TEAM SPIRIT

Under his leadership, ECP Asset Management co-founder and director Jared Pohl shows how working with the right and equally passionate people creates a type of kinship and synergy that sets the fund manager apart. Karren Vergara writes.

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To earn pocket money as a child, Jared Pohl ran different side hustles, one of which was operating a t-shirt printing business with a mate, another was building websites.

As he got older, his interest and talent in all-things technology deepened.

"I was enrolled to go to the University of Queensland. About three days before term started at Bond University, I switched to Bond, largely because of three mates who were studying there.

"I enrolled in the nick of time in the Bachelor of Finance and Information Technology degree," he says.

His interest in business or commerce from a study perspective, though, fell by the wayside.

It wasn't until later, when he gained real-world experience in financial services, that Pohl truly began appreciating the economics and commerce side of things as he was working towards his MBA.

"I got very good grades in computer science and had a natural proclivity towards IT. I think it's because I have an engineering mindset and am always trying to understand how everything fits together," he says.

After university, Pohl spent time travelling mostly across North America. To support himself financially, he worked in bars and waited tables.

While in Canada, he was offered an internship to work as a floor trader on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

"I couldn't make it work financially and the cost of living there was too high, so I missed that opportunity. It was a 'sliding doors' moment because if I went down that path, then I wouldn't be where I am today," Pohl says.

When it was time to return to Australia, Pohl was unsure about what he wanted to pursue. He was offered a job at Hyperion Asset Management, initially helping with systems because of his IT background.

That morphed into a broader cadetship where he worked across all areas of the business - from settlements, marketing, distribution to research and then the investment team.