on career choices;
- the importance of ‘soft’ skills, and diversity and inclusion in the modern workplace;
- how to come to terms with failure; and
- how to make your own luck.
Here’s the recording (32 minutes).
An edited transcript of the recording is below. For convenience, time markers are shown roughly every five minutes.
Interview with Lindsey Stewart
Harsha Boralessa: Hello, my name is Harsha Boralessa and I’m here with my friend Lindsey Stewart, a senior manager at KPMG. Hi there, Lindsey.
Lindsey Stewart: Hi there!
HB: Lindsey and I both share a passion for personal and career development and volunteer for the CFA Society Soft Skills Working Group.
While chatting to Lindsey, it struck me that he’d had an interesting and non-traditional path into the finance industry, and we thought there would be a number of people who are either starting out or are interested in a career in finance who could benefit from finding out more about Lindsey’s journey.
So, Lindsey, before we dive into your journey could you just tell us a little bit about your role at KPMG?
LS: Yeah happy to, Harsha. So, my current role: I’m a senior manager at KPMG in the UK and I handle investor engagement. My career’s taken a bit of an interesting turn — I’m actually an investor engagement manager in KPMG’s audit practice and that’s having spent most of my career in investor relations consulting and a few years helping write technical accounting publications.
I reach out to investors, analysts, investment associations and others involved in the investment and stewardship process, people like sell-side analysts or credit ratings agencies, that kind of thing. The aim of that is… at KPMG we see investors, company shareholders, as the true client of a listed company audit and there’s lots of scrutiny at present into what an audit does and what it doesn’t do — is it fit for the future? The Brydon Review recently looked into that. We aim to incorporate shareholders’ perspectives into our response to all that scrutiny and as part of our journey towards better audit quality.
HB: That sounds like a varied and challenging role! But let’s go back to the beginning — I believe you became interested in finance through reading your father’s copy of the Sunday Times.
LS: Yeah, that’s quite interesting. I’m not particularly from the kind of background that ends up in finance and accounting — definitely not at the time when I was coming of age.
I’m from a working-class background, my parents are Windrush generation immigrants from the West Indies — my dad worked in car manufacturing, my mum worked in the NHS as a midwife — and I didn’t really have the network or the benefit of family friends that could advise on a career. Don’t even get me started on the value of careers advice at a non-selective state school in Dagenham [a London suburb] in the late 1990s!
So, I knew that I was great at maths and interested in finance. I’d say that my parents weren’t especially keen on me choosing that career path fearing — not without justification — that my career might be derailed by racism, that certain areas of finance aren’t necessarily socially useful, those kinds of concerns. But I was still keen on it.
“Once you had that qualification, nobody could really look you in the eye and tell you that you weren’t good enough to do your job.”
My dad always bought a copy of the Sunday Times — a big thick newspaper — and I remember around maybe the age of 14, I was reading an article told by someone in the accounting industry who, it turns out, was from a South Asian background. He noted that while there were barriers in the industry, your qualifications were basically your licence to operate: once you had that ACA or ACCA or CIMA qualification, or similar, nobody could really look you in the eye and tell you that you weren’t good enough to do your job. I kind of held onto that through my later school career.
HB: I can totally relate to that because I’m also from an accounting background, so I think the whole idea of just having qualifications, it says that you’ve reached that particular level of attainment, and you’re right: nobody can take that away from you.
In terms of school and A-levels [the standard secondary school qualification for 18-year-olds in England], I was looking through your CV [resumé] and you had pretty decent A-level results: you had two As in Maths and Accounting I think, but rather than going to university you decided to start working. What’s the story behind that, Lindsey?
LS: That’s actually quite a complex thread! It turns out I had two good A-level results and one which, at the time, I considered a bit of a disaster! So, there’s that. There was the onset of student loans [which were introduced with the advent of university tuition fees in the UK in 1998] — I mentioned before, there was a lack of precedent for anyone from my background to go to university. I didn’t have any reference point and then there were cultural differences that played into that as well.
So, as I mentioned, my A-level performance: I got two A’s in Maths and Accounting but I also got a D in my third A-level, which was Design. So, there was the element of trying to cope with that disappointment.
(04:49)
So yeah: student loans, lack of precedent, A-level performance.
“Daniel Kahnemann said ‘people don’t choose between things, they choose between descriptions of things.’”
I’ll take the first one: the student loans. I finished school in 1999, which if I remember correctly means I was in only the second year that had to apply for student loans to go to university rather than grants. It reminds me of something that Daniel Kahnemann, a famous behavioural scientist, said. He said ‘people don’t choose between things, they choose between descriptions of things,’ and for me at the time, back just over 20 years ago, that was definitely true regarding student loans.
As I mentioned, I’m from a working-class background, Caribbean parents: generally, there’s an aversion among people like that to carrying debt. Most people have some kind of story about how somebody’s life went wrong because they were carrying debt and they had to face negative consequences. So, for me, I think the loan element was something of a barrier to entry.
HB: I think a lot of people are like that, Lindsey! I hate debt as well. I’m definitely in your camp — the less debt the better.
LS: For sure. A lot of people advocate for it [student loans] to be rebranded as a ‘graduate tax’ instead, and I’ve got some sympathy for that idea. Maybe I’d have made a different decision if it was presented to me in that way.
HB: Or thinking about it as a sort of investment in your career, paying off over 30 to 40 years. Was it £3,000?
LS: I think it was £3,000 per year when they were brought in, I’d have to check the figures. What I do remember is that, at the time, being from a working-class background in Dagenham, that was a lot more money than I’d ever seen at one time!
HB: It’s a lot of money, definitely!
LS: I did apply to go to university while I was studying my A-levels, but I feel like the lack of precedent and the cultural differences played into my not ending up going.
I’d say culturally I’m from a background that almost canonises manual labour, and perhaps that’s a legacy of the ‘triangular trade’ and slavery in the Caribbean but there’s a lot of emphasis put on doing ‘real’ work! My dad definitely had in his mind that I should take up a trade: be a plumber or something. Personally, I didn’t see a great deal of value in becoming the worst plumber in east London, when I had a math brain that could pay the bills!
HB: That would have been a tragedy, Lindsey. A real loss to finance and the CFA UK Soft Skills Group. I’m glad that you decided to not go down that route!
LS: [Laughter] I’m glad you think so, Harsha.
HB: I have a huge amount of respect for plumbing — unless you’re really into it and know what’s going on, it’s a tough gig. It’s pretty binary — it’s either repaired or not, and you find out pretty quickly if it’s not!
LS: Yeah absolutely. I’ve got a good deal of respect for all the trades — I know this because I know I wouldn’t be any good at it!
HB: You have to look at your skills and be honest and say, if you’ve got a math brain and that level of enquiring mind, it’s a tragedy if you don’t go down that path.
LS: What also played into that is the expectation in the household that a grown man… And the term ‘grown man’ applies the second you’re taller than your mum in my household, which in my case was around 14 years old! But there’s this expectation that a grown man should be working, not studying. So, I didn’t really have that much parental support for the idea of going to university.
And that takes me onto the A-levels. As I mentioned, I ended up getting two A’s and a D at A-level. I encountered some personal difficulties during my second year of A-levels. My dad was effectively laid off form his job working in car production — he took early retirement. I ended up working part-time to give myself a bit more of a financial base while I was studying; that was at McDonald’s in Harold Hill [a suburb on the eastern fringe of London].
So, for Maths and Accounting, the subjects in which I got the two A’s, that wasn’t really a problem. I got A’s in those subjects because the grade that you got was based entirely your performance in the final exam. And I was strong enough on those subjects that it didn’t really matter that I’d had a difficult year, I just needed a few weeks to get ready.
Design: that was a different matter. For that A-level, if I recall correctly, was about two-thirds coursework and one-third based on the final exam. A difficult year means you don’t actually end up with any coursework, so that’s zero out of 67. So, I got a D. A D rather suggests that my exam might have been pretty good, but that’s by the by.
I had applied to university to study Mathematics. I was predicted AAB grades. My first choice was Imperial College, which wanted two As and a B.
HB: That’s a great university!
LS: I believe it was, and still is, top three in the country.
HB: Yeah totally, they only get the top, the cream of the crop. So, impressive just to get an offer.
“I was entirely unprepared for academic failure. Frankly, because it had never happened to me before.”
(09:58)
LS: Well, I didn’t get the offer in the end because my grades fell short. They wanted two As and a B, which I didn’t get.
My second choice was Queen Mary University of London, who would have taken me with the grades I did get. There’s probably a reasonable point of view that says I should have taken that place. There are a few reasons why I didn’t.
Firstly, I was entirely unprepared for academic failure. Frankly, because it had never happened to me before. I got 10 As and A*s at GCSE [the standard secondary school qualification for 16-year-olds in England], and that’s at a school where only 1 in 3 students got even five A-C grades.
On the university applications, I mentioned that I didn’t really have parental backing or a network to call on, so I literally had no idea what I was doing. No knowledge, no guidance — so, there was too much that I didn’t know.
For example: [I didn’t know] that failing to get into one of the top three universities in the country certainly isn’t the end of the world. [I didn’t know] that Queen Mary University of London is actually a pretty darned good university, even if it wasn’t my first choice…
HB: Yeah, that’s a pretty decent institution.
LS: Yeah. I didn’t know that £3,000 a year for a university education — even though that was more money than I could even contemplate at the time — was not much in the grand scheme of things, looking back in my late 30s now. I also didn’t know that nobody’s legs get broken over student debt! I was pretty uninformed when having to make that decision! [Laughter]
HB: It’s interesting when you talk about the failure of not getting the B — which I totally agree with. And also talking about working and studying: I’m sure people either watching us or listening to this could relate to that. The whole idea of not having that smooth path.
Sometimes when you hear people’s career stories, it just looks very linear: I went to school, I got my A-levels, I got into the university of my first choice. I think it’s quite nice hearing the fact that it didn’t go very smoothy and the fact that you had to work and study, which unfortunately for some people is just a reality given the family circumstances.
Hopefully it will inspire people to hear of your journey. It isn’t just this linear path and, almost from birth, you weren’t destined to be a senior manager at KPMG. Hopefully other people will take comfort from the fact that you do go through these bumps in the road. It’s how you deal with those bumps, which you’ve dealt with very well.
LS: Yeah, there are some really, really good points you’ve made there. I’m certainly not mad at anybody who’s had a very linear path through life: school, university, good career… That’s great! Absolutely, that’s fantastic!
I feel like quite a lot of the time for decision makers, if you’re hiring or trying to recommend somebody for certain roles, it’s important to remember the context in which certain things were achieved, and not necessarily holding everyone to exactly the same standard. You know: ‘You need this grade, or this mark…’ or ‘You need to have gone to this institution, otherwise you’re no good to us,’ — I feel like there’s a lot more thought that needs to go into that these days. And that’s definitely been happening in the world of work.
HB: And I think that whole thing about diversity… there’s a question of fairness, which is one issue; but also, as you were saying, you need decision makers who have different perspectives. If you have everybody from a similar background, you essentially you only get one world view.
LS: Yeah, absolutely.
So, I decided to defer my place at university. I recognised that there might have been value in having the option, but it wasn’t a step I was ready to take. So, yeah, I deferred the place.
But I did remember that Sunday Times article that I’d read all those years ago. I quit my job at McDonald’s and started looking for work in financial services. That didn’t work out! I ended up doing various temp jobs locally. Around early 2000 I ended up working in a warehouse in Harold Hill doing picking — basically working in a warehouse fetching boxes. That was soul-destroying work!
Incidentally it was just down the road from the McDonald’s that I’d worked at before, so I just decided to go back there and try and make the best out of it.
That was kind of hard for me. I was always the smart one among my peers, so I felt like a bit of a failure — again — just making burgers and fries at McDonald’s when I knew I was capable of quite a lot more than that.
HB: So, in terms of finding that first job in finance — obviously by then you’re back at McDonald’s — can you give us a few insights about your strategy and process for moving forward and trying to find that ideal role.
(14:54)
LS: Yeah absolutely. So, going back and ‘making the best out of it’ meant going back with a plan. So, I decided that I was going to take the management course at McDonald’s. So, I did some time as a standard — I believe the term is — ‘crew member’. Long story short, by February 2000 I was promoted to floor manager — that’s one of the three managers on any shift — with me having passed the management test with the highest score in the UK, I believe; for which I received a fetching but very cheap McDonald’s-branded watch. I wrote an article recently in which you can have a look at that if you want.
HB: I’ve seen the watch and it does look very good. Also, I would recommend that everybody takes a look at Lindsey’s article on Medium. It is very good.
But in a way, I suppose, that whole idea of just starting back at McDonald’s doing that management course — it shows that even in difficult situations, there are things that you can be doing to improve your CV and improve yourself.
After that, what happened in terms of your career path?
LS: By around late April 2000, I decided to have one more tilt at a career in financial services, this time with a bit more experience under my belt. By then, I knew that companies in The City [London’s main financial district] were prepared to offer workers paid-for, part-time training in financial qualifications while working. So: valuable qualifications and no student debt. And I decided I was going to land one of those jobs!
One random day in (I think) May 2000, I jumped on the Central Line, got off at Bank Station and headed into the first recruitment agency I saw, CV in hand, asking if they could help find me a job. I mentioned my interest in jobs that offer training.
The first interview they secured for me was with Makinson Cowell, an investor relations advisory firm. I had no idea at that time what ‘investor relations’ was! But I did enough to convince them to hire me and went from there. I started off doing shareholder identification work for the princely sum of £12,000 per year.
“It’s important to recognise the role of luck in your success. It will definitely stop you getting carried away with how good you are.”
HB: That was a reasonable amount of money back then.
LS: I don’t know if it was that much, even then, Harsha! [Laughter] But yeah, it was certainly a step up from what I was getting before!
After doing shareholder identification work for a while, I moved onto equity research after around 15 months. During that time, I studied what is now known as the CISI Investment Operations Certificate, before going onto the CIMA qualification which I completed a few years later.
HB: But it’s interesting how you talk about how you literally took the Central Line up to Bank and then you got your first break in the finance industry. Some people will be thinking: ‘Well, Lindsey, how lucky are you that you got on the Tube for half an hour, got to Bank, then got the job.’
But I think, if you break that down, you put a plan together and thought ‘this is my strategy’. You did your management course at McDonald’s. So, luck is important, without a doubt, but having that plan and strategy is key, isn’t it?
LS: Absolutely. Having a strategy is important, but as you mentioned, it’s important to recognise the role of luck in your success. It will definitely stop you getting carried away with how good you are. Just knowing that, if certain opportunities hadn’t presented themselves, you wouldn’t be where you are right now.
HB: Just in terms of your qualifications, you have an impressive list of professional qualifications. You’re a CFA Charterholder and also CIMA-qualified and a number of other different things. How do you find these have helped you in your professional career? Has it been hard to work and study at the same time?
LS: Thank you, Harsha! The professional qualifications have been a massive help. The CIMA qualification gave me a good grounding in the fundamentals of accounting, but also in things like organisational theory, strategy and risk management, and I hadn’t appreciated at the time just how important all of those theoretical elements were. They definitely weren’t the exams I enjoyed the most when I did CIMA but, boy, are they valuable! I apply plenty of those things that I learned about Porter and Maslow and Herzberg even now, when I’m working at a more strategic level.
(19:57)
As for the CFA exam, I’d had my eye on that for much of my career. Some of my bosses and more senior peers had taken that exam. They said how difficult it was, but also how valuable it was. So, I had my eye on getting that done. I finally got funding and support to take that course — for which I’m incredibly grateful — in 2014. I finished in 2016 after passing all three levels the first time.
Working and studying… Yeah, it’s definitely hard. When you’ve got a full-time job — and plenty of people in finance know ‘full time’ does not mean 40 hours a week, it means a lot more than that quite a lot of the time — so, it’s not easy squeezing in all that study time, but it’s definitely been worth it.
HB: I remember my days sitting it slightly before you. It’s a very stressful process because there’s six hours of exams. You have to turn up there half an hour early, so you’re there at 8:30 am in the exam hall and then 9 to 12, short break for lunch, and back on in the afternoon. For you to have got through that first time is a very impressive achievement.
But also, I think in terms of when you’re dealing with other people in the investment industry, at least it says that you’ve attained a certain level of academic excellence and rigour. And also, that you’ve made the effort to work and study at the same time — I’m sure a lot of people would find more interesting things to do with their time rather than study for the CFA, no matter how important it is for your career.
LS: It’s a very good point you make there actually, Harsha. Definitely now working as an investor engagement manager, I’d say it’s possible that I’m not using all of those skills and learnings that I’d had in the CFA day-to-day. I’m not calculating duration for a portfolio or that kind of thing every single day. But I feel like having the CFA qualification has almost kind of given me permission to go out and talk to people that do do those things, and have conversations knowing that a certain level of understanding has already been reached on my side.
“I feel that there are times that I could have ironed out some of the bumps in my life path with what are known as ‘soft’ skills.”
HB: Apart from all the technical skills that you’ve acquired, on the accounting side and on the CFA side, what do you think are the most important soft skills to develop for anybody starting out on their career, or during their career.
LS: We do both share a passion for soft skills — we both work on the CFA Soft Skills working group. I’m going to be a bit of a heretic and say that I do object a little to them still being called ‘soft’ skills after all this time, because really, they’re leadership skills. Sometimes they’re even survival skills. And the attitude towards them has turned through 180 degrees since I started working.
In the early 2000s, it was very much a case of: ‘Soft skills? Who needs those?! It’s all about the hard skills.’ That’s not really an opinion that’s still held by any serious person. I feel personally having told my life story, as it were, that there are times that I could have ironed out some of the bumps in my life path with what are known as ‘soft’ skills. If I’d known how to deal with failure, manage anxiety, develop better self-awareness, communicate more clearly in person or in writing, negotiate, develop strong working relationships, advocate for myself… so, so many of those things.
HB: Especially when you’re going for the pay rise, it’s always good to be able to advocate for yourself and negotiate well! [Laughter]
LS: Harsha, I’m still on £12,000 a year! [Laughter] No, kidding! I have had pay rises. I’m sure it does help!
HB: In terms of emotional intelligence, what do you think of that and applying it to your own personal and working life.
LS: That’s another area where people’s attitudes have, thankfully, changed significantly. It was only a few weeks ago in the Harvard Business Review that there was an article that stated very plainly in the headline ‘The Best Managers Balance Analytical and Emotional Intelligence’.
I think 20 years ago, it’s a lot less likely that you would have seen an article in the HBR that didn’t have a very clear ‘hard’ skills focus — usually, back then, about getting ahead in the new dotcom world. So, it’s really, really good that leaders and organisations are waking up to the idea that authentic empathetic leadership, mindful listening, resilience, self-awareness, the importance of purpose in business, are all matters of intelligent leadership.
“Luck is what happens at the intersection of opportunity and preparation.”
HB: I think it’s interesting, as you’re saying, in this post-COVID world it’s even more important trying to understand, if you work in a team or group of people, what is their motivation? People have different motivations and they’re at different stages of their career path.
One of the most underestimated things, I think, in business is trying to be nice or pleasant in an authentic and genuine way. I think it does get you a long way. If you’re only pleasant to the people who can help you, people quickly find out that you’re inauthentic and that you’re hustling them, in a way, to further your own career.
Your career can be supercharged and enhanced if you just deal with people the way that hopefully you’d like to be dealt with as well.
(25:23)
LS: Yeah, absolutely true, Harsha. People do have a very well-developed sense of when people are being inauthentic. So yeah, it’s important to be authentic, but it’s also important to be authentically nice and authentically approachable.
HB: Is there anything else you’d like to talk about for people who are starting out on their career in finance, or considering a career in finance?
LS: When I talk about my career story, people often tell me that I’ve been lucky, and I do actually recognise that I’ve been lucky. People who say that I’ve been lucky are absolutely right. It’s also said that you make your own luck, and that’s right as well.
Luck is what happens at the intersection of opportunity and preparation. What people forget is that 100% of preparation is down to individual actions. And I’d say maybe 50% of opportunity is too.
So, as an example: I was lucky to get the first City job I applied for. But I still had to be prepared: a decent school performance, management experience that I’d gained. And I also had to take the actions to create that opportunity — i.e. get on the train and go to that agency with my CV and be prepared to interview.
So, my advice to people starting off in their career is to focus on the preparation side of that luck ‘equation’. Stay prepared, keep learning, keep practicing, keep developing, keep talking to people. And create those opportunities: turn up and try to make things happen, send emails, ask questions, find out who people are — those kinds of things.
HB: I totally agree with the luck element of that. Just from a personal perspective, I remember when I was trying to get a graduate training contract with an accounting firm. I went to the interview and it was one of these whole-day events where you met different members of staff at the firm. I’d looked at the interview list and though I was being interviewed by one particular person. But they weren’t there and I ended up chatting to another lady.
I started randomly talking about this concert that I’d been to. I’m not a massive classical music fan, but this concert had really made an impression on me, and I was talking in a very passionate sort of way about this whole experience and she was really interested. I was thinking: ‘It’s such a shame I’m not being interviewed by her because we’re getting on really well!’
Then, for some reason, when it did come to the interview, I ended up being interviewed by her — and how randomly lucky is that?! I was just being authentic. It just shows you never know where these bits of luck are going to come.
LS: Definitely true.
“The ‘hard’ skills: they’re super important but, as you move up through the organisation, your progression is a lot less reliant on those. It’s those intangible elements that will determine who’s ready to lead.”
HB: And also on the emotional intelligence piece that you were talking about, that helps you identify that there are some people who’ll naturally be your supporters and other people who… you know how it is in the working environment, you’re not going to get on with everybody.
Sometimes, I think, that whole emotional intelligence piece is quite crucial just to try and navigate your career path, especially at the higher levels where the hiring decision or the promotion decision is made not on these ‘hard’ skills but more on these intangible feelings to some extent.
LS: Very, very valuable point there, Harsha. Absolutely. The ‘hard’ skills: they’re super important, they’re the foundation on which you build your career. But, as you move up through the organisation, your progression is a lot less reliant on those. They’re assumed to be in place already and it’s those intangible elements, like you say, that will determine who’s ready to lead and who’s not.
HB: I know that we’ve just talked about work but I know that you have a lot of outside interests. And I think you used to play American Football?
LS: Yes, that’s right! I’ve tried a bunch of things. A few things indulging my artistic side: photography, producing music… I was DJing for a number of years.
But there was a time when I had a foray into sport for a few years playing American Football as a wide receiver. For those who are not familiar with the sport, the wide receiver is the person who stands and runs on the wing and has to catch the ball.
(29:50)
I was not good at it! I was very average, and I mean average for an amateur Brit! It turns out that sprinting forwards, while looking backwards, while trying to catch a small oval-shaped ball over your shoulder, while a 200-pound opponent is trying to tackle you… It turns out that’s actually quite difficult!
I will say, it was a valuable experience. American Football is a sport where there’s not necessarily just one team; there’s maybe two, three or four different teams depending on what the objectives are at any given time. It really does teach you that everybody in that squad has a very highly-specialised role in plays that have very specific outcomes.
Despite the name ‘wide receiver’, I’d say that less than half the job — certainly for me — was actually catching the ball. A lot of the time I had a completely different job to do. Maybe to block a defender to ensure that a running play was successful, or sometimes to convince the defending team that the ball was coming my way while a completely different play was running.
It taught me certain aspects of strategy and tactics that maybe I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn in any other forum.
HB: It’s interesting when you talk about the team aspect of team sports, there’s an analogy to the working environment where you have people with diverse talents and skills coming together. Everybody has a role which is crucial. Everybody has different skills and you have to make everybody feel appreciated and part of that team.
From a personal perspective, I love playing team sports. Obviously, individual performance is important and you have to execute. But there is the bigger issue of the team — the team needs to win. It’s figuring out how you can align those things, where the individual is doing well and the team does well as well. It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game where if I’m going to succeed somebody else has to do badly. We can all move forward together and we can all do well.
Thank you, Lindsey, for taking the time this afternoon to chat and give us some insights about your career journey and the skills that have helped you get to the position where you are. Have a good afternoon, stay safe and I look forward to speaking again soon!
LS: My pleasure, Harsha. Thank you very much. Take care of yourself!
* Harsha and I referenced several organisations that we work with, or for, in our conversation above. For the avoidance of doubt, all of these comments are made in an entirely personal capacity.
