When Daniel Sheard blew the whistle on a scandal that rocked the Swiss fund manager GAM, he was prepared for it to be a tough experience.
In 2017, Sheard began warning the company that he was worried about investments being overseen by his boss, the star fund manager Tim Haywood, into bonds created and sold by Australian financier Lex Greensill’s company. When Sheard felt that his concerns were not being taken seriously enough, he took them to the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK regulator, the following year.
“Your life goes on hold,” he remembers. “For two years, it was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I thought about at night. It was also challenging for the people around me, who didn’t understand what was going on.”
In 2021, the FCA fined GAM 9.1mn for failing to manage conflicts of interest and Haywood 230,037 personally. But Sheard, for all that he would eventually be proved right, was not treated like a hero — far from it.
GAM laid him off, along with many of his colleagues, in the crisis that followed the revelations. Feeling that he was a pariah, he then struggled to find another job, eventually spending several years out of work. And he was left with legal bills of more than 36,000.
“Whistleblowing has been a disaster,” he says. “[And] many whistleblowers are in a far worse position than I am.”
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