John Dance

As founder and principal of Vertem, John began his career at Wise Speke (now Brewin Dolphin) in 1996. He’s worked for international banks including Merrill Lynch and ABN Amro and, since launching Vertem, has built strong relationships with a number of Independent financial advisors, creating investment solutions for their clients. John’s strength is making sense of the economic and corporate outlook and translating it into sensible portfolios. He holds a number of industry qualifications including the CII Certificate in Discretionary Investment Management plus the CISI Diploma in Investment Advice and Masters in Wealth Management.

“I have long been interested in financial markets and my academic skills were certainly mathematical rather than linguistic. Initially this suggested accountancy would be the right career, but fate took over when I was sent to Wise Speke by a temping agency, originally to stuff envelopes. Fortunately, they soon found other uses for me and my career has taken off since then.

“I enjoy the dialogue with clients and investors, helping them understand the factors that influence investments and talking through their portfolios. Making sense of the economic and corporate outlook and then translating that into sensible portfolios is all part of the challenge. My fascination and interest with all things economic or investment related, leads to the frequent use of the word ‘geek-like’ in describing me.

“Of course, we geeks rarely confine ourselves to one area and outside work I apply a similar dedication to cars. Although my intention is to race, drive and enjoy cars, the real joy is the never-ending tinkering, building, rebuilding and development process, although my wife would like me to point out that no progress has been made on the current project for the last five years! Like most I am an avid fan of almost all sports but horse racing and ownership has become a real passion in recent years. As we don’t have an Oil well in the garden we buy young untested horses and watching them develop and progress before they hit the track is a real joy. Dreaming they may become something useful also provides a welcome mental distraction from work.”