I'm not just a finance person, you know," says Nicola Horlick, the fabled City "superwoman" and mother of six. Soon she will start shooting a 1960s-set East End gangster flick – Diamond is the working title – where the diamond geezer is a woman. It will be Horlick's first stab as lead producer of a film, although behind the scenes the one-time City maverick is fast becoming a movie mogul in her own right.
Bruised by the loss of millions of pounds of investors' money to Wall Street fraudster Bernie Madoff in late 2008 – her Bramdean Alternatives company had £21m, or nearly a 10th of its assets with Madoff – Horlick has spent the last few years focusing on raising cash for film ventures.
Her company Derby Street Films is developing a slate of around 25 movies, and in March launched a multimillion-pound round of fundraising from investors. Catherine Hardwicke, director of the first Twilight film, is in discussions to direct Diamond, and while casting is unconfirmed, Horlick is a huge fan of Gina Carano, star of recently released US action thriller Haywire. "She's the next Angelina Jolie."
Horlick muses over whether she's becoming one of the biggest film producers in the UK, and it's perhaps not an idle boast. But for many British investors, film has long been a junkyard of failed schemes, manipulated by the rich for tax benefits rather than artistic or box office merit.
Derby Street Films aims to raise money through the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), which offers tax breaks to high net worth individuals (see below). But Horlick insists the quality of the project comes first, and the tax advantages second.
The one-time star fund manager no longer spends her weekends poring over analysts' reports and spreadsheets. Instead, she reads film script after script, developing and bringing them forward into projects that can be sold to studios and TV networks. She has also developed a niche in film scores; another of her companies acquires the rights to original film music scores, and tries to generate a revenue stream from their use. So far Horlick has accumulated the rights to 150 scores, including The King's Speech.
"You can make money from investing in film. But it's probably not for the small retail investor. The EIS is only really suitable for someone with at least £25,000," says Horlick.
At an early age, Horlick says she wanted to become an actor (she interviewed for Rada as a teenager) and describes herself today as a "film buff". But her career followed the path of many of her contemporaries at Balliol, Oxford: straight into a high-paid job in the City – in her case, blue-blooded merchant bank SG Warburg. By the age of 32 she was managing director of an ailing part of Morgan Grenfell, and took its assets under management from £4bn to £22bn. She shot into the public eye after an extraordinary bust-up at the bank, which saw her fly to Frankfurt – with 40 journalists in tow – to persuade its German owners to back her case.
A theatrical stunt? Maybe, but taking centre stage, whether in the City or on the panel of Question Time, comes easily. Wouldn't she prefer to be in front of the camera rather than producing a film? "If I can't be the star, I don't want to be in the film," she says. "In any case, I have no desire to be in any of my films," she adds.
Towards the end of a lunch with journalists, she asked us: "What else do you do?" It was a telling moment – it is evident that she can't imagine why anyone would do just one job, follow one career, or have one set of interests. Can You Have It All? was the title of the book she wrote (in six weeks) after falling out with Morgan Grenfell, and today her zest for ideas and reinvention, even after Madoff, shows no signs of dimming.
Two weeks before launching a fundraising round for Derby Street Films, she helped launch another company, Rockpool Investments, where she will be chairman. It will be her three-day-a-week job. The other days will be spent on film ventures, and, along the way, she'll take time out to produce Diamond. Then there's the five surviving children (one, Georgina, died of leukaemia) plus three step-children from her marriage in 2006 to a financial journalist. And later this month she will open a new restaurant and private members club in Barnes, an exclusive enclave of south-west London, which she is naming Georgina's. The idea is that it will be the first of many.
Business startups – either her own film or restaurant ventures, or financing others – are now at the heart of what Horlick does. At Rockpool she will be joined by Gary Robins, who founded Hotbed in 2002. It became the UK's biggest venture capital network, with nearly 1,000 individuals investing £220m over nine years into startups. Businesses that sprung out of Hotbed financing included Gymbox and the Hoxton Hotel.
Rockpool hopes to use changes in the EIS regime from this month to invest in later-stage startups, ones that are already established but moving on to their next stage of expansion. It is mostly aimed at the very well-off – people who can invest £500,000 or more – although it also accepts investors who can put £25,000 into its EIS schemes.
Is it a good bet? After Madoff, Horlick's halo has slipped somewhat, although she insists that investors in her Bramdean Alternatives fund "did very well". Critics will also point to her later years as a unit trust and pension fund manager, when her performance was, according to some, lacklustre. In 2003 Sir Mark Weinberg removed her as manager of £500m of funds at his St James Place Capital group amid concerns about investment performance. At SG Asset Management, the firm Horlick set up after leaving Morgan Grenfell, performance was good at first but slipped during 2001 and 2002, and she left in 2003.
Now in her 50s, and with a remarkable career working in male-dominated areas, is she a poster child for breaking the glass ceiling? Not really. "There's a reason why most fund managers and nearly all hedge managers are men. It's very, very nerve-racking. Most women just don't want that sort of pressure. I didn't encounter sexism in the City. I was highlighted by the media because I am a woman. I'm not suggesting there are no blocks in the way for women, but I found very few."
