CFA Advantage

The Drive of the Investment Professional

The CFA Program Naturally Attracts Those With Intellectual Curiosity And Motivation, Says Alex Carpenter, CFA
By Rose Fry

o Alex Ian Carpenter, successful investment professionals are people who relish a challenge.
“If they’re not challenged they’re not happy,” he says. “So if they’re in a job where they’re not challenged, forget it. They’re going to be gone really fast.”
That’s where the CFA Program comes in, according to Carpenter, president of the newly formed CFA Brazil Society. He says that the motivated investment professional seeks out the CFA Program because it appeals to an essential part of his or her personality, the part that is not easily satisfied.

	President of the CFA Brazil Society, Alex Ian Carpenter, CFA, is a senior portfolio manager at HSBC Asset Management, where he and a team of three portfolio managers are responsible for US$800 million in equity assets.

        And Carpenter, who was just promoted to senior portfolio manager at HSBC Asset Management in Sao Paolo knows about tackling challenges head on.
        When he enrolled in the CFA Program, Carpenter had already earned a Master of Business Administration in international management from Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management. He also had several years’ experience working as a senior credit ratings analyst at Duff and Phelps Credit Rating Company in Rio de Janeiro and then as director of investment analysis at Banco Finasa de Investimento S.A., in Sao Paolo, where he oversaw a group of 10 analysts reviewing both credit and equity markets.
        “I wanted to do the CFA Program because the MBA I did was sort of a general MBA; it wasn’t a finance-focused MBA,” he says. “I thought I should improve my finance side so I could move forward in the investment business.”
        The CFA Program reinforced tools that Carpenter already had from his business background and gave him new tools to prepare for the constantly changing demands of the investment industry.
        When asked what drew him to investments, he attributed his professional interest to his first job in Brazil as a senior credit rating analyst. At Duff and Phelps (later acquired by Fitch Credit Rating), he found that he enjoyed what he calls the “comparable game” of credit rating, “where you’re comparing one company to the next, trying to fit them in in terms of relative credit quality.” However, he sees his attraction to the investment industry itself as much more fundamental, a drive to make full use of his intellectual capabilities.
        “What I enjoy about investments is the act of boiling down a complex issue and trying to simplify it down to actionable conclusions,” Carpenter says. “And then getting it right, that’s important too—at least 60 percent of the time,” he adds with a laugh.
        Carpenter believes that investment professionals are one of two types: either an extroverted, rapid decision maker who is constantly tied into the market and loves to win, or a more introverted analyst who is interested in long-term trends and studying complex issues. He admits that he is the second, studious type who enjoys profound analysis.
        Unfortunately for Carpenter, he didn’t take the CFA exam seriously at first. He thought since he had just completed his MBA, he wouldn’t have to study hard. “Then I went and failed completely,” he laughs.
        With renewed respect for the curriculum, he rose to the challenge and studied for an average of an hour a day for six months before each of the exams. “I passed each exam sequentially in ‘99, 2000, and 2001, because I had been bitten once, and I wasn’t going to get bitten again.”

         By the time he earned his charter, Carpenter was working at INVESCO Asset Management as an equity fund manager. While he prized the new skills the CFA Program had provided, he realized a large measure of value rested in the resources that CFA Institute continuously makes available through local societies who host programs that help members keep their skills up to date. Without a local society, he knew there was an unmet demand in Brazil.
        “I thought that without that part of the CFA Program —actually having local society events—in the long run that the CFA program wouldn’t be successful here in Brazil. I and some other members here really had a passion for making sure that we had that infrastructure for CFA charterholders here.”
        And so Carpenter took on another challenge. In 2003, he and a small, but inspired, group started the process of establishing a new society in Brazil.
        “We had a pretty intense series of five or six town hall meetings before we actually founded the society. We ended up having 20 people at each meeting but they were different charterholders, so that by the time we finished the series we had about 70 percent of the charterholders who had participated in at least one of the meetings,” he says. “That was a good consensus-building process. Now we have more than 100 members, so we’ve doubled since we founded it.”
        Starting from nothing, the group has worked hard to establish a strong Brazilian society for charterholders. By the end of 2004, the CFA Brazil Society was official, complete with its own website and a team of strong leaders.
        “My big goal is to get structured to have monthly events,” Carpenter says, “so members can have something tangible they can use.”
        With events scheduled for October, November, and December in Brazil, Carpenter seems well on his way to success, proving the truth of his own assessment:
        “The CFA Program ends up naturally attracting people that want to be challenged. And so does the investment industry.”