Company: Hargreaves Lansdown

Personal AUM: £8.7bn

Company AUM: £13.5bn, fund management AUM

Career history

Ziad joined HL in 2021 and is head of the multi-manager funds, overseeing the management of the multi-manager funds range within HL Fund Managers. He joined from Barclays Wealth where he headed the multi-asset team.

Ziad started his investment career in 2005 as an equity portfolio manager in Paris. He moved to London in 2011 to join the multi-manager team at Barclays covering various equity markets and managing the firm’s mixed assets funds.

He holds Masters degrees in both Economics and Management, as well as being a CFA charterholder.

Key areas of focus

Over the year, my focus has been on materially enhancing our investment process through a clearly defined top-down framework.

I led a structured review of how we set asset allocation, assess risk and implement decisions, ensuring greater consistency and transparency across our portfolios.

Continuous improvement of individual skills and processes is something I actively encourage and I am fortunate to work with a highly engaged team who have embraced my leadership in refining and challenging our processes.

Developing talent also remains central to my role. I was particularly pleased to promote a member of my team to fund manager after sustained mentoring and upskilling.

I also made deliberate efforts to strengthen our investment communications when I authored a series of articles and produced an explainer video for our key pension proposition which helps empower clients and keeps them informed.

Externally, I have represented the firm through interviews and contributions with various events and media.

I am also pleased to see new performance recognition for three of our funds, while the ready-made portfolios I and the team run have become central to the business and our client book.

I am now leading further research into private markets to broaden our capabilities and opportunity set.