executive impact

From Sanskrit to Schroders

12 Comments
By Mike de Jong for EURObiZ Japan

Of all the subjects one can study in university, Sanskrit might be the most difficult. Yet Guy Henriques is not one to back down from a challenge.

“The hardest language in the world,” laughs Henriques, president and representative director of Schroders Japan, of his major at London University. “I think it is [the hardest language]. It’s the grammar. I mean, other languages are kind of easy [by comparison].”

And it all came about due to a childhood holiday. As an 11-year-old, Henriques and his family embarked on an ambitious overland trip from the UK to Australia. They spent six months visiting such countries as Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Singapore and Malaysia, eventually stopping in India for three months.

“We’d go to all these temples, and I’d point and remember asking my mother, ‘What’s that writing on the wall?’ She said, ‘Oh, that’s Sanskrit; that’s the hardest language in the world’.

“And I thought, okay. When I was at school, they asked what are you going to do at university, and I said, ‘Oh, I decided that already when I was 11. I’m going to do Sanskrit’.”

After studying the Indian language intensively for four years, Henriques left with a degree in hand — and never used Sanskrit again.

“I certainly worked harder than my colleagues at university … four years, only Sanskrit. That’s it, nothing else. And so you really get deep down and dirty. As a result, when you finish, you either want to do that forever, or you’ve had enough and you don’t want to do anything in relation to Sanskrit again.

“So that’s why I went into finance. I loved it, but four years of intensity was actually [a lot],” adds Henriques.

So finance was it.

Beginning as a foreign exchange trader at Barings, Henriques moved on four years later to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), where he spent the next 15 years, with stops in Switzerland and Hong Kong. In 2006, he joined Schroders in London, later jumping at the chance to return to Asia, first to Hong Kong and then to Japan.

The various moves were natural for Henriques, who describes his background as “hybrid”, due to his Australian mother, British father and American wife.

“It’s not that I’m addicted to moving,” he says. “I thought when I moved back to the UK from Switzerland that I was going back to stay. It was Schroders that then said, ‘Oh, you’ve been in Asia, would you go back?’ And I think once you’ve moved around a few times, I wouldn’t say it’s easy … but you’re much more open to it. And I think I got that from being from a hybrid family and not minding moving.”

For Henriques, it now appears he’s found a home with the iconic British firm. Founded in 1804 as a merchant bank, Schroders today focuses exclusively on asset management. The company’s relationship with Japan dates back more than a century, with Schroders having financed construction of Japan’s first railway in 1870. The firm’s Japan office dates back 40 years.

Henriques has now been here two years, and is impressed with Japanese culture and its attention to detail. He also thinks it is an exciting time to be in Japan, where consumers may be on the edge of a changing paradigm.

“At the moment, in Japan, the market is on the cusp of something quite interesting,” he says. “The big question is, will Japanese savers start to believe in the possibility of long-term growth?”

Historically, the Japanese tended to be big savers, putting their money “under the mattress or futon” as he calls it, seeing it worth more six months later as prices fall. But now, people might be on the verge of real investing rather than cash hoarding.

“I think that as the market moves, people will start to believe that they can actually make money from their savings.

“In Europe we were always taught that when you’re young, you should be buying long-term, risky assets because you can afford the time and the risk; when you’re older, you should buy less risky assets… In Japan right now it’s completely the other way around.

“So it’s a very unusual situation. [But] I think it’s changing.”

As for his own future, Henriques says he won’t go back to Sanskrit, although he believes studying such a non job-related subject served him well.

“Actually, when I interview people, if they’ve done something non-vocational [in university], I actually pay more attention. Not that I would penalise someone for doing economics or accounting, or finance or business studies. That’s great. Or maths or engineering.

“But if someone’s done something really weird, they actually get a little bit more attention from me,” he laughs. “But I’m biased.”

DO YOU LIKE NATTO?

Time spent working in Japan: Two years and lots of visits over 20 years

Career regret (if any): Not being a drummer in a reggae band or a barrister

Favourite saying: “…as good as any and better than most”

Favourite book: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Cannot live without: Family, music, red wine

Lesson learned in Japan: Slow down to speed up

Secret of success in business: Hire people who are smarter than you and be mobile

Favourite place to dine out: Right now: Two Rooms in Aoyama

Do you like natto? I enjoy eating almost everything

© Japan Today

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12 Comments
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Looked up language difficulties. Sanskrit is no at the top.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Good to see a capitalist with a bit of Kulcha!!!!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Do you like natto? I enjoy eating almost everything

Translation: No.

He sounds like an interesting guy who has led a charmed life. I'd love to share some red wine with him.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Seems like a decent bloke, but the idea that Sanskrit is the hardest language to learn is just wrong. Try Finnish, not Indo-European and with fifteen cases (Sanskrit has eight), or Lithuanian, which has only seven cases but is crammed with irregularities and exceptions.

Sanskrit's a doddle in comparison....

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@Reckless

Oh yes. The funniest book ever written. I lost it a couple of times reading it: coffee out of the nose first time, and a (very slight) bladder problem the second. It's a dangerous document....

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The most difficult language in the world depends on what languages you already speak because there really isn't a credible list of most difficult languages. Every time somebody tells you that a certain language is the most difficult one, they are either talking about their personal opinion or repeating some hearsay. It makes sense that languages which are more similar to your own native language are easier to learn. It's impossible to make an objective list of most difficult languages because difficulty of a language varies depending on the person trying to learn it. Everybody is different and influenced by different factors. In the end a language is hard for reason of shyness, inexperience, no good motivation and lack of confidence. The only way to find out if a language is difficult is to try it yourself.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Novenachama,

Exactly.

After reading this, I couldn't take the article seriously:

After studying the Indian language intensively for four years

THE Indian language?

There are, according to the Hindustani Times, 780 languages spoken in India:

http://www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/books/780-languages-spoken-in-india-250-died-out-in-last-50-years/article1-1093758.aspx

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@Bertie

I think you're misreading, old boy.

If someone said, "Rio Ferdinand, the QPR footballer," would you reply "THE QPR footballer? According to the club they have forty-odd registered players."

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Bertie

You're misreading.

"the Indian language" doesn't imply that Hindi is the only language in India, merely that it is an Indian language.

If someone said "The British city, Glasgow" that wouldn't imply that Glasgow was the only city in Britain.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Sanskrit is not hardest language in the world! In fact, its context free nature makes it easily adaptable to computers.

BNF:

The idea of describing the structure of language using rewriting rules can be traced back to at least the work of Panini (who lived sometime between the 7th and 4th century BC). His notation to describe Sanskrit word structure notation is equivalent in power to that of Backus and has many similar properties.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Bertie, I think this was just an awkward way for the author to mention that Sanskrit comes from India, not an implication that India only has one language. Compare "when asked about his years in Zürich, he said that the Swiss city was..." as a way of telling readers which country the city is in without breaking flow.

I can see why he wanted to study it, though. Sanskrit is distantly related to Greek and Latin and all the other Indo-European languages, and there are many, many words whose ultimate origins you can see when you see what they are in Sanskrit. Indeed, the modern subject of linguistics basically began in the 1700s when this relationship was discovered. Maybe Mr. Henriques might have been able to make some great contributions to this field had he not going into banking.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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