And there is no better time to look at the leadership required to successfully run a globally connected business. Laetitia Peterson is managing director of rapidly growing fund manager Liontamer, started from scratch six years ago, with around $300 million in funds under management and a goal to reach $1 billion.

In May 2007 Peterson and her business partner Janine Starks, successfully negotiated the sale of the majority share in their business to the asset management arm of one of Europe’s largest banks, KBC Group. No mean feat for a small New Zealand-based company.

Liontamer depends on its connections with global financial circles. In Peterson’s view there’s no room for big egos or short cuts, and you need to be pragmatic and flexible. That is probably best illustrated by the fact it is run as a genuine virtual office environment. Most of the senior executives work from their homes.
Peterson is based in Auckland, while investment director Starks is based in Christchurch, the head of structuring and finance is based in Wellington and there are sales consultants in Auckland and Sydney.

Peterson is in daily contact with parent KBC. “We have a global business that requires regular interaction with people in Brussels, Dublin, Sydney and Shanghai,” she says. “With the different time zones we need to be available at odd hours, so working from home is very practical. I often have conference calls at 8pm or 6am and the flexibility and convenience of working from home suits the type of work we do.”

Such a connected, virtualised mode of working requires the right people and Peterson’s advice is to choose your colleagues and employees carefully. “I am surrounded by talented individuals and that makes my job as a leader a whole lot easier.” She emphasises that the company is not about its leader and there is no room for a big ego. The key is to provide the necessary support and guidance for the employees to ensure that they perform effectively.

“We are sometimes given a lucky break, but on the whole there is no replacement for hard work, vision and being well supported by your colleagues and, in my case, my husband.” Being faced with the worst financial markets in the last 20 years – unprecedented recent drops in large US financial institutions such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns – her other advice is that it “remains important for us to be flexible and to continue to adapt to changing market conditions.”

This adaptation is evident in its strategy for the Australian business which is completely different to the local one. “Many New Zealand businesses simply try and replicate what they have here in the Australian market,” Peterson says. “It is important to recognise that the markets are totally different. Our strategy in Australia has been to launch thematic, well diversified, open-ended managed funds.”

Peterson was born and raised in Belgium in a small town called Leuven. She laughs saying, that Leuven is now better known for its beer, being the home of Stella Artois, than it is for the beautiful Gothic buildings and medieval roots that define the town. She studied there, gaining a business degree before being accepted into the US’s top finance school, the University of Chicago, to complete an MBA.

Her career in financial markets began at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street, which she describes as a “baptism of fire into the world of finance.” It was 1990 and then the derivatives market was just being established. Based in New York and London, she worked on the derivatives sales and trading desk covering continental Europe.

After marrying a Kiwi and moving to New Zealand, Peterson joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in mid-1996 working in its corporate finance division. A few years later she moved to the Bank of New Zealand where she was instrumental in launching capital protected products into the branch network of BNZ.

Peterson’s entrepreneurial drive and passion for financial markets led her to set up Liontamer in March 2003. “I realised that there was a gap in the market for capital protected products, I understood all the regulations and I knew that if I pulled all the right people together and got an investment bank to provide the underlying capital protection I could make a success of a business that offered these products.”

Peterson’s quiet confidence in her abilities is evident when she describes how she got an investment bank on board. “I phoned Morgan Stanley in the UK and asked if they would issue the underlying security for me if I set up my own business in capital protected products. And they said yes. With that in place, the legal work wrapped up and a brand concept created in Liontamer, we were set to launch our company.”