* London-based Ardevora shuns corporate access
* Argues meeting CEOs can skew investor judgment
* UK FCA curbing methods of arranging company visits
By Lionel Laurent
LONDON, April 23 (Reuters) - At a time when regulators arecracking down on the way fund managers pay for company visits tohelp work out investment strategies, investor Jeremy Lang has asimple answer: don't bother meeting management at all.
For the past 15 years, Lang -- a founding partner of assetmanager Ardevora -- has made a point of never meeting companyexecutives, a rule he describes as totally against the norm inan investment community that prizes corporate access as a way toget better or exclusive insight into management thinking.
According to a 2014 fund-manager survey by Extel, "meetingswith companies" is the second-most desirable research serviceprovided by brokers, narrowly behind "trade ideas".
However, seeking to promote a level playing field amonginvestors, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority last yearfinalised new rules that curbed fund managers' ability to payfor broker-arranged visits using client commissions.
Lang believes that, rather than boosting the bottom line,meeting management is bad for returns. An avid follower ofcognitive psychology, Lang says company CEOs fit the profile ofcharming communicators whose job is to convince and cajole; theyare more likely than not to cloud or skew investors' judgment.
"The types of people that rise to the top are inveteraterisk-takers ... They all tend to be extremely good salespeople,"Lang told Reuters, at his offices near St. Paul's Cathedral inLondon's financial district.
"If you view it like that there's absolutely no point intrying to meet them."
There are some exceptions: Lang makes a point of readingwritten CEO statements, arguing that it allows him to analysetheir "choice of phrase" without fear of influence.
And last year, ahead of the spin-off of Lloyds Banking Group unit TSB, Lang decided to break his own ruleand meet with the bank's management. It was the first time hehad arranged a company visit in 15 years, he said, explainingthat there were just a few specific questions he had to ask.
"I don't trust banks ... We got a couple of questions in andthen we ran," he said. "It was my 15-year vaccination."
Ardevora, which manages 1.3 billion pounds ($2 billion) inassets, said that for the first three months of 2015 its UKequity fund was up 11.2 percent and its global equity fund wasup 8.5 percent. The UK FTSE 100 index rose 3 percent and theMSCI World index rose 1.8 percent in the same period.
Among the companies Lang says he has shunned is UK retailerTesco as well as names in the oil-and-gas sector,saying management showed signs of over-selling empire-building.
"(Oil companies) went through the language of hope. You canclearly see evidence they over-hyped those hopes," he said.
($1 = 0.6644 pounds) (Editing by Mark Potter)