Meet the finance guru who tells millionaire athletes how to invest — and not squander

Jonathan Gold, the executive director at London and Capital, has a number of high net worth athletes on his client list, including golfers, tennis players, and soccer players.
His goal, he told Business Insider, is to help them win major tournaments. But he does not do this by offering athletic insight.
Instead, he takes stresses synonymous with looking after money away from the client, and helps them figure out where to invest it.
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This London-based finance guru has the unusual task of advising sport stars to help them invest — and hopefully not squander — their million-dollar paychecks.

Jonathan Gold, the executive director at London and Capital, told Business Insider he helps athletes keep their performance top notch. Not by offering athletic insight, but by removing the stresses synonymous with high-earning but short-lived careers.

London and Capital

To ensure his superstar athletes don’t blow all their cash while they’re playing sport and earning money, he advises a straightforward approach of stocks and bonds.

"The equity should be the risk part of your portfolio and the bonds should be the balance of that, the bedrock of producing a readily-knowable income stream. Income not necessarily to spend straight away, maybe reinvested," Gold says.

A career in sports could last between just 10 and 15 years, and sometimes only a small part of that could be high-earning. Low risk is therefore an essential investment strategy as the client’s earning power in soccer, golf, or tennis is uncertain, Gold said.

"They don’t need to be taking risk. We should be keeping you wealthy. In the sports space it’s important because of the precarious nature of the profession. This is an area where you don’t want to be adding to that uncertainty."

Gold handles investments for high-earners not only in sports, but in music and entertainment as well. According to his LinkedIn profile, he assists in areas including:

ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investment portfolios designed for high-profile clients
Asset allocation
Retirement planning
Cash flow analysis

"It’s nothing to do with how to improve their game, it’s taking away any concerns or anxieties — trying to minimize these — so they can just focus on what they do best," Gold told Business Insider.

"What they don’t need … is to be reading about stock markets. That’s just noise. But knowing that they are owning good companies with good profit that are going to be around tomorrow and not go bust."

ESB Professional/shutterstock

He described pitching for business as a "beauty parade process," adding that by the time he meets the talent, a final decision has often already been made.

"These clients have significant wealth, and have appointed a multi-family office who oversee that process."

Gold said athletes want familiarity — big-name brand stocks like Coca-Cola and Disney. "Significant dividend" income is also a key metric, he said.

Markets Insider

Helping them ‘achieve the lifestyle they want in the future’

You only have to follow a few high-net-worth athletes on Instagram to see that some have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for expensive things.

Tiger Woods and Rafael Nadal love buying yachts, while Floyd Mayweather continually flashes his gold watches, ultra-rare cars, and private jets.

However, Gold said advising athletes for or against these types of purchases is "not our bag."

"I would look at that part of the conversation with any client, and talk about core capital," he added.

Ethan Miller/Getty

"Let’s say you’re talking to a footballer. They will have a career. They have a certain amount of money that they are earning in a certain amount of time. You’d have cash flow modelling and investment modelling. You’d say, ‘This is what we need the plan to do, to create an amount worth X in a given time.’

"And that is a way of reversing out the amount this person wants to spend or live off in the future. Whatever that number happens to be, you may find they need to put away 60% of their net income, whatever the number is, and the rest of it is excess capital."

The rest, Gold says, can go on their luxury or lifestyle purchases. "My role is to help them achieve the lifestyle they want in the future," Gold said.

A future where they won’t be winning majors or making millions of dollars every month because they’ll have retired from elite sport.

"Stories reverberate around people who have taken bad advice or made bad decisions with their finances," Gold said.

So he’s trying to ensure his clients don’t become the subject of any of those stories.

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