Garry Laurence was a star stock picker at the 138-year-old Perpetual when he decided to leave the investment giant in the middle of the pandemic to start his own global fund.

The investor, working from Sydney’s beachside suburb of Coogee, had spent more than nine years managing Perpetual’s flagship global equities fund since its inception. He left in late 2020 to start boutique firm Profeta Investments as a one-man band.