Nicola Karina Christina Horlick ( née Gayford; born 28 December 1960) is a British investment fund manager, dubbed City 'superwoman' in the British media. She has publicly supported the Labour Party and latterly, the Liberal Democrats.
Horlick attended the independent Kingsmead School in Hoylake, Wirral, between the ages of six and twelve. She was one of four girls amongst 300 boys initially. She then boarded at the independent Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1973. She stayed for two years then went to Birkenhead High School GDST. She also spent some time at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, US, on an English-Speaking Union exchange scholarship. She gained nine , four , and an S level. She gained a place at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1979 to study law, and graduated in 1982. She was president of the Oxford Law Society and counted William Hague, later Conservative Party leader, as a friend.
She set up SG Asset Management in 1997 and Bramdean Asset Management LLP in 2005. In 2008 one of Bramdean's funds, Bramdean Alternatives, had £10 million, about 10 per cent of its assets, invested with Bernie Madoff, money Horlick said she was uncertain she would ever see again. At the time Bramdean shares lost one third of their value. Horlick lost control of Bramdean Alternatives on 19 November 2009. She founded and is the CEO of Money&Co., a marketplace lending business focusing on business loans. She also has a film business called Derby Street Films. Horlick is the Chairman of film finance fund Glentham Capital, which raised funds on equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs in 2013. She was also a founding partner of Rockpool in 2011, which has its offices in Victoria, London. The other businesses are based in nearby Mayfair.
In a May 2017 LinkedIn blog post, Horlick stated that her preferred outcome at the forthcoming 2017 United Kingdom general election was a hung parliament. Horlick encouraged voters in constituencies "where Labour won last time" to vote Labour (under then leader Jeremy Corbyn) so that the UK would "not end up with 'hard' Brexit", and that "the important thing is to avoid a large Tory majority if we are to protect the economic future of our country".
In the wake of the EU referendum, she wrote of her strong opposition to Brexit and cautious support of the Liberal Democrats.
On 3 October 2019, it was announced that she was to be the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate in Chelsea and Fulham. Horlick was unsuccessful in her bid to become the MP for Chelsea and Fulham at the 2019 United Kingdom general election; incumbent Greg Hands retained the seat for the Conservatives. She did, however, greatly increase the Liberal Democrats' vote share, from 11% to 26%, finishing in 2nd place.
She married Timothy Piers Horlick, whom she had met while at Oxford, in June 1984, when she was 23. He was also a City investment banker. They separated in December 2003 and divorced in 2005.
Her second marriage was to Martin Baker, a financial journalist, on 8 September 2006. They had met in March 2005, when he interviewed her for the Sunday Telegraph. She acted as technical editor to his thriller novel set in the world of high finance. He died of prostate cancer in November 2022 aged 64.
She lives in Barnes, London. She supports charities such as Just a Drop, which works for clean drinking water worldwide, UNICEF, and Great Ormond Street Hospital.
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