Who we are

Rob has been in the financial services industry for more than 30 years, having started his career as an independent financial adviser within Lloyds Private Bank. He has held multiple CMO and senior distribution roles during that time, most recently at Janus Henderson Investors (JHI) where he was responsible for the marketing integration, rebrand and relaunch of the combined business.

He left JHI in 2018 to co-found Octo Members, the closed social media app for the financial services industry which now boasts some 4,000 active members. In 2020, he went on to launch fVenn, a highly specialist consultancy business serving both domestic and global clients exclusively within the asset and wealth management sectors.

Prior to JHI, Rob was CMO at Hill Samuel, Barings, New Star, Liontrust, Ignis, Ardevora, Hermes and Henderson, where he and his teams have won multiple industry awards.

Neil has an established advertising and marketing career, spanning both client and agency senior roles over some 20 years.

He started his career in the marketing department of a global insurer but left after three years to establish a communications consultancy specialising in financial services – City Financial Marketing – with two industry colleagues. In 10 years, they grew the business to over 100 people, with offices in London, Leeds, Edinburgh and Amsterdam, becoming the largest specialist FS agency in Europe.

In 1996, the business was acquired by Publicis, one of the world’s largest communications groups. He spent eight years at Publicis as a strategy director working on all the financial services business that was hubbed out of the London agency – primarily Fidelity International and UBS – but also working on a wide range of non-financial brands such as Renault, Asda, Ericsson and MFI.

In 2004, he left Publicis to join MORE TH>N as Marketing Director, and set about successfully repositioning the brand around product and service superiority. He continued his return to client-side engagements in 2007 as Marketing Director of the Post Office’s joint venture with Bank of Ireland, responsible for all aspects of its financial services offering.

In 2009, he rejoined the communications industry as a strategy director at WPP and has been a consultant strategy/marketing director since 2012, focusing exclusively on the asset management sector. He is a frequent conference speaker and contributor to advertising, business and financial publications.

Tony Lanning was most recently the international head of multi-asset and fixed income solutions for JP Morgan’s specialised strategies team where he launched, raised and managed an $8.5bn fund of traditional asset classes combined with alternatives and structures.

Prior to JP Morgan, he held a number of senior fund manager roles, including head of multi-asset at both Henderson and Gartmore, and head of collectives research at Arbuthnot Private Bank.

Tony is a highly experienced portfolio manager with strong macro and asset allocation experience and over 30 years’ analyst experience, with a proven track record of raising assets across EMEA, Asia, Australia and LATAM.

Ian Burton was most recently at Pictet Asset Management where he built out and led the global consulting relations function and the UK institutional business development team. He subsequently moved into a senior strategic client role within the firm’s Global Client Group, working closely with key institutional relationships.

Prior to this, Ian was European Head of Consultant Relations at AllianceBernstein where he was instrumental in reshaping the firm’s consultant engagement strategy to focus on its fixed income and defined contribution capabilities.

He has also had senior distribution leadership roles at Pioneer Investments and Insight Investment Management, and was a senior investment consultant at Mercer.