Gina Miller: Counting cost of the Brexit vote

Despite being under armed guard due to death threats during her High Court action against the UK government’s proposed exit of the EU without a parliamentary vote, wealth manager Gina Miller does not resemble a fugitive or prisoner.

Just as she did before her name became synonymous with opposition to the procedure leading to Brexit, the elegant, Guyana-born Ms Miller flits between client appointments in the monied districts of west London by taxi, albeit with her police protectors now following discreetly.

But something has changed in the way prospective clients, including family offices and charities now relate to the SCM Direct office, which she runs together with husband Alan Miller, whom she once worked with at New Star, where he was one of London’s few top-performing hedge fund managers.

Although Ms Miller will not be drawn on exact assets, her business is estimated to run around £100m ($125m), mainly for family, friends, and a smattering of high net worth and mass affluent clients.

Yet growing this business in current circumstances will be a tall order, she believes, with at least two major family firms having cancelled “pitch” meetings. “I am now seen as a toxic brand,” confesses Ms Miller. “People are frightened of being associated with us. The British psyche is such that people are frightened of those who do not tread the same path.”

Automated future

Yet the firm’s automated wealth management platforms are “about to break even”, even though services designed specifically for women were possibly aimed too high and will be recalibrated in the New Year.

SCM’s formula of automated distribution, with some advice, linked to passive instruments such as ETFs will determine the future of the funds industry, believes Ms Miller. This is already light years away from the high stakes, high fee active management era from which her husband made his multi-million pound fortune.

“Alan thinks the days of the hedge fund are over and that we need an RIP headstone over that industry. We can’t believe or understand why pension funds and endowments still invest in hedge funds,” says Ms Miller.

She is however concerned about the future of the entire UK industry post-Brexit, with ease of “passporting” Ucits mutual funds across EU borders from London soon to be lost to history. 

“Europe will not look favourably on our financial services now, as they want to punish us for what we have done. People don’t understand the impact of this. There is arrogance in the city, that this event will not decimate financial services.”

Yet Morgan Stanley is talking about moving one third of its UK staff to the continent while “the Irish regulators can’t even cope with demand, they are so overwhelmed” by requests from UK financial firms, she says.

She uses her knowledge of the law – as well as her own legal education, her father was Guyana’s attorney general – to analyse the situation which could unravel in post-EU Britain.

“I look at this from a legal point of view. Under UK employment law, Brexit is a force majeure event, allowing people to be made redundant without a normal process. You will see a lot of companies using technology to downsize.”

She expects many jobs to be lost. “What Brexit will do for the City is fuel a real technology revolution. Some big companies will downsize significantly, embrace technology and confront their legacy issues.” 

World is watching

But aside from any structural changes, business will also suffer because of a negative view which other countries are fostering of the UK, having witnessed casual racism, murders and increased frequency of attacks in Britain since the referendum.

“[Racism] is now everywhere,” says 51-year-old Ms Miller. “Politicians and the press are fuelling it, they are not being responsible and not speaking up,” she suggests, after showing me shocking misogynist and racist emails, insulting her ethnicity and threatening to kill her entire family. 

Several days after our interview, Police arrested a 55-year-old man in Swindon, on suspicion of racially aggravated malicious communication. A “cease and desist” notice was also issued on a 38-year-old man in Fife, Scotland.

“The world is watching us,” she says, referring to key trading partners identified by the UK government. “Japan and India are looking on at what is happening to the UK and are in shock.”

The fear factor among both businesses and the political elite when it comes to saying anything which may be interpreted as contradicting the new Brexit orthodoxy, does not help, she suggests.

“Politicians and business people all quietly support me, but not a single one will speak publicly to back me,” says Ms Miller, who believed her phone line would be red hot with friendly messages from MPs after judges backed her case that parliament must have a free vote before the government’s invoking of article 50 to leave the EU.

“We naively thought they would back a winner,” smiles Ms Miller, perplexed by MPs’ failure to understand the very political system which they participate in.

“Every member of parliament should be supporting me. If they don’t believe in parliamentary democracy, they shouldn’t be in parliament and should support direct democracy,” she says, wondering where all the “great minds and the great leaders” have disappeared to when it comes to discussing Brexit.

“What about accountability, rule of law and sovereignty? If we lose these and we no longer have a civil society, then we have lost everything.”