Custody Risk European Awards 2010 - European Personality of the Year: Paul Chapman, Hornby Chapman

After graduating from Bournemouth University in 1990 with a four-year fund management degree, Chapman says he knew the financial world was for him. 

He went into the securities services sector straight after university, with his first job at Brown Brothers Harriman. He spent 11 years there and rose from being ‘number seven’ in a team of seven tearing off telexes, to head of investor services where he ran the London operations.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget being introduced around the office. I remember thinking that everybody was great, but questioning what the ‘custody’ thing they kept mentioning was all about,” he says.

Since then, Chapman has held a number of senior roles within top-tier asset servicing companies, including State Street and Northern Trust. “I had some very memorable and happy years,” he recalls. 

However, November 2006 saw a change of path for Chapman when he set up the joint venture recruitment company HornbyChapman, which focused on the asset servicing industry.

“It was a scary and, some may even say, fool-hearted step leaving a secure and happy firm to go into something that was so uncertain. But, I wanted autonomy and it was going to be then or never,” he says.

Chapman says going into recruitment allowed him to utilise the securities services network that he had built over 17 years in the industry.

He comments: “I felt like I could do a better job than many of the recruiters around because I’d already performed many of the jobs that I would be working with. I’d gained the contacts, the credibility and knowledge, and it would now be easy for me to know straight away which people would fit into which firms culturally.”

Chapman says the greatest achievement in his career was placing his first HornbyChapman candidate into a job –coincidentally it was for Brown Brothers Harriman.

“It was such a great feeling because it was the first realisation that I’d successfully set up my own business. It was also fantastic to be able to go full circle and provide my own services back to a firm that I loved dearly,” he says.

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