Who was Robin ?
Robin
Cosgrove was an outstanding young investment banker who died in 2004, age
31. During his brief but brilliant career, he worked for several major investment
banks mainly in Tokyo and London and enjoyed an extremely active life as
a traveller and sportsman. He was consistently committed to excellence in
everything he did. He was uncompromising in his demands of himself and of
his colleagues, and believed passionately that sustainable success could
come only from high standards of integrity and honesty.
Robin was born in Reading, England in 1972. He went to Reading School and became School Captain and Captain of the house rugby team. He also won the School prize for French. On leaving school he attended the Royal Marines Arduous Training Course and then to Oxford University (1991-1996). He studied Japanese and Economics at St Edmund Hall, spending many months studying in Osaka (at SENRI International) and Tokyo (at Hosei University), and gained an MA degree from Oxford University.
After interning in both investment banking and investment management in Barclays de Zoete Wedd (BZW) Japan, Robin joined BZW’s Japanese Equities Desk in London in 1996. While at BZW he wrote a report which was subsequently published by Barclays on South Kanto Seismic Exposure, assessing the risk to Tokyo financial markets of a potential major earthquake in the aftermath of the Kobe quake. He moved back to Tokyo to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson Securities, where he was an investment analyst in chemicals and commodities. He moved on to UBS Warburg in Tokyo in equity sales before being headhunted to join Morgan Stanley Japanese Equity Sales, specialising in hedge funds, where his clients included Gartmore, Penta, Moore Capital, Lotus, Wharton, Barings, and Fidelity. In 2001 he joined Lotus Asset Management as the Manager of the Lotus Japan Fund, and then in early 2004 he moved back to London to become the manager of the RAB Capital Japan Fund.
Robin was a keen sportsman, excelling at athletics climbing, tennis, squash, scuba diving and snow boarding. He was an active member of the Oxford University Japan Society and of the Japan Society of Great Britain.
He travelled widely throughout Asia and Africa, where he developed plans to create a programme to aid young professionals in poorer countries to obtain the international awareness and commitment to ethical financing practice that he believed was essential to attract sustainable investment and so promote economic development. Sadly, his plans did not come to fruition before his untimely passing.