I really <i>do</i> want to spend more time with my family

AND then there were...well, er, none. The decision by Paul Myners, influential chairman of investment group Gartmore, to quit for pastures new means there has been an effective clear-out at the top of the fund management business.

In less than nine months, half-a-dozen of the biggest players have said they are bowing out. Carol Galley and Stephen Zimmerman, the duo who built up Mercury Asset Management and sold it to US investment bank Merrill Lynch for £3.1bn, were the first to say they would be opting for early retirement, at the end of this year.

Then Nicola Ralston, head of Schroders, one of the most powerful investment funds in the City, announced her intention to leave full-time work to 'go plural'.

Alastair Ross-Goobey, one of the most outspoken figures in the sector and head of Hermes, which handles the enormous BT pension fund, threw his name into the retirement hat shortly after and was swiftly followed by David Rough, boss of the £100bn Legal & General investment operation.

But, far from all this signalling that these high-flyers know something about the outlook for shares that has so far escaped the rest of us, Myners claims the raft of departures is simply 'a generational change'. He says: 'Don't forget that fund management is a very young industry, which has been developed over about 25 years and has seen rapid growth.' The founding generation is now moving on to make way for younger blood.

At 53, Myners is one of the older leavers. 'I want to take my life into a final phase,' he says. 'If I didn't go now I would probably be leaving it too late. I reckon I can do other things with energy and commitment, but if I waited for two or three years, people might think I was not up to it.'

Myners has several other strings to his bow. He is chairman of the Guardian Media Group - a position he clearly relishes, possibly for its reminders of his early days as a City journalist on The Daily Telegraph - and he has a non-executive directorship at the recently demerged BT mobile phones business, mmO2. He is also a trustee of the Royal Academy, chairman-designate of the Tate St Ives and is on the advisory council of the London Symphony Orchestra.

He is already considering other boardroom offers, but most of all he wants to create time to spend with his wife, Alison, and young children, Barty, 5, and Tally, 3. 'It's become a corrupted term, spending more time with the family,' he says, 'but it's the most rewarding thing in the world. When my wife went on a course for 10 days last month, I really enjoyed taking the children to school and helping with their homework.'

Myners is, of course, speaking from the luxurious position of wealth. He has made a fortune from selling Gartmore three times over and increasing its value from about £17m to more than £1bn.

But he is also speaking from experience. He admits to a 'sense of missed opportunity' with his three daughters from a previous marriage. 'I had my first family when I was in Hong Kong and I used to spend about 180 days a year away, so I missed great parts of their growth,' he says.

Now, though, he is making up for lost time. He meets his eldest, Sarah, frequently and e-mails his 19-year-old twins, Charlotte and Lucy, who are both at university, first thing every morning.

Recently, Myners has been spotted in the courtroom where the seminal contest between Unilever and Merrill Lynch, the former manager of its pension fund, is being played out. 'I feel the case vindicates many of the recommendations I made in my report,' he says of the investigation he carried out for the Government into the way UK pension funds are run. 'It's all about the professionalism of trustees, the clarity of objectives of pension funds and clear communication between fund managers and their clients. The biggest single challenge in this country is to appoint pension fund trustees who are able to challenge the advice they are given.'

Myners becomes almost evangelical when he talks about the overhaul needed to ensure that the pensions of future generations are safeguarded.

It almost goes without saying that some of his recommendations, which called into question the power of the consultants who advise funds and tried to put a spotlight on fund management charges, met with an icy response.

And only now, after the decision by Boots to transfer its pension fund out of shares and into bonds, are the questions he raised about matching investment performances to the liabilities of pension schemes being widely discussed. 'There's too much emphasis on the relative performance of fund managers rather than the absolute return they achieve,' he says. 'One fund manager might do better than another, but if they still make a loss, that does not pay the pension.'

But Myners, whose charm and openness belie his 16 years in the arcane world of investment management, adds: 'My real frustration about the review was that people said I had made good points, but then said ''But what can we do to change it?'' That is simply not an acceptable response.' He reckons about a fifth of pension funds appear to be changing in the wake of his recommendations.

Myners denies being bruised by his experience of acting as the Government's poacher-turned-gamekeeper. It certainly does not rank on his list of business mistakes, which is topped by his errant decision to join the board of NatWest at a time when the bank was beyond redemption, but he is adamant that he does not want another brush with high politics. 'A Government post?' he snorts. 'Absolutely not.'