Leonie Schroder

Spear’s Review                       

As the principal of the family that controls Schroders, the UK wealth management titan with £750 billion in assets under management as of end-2023, St Andrews graduate Leonie Schroder is a force within the world of big money.

The only daughter of billionaire Bruno Schroder, whom she replaced on the board as a non-executive director after his death in 2019, is at the head of the family that holds sway at the 220-year-old FTSE 100 funds behemoth – subsidiaries of which include Cazenove Capital – through a 42 per cent holding. It provides the lion’s share of the family’s fortune, put at £3.9 billion by the 2024 Sunday Times Rich List.

Schroder is described by someone who knows the clan as highly intelligent, able, articulate and ‘a credit to her family’. Another figure familiar with the family says they regard her appointment to the board as an excellent move. ‘She was a wonderful daughter to her father, who adored her. Her diligence in learning about the family business, her work on the foundation, her work with various communities where the family are active, especially in the Hebrides, is inspiring. She’s a highly intelligent person, she brings rigour and would absolutely espouse stakeholder values. She’s an incredibly positive element for that firm to have.’

Prior to joining the board, Schroder had not worked at the firm or at any other large financial institution. Instead her career had focused on the family’s philanthropic efforts as a director of the Schroder Charity Trust – which makes around £500,000 of grants each year to smaller charities – as well as acting as a trustee for the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, where her colleagues include Venetia Hoare, a partner of C Hoare & Co.

A mother of three, Schroder also farms her 1,200-acre Hurstbourne Park estate in Hampshire, which she bought with her first husband in 2000, as well as the family’s 18,500-acre Dunlossit estate on the Isle of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. There she is also president of the local RNLI (both its lifeboats were paid for by the family) and a trustee of the local air ambulance, notable for having the country’s only charity-funded air ambulance.