Nigel Sillis

The director of fixed-income and currency research at Baring Asset Management talks to Matthew Attwood about bubbles, credit risk and mushroom picking

While the subjects for this feature often surprise us with the jobs they had before entering the capital markets, Nigel Sillis can lay claim to one of the strangest: when not studying A-levels in Maths, Further Maths, Pure Maths and Physics, he had a spare-time job on a local farm clearing up the detritus left by mushroom pickers, a task he could at least perform with the lights on and with a power-hose.

How he brings this experience to bear in his research at Barings is a secret Sillis keeps to