Simon Barrell

Simon Mark Barrell is an investment manager at Vermeer Partners in London. Vermeer’s own profile says he has more than 30 years of securities-industry experience and is responsible for managing investments within the firm’s private-client investment-management model.

He began his career working on UK Government privatisation programmes, then joined SG Warburg & Co, where he was seconded to Mercury Asset Management. His formal private-client investment-management career began in 1988 at Laing & Cruickshank Investment Management, where he became a manager.

When Laing & Cruickshank was taken over in 2004, Barrell was promoted to Associate Director at UBS Wealth Management. In 2006, he moved to Cheviot Asset Management, where he managed bespoke portfolios for private clients, trusts, pension funds and charities. He joined Vermeer Partners in 2019 and is listed by Companies House as appointed a member of Vermeer Holdings LLP on 26 April 2019.

His education and qualifications include King’s College London, Birkbeck College, Stock Exchange exams studied at City University in 1987, and Chartered Member status with the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.

• Vermeer’s stated investment approach is “Straightforward, Unconstrained & Collegiate,” built around bespoke investment strategies, research, collective experience and stock picking.
• The firm emphasizes diversification and risk management, saying its philosophy relies on “spreading risk across industries and regions” and recommending international portfolios with exposure to “high-quality, global companies.”
• Barrell works within Vermeer’s governance process rather than as a standalone angel investor: the firm says investment managers have discretion to tailor portfolios, but must satisfy risk-management, due-diligence and peer-review frameworks.
• Vermeer’s products include discretionary fund management, portfolio funds, financial planning and an AIM Inheritance Tax Portfolio that invests in qualifying AIM-quoted companies.
• In a 2021 Vermeer podcast on pharmaceuticals, Barrell discussed Bristol Myers Squibb as an example of a pharma stock he liked, citing valuation, cash flow, balance-sheet strength, dividend sustainability, debt paydown, buybacks, product breadth and pipeline depth.