Coach, catalyst - and leader

Catherine Savage says a background as a competitive badminton and tennis player has helped her career. Picture / Ross Setford

Some people might be surprised to find that the country's most powerful fund manager is a 37-year-old woman with long, blond hair.

Wellingtonian Catherine Savage is the managing director of AMP Capital Investors, which manages about $10 billion of assets or about a quarter of the market.

The informal Savage encounters the surprise sometimes when she greets guests at the reception in AMP's Wellington headquarters.

That informality is part and parcel of her management style as she does not see herself as the type of manager who remains at arm's length from the staff, merely issuing orders.

She views herself as a coach or catalyst and only occasional commander.

"I don't like to think that I'm one of those managers who raps on their desk and orders people around. I like people to think they can run their own business areas as businesses and I'm just here to help."

Partly because AMP manages money for about 80 per cent of the country's community trusts, Savage believes social responsibilities go hand in hand with that.

"It isn't just about managing the money. It's about returns to the clients and the community at large.

"We actually do manage the community's money so we should try and do as much as we can to grow it."

Under Savage, AMP has joined the new think tank, the NZ Institute. It is working on new ideas and solutions to help the country fulfil its potential. It is also seen as a counterweight to the Business Roundtable, a leading voice in the economic liberalisation of the 1980s and early 1990s.

AMP also manages money for BNZ, ASB, the National Bank and Westpac as well as superannuation schemes for companies such as Carter Holt Harvey, Air New Zealand and Fletcher Building.

As a member of AMP's regional management team, Savage spends two days a fortnight at the group's headquarters in Sydney.

She also makes weekly visits to AMP's Auckland offices and visits clients in the South Island every two to three weeks.

Then there was the 15 days at a business leadership course at the well-regarded IMD school in Switzerland. It's just as well she loves travel, putting it down to her birth sign of Sagittarius

After four years in the job, Savage is still the only female country manager in the AMP group as well as being one of its youngest managers.

And there's nothing wrong with being a woman in the male-dominated fund management world. "Really good", actually. "You get noticed because there aren't a lot of women."

Growing up with two older brothers and a background as a competitive badminton and tennis player she feels has helped her career. Glass ceilings have never figured.

"I have to be working full on or I don't work optimally."

Savage cites her parents as the biggest influence on her career - they never set boundaries while giving her the confidence to try different things.

Her father, Wellington businessman Roy Savage, ran NZ Safety until selling out in 1998 but remains a director of importer Griffin Savage, co-founded by his father.

The company distributes Crabtree & Evelyn food, perfumes and luxury goods. The National Business Review rich list estimates his wealth at $60 million.

For someone who has achieved so much in so short a time it is almost hard to believe Savage never knew what she wanted to do while growing up.

While head girl at Marsden in Karori, she enrolled in medicine at Otago University, engineering at Canterbury University and architecture at Auckland University to be accepted by all three.

Still not sure what to do, she took up her father's suggestion to study business at Victoria University, majoring in accounting, marketing and finance. She thought the accounting qualifications would enable her to work while travelling. A three-year stint followed - her first job - at the Wellington accounting firm of Curtis McLean. Then with encouragement from her oldest brother, who was working for merchant bankers Fay Richwhite, Savage applied for the post as treasury manager at the Natural Gas Corp, which had recently been separated from Fletcher Challenge.

Another three-year stint followed before she shifted to AMP to work as a portfolio manager.

"I just loved it. I loved the people I worked with and the industry."

Starting out at AMP, Savage was asked by the then managing director where she would like to be in five years' time only to be told that she wanted his job.

"He just laughed and said 'we'll see'."

Five years later she had her way.

Pressure decisions do not worry Savage as she believes everyone, no matter what they do, has to be accountable for whatever they decide.

And AMP's staff can have heated debates, which is something Savage enjoys to the point that when hiring staff yes men or women need not apply.

"We're asking people to come and work for us because we trust them and we think they're capable so why would I then say 'do as I say'?" she asks.

And, by the way, she does have time for a private life.

With husband Glenn Stewart, a former professional badminton player, Savage has three young children.

One of their business interests is an organic cafe, as she is a great advocate of organic food, believing it provides the country with a competitive advantage.

And although happy in her job and New Zealand, running a listed company or being on listed company boards has a certain appeal for someone who describes herself as being hot on corporate governance.

But back to business, where the AMP's ambitions to invest in infrastructure such as roads is frustrated by the lack of a mechanism to do so.

Savage does not like the 2003 Land Transport Management Act which prevents the private sector from owning roads.

"We don't want to develop infrastructure and then on sell it, we want to own it," she says.

"We want to manage them, that's where our expertise is."

AMP already does this in property, in which it has $1.8 billion invested. The developments include the Botany Downs Town Centre and Auckland's PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower.

Savage said the act was structured in such a way that the private sector would have to carry all the risk if partnered with local or central government - therefore the return on investment would be inadequate.

This meant there was a risk that money tagged for infrastructure investment from superannuation funds, including the NZ Superannuation Fund (Cullen fund), which AMP helps manage, would be invested in Australia.

Savage said New Zealand not only needed roads but the money was there to build them.

High on the list of AMP's ambitions for next year was to make some sort of progress on infrastructure investment with local councils and central government .

She also believes the financial services and funds management industries need to simplify issues so that they become easier to understand. "This country needs to save more."