I think the most underappreciated and under-discussed aspect of equities is that they have a unique quality that no other asset that you can invest in has.

They can compound it value.

Welcome to the Money Maze podcast.

I'm Simon Brewer and Will Campion and I have created this show to explore and unravel some of the mysteries surrounding the investment business.

You can keep up to date by visiting Moneymayspodcast.com and please sign up to our newsletter

to ensure you won't miss a release. If you enjoy this show, please subscribe and we'd love you

to tell a friend or colleague about it. Thank you for listening. Our guest today has been referred to as the English Warren Buffett

for his style and success in investing. His book published in 1992, Accounting for Growth,

and its ensuing controversy, helped propel it to the top of the bestsellers chart,

displacing Stephen Hawking's a brief history of time from the number one spot.

And I did ask myself, has any book with accounting in the title ever been a bestseller

before or after? He's been head of research, CEO of a public company, a former top bank's

analyst who won't own a bank in his fund, and a highly respected and an extremely successful founder and CIO at the

Global Equity Fund Manager Fund Smith. So Terry Smith, welcome today to the Money Mace podcast.

Simon, thank you. So looking back, Terry, you graduated in history from University College

Cardiff in 1974 and finance in the 70s was a different duller beast. Some might say the better for it.

What was the attraction? I've got a first industry, in fact. And my professor, Stanley Crimes,

S.B. Crimes, had me in one of those classic meetings that took place in those days in his sort of

study with a glass of sherry one afternoon and said to me that he thought

I was, quote, was going to do very well in my finals. I said, well, you should know, Prof. You're marking

him after all. There's lots of application for a drill. He said, I think you're going to be,

because he was about to retire, actually. And he said, I think you're going to be my last first, which was nice thing. And he said, I'd like to offer you a role, basically, is

...