Meet Maud van Beuningen, who started her career at top firm Clifford Chance in Amsterdam before joining Airbus in Paris. After living and working in Paris for two years and getting to travel around the world for her work, she returned to the Netherlands and joined ABN AMRO as M&A counsel. At ABN AMRO, and after working as a lawyer for seven years, she transitioned from the legal team to the business side and worked in project finance, financing wind and solar parks to contribute to the energy transition. In 2021, she joined Bluemetric as client advisor and is, together with the CEO, responsible for Bluemetric’s clients. Their mission? Offering clients financial well-being in a rapidly evolving world, so they can focus on what matters most to them. Wondering what that means and how she got to where she is today? Read on!
1. If you could ask your future self a question, what would you ask?
Interesting question. I also already know the answer, but the question would be: Would you have chosen law and the legal profession again? Now that I know where I ended up, which is very different from a legal job? Funnily enough, yes. Law was fun and working at an English firm - well, I just learned so much. It opened so many doors, all thanks to those years. You really get drilled, but it shows in your output.
2. Introduce yourself using a list of ~10 words (adjectives, nouns, etc.). Who are you, what do you love?
Enthusiastic, positive mindset, driven, diligent, travel & cultures, nature, family & friends, food & drinks. I’m a pretty happy person!
3. What does your day-to-day really look like? What challenges do you tackle and problems do you solve?
Let me first explain the job. Bluemetric can be described as an investment office and we provide financial advice on investments in public and private markets to ultra-high net worth individuals (often families). We are not an asset manager, we only give advice and enable people to make their own decisions.
So, we advise on investments within public markets and private markets. How does that look like?
Firstly, we create an overview of clients’ assets and advise on strategic asset allocation. We prepare multi-year asset management plans: what comes in, what they can allocate annually to PE and/or public markets. So we create the asset management plan and we help them implement it. The plan can also be adjusted on an annual or more regular basis, depending on the client’s needs and developments in the markets. It’s truly a tailor-made plan, designed specifically with an individual client and their assets and wishes in mind.
Secondly, we help our clients with the managers’ selection. As to the public markets, we have strong connections with banks worldwide and advise on client’s portfolios held with such banks. Regarding private equity, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of funds.Within the very large funnel, we do a first screening, then select funds on which we do due diligence and finally we end up with about 10 -15 funds per annum that we recommend to our clients. As said, each client has its own strategic asset allocation plan, so not each fund that we select is recommended to each client. We are also able to arrange access to PE funds which can have high minimum ticket requirements. Even though our clients are wealthy, they may not want to individually invest a large proportion of their freely available funds into one specific fund. What we are able to do is aggregate the investments of a number of clients to meet the minimum ticket requirement. The clients invest into the fund directly, but the funds only report to us which also keeps things simple for them.
Thirdly, we take care of our clients’ cash management, which actually forms the basis for our advice on investments.
Lastly, we provide monitoring & reporting services. We receive data from banks/PE funds, monitor their performance and prepare reports for our clients.
Being responsible for clients, I note that trust is key in this business, so it is my job to build and maintain that relationship with our customers. I translate our clients' wishes to our analysts, and vice versa. I also ensure that the strategic asset allocation plan of each client is being executed. So on the one hand I’m really focused on substance, but my work is also super people oriented and relationship based. I love that combination.
4. What parts or aspects of your job do you consider most rewarding & fulfilling and what do you consider less rewarding and/or tedious?
Most rewarding is enabling people to make a well-informed decision about their asset management. Empowering clients whose background may not always be the asset management world, help them feel confident and in control.
Bluemetric’s mission statement is: in a rapidly evolving world, we offer our clients financial well-being so they can focus on what matters most to them. We want our clients to understand how the public and private markets work, that they are comfortable with the multi-year plan and the decisions they make. And the most rewarding is obviously giving advice which ends up in beneficial results.
From a personal perspective, what I find most fulfilling is building and maintaining strong, trust based relationships with our internal investment team and our clients. I am part of the client advisory team, we are the ones that communicate with our clients. If questions arise or issues come up, our team and our clients come to us. It’s a lot to manage and I’m shifting gears constantly throughout the day. But it’s all about that human touch & connection - I’m constantly working with people. And I love that!
Less rewarding to me is the administrative work that’s part of the job.
5. What motivated you to make the career changes you made, first from private practice in-house, then to the banking world and now to Bluemetric? How were you able to make the transition out of law?
I was in the right place at Clifford and really figured I would stay with the firm for a few more years. However, my boyfriend at the time - now my husband - and I both really wanted to go abroad. He was working at Loyens & Loeff at the time and was able to get transferred to their office in Paris. And I was able to go on a secondment with Airbus also in Paris. We decided we wanted to give it a try, both applied - and got selected. His transfer with Loyens & Loeff was for two years though, and mine was for 6 months. After those 6 months, I figured I’d try to join Clifford Chance in Paris or travel between Amsterdam and Paris regularly. About halfway through the secondment, my manager in France asked me if I w
anted to stay. They had a great position in the team and found me suitable for the role, plus it would allow me to stay in Paris longer. I really enjoyed working for Airbus, the team was fun, but I thought it was a hard decision to make - particularly towards Clifford. I’d always figured I’d stay at the firm for a long(er) period as I loved the team and liked the work (despite the hours..). But the reason I thought it was OK to leave earlier than I’d anticipated was because the company and the role were so cool and it meant I could stay in Paris with my husband.
What was the role exactly?
The role was in the Corporate & Subsidiaries Management team and I had about 15 countries in my portfolio, from Dubai, Malaysia to Mexico, Russia and Thailand. You could see the role as a “general practitioner” doctor for those countries, on the legal front. The local Airbus teams did not have legal counsels, so I needed to manage those teams from a legal point of view. I got to travel a lot, work with the local Airbus team in those countries and with local lawyers.
After two years in Paris, we had to go back to the Netherlands. I thought to myself: what do I want to do next? A friend of mine was working at ABN AMRO at the time and heard I was coming back so she told me there was an M&A role opening up in the Corporate team and said I should definitely come in for a coffee to discuss it. I was in the Netherlands for a few days looking for a house and decided to go have a chat. I went to the office, had a great chat and met a few people in the team who were great. Then had another chat with the hiring manager and GC and thought great - and thankfully they did too and offered me the job. So it was the type of work and the team atmosphere. In the M&A role at ABN AMRO, I got to advise the ABN AMRO board on the acquisitions and divestments it did. It was a great level to work at. I participated in the acquisition of a bank in Belgium, went to Belgium a lot for it too. And on top of that, I got to work for the PE branches of ABN AMRO a day a week too to work on SHAs, SPAs, NDAs, etc. At the time, there were 3 PE funds. I worked for all three, but really enjoyed working for the energy transition fund the bank had set up . During that 1 day a week, I got to see what was going on “in the business”. When you work as a lawyer at a bank, you’re not the core business. But the PE team was the business side. And on top of that, they were working on projects related to the energy transition which really appealed to me on a personal level.
I was quite open towards my boss and told him that after 7 years working as a lawyer, I want to make a switch. Within ABN AMRO, thankfully it’s quite common to switch teams and departments. So (even) if you’re a lawyer and you want something, a lot is possible too. So I went to have coffees - including with the Head of Project Finance at the time. Although not having worked in the financial sector before, he said that if I was willing to work hard, I could do the job. The Project Finance team at ABN AMRO finances projects related to the energy transition, like wind and solar parks. The role was a way for me to make the switch to the business, broaden my skill set and play a part in the energy transition. Legal was not my passion, but I did like the project management side of things. In my role for project finance, I was a spider in the web, bringing the right people together with input from all these different stakeholders and getting their perspectives. I’d have to combine it all into a big memo for our Risk team for approval of the project financing for EUR X million. I learned so much working with all these different people - from speaking to contractors on how a windmill is built to our financial analysts and the commercial team.
About two years ago now, I was approached for my current position at Bluemetric. My boss wanted a right hand to help manage clients because Bluemetric was growing and he was the one solely responsible for clients at the time but couldn’t do it all alone anymore. He also wanted a woman - because the whole team was made up of men - and he wanted someone with a legal background. The headhunter got in touch with a good friend of mine, Loes Mensink (see her coffee chat here). As the headhunter was speaking to Loes about the role, talking about how she was looking for someone with a certain background, fits in the world of wealth/asset management and family offices, has experience in legal and finance, is commercial but most of all social - Loes had thought of me. She didn’t know whether I was even looking for a new job - I wasn’t - and Loes wasn’t getting anything out of it, but she wanted to pitch it to me anyway. She knows me quite well, so I thought I should at least do a call. Spoke to my boss, it was a really nice conversation. It was also a much more generalist role, and really focused on building relationships. Things really clicked, so I had another interview and had to do a case. I got an immense amount of responsibility right off the bat, and love working with the team. What we do at Bluemetric is really unique I believe. I love working here and I see myself staying here for a very long time to come!
6. What do you consider the top 3 best tips or strategies for others looking to make a similar move?
Talk to people. The Legal/M&A world is a small bubble, and you’re really only a very small piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Step out of your comfort zone & see what's out there. There’s so many great jobs. After that first career change, I was never afraid again. Mind you, this is my fifth job in 10 years. And none were really very much “on purpose”.
Don't be afraid of what’s next - everything you encounter is more fun. When you start working, you have no idea about the world. I used to speak to people who were 40, 50 years old saying: it is only now that I’m doing what I really like. You have to follow a certain path, go from left to right and back, try things out. Go out into the world and just do it. And don’t be afraid. If you’re well-trained, eager to learn and motivated, you really can do anything you want.
7. What were the most valuable things that you learned working as a corporate lawyer that you still use in your work today?
Being very precise and structured, collaborating and persevering.
8. What were you trained to do as a corporate lawyer working at a law firm, that would not serve you well in your current job? What did you have to “unlearn”? And what skills did you have to pick up on quickly?
What I had to unlearn was “legal” reasoning. In the beginning, especially at Airbus but also later at ABN, I came up with huge substantiations. Long emails. As a lawyer, you’re trained to cover your *ss. I had to unlearn that nitty gritty approach and become much more practical & much more concise. And to start with conclusions - that’s what matters.
Skills I had to pick up on quickly relate to the substantive side of investment advisory - economics and finance. We are monitored by the Dutch Financial Authority, so I also had to take a number of exams (on skills, theory & integrity) to become DSI (Dutch Securities Institute) certified because the authorities want everyone who gives financial advice to have a certain degree of expertise. And there’s still a lot for me to learn in terms of investment advisory.
9. If you hadn't become a lawyer, what would you have studied and worked as?
If I hadn't studied law, I would have studied human geography and urban planning. Human geography seemed interesting to me because people only want more and more and the world and nature is so precious, so I wanted to rethink and rearrange countries and cities. I found out that with that degree you couldn’t really do that, so decided to go for law instead. What I would have worked as, something completely different. Related to nature. If I could really choose, I’d want to be a forest ranger, set up my own nature reserve park in Africa and focus on wildlife management and preservation. Maybe when I retire!
10. What if you could bring one experience, lesson or piece of advice of your last ten years to your ten-year younger self?
Dream bigger. And just do it. Don't be insecure about what you can do yourself. I was raised to be modest and humble but maybe that also keeps you a bit small. Don't be afraid, if something inspires you: pursue it, go for it. Stand up for who you are. Don't be too focused on what the “picture” looks like, like if you’ve studied law you should become a lawyer. To be honest, I wanted to become a lawyer - but also because I didn’t know what else I could have done. And be interested in what's going on in the world around you.
Also: from every (subsequent) job, you learn more and you get a better idea of what you are good at and what you like. What I do now, I’m able to do because of the skill set I have - now. Don’t be in such a rush, be patient. Your first year out of university, you can’t be the best (well if you’re really lucky maybe, but that’s more the exception than the rule). You need to be patient and you need to learn. You also have to develop yourself.
So if Bluemetric sounds interesting for you to work at, please do reach out to me (mvb@bluemetrric.nl)!
*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the interviewee alone and not their employer.
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