Terry Smith (businessman)

Terence "Terry" Smith, MNZM (born in 1953, London, England) is the founder and chief executive of Fundsmith and a notable British fund manager. He was formerly the chief executive of Tullett Prebon and Collins Stewart. He is a bestselling author and a regular media commentator on investment issues.

He has been referred to as "the English Warren Buffett" for his style of value investing, which involves buying and holding shares in a relatively small number of established companies.

Smith was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2012, after his work in recognising the contribution of Sir Keith Park during the Battle of Britain. In 2016, Smith received an Honorary Fellowship from Cardiff University.

Smith grew up in East London where he attended Stratford Grammar School before reading history at University College Cardiff in 1974, graduating with a First. He turned down an offer of research fellowship to pursue a career in business.

Smith worked for Barclays Bank from 1973 to 1984. He managed the Pall Mall branch before transferring to the firm's finance department, where he developed an interest in stock analysis. He obtained an MBA from Henley Management College in 1979.

He left Barclays to work at W Greenwell & Co as a research analyst. Later he joined Barclays de Zoete Wedd where he was a number-one rated banking analyst, earning notoriety for writing a sell note on Barclays itself.

In 1990 he was appointed Head of UK Company Research at UBS Phillips & Drew, a position from which he was dismissed in 1992 following the publication of his best-selling book Accounting for Growth.

In 1990 a series of high-profile FTSE 100 public companies went bust, including Polly Peck and British and Commonwealth. Smith's clients wanted to know why these firms had failed despite posting apparently healthy profits. In response, Smith wrote an analysts circular showing that these firms had run into difficulties with cash flow, rather than profitability, and in some cases had used deliberately misleading accounting techniques.

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