Finfluencers: Derren Nathan – one year on as head of equity research at Hargreaves Lansdown

It was fascinating to get an inside perspective on the UK’s largest retail execution platform, Hargreaves Lansdown. We meet Derren Nathan, who has been at Hargreaves Lansdown for a year as head of equity research. His team is part of a wider group which includes colleagues who focus on ESG, collective investments and asset allocation. The equity research team looks at more than 100 of the most traded stocks on Hargreaves Lansdown’s platform, providing insight and opinions in a format that that the layman can digest. As the platform has close to two million users, the team is aware that a ‘one size fits all’ approach will not meet diverse investor preferences and requirements. Instead, the team aims to provide information to help investors make their own investment decisions. We discuss how the retail audience is an important one for listed companies to address, as it owns c 15% of UK stocks and is now being empowered to vote through some new tools on Hargreaves Lansdown’s platform. For the current ISA season, Hargreaves highlights ASML (ASML.SA, market capitalisation €242bn), British American Tobacco (BAT.L, market capitalisation £61bn), Bunzl (BNZL.L, market capitalisation £10bn), Caterpillar (CAT.N, market capitalisation $110bn) and LVMH (LVMP.PA, market capitalisation €444bn). For a junior ISA, Derren highlights some stocks with long-term potential including Diageo (DGE.L, market capitalisation £81bn) and Walt Disney (DIS.L, market capitalisation $184bn).