Following the current

It wasn't confidence that prompted Sarah Shaw to walk away from established investment houses and co-found 4D Infrastructure in 2015. It was something she believes is far more important: courage.

More than a decade later, that leap has evolved into one of Australia's recognised boutiques. Yet Shaw is quick to dispel the notion that her career was meticulously mapped out. Unlike many fund managers who speak of markets as a lifelong calling, she readily admits she never imagined herself becoming an investor.

"I didn't even know my job existed when I was at school," she says.

Instead, her career emerged through curiosity. Numbers came naturally, leading her to accounting. Law followed because she enjoyed analysis. But it was only when she found equity research that the pieces finally fell into place.

In research, which offered a combination of numbers and analysis, Shaw found her niche.

That niche would eventually become listed infrastructure, although even that arrived by chance. Having spent several years in London analysing global telecommunications, Shaw returned to Australia expecting to continue down the communications path. Instead, she arrived just as listed infrastructure was beginning to establish itself as a distinct asset class. The parallels immediately resonated.

"You have a telephone line or a power line," she says. "It's the same level of analysis."

But infrastructure offered something telecommunications alone could not. Long-term visibility. Stable cash flows. Predictability. To someone with an accounting background, those characteristics were irresistible.

"As sad as this may sound," she laughs, "I ultimately fell in love with the asset class."

Two decades on, that enthusiasm has only intensified.

"I think every year it gets more exciting and more of an opportunity set. I can't see myself going anywhere else."

If infrastructure became Shaw's professional home, the world became her classroom.

Across more than 30 years in finance, her career has stretched from Australia to London, through the United States, Europe and emerging markets. It is the latter, however, that continues to shape how she thinks.

While many global investors remain cautious of developing economies, Shaw sees something different.

"Eighty-five per cent of the global population lives in the emerging world," she says. "Not understanding what's happening in these very, very diverse and very fast-moving markets, I think, is a shortfall of global investing."

That perspective has become one of her defining strengths. Rather than viewing emerging and developed markets separately, she believes understanding both produces better investors.

"I think having an understanding of the emerging world as well as the developed world has rounded my investment style."

It is also central to the philosophy that underpins 4D. When Shaw founded the firm, she wasn't trying to reinvent investing. She simply wanted to build the kind of investment business she believed clients deserved. Looking back, she is careful not to romanticise the decision.

"I'm not sure I ever had the confidence. I don't want to end my career without giving it a go," she says. For Shaw, the distinction matters.

"I think it's courage as opposed to confidence," she adds.

After years working within larger investment organisations, she believed there was room to refine the processes and philosophies she had developed throughout her career. Rather than discarding those experiences, she chose to build upon them, combining everything she had learnt with her own ideas about how infrastructure portfolios should be managed.

"I took everything that I'd learnt... and then I really tried to enhance those processes or philosophies by what I thought could be done differently or better."

Eleven years later, she reflects on that decision with quiet satisfaction.

"Courage has probably turned into more confidence over that decade," Shaw notes.

Today, Shaw's definition of success extends well beyond investment performance. Certainly, performance matters. She speaks proudly of delivering on the objectives the business set itself and maintaining competitive long-term returns. But just as important is the culture that has grown alongside the firm.

The investment team holds equity in the business, aligning employees alongside clients and ownership. For Shaw, longevity itself represents an achievement.

Boutique investment firms are rarely built overnight. Fewer still survive long enough to establish themselves among Australia's specialist infrastructure managers. That 4D continues to evolve more than a decade after its founding is, in her view, proof that courage can become conviction when paired with discipline. Today, she balances the responsibilities of chief executive with those of chief investment officer, although she is quick to distinguish between the two.

"My strength is clearly in investment management," she says. "Running a business is a skill set that I have learnt and evolved over the last decade."

Bennelong Funds Management provides operational support, allowing Shaw to spend much of her time where she is most comfortable: analysing companies, meeting management teams and travelling to understand the assets behind the portfolios.

Some of those investment ideas begin long before she opens a spreadsheet.

Artificial intelligence has transformed the way information is gathered and processed, but Shaw still boards planes.

"I think there is nothing more important than sitting across the table from someone face to face," she says. "You pick up the nuances, not only of what is being said, but their reactions as well."

The meetings are one part of the trip. In Brazil, taxi drivers asking to be paid in Brazilian real instead of US dollars gave her confidence in the domestic economy. In Rome, queues outside luxury boutiques challenged expectations that consumer spending had weakened. Before the Brexit referendum, conversations with strangers at a cricket match left her convinced Britain would vote to leave the European Union.

"Being on the ground really helps understand the drivers of my infrastructure assets," she says. "Whether it's how full a restaurant is, how many people are queuing to get into a store, or how the taxi drivers appear or feel, it's critical."

Those moments have reinforced her conviction that investing starts with paying attention. Infrastructure itself has changed over the course of her career. Once regarded largely as a defensive asset class, it now sits alongside some of the world's biggest structural shifts.

"It is the foundation of society," she says. "These growth thematics must happen. If they don't happen, the world as we know it is going backwards socially, economically and environmentally."

The same thinking guides the way she constructs portfolios.

"We are truly global," she says. "I do believe in investing in emerging markets. I do believe that every country and economy is important to a true global diversified portfolio."

Some lessons have taken longer to learn.

Looking back on her early years as an analyst in London, Shaw says she focused too heavily on valuation and not enough on the people running the businesses.

"I did not give enough credibility to how strong the ownership and management was," she says.

Experience has changed that.

"You need both quality and value. If you don't have the combination of the two, you're never going to realise true value," Shaw says.

For her, success ultimately comes down to trust.

"The fact that our clients still have trust in us to deliver what we promised," she says. "That's how we measure our success."

Travel has become part of the rhythm of her life as research trips rarely finish when the meetings do. Shaw usually stays a little longer, walking cities, booking food tours and getting a feel for the places she spends so much time analysing. She still talks enthusiastically about Brazilian cheese bread, jamón in Spain, vegetables in China, steak in Argentina and the pasta she always returns to in Italy.

"Italy has my soul. If I ever need a reset, you'll find me in Italy," she says. She has visited 68 countries, with Patagonia and Churchill in northern Canada still on the list. Home, though, has always been by the water.

She grew up beside it and still chooses to live near it. Much of her career has been spent studying movement: Freight crossing oceans. Aircraft lifting before dawn. Electricity slipping through transmission lines. Capital finding its next destination.

Then there is the sea, to which Shaw has always returned. After a career spent reading markets and anticipating change, she has found comfort in the one current she has never needed to predict.

"I've always lived by the water. I just find it calming," she says.

More than 30 years after finding a profession she never knew existed, Shaw is still asking questions, still boarding planes and still looking beyond the obvious. Curiosity, she suggests, has always been a better guide than certainty.

Shaw's enthusiasm extends far beyond investing, shaping the way she approaches both work and life. For someone who never knew this career existed, Shaw has spent more than three decades proving that the best investors don't just analyse the world.

They remain endlessly curious about it.