Wealth & Finance International
fundawards twothousand& fifteen Deutsche Finance Group Best for Individual Indirect Investment Portfolios in Real Assets Winning ‘Best for Individual Indirect Investment Portfolios in Real Assets’ is Deutsche Finance Group, an international investment manager specialising in institutional and private market investments. We spoke to their Managing Partner, Symon Godl, to find out about their innovative investment strategies and the many benefits of fund of funds.
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Welcome to the 2015 www.wealthandfinance-intl.com Wealth & Finance Fund Awards As the global economy continues its journey on the long road to recovery, one of the major factors in this gradual but much-needed upturn has been the innovative work taking place across the worldwide fund industry. Spanning large corporations and smaller niche practices, the 2015 Fund Awards pay homage to these forward thinking professionals across the globe, who have orchestrated and implemented some truly exceptional strategies and gained spectacular results for their clients. Selecting these luminaries is the result of a rigorous judging process carried out by our dedicated awards team, during which we leave no stone unturned to ensure that all winners are chosen purely on merit. This, of course, means that all successful nominees can take real pride in being counted among the real leading lights in their industry. So, to get the inside track on the top players making waves in the funds industry in 2015, read on…
Contents
4. Deutsche Finance Group - Best for Individual Indirect Investment Portfolios in Real Assets 10. Aberdeen Asset Management Inc - Best Closed - End Fund: Aberdeen Asia - Pacific Income Fund 14. Adiant Capital Partners - Best Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund – Adiant Capital Partners 18. Allianz Global Investors Infrastructure Equity - Infrastructure Asset Management Newcomer of the Year 20. The Osiris Group - Best Emerging Asia Impact Investment Fund - Osiris Asia Impact Fund 22. Qato Capital - Best Asian Market Neutral Fund - the Market Neutral Long/Short Fund 24. Strategic Partners Fund Solutions - Secondaries Firm of the Year & Best Secondary Fund: Global Private Equity Secondaries Fund 26. ALPS Fund Services, Inc. - Excellence in Exchange Traded Fund Operations 28. Altum Capital Management - Best Hedge Fund - Altum’s Flagship Offshore Fund 29. Altum Capital Management - Recognised Leader in Opportunistic Distressed Structured 30. Armstrong Investment Managers LLP - Best UK Multi Asset Fund - AIM Multi Asset 32. Arowana Asset Management - Best Multi - Strategy Fund of Funds - the Arowana Asian Fund 34. Asthenius Capital - Emerging Markets Focused Boutique Alternative Asset Advisory Firm 36. Barak Fund Management - Best Trade Finance Fund - Barak Structured Trade Finance Fund & Best African Alternative Financier 37. BCM & PARTNERS SA - Best Total Return Fund - C - Quadrat Euro Investments Plus 38. Boyne Capital Partners - Midmarket Private Equity Fund of the Year 40. Changjiang Asset Management - Best Long/Short Fund: Absolute Return China (Cayman) Fund & Best Pure Long Fund - Changjiang Hong Kong Equity Fund 42. Charter Hall Group - Best Unlisted Property Fund - Charter Hall Direct Office Fund (DOF) 44. Craigmore Sustainables - Best Farming Investor 45. Delta Capital - Best Chinese Growth Fund 46. Earth Capital Partners - Best for Sustainable Asset Management - UK 47. GNE Management - Best Trading Program - S&P Futures and Options Strategies & Best for Actively Managed Futures Accounts - USA 48. Fundadministration, Inc - Best Hedge Fund Administrator 49. Ice Farm Advisors - Best Concentrated Global Macro Fund - Ice Farm Global Master Fund, Ltd 50. Harwood Capital - Best Aggressive Portfolio 52. HB Sconyers and company - Best US Student Housing Fund 53. Incrementum AG - Best Owner - Managed Asset Manager 54. Ivy Realty - Best for Non - Core Value - Add Office Assets Acquisitions 55. LCM Partners - Best Credit Investor - Europe 57. STI Financial Group - Best for Wealth Management - Hong Kong 58. Strattam Capital - Best for Core Enterprise I.T and Services Buy Outs 59. Tactical Global Management - Best for Rebalancing Overlay Management - Australia 60. Twelve Capital UK - Best Long Term Performing Credit Fund & Recognised Leader in Cat Bonds and Private Insurance-linked securities 3 62. Whitefield Capital Management - Best for Equity Markets in Asia Ex Japan - Whitefield Asian Opportunities Fund (WAOF)
Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company Name: Deutsche Finance Group Name: Symon Godl, Managing Partner Email: s.godl@deutsche-finance.de Web address: www.deutsche-finance.de Address: Ridlerstrasse 33, D-80339 M端nchen, Germany Telephone: +49 89 6495 630
Best for Individual Indirect Investment Portfolios in Real Assets
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Deutsche Finance Group is one of the most active private market investors for indirect real estate and infrastructure investments in Europe. It is a highly focused investment company managing indirect institutional private equity real estate and infrastructure portfolios on a global basis. With a personal investment experience in the institutional indirect market space of more than one decade and investments of more than 4 bln USD in about 200 Limited Partnerships in Europe, North and South America and the Asia Pacific region the investment team of Deutsche Finance is one of the most experienced teams in the international fund selection and co-investment arena. They focus on entrepreneurial managers with a high dedication to create value and being fully aligned with their investors. We spoke to Symon Godl, Managing Partner at Deutsche Finance Group, to find out more.
Whenever we pitch for a prospective new client or mandate, one of the first sentences we hear is: “Fund of funds are expensive, illiquid, not transparent, not focused and for that reason somewhat more risky than other ways to invest in alternative investments like private equity real estate and infrastructure.”
distribution company and having all important resources in-house, Deutsche Finance is able to maintain the full lifecycle of a product from the beginning until the liquidation of a fund. Deutsche Finance is supervised by German Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and German Federal Reserve Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank).
This is always a great start of a discussion because it is the perfect invitation for us to talk about the great benefits of indirect investing and fund of funds and talk about the different experience we provide after being active for more than one decade in this market sector.
We service the needs of private clients with highly focused fund of funds, family offices, professional investors and institutional investors with co-investments and individual solutions. Our fields of competencies are real estate and infrastructure, investment strategy, fund of funds, segregated accounts, fund selection, emerging managers, mature and emerging markets, value add and opportunistic investments, development and distress strategies.
I can tell you, fund of funds investments can actually be cheaper, less risky and much more transparent than any other way of investing in private equity real estate and infrastructure and as a result the risk adjusted performance of these investments can be much higher. But even important is that fund of funds can add much more benefits for the investors.
The Benefits of Fund of Funds/indirect investments The potential benefits of funds of funds for real assets are always debated in the asset management industry. How can a fund of funds manager justify the additional fees on a second investment level? Can he argue that funds of funds deliver excess returns? We always argue that fund of funds investors may indeed benefit from attractive risk-adjusted returns: firstly, because diversification does reduce volatility; and secondly, because diversification may even increase returns. But additionally, funds of funds managers that want to justify their services going forward will have to add value beyond the premier fund selection and diversification.
Deutsche Finance Group When the partners of Deutsche Finance Group started their business 10 years ago, their vision was to establish an investment company offering products for private clients and institutional clients different to the existing competitors. But the target was not only to be different, it was to be much more diversified, long term oriented, actively managed, more transparent and to deliver higher performance based on risk adjusted returns.
We always explain that investors can benefit from a different asset management approach, combining the traditional benefits of a fund of funds, with additional support. By assessing the relative attractiveness of different private equity real estate and infrastructure strategies and instruments, funds of funds managers can considerably improve efficiency and returns to their investors and funds.
Today, 10 years later, Deutsche Finance Group manages 10 indirect investment vehicles for private individuals and institutional investors. With assets under management of roughly 400 mln USD of equity and a personal investment track record of more than 4 bln USD and nearly 200 indirect investment strategies in more than 30 countries globally, Deutsche Finance is one of the most active European private market investors and most experienced teams in the international fund selection and co-investment arena. The focus of all investment strategies is on indirect private equity real estate and infrastructure investments with entrepreneurial local managers and a high dedication to create value and being fully aligned with investors.
Discussions about the attractiveness of fund of funds often focus on the double layer of fees charged by fund of funds. And for many investing institutions, that’s reason enough to eschew the fund of funds model in favour of investing directly in a selection of private equity real estate funds.
Every day we are convinced that fund of funds, managed the right way, can offer great benefits compared to direct investments in a market.
But a comparison of management fees alone is not the whole story. Instead, a sound decision about which approach to use should rely on a close look at all the factors that contribute to the overall value.
The core investment team of Deutsche Finance Group earned broad experience in indirect investments in private real estate and infrastructure working for well-known pension funds, insurance groups and asset management firms in the past.
Investment Performance as the largest contributor to investor benefit is unknowable in advance, but other benefits of a fund of funds model may be more easily identifiable. They include the following:
Deutsche Finance Group is an integrated investment company with more than 50 people working every day for the success of our clients. Being regulated with a licensed investment manager and a licensed
Professional Research and Due Diligence – Investing in private equity real estate and infrastructure funds can be a very complex strategy, especially making due diligence a critical part of the process. With a
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fund of funds, institutions without in-house private equity real estate and infrastructure expertise and experience can rely on professionals to perform the kind of investment research, monitoring and due diligence that is necessary to avoid choosing the wrong manager, avoiding fraud and other potential costly mistakes.
negotiating power of a large pool of comingled assets to arrange for more favourable investor terms and rights with underlying managers. For example, managers may agree to fewer restrictions on redeeming capital, lower fees, more alignment of the manager, more performance related share of fees and greater transparency.
Manager selection is certainly the foremost area of expertise of a professional private equity real estate and infrastructure fund of funds. A well-structured and executed due diligence process, financial and operational understanding and access to the best private equity real estate and infrastructure funds in the market are the core competences of a traditional fund of funds. Most of the experienced fund of funds around the globe follow similar principles in the due diligence process and strive for the same goal and to select managers that generate best in class returns for their investors in their respective market segment. Although diligent fund selection should certainly limit the downside of a private equity real estate and infrastructure portfolio, most investors would rather pick a fund of funds for the upside potential through manager selection. This is certainly demonstrated by performance data of fund of funds managed by Deutsche Finance.
Fund of funds negotiate with private equity real estate and infrastructure funds to ensure that terms are in line with industry standards. Fund of funds are important to ensure proper downside protection and alignment of interest between limited partners and general partners. Many GPs are even willing to accept more LP-friendly terms to get a renowned investor, which should ultimately attract further investors. We at Deutsche Finance always negotiate hard to get a GP fully aligned to our investors and to make sure that the GP does not earn real money before our investors do. Reporting – Proper reporting is even important for most investors. Gaining the know-how, setting up the necessary software and staffing a qualified team means significant costs that are inappropriate when an institution is invested in just a handful of private equity real estate and infrastructure funds. Professional fund of funds managers that have to deal with more than a hundred fund investments in their various vehicles, by contrast, have the necessary economies of scale to justify such expenses. Thus, established fund of funds managers can provide their investors with a state-of-the-art reporting that reduces the administrative burden for their clients.
Wider Access to Fund Managers – Institutional investors without or with limited private equity real estate and infrastructure fund expertise in certain markets or at all may make more conservative choices in large and well known funds or will avoid a market. In contrast, experienced fund of funds managers knowledgeably navigate a wide universe of potential managers and sometimes concentrate on more focused strategies to identify those that may offer a unique competitive advantage or more favourable investment terms.
Access to Co-investments and Secondaries – For the private equity real estate and infrastructure industry network to include secondaries and co-investments in a private equity real estate portfolio, an extensive GP network is necessary to provide for the necessary deal flow. Moreover, while private equity real estate funds are generally not selective when it comes to accepting money for fund commitments, access to secondaries and co- investments is not always the norm. A number of highly successful fundraisings for secondary funds in recent years, and the increased appetite for secondary transactions displayed by investors, often lead to auctions. What are a fund of funds advantages in such competitive situations? GPs often favour buyers with a solid primary business. After all, private equity real estate funds would like to keep or grow their investor base and would rather give transfer consent to potential long-term investors. For them, the ideal secondary investor will likely re-up to the next fund. Pure secondary players start to give more notice to these facts, reserving a part of their fund for primary commitments, in order to help them in obtaining transfer consents when purchasing secondary portfolios.
Portfolio Diversification to Reduce Risk - Many investors lack the necessary size for appropriate diversification, and only fund of funds may allow these investors to reduce manager or market specific risk in selected segments. Portfolio Diversification to Enhance Performance - Seeking portfolio diversification for the purpose of enhancing returns may seem to be a contradiction for many investors, given that the principal reason for portfolio diversification is to reduce risk. But it is likely that the performance of a single fund is lower than the performance of a pool of funds. For an investor with a given return target, it is wise to diversify the portfolio to increase the probability that this return is actually achieved. Additionally the combination of primary funds with secondaries and co-investments in an indirect portfolio is for many reasons not easily executed by a typical investor. It can enhance the performance of a portfolio significantly when it comes to peak equity exposure. But it also requires a lot of experience how to combine a portfolio, to organize access to secondaries and co-investments and it requires resources to conduct a proper due diligence on the different strategies and to make quick decisions.
When looking at co-investments, why would a GP share the best investment opportunities and give up the performance fee on these deals? There are two reasons why a GP may do so in the case of a fund of funds. Firstly, fund of funds managers are often large investors and thus have the necessary leverage to secure co-investment rights. Secondly, fund of funds can add value to the GP through their extensive industry network. After all, private equity real estate is a people’s business and putting the right people together can help GPs to solve some of their issues.
Performance Incentive Alignment – Fund of fund managers often invest alongside their investors, which provides incentive to generate attractive returns that benefit managers and clients alike. Beside the arguments discussed above there are more areas of expertise of a fund of funds manager which are often not on the screen of an investor but even as important:
After investing in more than 200 investment strategies globally in their career the Deutsche Finance team earned a lot of reputation in executing secondaries and co-investment opportunities diligently and quickly. So we have a permanent access to interesting opportunities in this market. We also organise other equity partners if an opportunity is too big for us.
Favourable Investment Terms – Intensively negotiating fund and investment terms is an important element of value creation that is often not recognised by investors. Funds of funds are able to leverage the
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Investment Efficiency - The case for co-investments and secondary investments as beneficial additions to a fund portfolio can be easily made. Secondaries on the one hand allow for a quick increase of a private equity real estate portfolio’s investment level for better capital efficiency, early distributions and attractive IRRs and multiples. Moreover, the visibility of the return potential is significantly higher for secondaries than for primaries. Adding co-investments, on the other hand, may increase the upside potential of a diversified portfolio as the exposure to selected assets has been carefully increased. Moreover, co-investments may decrease the overall fee load as direct deals are often offered at reduced, or even eliminated, fees and carry.
Products - Private individuals for example are serviced with structured fund of funds (Deutsche Finance Private Funds). In this area Deutsche Finance offers two main product series: a short term private equity real estate fund of fund series with a onetime investment cycle, and a long term private equity real estate and infrastructure fund of funds with reinvestments and active management approach to build up a portfolio of real assets. Both products are in the market for many years now and more than 16.000 clients gave us commitments in these funds. The product range for professional and institutional investors is much more individual (Deutsche Finance Individual Funds/Deutsche Finance Institutional Funds). With regards to the certain needs and restrictions of any individual investors we are able to structure a tailor made fund of funds strategy for a private equity real estate and/or infrastructure portfolio. A broad diversification focus can also be on emerging managers, emerging markets, distress assets or even a regional or sector focus. Additional services can be added as per request of the investor.
Information - For fund of funds managers with an integrated approach, administration is much more than reporting and data warehousing; it is the data backbone that allows assessing their private equity real estate portfolios in depth. Clearly, such managers have a competitive advantage both for secondaries and co-investments. They can often move more quickly in secondary transactions, as they might already be invested in some of the funds being transacted or even have insight from advisory board seats. Knowing both the GPs as well as the portfolio assets is a key advantage that allows for fast execution of secondary transactions. For co-investments, a thorough analysis of the asset and the characteristics of the transaction are necessary to determine whether it is worth taking a higher concentration risk on a single deal. Fund of funds managers with portfolios of more than a hundred funds and thus potential exposure to thousands of private equity real estate assets clearly have an advantage in assessing a deal’s risk-adjusted performance potential.
Distribution – For the distribution of our products for private individuals we use external distribution companies. Most of these companies work with us for many years and some of them helped us to start our business model 10 years ago. All of them are serviced with state-of-the-art products, individual trainings and seminars, an online platform and special coaching. Institutional clients are advised by our management which is one of the most experienced fund selection teams for private equity real estate and infrastructure in the market. Network – With investments of 4 bln. USD in more than 200 investment strategies worldwide the investment team of Deutsche Finance established a worldwide network of GPs, LPs and service partners. With our yearly “Deutsche Finance Group Investment Forum” we invite 150 of our best distribution people to hear world class speakers and to learn more about our strategies and partners. Our quarterly “LP round table” organised to bundle the know-how and investment power of some of the largest fund of funds investors in the market from Europe and the US is a perfect platform to share investment ideas, create deal flow and to maintain our approach as a well-respected player in the private equity real estate and infrastructure asset management business.
Stable/Less Volatile Perfomance – A portfolio of private equity real estate or infrastructure funds with different cash flow streams over the investment period provides for an investor a less volatile performance stream. A portfolio of funds is much more stable than single funds can be. For investors who are dependent on a regular income stream a fund of funds can be the ideal solution to better match the cash flows. Widen the Opportunities – Sometimes investors are restricted to invest in certain fund structures but are not prohibited to invest in the asset class at all. For structural issues fund of funds provide a blocker function and can enable an investor to use the fund of funds model as a gateway to access interesting private equity real estate or infrastructure funds.
Regulation – Deutsche Finance Group is an integrated investment company serving all steps of an investment process in-house. Being regulated by German Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (BaFin) we stand for a well implemented investment process, a proper risk management and integrated compliance management. We offer our clients solutions for regulated and unregulated products as well.
Deutsche Finance Business Model Founded in 2005, Deutsche Finance Group is based in Munich with offices in Zurich and Paris. The company is 100% management owned. Deutsche Finance fund of funds offer investors diversified access to institutional private equity real estate and infrastructure strategies to delivering long time superior investment performance, broad diversification, excellent manager allocation and ongoing risk management capabilities. Deutsche Finance Group is an investment company offering all types of clients tailor made products with an excellent investment team, top in class investment managers and a well implemented investment process. Every target investment is handpicked, with a thorough due diligence process and serious negotiations to have a fully aligned investment manager. We have access to the best in class managers in the private equity real estate and infrastructure business. They all are the best positioned, well focused specialists for certain markets and sectors and earned consistent track record of success for a long term. They all help us to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities in the global private equity real estate and infrastructure landscape.
Award We are very pleased with the growth of our company and the success of our investments, and Deutsche Finance Group is very delighted and proud to receive acknowledged with this award. It is an honour for us but also the proof that fund of funds are not only a niche product. It is the proof that our product and strategy is being recognised by professionals as an interesting alternative or addition when building up a real asset portfolio. It is our vision to create the best investment platform for indirect investments in private equity real estate and infrastructure in the industry. We are inspired by the trust of our clients and partners and the everyday passion of our team. Be in the right market, with the right timing and the right partners. We are happy to share our experience with you!
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Best Closed - End Fund: Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income Fund, Inc. (FAX)
Aberdeen Asset Management
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Formed in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1983, Aberdeen Asset Management is a global asset management firm and a FTSE 100 company. We operate in 36 offices across 26 countries with over $480 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2015.
Listed on the London Stock Exchange, we have more than 30 years of experience and have seen decades of expansion through organic growth and acquisition. Aberdeen Asset Management aims for strong investment performance based on original thinking and first-hand research. Our mission is to deliver strong fund performance across a diverse set of asset classes in which we believe we have a sustainable competitive edge.
Chinese bond markets bucked the regional trend, driven by short-end strength. Sluggish inflation, retail sales and credit data raised hopes of further stimulus. Towards the month-end, a sharp drop in domestic equities led the central bank to cut rates and bank reserve ratios to stabilize markets. Philippine bonds were resilient owing to slowing inflation and the government’s first monthly budget surplus.
We dislike unnecessary obscurity and complexity so our investment processes strive to be simple and clear.
As for U.S. dollar bond markets, the IG segment was hurt by the volatile rates environment, being relatively more sensitive to U.S. Treasury swings. In contrast, HY credits posted modest gains, with Chinese property names lifted by growing signs of a real estate recovery as a result of Beijing’s policy easing. In the primary market, IG deals dominated transactions in a subdued month, with new issues totaling about $90 billion so far this year.
To facilitate local decision-making, we operate in close-knit teams with clear investment processes and flat structures. To further ensure control and accountability, a central executive committee comprising the heads of all the main business lines reports to the board of directors.
Outlook We expect developments in both Europe and the U.S. to continue to drive sentiment in Asian financial markets. Post-Greek referendum, volatility in the euro and European markets is likely to persist, given that ramifications of the “no” vote remain unclear and the risk of a Eurozone exit for Greece remains high. This is despite the resignation of Greek finance minister Varoufakis, who had angered creditors with his belligerence. Whether or not the Greek uncertainty will sway the Fed policy normalization remains to be seen. While a delay in the expected U.S. rate tightening in September could hurt the Fed’s credibility, the policy of least regret could be to keep policy unchanged until there is further clarity on Greece.
We pride ourselves on original thinking and research. We also believe strongly in portfolio transparency. Implicit in our style is a rejection of commoditized products and closet indexing; our business therefore stands or falls on whether we can genuinely add value to client wealth over the long term. Economic & Market Overview Most Asian local currency bond markets began to retreat in May amid a broader global sell-off. In June, an unfolding Greek tragedy in view of a potential Eurozone exit weighed heavily on global financial markets. Risk aversion was heightened further by gyrations in Chinese stock markets. Against this backdrop, most Asian local currency bond markets weakened, although shorter-term bonds benefited from policy easing, with interest rate cuts in China, India and Korea.
In Asia, big swings in China’s equity markets remain worrying. The recent spate of measures – aimed at ensuring ample liquidity in the financial system – appear to signal Beijing’s concern with the pace of the stock sell-off and possible systemic risk. Amid a sluggish economy, a property recovery appears to be gathering pace with increases in both prices and volumes in Tier 1 and 2 cities. Elsewhere in the region, Malaysian markets have sold off, owing to more negative news about state-owned investment vehicle 1MDB. We see regional central banks continuing with policy easing, given that manufacturing activity and exports remain weak. Cheaper oil prices are providing some inflation relief. This may support local currency bond markets. As for Asian currencies, we expect further weakness amid continued U.S. dollar strength.
It was a similar trend in regional currencies, with the ringgit and the peso among the key laggards, as U.S. dollar demand was supported by expectations of a rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve U.S. Federal Reserve’s (“Fed”). This was despite the dovish tone of the Fed’s latest meeting. Across Asian credit markets, investment-grade (IG) losses overshadowed modest high-yield (HY) gains. Indonesian local currency bonds and the rupiah hit a rough patch, caught up in the broader risk aversion. In both Hong Kong and Singapore, longer-term bonds sold off in tandem with U.S. Treasury weakness. Korean bonds also felt the impact of rising Treasury yields, even though the central bank cut rates to a record low of 1.5% to mitigate the impact of the MERS outbreak. Thai policymakers kept rates unchanged, highlighting the already accommodative stance and depreciation of the baht. Short-term bonds outperformed other tenors amid muted trading.
Focus – The home advantage
Despite a rate cut, Indian bonds sold off as investors grappled with a more cautious central bank outlook amid concerns over the monsoon as well as higher crude and global bond yields. In Malaysia, short-term bonds drew keen interest. The ringgit was the worst regional performer, depreciating to a 10-year low against the U.S. dollar at one point, owing to speculation of a Fitch credit downgrade that failed to materialize. Instead, Fitch lifted its outlook for Malaysia to stable from negative, noting that a new consumption tax and fuel subsidy reforms should support government finances. Source: Morgan Stanley, July 2015. For illustrative purposes only.
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Borrowing locally is turning more attractive for Chinese high-yield property developers. This is thanks to a recent loosening of curbs on market access as well as interest savings compared to the offshore option (see chart above). There is also a tax perk: interest paid on onshore bonds is tax-deductible, unlike offshore payments. Evergrande Real Estate was among the companies capitalizing on this funding opportunity. It recently raised five billion yuan by issuing a five-year onshore bond with a coupon of 5.38%; in contrast, it had offered a 12% coupon on a five-year U.S. dollar bond in February, raising U.S. $1 billion. Other developers that are looking to fund onshore include: Longfor Properties, Times Property, Guangzhou R&F, Gemdale and Future Land. We believe if these companies use the proceeds to pare costlier debt, this could translate into stronger balance sheets and credit profiles. IMPORTANT INFORMATION PAST PERFORMANCE DOES NOT GUARANTEE FUTURE RESULTS Fixed income securities are subject to certain risks including, but not limited to: interest rate (changes in interest rates may cause a decline in the market value of an investment), credit (changes in the financial condition of the issuer, borrower, counterparty, or underlying collateral), prepayment (debt issuers may repay or refinance their loans or obligations earlier than anticipated), and extension (principal repayments may not occur as quickly as anticipated, causing the expected maturity of a security to increase). International investing entails special risk considerations, including currency fluctuations, lower liquidity, economic and political risks, and differences in accounting methods. These risks may be enhanced in emerging markets countries. Concentrating investments in the Asia-Pacific region subjects an investment to more volatility and greater risk of loss than geographically diverse investments. In the United States, AAM is the marketing name for the following affiliated, registered investment advisers: Aberdeen Asset Management Inc., Aberdeen Asset Managers Ltd, Aberdeen Asset Management Ltd and Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd, each of which is wholly owned by Aberdeen Asset Management PLC. “Aberdeen� is a U.S. registered service mark of Aberdeen Asset Management PLC.
About the Fund Aberdeen has been investing in Asia for 30 years with on-the-ground presence in the Asia-Pacific region for over two decades, which helps us evaluate investment opportunities from a position of experience. Key Fund Facts Investment Objective: The fund seeks current income through investing in Asian and Australian debt securities. The Fund may achieve incidental capital appreciation. Date of Launch: April, 1986 Total Net Assets: US $1,420.7 million as of August 31, 2015 Ticker: FAX (NYSE MKT) Website: www.aberdeenfax.com
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Company: Adiant Capital Partners Name: Pierre-Loïc Caïjo Email: plc@adiantcapital.com Web: www.adiantcapital.com Address: Adiant Advisors GmbH, Pilettes, 3, CH-1705 Fribourg, Switzerland Telephone: +41 44 3083 950
Best Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund – Adiant Capital Partners
Adiant Capital Partners Adiant Capital Partners (“Adiant”) is a privately-held, independent investment platform founded in 2011 by Dr. Nils Hammon and Pierre-Loïc Caïjo, two private equity professionals who have worked together within Goldman Sachs’ Principal Investment Area in London. The firm, headquartered in Switzerland with a presence in Frankfurt, Germany and Paris, France, currently operates in the energy infrastructure space and aims at offering differentiated and innovative investment products to its investor client base. The founders got in touch with us to talk about their company as well as the thriving renewable energy sector.
finance, project development and management, and fund placement. Prior to working with Adiant, the team members have collectively deployed in excess of €5 billon of investors’ capital in a range of industrial sectors and a variety of private equity situations, working for organisations such as Apollo Management, Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas Clean Energy Partners, Capital Dynamics or Climate Change Capital. The team has also raised c. €2 billon across three prior funds. With respect to the renewable energy sectors alone, the team has invested in more than 300MWp in solar and 600MW in wind power. Two senior executives, who each have established leading global financial institutions, have also joined Adiant’s advisory panel.
When launching Adiant, the founders were fully aware that raising a first-time fund with a first-time team would add to the challenge of a then very difficult fundraising environment. Considering this, the founders decided from the onset to base the core values of the firm on innovation and product differentiation, superior investment market knowledge and transparency. The founders also were convinced that the global energy infrastructure sector, in particular renewable infrastructure, would continue to be a very appealing and dynamic area of investment. “The renewable infrastructure sector has been and remains one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy globally and probably the sector with the highest investment potential in volume over the decades to come.” indicated Dr. Hammon.
In 2015 Adiant has received the Best Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund award. “The entire team feels very honoured to receive this award, especially given that it is given to the very first fund of the firm, Adiant Solar Opportunities.” commented Dr. Hammon.
The firm’s first investment vehicle Adiant Solar Opportunities (“ASO”) was designed with these values in mind: it is the first investment vehicle exclusively dedicated to investing in the construction phase of solar assets. ASO’s strategy has to date proven successful with average return in excess of 40%.
About Adiant Solar Opportunities The first investment vehicle of Adiant, Adiant Solar Opportunities (“ASO”), addresses the liquidity gap between construction-ready solar projects and long-term hold investors not willing or able to invest in the construction phase. In doing so, ASO captures highly attractive arbitrage opportunities.
The founders have since grown the company and assembled a very competent team comprising 13 individuals with a range of expertise encompassing private equity and infrastructure investment, project
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Parley solar park, Bournemouth, UK
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The ASO value creation strategy consists in focusing on the steepest part of the project value curve, i.e. the construction phase. The core expertise of ASO is to select investment opportunities and contractually structure transactions to mitigate construction and operational risks.
Why investing in the construction phase? The renewable energy sector has been criticised for its reliance on an overly subsidised and regulated phase, characterized by the entry of many opportunistic investors and market shakeouts induced by unstable regulation. This, in turn, has, in certain cases, resulted in poor investment performance and negative sentiment about the sector. Nevertheless, in this phase, a critical mass of the industry was achieved across the value chain and, following a necessary market consolidation, the sector has achieved a remarkable cost reduction placing renewable energy assets competitively with conventional technologies.
The investment process of ASO consists in originating a construction-ready solar project and, after completing a due diligence, acquiring the special purpose vehicle (“SPV”) owning the construction permit to such project. Unlike a project financier, ASO does not lend to developer or the project SPVs. As project owner, ASO then negotiates and executes all key contracts relating to the construction and operation of the plant. As ASO does not take the financial exit risk, it further executes, at the time of the project acquisition, a sell-side transaction with a pre-identified long-term asset owner; such transaction completes once the construction has been finalized and the asset has been connected to the electricity grid.
“Because we have chosen an investment strategy that specifically focuses on the construction stage, which means short investment-divestment cycles, our funds are practically immune to the regulatory changes.” explained Caïjo.
At all transaction stages, ASO implements best practices in terms of ESG. During the construction process, ASO has dedicated personnel on site to monitor the quality of the construction and the conformity with local construction laws, permitting restrictions, environmental mitigation plans, and health and safety guidelines.
The short cycle investment strategy also allows Adiant to flexibly arbitrage between different geographic regions, and capitalise on whichever country is most attractive without bearing long-term exposure to regulatory and currency movements. The Adiant investment team has a long experience investing in renewable markets since the early days. As such, the firm capitalises on its ability to anticipate the markets patterns and to have a realistic view on the pricing of assets. “When a new market opens up, like the UK five years ago, demand for our construction equity is high due to our ability to deploy capital rapidly. In mature and sophisticated markets such as Germany, which represents half of the global renewable market, it is the flexibility of our capital to adapt to new investment situations that is sought after. “ said Dr. Hammon.
About Adiant Construction Opportunities In October 2015, Adiant will launch Adiant Construction Opportunities (“ACO”), a follow-up construction capital fund to Adiant Solar Opportunities. ACO is structured as a conventional fund based on a Luxembourg SCS SICAV-SIF structure and is open to institutional investors and high net worth private investors. “The rationale for ACO includes a number of factors,” explained Caïjo. “Firstly, based on market feedback, investor appetite for our construction capital strategy is high, as it combines private equity-like returns to the attractive energy infrastructure class. Secondly, there is still a high demand for construction capital globally and, thirdly, demand for construction capital stems from all renewable sectors and also from conventional power. We believe there is a strong rationale for a follow-up fund to ASO with a broader scope and a similar investment strategy.”
What new investment products will Adiant be offering in the near future? Looking forward, the renewable infrastructure sector will continue to grow by increasingly relying on pure economic drivers rather than subsidies. According to the International Energy Agency, the growth in the renewable infrastructure sector will remain unaffected by low oil prices and the required investment volumes will exceed US$1,000 bn over the next 5 years.
In addition to solar, ACO’s scope therefore also includes wind power and other renewable energies but also cleaner conventional energy infrastructure, all facing similar construction capital constraints.
Away from its construction products, Adiant will in 2016, address the private wealth and insurance segments and propose long dated, fixed income products based on operating energy assets, which will primarily be delivered by Adiant Solar Opportunities and Adiant Construction Opportunities. The product will offer a superior degree of capital and performance guarantees and an attractive annual yield payment to investors.
Leveraging ASO’s market presence, ACO sees immediate opportunities in mature markets such as Germany, France, the UK, and Scandinavia but also in more recent markets such as North America. With the renewable energy market in constant development, ACO may adapt to new markets opening up. ACO has a target volume of €300 million. Such capital will be deployed over a 4 to 6 year investment period. ACO aims at delivering mid-teen returns and up to 2.0x multiple on invested capital. With cornerstone investors already identified, ACO anticipates a first close during the first half of 2016.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Allianz Global Investors GmbH Name: Dr Armin Sandhรถvel Email: armin.sandhoevel@allianzgi.com Web: www.allianzglobalinvestors.com Address: Bockenheimer Landstrasse 42-44, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany Telephone: +49 69 2443 15130
Infrastructure Asset Management Newcomer of the Year
In 2012, Allianz Global Investors decided to launch the infrastructure equity platform, thus giving institutional investors the opportunity to commit their capital to infrastructure equity through respective fund vehicles. Within only three years, the dedicated 12 professionals, who started at AllianzGI as a Captive Investment Team of the Allianz Group, have not only managed to establish a trusted asset class within Allianz Global Investors but have also been successful in becoming renowned on the European market. We got in touch with their CIO of Infrastructure Equity, Dr Armin Sandhรถvel, to find out more.
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service is understanding each client’s unique circumstances and acting in their best interests. We focus on distinct areas where we believe we can excel, helping us align our strengths with our clients’ goals.
The Allianz Renewable Energy Fund, a pooled SICAV-SIF vehicle domiciled in Luxembourg and our flagship product, was Allianz Global Investors’ first infrastructure equity product. It was set up in the first quarter of 2013 and closed with an overall equity volume of roughly EUR150m in September 2013. Within only one year (instead of the full investment period of 3 years) we managed to nearly invest all the equity in various wind onshore and solar parks in Germany, Italy, France and the UK with an overall capacity volume of 248MW. With this capacity, almost 100.000 4-person-households can be provided with electricity for a period of one year.
Our mission is to set up fund vehicles in a regulated area which invest in real assets. Accordingly, within the strategy we follow, we have to be on top of regulatory developments with regard to the structuring of fund vehicles which are investable for regulated investors. The vehicles invest in regulated environments in different jurisdictions, and resulting from that we need to be capable of understanding and anticipating specifics of the target markets allowing us for long-term planning.
To ensure the success of our fund, the acquired assets are constantly monitored and supervised by our asset controllers and technical experts. Therefore, in case of any interruptions, we can take necessary measures quickly and at a very early stage so that damages can either be prevented or kept very small in most of the cases. However, just as important as the post-acquisition management of the acquired assets is the thorough research, preparation and set-up phase as well as the effective due diligence, negotiation and acquisition phase. Infrastructure equity is a very challenging asset class in which small mistakes and inadvertency can have major impacts. Finding, examining, acquiring and managing infrastructure assets on a long term basis requires in-depth expertise and active management in order to outperform.
Last but not least, we must understand the abilities of our target investments to deliver as required from a technical and commercial point of view. In order to do all that, we keep a close eye on the markets we are investing in. We source information on the ground by using the leads we get from our trusted partners but also from the insurance colleagues within Allianz which are based in all the countries we invest in. When you’re making investments in projects which last for charter , it is important not to underestimate the risks involved. Regulatory and economic conditions play a key role in the renewable energy sector. The technical risk analysis of the projects, however, is also crucial when it comes to ensuring investment success for our customers. There are many different areas in which special expertise is required to ensure that individual project components in different countries are assessed correctly. This is why our close collaboration with Allianz is a decisive advantage. As a member of the Allianz Group, we have access to an international network of excellent in-house specialists and their connections to specialized technical experts, project developers and manufacturers. This puts us in the best possible position for meeting our customers’ demands.
As a company immersed in the European markets, we have found that the competition for attractive assets is getting more intense. Accordingly, the ability to source assets which provide for an attractive risk-return ratio will also be key in the future. Given our strong network and in addition our unique cooperation with the insurance units of Allianz we are positive to be able to continue to source the required assets in the future as well. Infrastructure equity provides a range of opportunities for investors. At the moment, it currently offers three main types of funds: pooled vehicles for multiple investors, club vehicles for a small group of investors, and segregated accounts which are tailor-made funds for single investors.
At Allianz Global Investors, we follow a two-word philosophy: understand and act. It describes how we look at the world and how we behave. We aim to stand out as the investment partner our clients trust by listening closely to understand their challenges, then acting decisively to provide them with solutions that meet their needs. In addition, as the team works together for a long term and we are all thrilled to work in the infrastructure equity sector especially focusing on renewable energies, we have a very strong spirit already and by winning the award we are glad that this is noticed also outside of our company and our customers.
Especially in times in which returns in traditional asset classes are diminishing and volatility increases, infrastructure equity is able to combine high return levels in a stable risk environment thus providing for cash flows which are low correlated to the stock markets. This proves to be very attractive for institutional investors which therefore, over the last years, have increased the percentage of their investments in illiquid assets like infrastructure equity.
Providing such a high standard of service for our clients is very rewarding, and likewise my team and I feel honoured to be selected as winner of this important award. It really shows that hard work and dedication pay off in the end and that we made the right decisions. The reasons behind our success are, among others, a combination of a great team spirit, an allocated 60 years’ of expertise in the energy market, as well as technical, legal and regulatory know-how. And of course, having a strong brand and partner such as Allianz Group behind us was a vital for achieving this success.
In order to create sustainable outperformance, in-depth market knowledge is essential. Our broad and diversified global network is the base of our investment decisions and key to creating a sustainable advantage for clients. We fundamentally believe that especially in our asset class direct access to the markets and projects is essential for everything we do. Therefore we constantly screen local markets, not only in Europe but also for example in Asia.
From our perspective, the award confirms that expertise and responsibility in asset management challenges is essential to be successful. For other market participants and investors, they can possibly serve as a benchmark and a first indication of a reliable partner that is able to outperform and deliver premium service.
Furthermore, the availability of cheap debt financing on a non-recourse project finance base leads to high asset prices being paid under the use of low levels of equity. Therefore, it became increasingly important to source assets as an asset manager who prefers to avoid aggressive use of debt. We were able to continue our strategy on the basis of a conservative use of debt within this environment which makes us very proud.
Looking towards the future, we were asked by our customers to continue our approach and set up further vehicles within the AREF Fund Family, something we are very glad to do and accordingly we will continue our approach on the back of our successful strategy in the near future.
As well as keeping up to date with current trends, communicating with our clients is also vitally important to us. The key to providing excellent
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Name: Jason Bajaj Company: The Osiris Group
photograph by dxbimran (Imran Ahmed)
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Best Emerging Asia Impact Investment Fund - Osiris Asia Impact Fund
The Osiris Group is a boutique private equity firm scaling innovation in frontier markets. A top priority for the firm is allocating capital into investments leapfrogging long-term development, prosperity and growth. Pioneering impact investing in Asia, their investment framework integrates public policy, entrepreneurship and operational leadership, creating sovereign alpha while best capturing risk-adjusted growth returns. Their Co-Founder and Managing Director, Jason Bajaj, spoke to us about their firm’s philosophy on how money can truly make a difference through Impact Investing.
In 1961, a pandemic wave of Cholera began in Sulawesi, Indonesia and violently spread across Asia, Europe and Africa. Extreme dehydration, induced by diarrhea and vomiting, triggered rapid death, killing tens of thousands of people in South Asia alone. Bengali doctors working feverishly in Dacca, East Pakistan found an innovative way to fight back. The Bengali’s revisited a century-old concoction of coconut water, carrot juice, carob flour and old bananas spiking rapid rehydration, healing the sick and ending the outbreak. This novel life-saving treatment of carbs, sugar and salt was later published in British medical journal, Lancet, and eventually made its way to a doctor in the US. The physician, based at the University of Florida, was working with the school’s football team, on how to best deal with oppressive heat and humidity his players faced during strenuous games. The doctor saw a common solution in rapid rehydration, if it worked for sick cholera patients, it would surely work for his healthy team, the Gators. Whipping up a formula of water, glucose, sodium and potassium, the genesis of the most popular sports drink in human history was created - Gatorade.
processes relevant in one industry are pertinent to others. Innovation makes a significant difference commercially addressing urgent developmental challenges such as universal access to electricity, rural cardiac care or better financial inclusion. In the next three years, smart phones will replace feature phones, and a billion frontier market consumers will be connected to the Internet. The most important challenges facing society today create commercial investment opportunities transforming commerce, education, and infrastructure management. With 21st century technology, rural innovation strengthens community resilience and creates two sources of alpha; sovereign and deal alpha. Our investees commercially leapfrog lives scaling basic, recurring needs. We painstakingly source, invest and enhance dominant local ventures building capabilities, marketplaces or payments passing the “toothbrush test,” an affordable B2C service used daily making life better, targeting the rural masses. Our process of creating new jobs and educational training is development. Obtaining a beta blocker solution when you have heart pain is an example of prosperity. Making sure every man, woman and child irrespective of socioeconomic status has access to a better life – that’s growth. The perceived tradeoff between returns and impact is a false dichotomy, there are tradeoffs with any strategy; but undervalued moats, when thoughtfully combined, propel pro-cyclical, virtuous sovereign growth.
Gatorade is a rare example of reverse innovation, an idea adopted first in the developing world, and defies gravity by flowing uphill to the developed world. It runs counter to the dominant innovation pattern we think first happens in places like Silicon Valley or New York. Reverse innovation pushes the performance paradigm, offering more for less while recognizing an entirely different user context.
For the 3.1 billion village consumers around the world today, they won’t repeat the last 200 years of industrialization; we intentionally leapfrog development to build systems of the future, rather than the past. Market creating innovation, our area of expertise, transforms expensive and inaccessible offerings into cheap and accessible ones, enabling reach to an entirely new population of customers. By transforming previous rural non-consumers into consumers, market creating innovation turns the liabilities of developing nations - the diverse unmet need of her populace - into larger TAM assets for GMV capture. We build and capture significant IRR disrupting nonconsumption, helping entrepreneurs win hearts and minds while transforming real lives.
Around the world low-income rural villagers, measuring 3.1 billion people, represent half the world’s population and nearly $15 trillion in income. The fact is – globally the middle class is getting larger – but it’s really happening from the very bottom up. Engaging the frontier market rural consumer is the most important secular investment trend of the 21st century, and is at the heart of our investment framework. One of the important lessons of the past two decades has been the pivotal role of innovation in economic development. Every industry dealing with information can be efficiently modernized – and disrupted with innovation. Innovation has globalized; business models and technology developed in one country can be easily exported to another. Orthogonal
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Qato Capital Name: Ben Silluzio (CEO & CIO) Email: ben.silluzio@qatocapital.com Web: www.qatocapital.com Address: Level 6, 100 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000 AUSTRALIA Telephone: +613 8672 5010
Best Asian Market Neutral Fund - the Qato Capital Market Neutral Long/Short Fund
Qato Capital
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Qato Capital is an Australian based alternative funds management group backed by single family office, Larkfield Funds Management. We got in touch with Ben Silluzio, CEO and CIO of Qato, who took the time out to tell us about their company and more.
Currently, Qato Capital manages an Australian fund and is launching a Cayman Islands domiciled fund – both of which utilise the same S&P/ASX-100 market neutral long/short strategy. This strategy is systematic and employs an objective, consistent and replicable process using Qato’s proprietary ‘Q-Score’ methodology to select our long and short positions.
When the ASX-100 experiences a negative month, our market neutral strategy has produced positive returns 67% of the time: • Average performance of ASX-100 in a down month: -3.39% • Average performance of Qato (net) in a down month: +1.97% When the S&P-500 experiences a negative month, our Market Neutral strategy has produced positive returns at 83% of the time: • Average performance of S&P-500 in a down month: -2.90% • Average performance of Qato (net) in a down month: +3.60%
The Q-Score process is fundamentally based, evaluating improving and deteriorating fundamentals within each business from a variety of financial metrics such as valuation, growth, risk, quality, earnings and price. The strategy seeks to preserve capital and maximise absolute returns through active and constant risk management, targeting a net market exposure of 0% to hedge broader market risks through 30-40 S&P/ASX-100 positions (15-20 long & 15-20 short equally-weighted positions). Historically, the strategy has been uncorrelated to traditional asset classes with a negative beta to equity markets.
Furthermore, Qato’s stock selection and risk management processes are systematic and are all employed in a rules based manner, providing investors with a consistent style that will continue to deliver uncorrelated returns. In terms of our region, the Australian economy continues to slow and as a result the stock market has begun to factor in a lower-growth environment. The risk appetite of investors is changing and absolute return strategies like Qato’s are becoming more appealing given their ability to weather increased market volatility and generate returns irrespective of broader market movements.
The backing of Qato by a substantial single family office - Larkfield Funds Management - has enabled us to build a world-class operating platform with institutional-grade, tier-one service providers, and a highly experienced team. We know that the operational infrastructure and systems we employ are also used by the largest, most sophisticated funds in the industry.
Australian based hedge funds are sitting in an advantageous position due to the size and the long-only nature of Australia’s pension assets. At present Australia has the 4th largest pool of pension assets in the world (AUD$2.0 trillion) with approximately 28% invested in Australian equities. This amount is greater than one-third of all assets invested in the S&P/ASX-100 Index. Interestingly, hedge funds in Australia only account for a mere AUD$80 billion (4%) of the AUD$2.0 trillion market. This anomaly effectively guarantees the continual purchasing of Australian equities by these large pension funds, producing structural inefficiencies that can be exploited by a small number of sophisticated investment managers, such as Qato, with skillsets in short-selling.
Having worked as an UHNW and Institutional Advisor for over two decades, I recognise that creating genuine relationships with investors is the most rewarding means of doing business. These relationships are strengthened by the fact that the management team, and members of our advisory board, have invested significant amounts of personal capital in Qato’s fund – which ultimately aligns our interests and provides our investors with further confidence in our investment style and strategy. Qato provides investors with a unique fundamentally based investment strategy. Our team has a strong desire to improve and to be at the forefront of the funds management industry – we’re continually researching and testing new fundamental techniques, both domestically and in international equity markets. We’re striving to be the best in our industry - it’s as simple as that.
Outside of Australia, Qato has received a significant amount of interest in our strategy. The upcoming launch of our Cayman Islands fund provides a vehicle for international investors to invest accordingly. As such, we expect to see our FUM continue to grow, particularly as our track record of uncorrelated returns persists.
Qato Capital’s Market Neutral Long/Short strategy delivers investors negative beta, with a negative correlation to all major equity markets such as the S&P-500, FTSE-100 & S&P/ASX-100. In instances of major market turmoil and volatility, like the present, our market neutral strategy provides investors with much needed diversification and typically, positive returns. For example:
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Strategic Partners Fund Solutions Name: Verdun S. Perry Email: verdun.perry@stratpartners.com Web Address: www.blackstone.com Address: 345 Park Avenue New York, NY 10154 Telephone: (646) 482-8926
Secondaries Firm of the Year & Best Secondary Fund: Global Private Equity Secondaries Fund
Strategic Partners Fund Solutions Strategic Partners was established in 2000 and is Blackstone’s dedicated secondary and fund solutions platform. They are one of the most active secondary buyers in the world, completing on average one-to-two transactions per week. They focus on establishing differentiated and diversified private equity exposure, leveraging its deep team to access premier global private equity and real estate managers. Verdun Perry, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Strategic Partners, got in touch to talk to us about their unique strategy and more.
First of all, how does it feel to have been awarded ‘Secondaries Firm of the Year’ and ‘Best Secondary Fund: Global Private Equity Secondaries Fund’? What do you believe are the reasons behind your success? On behalf of Strategic Partners, we are honored to have been awarded ‘Secondaries Firm of the Year’ and ‘Best Secondary Fund: Global Private Equity Secondaries Fund’ which acknowledge the strength of both our global secondary private equity and real estate platforms.
Over the last 15 years, we have maintained a consistent investment strategy, employing a nimble and flexible approach which allows us to acquire fund interests and portfolios which range widely in size and complexity. By virtue of having completed 850+ transactions which represent 2,300 underlying fund interests, we believe we have an information advantage when assessing new transactions, especially those that are highly diverse and/or complex. This strength has been put to use as a result of our longstanding reputation as a trusted counter-party to those seeking liquidity options on a fair, timely, and confidential basis. Our transactions have been done with sellers of all types, sizes and geographies, and we are respected partners to an equally diverse roster of general partners.
The success of Strategic Partners as a firm has been a consequence of our strong culture, talented professionals, and consistent investment focus. Team continuity has been key to our platform’s success: the ten senior Strategic Partners professionals who represent our investment committee have been working together for an average of over 12 years. Moreover, the balance of our team has largely been with Strategic Partners since beginning their professional careers.
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executing secondary transactions. In addition, leveraging the Blackstone platform for insights and perspectives, all subject to Blackstone’s information barrier policies and conflicts procedures, provides an important advantage for us.
How important do you believe awards like this are, both to individual businesses like yourselves and to your wider industry? This award represents an important validation of our consistent investment strategy to acquire high quality secondary limited partnership interests. Our motivation for success will always be to honor the commitment we have made to our investors, and we are flattered when the product of our team’s hard work yields industry awards.
What is your philosophy behind client service? How do you maintain the high standards you set yourselves across your company? We are focused on building strong and long-standing partnerships with our investors, many of which have invested in multiple Strategic Partners mandates. We partner with investors to provide thoughtful portfolio solutions, which is often differentiated from other options in the market. As a result, we believe we are considered a trusted partner to our investors.
Please give us a brief overview of your client base. Since inception, we have raised over $17 billion dedicated to private equity and real asset fund solutions. Our deep existing investor base includes public / private pensions, endowments / foundations, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, fund of funds, insurance companies, family offices and HNWs.
What makes your firm unique? How do you distinguish yourselves from your competitors, and present yourselves as the best option for your clients? We believe Strategic Partners’ consistent investment approach combined with our team’s in-depth private market experience and strong relationships with both our investors and fund managers gives us a relative strength amongst competitors. Our flexible mandate allows us to pursue a wide range of transactions, which we believe also differentiates our platform.
Similarly, please tell us more about Global Private Equity Secondaries Fund. What do you believe are the reasons behind its successful performance? Strategic Partners focuses on acquiring secondary interests in mature private equity and real estate funds globally. We believe our success is driven by our approach of originating proprietary investment opportunities via proactive sourcing to acquire highly diverse portfolios of secondary private equity and real estate assets.
Tell us about the culture within your company and the things you do to maintain and develop it. How does it influence your interactions with and results achieved for your clients? We believe that we have built an outstanding team. Our cohesive culture and commitment to “growing our own” has led to a very stable and long-tenured team, with our senior professionals having worked together for an average of more than 12 years, and virtually all of the team joining Strategic Partners early in their professional careers.
We maintain a nimble and flexible approach to investing which, along with our deep and experienced team, leads to unique and often proprietary investment opportunities. While working on a fund, what measures do you take to ensure that it performs to its full potential and beyond? Fundamentally, we work to identify high-quality assets managed by proven sponsors. However, evaluating transactions with confidence and acquiring interests with the conviction of reaching our performance targets requires rigorous up-front analysis. To adequately understand each possible transaction, we generally perform a detailed analysis of companies in underlying funds, regardless of the transaction’s size and complexity. This granular underwriting approach is difficult for organizations that lack the resources and / or information necessary to analyze a broad spectrum of funds, which favorably positions us in considering diverse portfolio transactions.
What have been the most prevalent trends in your industry over the past 12 months? Secondary private equity and real estate transactions have dramatically increased over the last several years. Both institutional and individual investors have become increasingly proactive in managing their private equity portfolios, choosing to divest interests for asset allocation, risk management, cash flow, financial regulatory reform or other strategic reasons. 2014 was a record year for secondary transaction volume, and we as a group have experienced sustained deal flow throughout 2015.
As a leading investor in the secondary private equity market, what have you done to be at the forefront of your industry and what do you do to sustain this success? We have differentiated ourselves with our multi-asset discipline and flexible investment approach, which does not discriminate based on deal size, complexity, geography or seller type. As previously mentioned, the success of our investment approach is predicated on extensive bottom-up analysis, which is possible by virtue of maintaining a market-leading database of funds and underlying companies.
Finally, what does the future hold for your firm? What plans do you have to both maintain and build upon your success? We are confident that we are well-positioned to take advantage of the growing acceptance among private equity investors of the secondary market as a means to gain liquidity. We intend to continue focusing on our core strengths, extensive investment experience, deep relationships, and informational resources, and we will work in earnest to sustain these competitive advantages as we continue to be a leader in the secondary market.
To sustain this success, we will continue to actively monitor our holdings, foster our deep investor and general partner relationships, and maintain our reputation as a trusted liquidity solution. Additionally, we stress the importance of retaining a culture where our professionals are collaborative, supportive, and actively train and mentor our newest hires. Maintaining strong team alignment where our professionals remain hungry and eager to win has helped to sustain our compelling deal flow.
Wealth & Finance International selected award winners by distributing voting forms to its subscribers as well as individuals and firms active across the fund sector. Voting forms were also open to visiting traffic to the W&F website. Nominations are vetted by W&F’s in-house awards committee. A different set of voters may have achieved different results. Blackstone does not know whether it has been rated by this or any other third party in any way that would conflict with these awards. There may be other categories for which Blackstone, its funds or its portfolio companies were nominated but not awarded. The awards may not be representative of a particular investor’s experience or the future performance of any Blackstone fund or transaction. There is no guarantee that similar awards will be obtained by Blackstone with respect to existing or future funds or transactions. This information is provided solely for informational purposes. It should not relied upon as any indication of future performance of Blackstone or any of its funds or portfolio companies.
What would you say are the advantages and disadvantages (or challenges) of being involved with a company as large as Blackstone? Our partnership with Blackstone has materially benefited our business. By harnessing Blackstone’s global capabilities, relationships and expertise, we maintain a competitive advantage in sourcing, analyzing and
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: ALPS Fund Services, Inc. Name: Jeremy May Web Address: www.alpsinc.com Address: 1290 Broadway, #1100 Denver, CO 80203 303.623.2577
Excellence in Exchange Traded Fund Operations
ALPS Fund Services, Inc. Winning isn’t important to ALPS, it is the success of the clients which is paramount; as they succeed we are able to share this through the growth of our services, assets and recognition.
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the newest generation of exchange-traded products, provide unique, cost-efficient opportunities.
ALPS is a DST Company offering a full-service partnership approach to a select group of fund clients looking for truly customized service. We provide our clients turn-key capabilities anchoring all of the diverse resources needed to run a full-service fund complex. Headquartered in Denver with offices in Boston, Seattle, Toronto, and New York, ALPS currently employs approximately 530 people.
Another benefit offered to clients is accessibility to the Directors in each department. Clients can pick up a phone and call anyone in management at ALPS. Everyone from the President to the Directors of ALPS pride themselves in procuring strong working relationships with each of our clients.
In two and a half decades, ALPS has evolved from its modest beginnings of servicing a single bank mutual fund client, into a full-service provider to the investment management industry. With an executive team that has been in place for 20 years, ALPS continues to actively promote all of its various business segments, from asset servicing through ALPS Fund Services Inc. to asset gathering through ALPS Distributors Inc. and ALPS Advisors Inc.
Everyone including the President and Directors of ALPS is wary of becoming a victim of our own success, we always ensure that our staffing levels are sufficient to meet the demands of our services. Growth should never compromise the services available to our existing clients. In fact, our diverse field of current clients allow us to enhance the new services offered. This diversity also allows management a greater breadth of experience and knowledge regarding distribution issues to the benefit of all of our clients. Alliances and partnerships provide ALPS with the experts who enable us to produce, develop, and distribute services clients need.
Innovative processes and solutions, which give our clients a tremendous amount of flexibility in how they choose to navigate the fast-changing landscape in the asset management arena are at the heart of our continued success. Developing a partnership model with our clients allows for collaboration on marketing, strategy and product development to support the most innovative products in the exchange-traded product space.
ALPS’s ability to customise and differentiate to meet each client’s need sets us apart. Remaining committed to investing in time, technology, and human capital resources allows us to grow our business and ensure that the systems we put in place are never too rigid to adapt to client and industry needs.
Keeping our clients up to speed involves providing timely and accurate information; achieving this is a source of great pride to ALPS. Without this they cannot manage their funds optimally to provide the most shareholder value as possible. It is this type of understanding, that each part of data we handle, whether it be transfer agency, shareholder data, daily fund NAV calculations, or the legal drafting of shareholder material (like prospectuses), has a direct influence on the efficiency of our clients and the ultimate satisfaction of the shareholders of their products, which guides our daily practise while managing funds.
It is growth and success which has led to our wide range of active distribution consulting services offered; services which range from strategic planning consultations, to market research, to broker-dealer selling agreements, to configuring a wholesale team. Additionally, ALPS has experience in product development, offering a full-service Creative Service Department.
High standards are an absolute must in this industry, and to ensure that clients get personalised treatment ALPS ensures that within each department there is a dedicated team servicing a client’s funds. The team service model has many benefits, but the main advantage is that clients can always communicate their needs to a member of the company who is familiar with them and their portfolio. Personalisation is the key to our team endeavour; meaning the size of the team assigned to a client will vary depending on the size and complexity of the client’s needs. If additional staff is required to handle a case then additional staff is delivered. What the clients need is what we deliver.
Both the size and the structure of the company help give us the agility to focus on client service unfailingly. As laid out in the five guiding principles of the firm: • We believe that personal relationships are the foundation of our success • We are committed to “Do Things Right” • We are driven by growth and the challenges and opportunities it presents • We strive to establish and grow relationships with organizations that share our values • We promote an open and enthusiastic environment that leads to job satisfaction and career advancement based on merit
Ensuring an approach which provides a comprehensive methodology for measuring our service levels, is the client’s dedicated Relationship Manager who oversees what is called the ALPS FBRM (Fact-Based Relationship Management) system. This approach guarantees clear communication with all issues being discussed on a regular basis which is the cornerstone to meeting and exceeding expectations.
With the tremendous amount of growth seen in the exchange-traded product space over the last year, active, and passive-managed ETPs and market entrances by some of the largest mutual-fund based managers are looking to partner with us to launch exchange-traded product options.
Innovation is also the key to ALPS staying ahead of regulatory, technological, and asset management trends. Keeping up with all this is the responsibility of the forward-looking committees and working groups who develop and evaluate the trends, new products, and services available to our clients. New product support platforms and the development of new technology, such as the ETP bulk order processing system (a closed-end turnkey solution) and the exchange-traded mutual fund trust supporting
Our future holds continued growth in the exchange-traded product space, as well as constantly looking for new growth in other service areas, by maintaining and building on our success and continuing to hold onto our culture as a company. Our partnership with our clients remains consistently at the heart of what we do.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Altum Capital Management, LLC (“Altum”) Name: Megan Cruse, Director of Marketing & Investor Relations Email: mcruse@altumcredit.com Web Address: www.altumcredit.com Address: 681 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10022
Winner of Best Hedge Fund Award
Altum Capital Management, LLC Altum’s investment team has approximately 20 years’ experience on average trading structured credit products through various market cycles. Moreover, Altum’s CIO, Marjorie Hogan, has had over 22 years trading experience in structured products. Through a detailed, analytics-based approach, they seek opportunities, using no margin borrowing, that add value using techniques tailored to specific products and points in the market cycle. We spoke to them to find out more.
We are excited to receive this recognition of our efforts. Altum has a proven track record of demonstrating success in generating positive returns with low volatility, and is powered by a strong team inspired by the pursuit of complex opportunities in a constantly changing market. Opportunity, excellence, and integrity help define the strategy outlook, and the recognition of that success inspires us to continue the hard work of helping us pursue attractive risk-adjusted returns while seeking to preserve capital on behalf of our clients. Marjorie Hogan, the CIO and Managing Member, has been managing the strategy since July 2009, implementing an opportunistic strategy that invests across a wide range of structured credit market sectors including CLOs, RMBS, CMBS, and other asset backed securities in both the U.S. and Europe.
in order to promote efficiency and transparency in all of our interactions with clients. This award was given by Wealth & Finance, a financial magazine which is independent from Altum. The award was determined by Wealth & Finance magazine based on a combination of votes gathered from their network of respected industry partners and their rigorous in-house research. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This is not an offering or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in a fund. Any such offer or solicitation will be made to qualified investors only by means of a final offering memorandum, which contains important information (including investment objective, policies, risk factors, tax implications and relevant qualifications) and only in those jurisdictions where permitted by law.
Through a detailed, analytics-based approach, we seek opportunities, using no margin borrowing, that add value using techniques tailored to specific products and points in the market cycle. Over the past six years, we have built sophisticated models and analytical systems for different types of structured products, which we think provide a trading edge in these complex markets and an advantage over most competitors. We like uncompetitive markets where assets are overlooked and undervalued with attractive positive convexity properties and move in and out of sectors as opportunities arise. Our team has extensive experience and the strategy relies upon sophisticated models and analytical systems for different types of structured products, which we believe provide a trading edge in these complex markets. In order to ensure that we have the adequate resources, we employ an expert team and have built out complex models that are processed on robust data servers. We strive to maintain an open forum for communication, and prioritize the benefits that this brings to the client. Client service is an integral part to our business. It’s a daily concern and it’s important to Altum that we maintain high standards in client response and service. Our marketing and investor relations teams work with the operations team
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Company: Altum Capital Management, LLC (“Altum”) Name: Megan Cruse, Director of Marketing & Investor Relations Email: mcruse@altumcredit.com Web Address: www.altumcredit.com Address: 681 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10022
Recognised Leader in Opportunistic Distressed Structured
Altum Capital Management, LLC Altum’s investment team has approximately 20 years’ experience on average trading structured credit products through various market cycles. Moreover, Altum’s CIO, Marjorie Hogan, has had over 22 years trading experience in structured products. Through a detailed, analytics-based approach, they seek opportunities, using no margin borrowing, that add value using techniques tailored to specific products and points in the market cycle. We spoke to them to find out more.
For the past six years, Altum’s opportunistic relative value strategy has been to trade nimbly across structured credit market sectors including CLOs, RMBS, CMBS, and other ABS in both Europe and the U.S. We focus on distressed, higher yielding and difficult to analyse sectors where there is reduced competition and the greatest potential on a relative value basis.
gan, has been managing assets for the strategy since 2009, and started her career on Wall Street in 1985. The majority of the investment and quantitative team hold PhD degrees in the math and sciences, with over 100 years of combined experience on Wall Street.
Altum has dedicated teams in New York and London, and we will seek to find new and unique opportunities in Europe where we think the best opportunities currently reside. We use the resources of both locations to take advantage of the universe of options, and we will continue to build out our expertise to maintain the edge that we have in the European region.
The investment team searches for unique and poorly understood opportunities within the structured credit space. We look for securities with attractive positive convexity properties, and try to move into new sectors as opportunities arise. Finding the most attractive opportunities in which to invest requires us to stay nimble within our investment mandate while we pursue attractive risk-adjusted returns and seek to preserve capital. We have built sophisticated models and analytical systems for different types of structured products, which we think provide a trading edge in these complex markets and an advantage over most competitors. The U.S. and European loan markets have recently been characterized by strong demand, with many loans repricing tighter, or being prepaid. Such events typically reduce the cashflow to equity tranches, as managers are forced to reinvest proceeds at tighter spreads. Altum s proprietary models incorporate the effects of potential future tightening as well as widening markets on tranche valuations.
This award was given by Wealth & Finance, a financial magazine which is independent from Altum. The award was determined by Wealth & Finance magazine based on a combination of votes gathered from their network of respected industry partners and their rigorous in-house research. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This is not an offering or the solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in a fund. Any such offer or solicitation will be made to qualified investors only by means of a final offering memorandum, which contains important information (including investment objective, policies, risk factors, tax implications and relevant qualifications) and only in those jurisdictions where permitted by law.
We like uncompetitive markets where assets can be overlooked and undervalued. One of the major developments in our industry is that a lot of the larger structured product firms have largely been leaving the space we traffic, so we are enjoying less competitive markets. We are adding compelling alpha opportunities and finding interesting securities within the European structured credit space and continue to do so for our clients. A large portion of Altum s success can be attributed to the investment team which is composed of senior and expert traders. CIO, Marjorie Ho-
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Armstrong Investment Managers LLP Name: Dr Ana Armstrong Email: aim.admin@armstrongim.com Web Address: http://armstrongim.com/ Address: 1 Royal Exchange Ave. London EC3V 3LT United Kingdom Telephone: +44 20 7464 4330
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Best UK Multi Asset Fund - AIM Multi Asset
Armstrong Investment Managers LLP Having fostered an environment of collaboration and knowledge sharing, where each individual brings a unique expertise to an investment, operational or distribution effort, has allowed AIM to remain flexible and open to the requirements of all investors. The varied backgrounds of our staff ensure diversification when filtering decisions and critically lower any operational risks. It is this type of knowledge which led to our UCITS products put us ahead of many firms just now looking for similar solutions.
Dr. Ana Armstrong’s knowledge of asset allocation, developed over 20 years, provides clients with the assurance they need to understand that their capital is protected and managed to the highest standard. Through her expert management, the team strives to combine the experience and reliability of an institution, with the client-focus of a boutique firm.
This investment process is built on a set of key beliefs which are: • The pursuit of excellence requires significant investment in human capital. • The interaction of model driven trade and discretionary beliefs is the key to long run out-performance. • Peer reviewed research and development are required to identify strategic opportunities. • Our research mandate focuses on: • Generating superior alpha by identifying asset pricing anomalies; • Generating superior returns by harvesting risk premia within ex-ante volatility bounds. • Our investment mantra allocates between contrarian and trend following strategies, value/growth and carry investing, within and across asset classes. • Inflation is the ultimate destroyer of long run purchasing power. Real diversification is a key component of our investment beliefs.
AIM is extremely proud to be the recipient of this award as it helps to demonstrate our commitment to providing our leading UCITS solution for the multi-asset investment product range. The strengthening of our business in terms of team, distribution network and proprietary investment strategies employed, allows for the strict focus on risk management which in turn ensures that we are always well place to deal with volatility shocks, yet still generate returns for the client. The ever-growing and increasingly competitive investment landscape makes investors and their advisors face tougher tasks in finding the right opportunities and solutions which best suit their requirements. It is through awards such as this one that we establish connections between investors and the established managers who suit the provision of solutions being sought.
Working closely with academic development and concepts involving asset allocation, quantitative modelling, risk premia, portfolio construction and risk management, we have developed the following strategies which have delivered a robust return during the recent market sell-off: • Cross-sectional momentum (across US, UK and EU equities) • Time-series momentum (across FX, Commodities and EQ Index futures) • Carry (within FX and Commodities futures markets)
An FCA regulated asset manager, AIM is focussed on providing structured financial solutions to a diverse international client base. Our inhouse team of fund managers and analysts continually create excellent results for our clients. Ensuring that the solutions we provide to our clients achieve practical, sustainable and successful financial results for the future is our focus.
The trends we have found most prevalent over the last year is the robust portfolio solutions which focus on cross sectional models being both long and short different market segments. Asset allocation calls are increasingly difficult to make and there has been a distinct increase in the demand for multi-asset products which can invest across different asset classes. Keeping abreast of situations like these while we further develop our intellectual property, focus on quantitative and empirically tested investment modes while expanding into other markets such as the Middle East and Asia are all in our sight for the not-to-distant future.
Our current services include: structured solutions to increase liquidity for existing portfolios, Liquidity solutions to private equity investors, access to an existing Multi Asset fund, an award Global Macro fund and a UK OEIC, funds to an Irish UCITS/QIAIF platform onshore and segregated managed accounts To ensure that a fund performs to its full potential we always start with the risk budget of the fund; from there, we look at the weight of each position determined on the level of conviction and fits marginal contribution to risk. The risk is used interactively in portfolio construction where we apply quantitative models, developed of the last two decades to identify the best opportunities.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Arowana Asset Management Ltd Name: Pierre Hoebrechts Email: pierre@arowanaam.com Web Address: www.arowanaam.com Address: Suite 6601, The Center, 99 Queen’s Road, Central, Hong Kong Telephone: +852 3965 3290
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Best Multi - Strategy Fund of Funds - The Arowana Asian Fund
Arowana Asset Management Arowana Asset Management is an independent asset management and advisory firm focusing primarily on hedge funds but also long only funds. The team has over 50 years’ of experience in global markets and has been analyzing hedge funds since 1998, combined with an extensive network of relationships worldwide. Their CEO & CIO, Pierre Hoebrechts, was in touch with us to tell us about his company and more.
As a boutique firm with a small number of clients, we can provide tailor made services with a high level of care and attention to each client and ensure we are always available to them as their partner in Asia.
Arowana Asset Management offers three main services: asset management, advisory, operational due diligence. With regards to asset management, we are the investment manager of the Arowana Asian Fund which is a multi-strategy fund of funds investing in Asia. We can also build tailor made funds or products/portfolios at the request of clients.
As well as these attributes, we have a highly professional and experienced team. We believe the key point is our focus on understanding the several dimensions of risk which helps tremendously in generating high risk adjusted returns. We perform detailed analysis and monitoring of the market to help us understand the alpha generated by each manager as well as performing thorough operational due diligence.
As for advisory, we provide an extensive list of services from fund selection to markets and risk research as well as analytics. With respect to operational due diligence, we have developed a unique in-house standardised report on a long list of Asian funds based on our extensive experience. Similarly to asset management, we also provide ‘bespoke’ reviews, focussing on specific areas requested by a particular client.
At our firm, we have established a high standard of professionalism and innovation, which drives the way due diligence and research is performed by our team. Our extensive coverage of markets and focus on risk is a key determinant in maximising clients’ risk adjusted returns and is at the centre of all the decisions we take. As a result, we ensure we always match the risk profile of our clients with the products we recommend or structure for them. Frequent attendance at industry conferences and regular contacts with market participants helps us ensure we are up to date with emerging developments and trends.
Our investment process is driven by a number of key factors. Firstly, we aim to maximize risk adjusted returns, whether it is at the portfolio level or when assessing underlying funds as potential investment candidates. Expected return per unit of risk taken will be the key factor in driving strategy and fund allocation. Scenarios where we cannot assess the downside potential will be discarded. Furthermore, we tend to favour funds with a reasonable level of assets under management. It is our belief that smaller funds have greater potential to profit from niche market opportunities as well as providing much better risk adjusted returns and a closer alignment of interests with investors.
At the present period, there has been an increasing demand for Asian investments as valuations in the US and Europe are looking rich and the economic growth potential increasingly moves east. As investors discover the abilities of Asian hedge funds and funds of funds to provide very high risk adjusted returns, we expect asset allocation shift to the region to increase.
We also favour funds investing in liquid securities and strategies with conservative amount of leverage. Last but not least, a high level of transparency is required to provide us with the necessary tools to monitor the funds’ risk accurately.
As we reflect on our success, and look to expand our business even further, we are delighted to be receiving this award. It is very gratifying to receive external confirmation that we have achieved top notch performance for our investors. This provides us with strong evidence that we are on the right path to develop an asset management firm where excellence is the goal. These awards are an important validation for the managers like us who wish to demonstrate their abilities in a global context as well as relative to their peer group. The fact that it is independent provides substantial credibility to this achievement.
What separates us from our competitors is that we are one of a few fund of funds groups based in Asia. Our location within the region gives us frequent and meaningful contact with the funds we monitor and we have built up an extensive network of relationships within the region over the past 9 years. We are able to hold over 200 meetings with Asian fund managers each year, which is of tremendous value to clients with no or little presence in Asia. Our CIO has also spent 10 years in NYC providing a unique perspective and experience to analyse the Asian hedge fund industry and markets.
Going forward, we believe that continuing to differentiate ourselves through high risk adjusted performance will provide numerous opportunities to develop our business, whether it is increasing our AUM or developing new tailor made products for our clients.
Moreover, we have also developed a unique operational due diligence platform. The fact that we also act as investors provides us with a perspective that stand alone service providers might lack particularly when it comes to understanding the correlation between operational risk and market risk.
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Company: Asthenius Capital Name: Alp Sevimlisoy Email: Investor Relations: info@astheniuscapital.com CEO: a.sevimlisoy@astheniuscapital.com Web: www.astheniuscapital.com Address: Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, London, SW3 6RD Telephone: +44 (0)203 709 6520
Emerging Markets Focused Boutique Alternative Asset Advisory Firm
Asthenius Capital is a boutique alternative asset advisory firm with a key focus on emerging markets. Dynamic fundamentals, sophisticated structuring and financial engineering alongside comprehensive asset advisory insight enables Asthenius to extract premium returns from its investments. We spoke to their CEO, Alp Sevimlisoy, to find out more.
Asthenius Capital works closely with its clients (largely focusing on MENA & EMEA clients) to provide personalised and tailored investment solutions that are heavily diversified, objective aligned and focused on extracting total value.
It is in our ability to adapt to the myriad changes in our industry that we truly excel. We are always at the cutting edge of what’s happening in our industry and we believe that in order for a firm to truly make a difference, they need to be constantly developing and innovating their services.
We focus on using ‘Strategic Finance’, which is the name for our strategy which combines socio-political developments with underlying financial fundamentals of assets and investments focusing on both private equity and liquid strategies.
One of the interesting developments we have noticed is that boutique investment advisory, private equity funds, M&A etc. firms are now competing with institutions in a much closer fashion than in the last few years. Both institutions and boutiques are now attracting the same quality of LPs, the same quality of deal flow and in my personal belief boutiques on average now have a more professional deal execution quality. I believe wholeheartedly that in the future boutiques from all sides of the spectrum will become increasingly more competitive in their respective spaces.
What makes our approach unique is that we simply ask “What can we do for you?”, rather than simply offering a pre-determined set of products. Close contact is also vital in order to maintain the long-term relationships we have with our clients. In this sense, we offer a ‘Carte Blanche’ in terms of an investment approach that is tailored to specific individual and institutional needs.
Winning this award is a further testament to our success. I would like to state that as a firm we are honoured to be the winner from amongst a wide array of companies of great stature, and it allows both myself and my team to continue in a proud fashion in our field. Awards such as these are highly important as they highlight select firms to display the reasons as to why they have excelled whilst also bringing together those that are truly the best of the best.
Our work is built upon a strong team effort. One of the key aspects of our service is that our investment committees are very much open platforms where all members of our team can put across their opinions allowing multiple different voices to be heard and different approaches being examined when key decisions are due to be taken. I strongly believe that the culture of a firm is very much dependent upon the personal attributes of individuals and at Asthenius we take the best of these attributes and evolve and integrate them into our collective mind-set, which allows us to provide a diligent and professional yet innovative approach.
Looking towards the future of our company, we are looking to progress even further as well as looking to grow significantly in both the liquid and illiquid space. Continuing our successes, especially in the Turkish Market which is one of our key regions is of notable importance to us.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Barak Fund Management Name: Declan O’Brien Email: contactbarakfund.com Web Address: barakfund.com Address: Marbella Road, Pellegrin, Trianon, Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius Telephone: +230 698 0397
Best Trade Finance Fund - Barak Structured Trade Finance Fund & Best African Alternative Financier
Barak Fund Management is the number 1 Africa-based commodity trade finance fund, providing short-term trade finance, asset backed loans with various forms of collateral. The firm uses a time-tested approach to originate, acquire and manage structured commodity-backed transactions across more than 30 African countries. We got in touch with Declan O’Brien, CEO of Barak Fund Management, to find out more.
Barak Structured Trade Finance Fund seeks to generate equity-like returns in a capital-constrained market with relatively low volatility and limited correlation to the broader markets. This strategy focuses on fully-funded or blended debt in the African commodity markets, using asset-backed loans with various forms of collateral.
When it comes to ensuring the success of their fund, the company implements a rigorous approach to assessing both risk and default. As O’Brien explains: “The key component to our fund being successful is the management of risk and default. This is due to having a strict credit and risk management policy that is never compromised in the pre-approval process.”
The business brought in a seasoned external CEO, Declan O’Brien who has a history of building great businesses with great company cultures. O’Brien has been busy deploying his cultural beliefs into the staff with mentorship and leadership principals, which will be maintained and expanded upon going forward.
As well as achieving stellar results for their clients, maintaining a close relationship with their clients is equally as important. “Our philosophy is openness and transparency with our investors. We are constantly keeping them in touch with our deals as well as monthly Fund Fact Sheets and quarterly reports to ensure on-going communication between both parties.”
One of O’Brien’s beliefs that retaining the right talent is not only important at a senior level, but should be implemented across the board. “One of the things that separates us from our competitors is that we are always striving to employ and retain the very best personnel we can for the roles we have throughout the business divisions,” says O’Brien. “This goes from junior staff all the way through to management executives.”
Being able to meet their investor’s expectations is an ongoing process, and the company is constantly keeping a close eye on any changes happening within their industry. “To ensure that we keep abreast of changes within the industry, we attend all industry related conferences and are always in close contact with our third party service providers. One of the major trends we currently have our eye on is that asset class trade finance has become much more respected and understood.” When asked about the award, O’Brien believes that this accolade is a further testament to their success. “It really does feel great to be recognised for all the hard work that goes into making the fund a success. This success is due to the combined effort of our dedicated team.” Looking further ahead, Barak are looking towards creating new funds and opportunities for their investors. “We are on an aggressive expansion plan to roll out more funds and to create new business units that complement our current suite of funds. As the African landscape evolves, we will evolve with it.”
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Wealth www.wealthandfinance-intl.com & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: BCM & PARTNERS SA Email: info.uk@c-quadrat.com Web Address: www.c-quadrat.com Address: 1 Vine Street London W1J 0AH, UK Telephone: +44 207 925 8700
Best Total Return Fund - C - Quadrat Euro Investments Plus
BCM & PARTNERS SA BCM & PARTNERS SA, part of the C-QUADRAT Group with AUM of approximately USD 7 Billion, fully regulated in the UK, Austria and Germany, provides marketing and distribution services in Switzerland. They offer qualified investors two possible solutions to their financial needs: open ended investment funds managed out of the group’s London and Vienna offices and tailor made portfolio management. We spoke to them to find out more.
The C-QUADRAT Group is one of Europe’s most skilled and renowned counterparts in credit markets. Far from being a giant “detaining” an asset class, the firm provides a nimble, skilled and attractive risk/reward approach to investors’ needs. To this extent, constant investments are made in talented portfolio managers and in sophisticated risk management including legal, compliance and IT.
At BCM & Partners SA we believe any investment should be viewed as a medium term commitment rather than a short term lucky bite into a successful trend. BCM & Partners’ clients who entrust us with discretionary mandates should aim at capital conservation and at capital appreciation over the medium term. Should this be required, our clients’ financial needs are thoroughly discussed and analysed before a mutually satisfactory portfolio is put in place.
Financial markets are interconnected and very reactive leaving no space for non-professionals. All of the firm’s professionals have not only a solid background, but are also fully committed to achieving the proposed financial targets whilst being within easy reach of investors.
Most of C-Quadrat’s investment funds are European regulated UCITS funds offering daily liquidity. The firm’s resistance at using leverage, although allowed, has been fully appreciated by investors who have never had to face any gate or similar hindrances in their contractual terms. Providing full strategy and portfolio transparency, together with a sustainable track record, is something the firm is very proud of. We believe these goals have so far been reached, among others, by the C - QUADRAT Euro Investments Plus, and this is why being awarded Best Total Return Fund is a great achievement for both our dedicated teams and our trustful investors.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Boyne Capital Partners Name: Derek A. McDowell Email: dmcdowell@boynecapital.com Web Address: www.boynecapital.com Address: 2601 S. Bayshore Drive, Suite 1475, Miami, FL 33133 Telephone: 305-856-9500
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Midmarket Private Equity Fund of the Year Founded in 2006, Boyne Capital is a lower middle market private equity firm focused on acquiring businesses in the U.S. and Canada with revenues between $10 million and $100 million. We employ a deep value investment strategy around opportunistic industry themes and relationship-driven deal sourcing. For each investment, our team takes an active operating approach to driving value creation and monitoring performance.
Since 2006, we have completed 9 platform acquisitions and 17 add-on acquisitions, which have collectively generated an over 4x multiple of invested capital and over 30% IRR to our investors (as of 7/31/2015).
segment. The effort required relative to the capital deployed per transaction makes our segment unattractive to larger private equity firms or AUM managers, yet the returns relative to other parts of the private equity community make it compelling for Boyne and our investors.
Boyne Capital portfolio companies include: • AmeriFactors – Discount, non-recourse factoring company based in Celebration, Florida. We are also seeking the acquisition of other specialty financing businesses and factoring portfolios. • Evolution Lighting – Consumer lighting and commercial products sold through big box retailers and industrial/arcitechtural channels based in Miami, Florida. We are also seeking the acquisition of LED lighting businesses, energy efficiency and energy audit businesses, and companies that are selling lighting, vanity and other products through big box retailers. • Family Private Care – Private duty home nursing care company based in Hobe Sound, Florida. We are also seeking the acquisition of medicare certified home care agencies and private pay agencies or registries based in Florida or the Southeast. • Fulcrum IT – Data security and IT services company servicing federal agencies such as Department of Defense and Intelligence Agencies based in Manassas, VA. We are also seeking the acquisition of data assurance, cyber security, and IT staffing serving the same-end market. • Tender Greens – Grower, packer and shipper of distinctive tender leaf salad greens. Tender Greens is based in Florida with farming and distribution locations throughout the United States. We are also seeking the acquisition of geographic expansion of traditional farming operations as well as vertical, indoor and other controlled environment farming assets.
Furthermore, our disciplined adherence to a value-oriented investment strategy is very difficult for our industry peers to replicate. Over the years, we have developed the network, team and wherewithal to continue to execute our strategy. Our firm is multi-disciplined by design. We have professionals from various fields ranging from corporate law, to private equity, to operations, to finance and accounting. Despite our diversity, we are cohesive. We believe our clients appreciate and benefit from the multiple areas of expertise encompassed by our team as well as our honest and open communication style. We are unique in our flexibility to accommodate our investors’ needs. In addition to traditional funds, we provide significant direct co-investment opportunities to our partners. In our industry, capital is being committed to private equity funds at a rapid rate – almost the fastest rate in history. A tremendous overhang of capital commitments has caused many of our peers to shift strategies to deploy this capital. We have observed several of our peers move up market to acquire larger assets or pay more for smaller ones. The confluence of these factors and the relatively strong economy has been the cause of a very robust sellers’ market as of late in the private equity industry. Boyne prides itself on being a disciplined value investor with a track record of top quartile investor returns. We are pleased to be recognized for our successes, especially given the level of competition within the middle market private equity community.
Disciplined adherence to our core strategy and avoidance of investment style drift have been critical to the success for our firm and our investments. We firmly believe that our success depends on the success of our team and we have focused on building the best team of professionals possible.
It is important to recognize positive contributions of participants in our industry as well as the successes of our competitors. It is satisfying that our team receives this level of recognition given the effort put forward and success generated for our investors.
Our investors are our first priority in everything we do, be it our investments, our communication or our service. Furthermore, we hold ourselves to the highest of ethical standards ensuring our constituents are treated properly. We appreciate the privilege and responsibility of being stewards of our investors’ capital. When we do the right thing by all of our constituents, whether it’s investors, management teams, employees, customers or communities, strong performance follows.
Looking further ahead, Boyne is exploring the idea of raising a new private equity fund. With strong demand from our existing investor base and new investors, we expect to continue our top-tier performance for a growing set of investors and other constituents.
Boyne serves a unique niche of the lower middle market investing. Given the nature of the small businesses we acquire, investors and competitors are challenged to access it efficiently. Our success rests on the network built by our team members over the last twenty years and our commitment and dedication to finding value in this small market
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015 Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Changjiang Asset Management (HK) Ltd Web Address: www.cjam.com.hk
Best Long/Short Fund: Absolute Return China (Cayman) Fund & Best Pure Long Fund - Changjiang Hong Kong Equity Fund
Changjiang Asset Management
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ChangJiang Asset Management(HK) Ltd (CJAM) is a subsidiary of ChangJiang Securities Holdings (HK) Limited, representing its ultimate holder of ChangJiang Securities Company Limited (Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Stock Code: 000783) to establish an asset management business unit for China and beyond. We spoke to Nelson Yan, Chief Investment Officer at Changjiang Asset Management, to find out more.
CJAM is licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, permitted to conduct regulated activities of Type 4 (Advising on Securities) and Type 9 (Asset Management). CJAM’s vision is to provide the best asset management services to its clients, which includes professional investors, Capital Investment Entrant Scheme’s applicants and institutional investors with interests in the Greater China region.
the top ten securities brokerage firms in China, our unique investment philosophy has enabled us to perform at its full potential and beyond. Like any other markets, our area of expertise is subject to continuous changes and developments. And of course, the constantly-changing economic, political, industry and corporate dynamics all need to be identified and analysed as to their potential impact on the portfolio and new opportunities. Our solution to these challenges is to meet them head on with our numbers and experience. First of all, we have over 50 inhouse analysts in our parent company and our Hong Kong office covers almost all the sectors in China market. This allows us to fully understand the industry and the competitive landscape and in turn prepares our investment strategy in advance. Furthermore, our parent company, ChangJiang Securities Company Ltd, has developed an extensive network of local relationships with more than 140 branches. It enables us to understand more about the needs of clients from time to time and stand at the forefront of the products trend.
One of our primary services is fund management, where we aim for absolute returns with an emphasis in Greater China equities. We currently manage two funds which are ChangJiang Absolute Return China (Cayman) Fund and the ChangJiang Hong Kong Equity Fund. However, more diversified products are set to be launched in the future. Furthermore, we also have tailor-made investment services known as Discretionary Account Management. We offer a tailor-made mandate, where we can cater for all risk appetites by creating a personalized portfolio. We create a specific management account to meet each investor’s requirements. For instance, we have fixed income/bond portfolio for risk-natural or risk-averse investors. Meanwhile, we not only pursue absolute returns but also focus on risk management as well. This allows us to reach of goal of performing well with low volatility.
Over the past 12 months, China A shares have boomed from November of last year, and China is becoming much more attractive to investors. Therefore, products including RQFII which are focused on investing in China markets are highly demanded. However, since the market is becoming more volatile recently, with the downside risk of RMB depreciation, more fixed income and offshore products are required by investors to avoid risk from the Chinese market.
Our clients include both institutional and retail investors. Previously, we have had institutional clients from Japan and now our markets in China are even expanding further beyond this region. They are individuals mainly focused on investing in China markets or those who are interested in Hong Kong/China markets.
To ensure that we at the forefront of our industry, our team is made up of a range of different professionals all armed with a unique set of skills. We act as a bridge between both overseas/mainland investors and global markets/China market. To ensure that the investors and the markets are in unison, we have plenty of resources which meet the requirements of investing in the Chinese market.
We like to see our clients as our friends and treat them with honest and integrity. We get to know them and understand their preferences of investment style and respond quickly to their requirements, based on an international perspective.
The culture of our company is based upon wealth gathering and sharing growth. This has allowed our company to pursue sustainable and harmonious developments in the long term. Also, we have been dedicated to gaining the reputation as a first-rate financial institutional in our industry as well as being respected in China as a whole. We also gain trust and support from our clients by continuously creating value for them and promoting stable growth on their wealth.
When working on a fund, superior returns but with very low volatility is the key measurement to ensure that it performs to its full potential and beyond. As an long/short or pure long fund, our core investment philosophy is to actively identifying investment opportunities while minimising the probabilities of error in investing via our investment approach, which is a combination of top-down and value investing.
In the long run, we consistently aim to perform well with low volatility, and have our AUM expanding at the same time. And we will also maintain good relationship with existing clients and develop potential clients mainly from Asian and European market.
Our top-down approach involves analysing the macro economies and figuring out which sectors are expected to generate the best return and benefit most from the government policies. Then, we shall look for individual companies within the chosen sectors and add them to our universe or even our portfolio.
As an intermediary between overseas and China markets, we aim to expand our professional investment services to clients from China and also, introduce China market to overseas investors who have interested in the China market through sharing resources as global perspective.
Simultaneously, to avoid missing good companies from our top-down approach, we adopt a value investing approach by analysing those companies trading at inefficiencies in respect of their fundamentals and prospects. By relying on our research capabilities and the research support of our parent company, ChangJiang Securities Company Ltd, one of
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Charter Hall Email: directproperty@charterhall.com.au Web Address: www.charterhalldirect.com.au Telephone: +61 2 8651 9139
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Best Unlisted Property Fund - Charter Hall Direct Office Fund (DOF)
Charter Hall Group Charter Hall Group is one of Australia’s leading fully integrated property groups with over 23 years’ experience managing high quality property on behalf of institutional, wholesale and retail clients. Charter Hall has over $14.5 billion of funds under management, and their funds own over 275 real estate assets across the Australian office, retail, industrial and hospitality sectors.
We align our interests by co-investing in our managed funds, investing close to $1 billion alongside our investors. Charter Hall has ranked as one the highest performing A-REITs in the ASX 200 Property Accumulation Index over three and five years with a total security holder return of 32.9% and 20.9% per annum respectively.
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Charter Hall Direct, part of Charter Hall Group, has a strong track record managing unlisted property funds and syndicates since 1995 for retail investors, including self-managed super funds (SMSFs) and high net worth individuals. Our products are consistently highly rated by external research groups and we are Australia’s leading direct property fund manager, with $2 billion of real estate assets under management.
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Our direct funds have lower volatility than, and low correlation with, the listed equities market, which reduces the overall risk potential for an investor’s portfolio when direct property is included. The alignment of interest with our investor base is evident by the co-investment in our funds by Charter Hall Group and its management teams. We have best practice of corporate governance, including independent boards.
In terms of the award, we are delighted to have won the ‘Best Unlisted Property Fund’ for our Direct Office Fund (DOF). DOF is an actively managed office fund with a high quality core office portfolio valued at circa $700 million. We are seeking to acquire additional assets and manage a diversified portfolio of up to $800 million of quality Australian office properties. Over 80% of the current portfolio is located in Australia’s two largest office markets, Sydney and Melbourne, which are forecast to be the strongest performing Australian office markets over the medium term.
Furthermore, we are the market leading fund manager in the direct property sector. Our integrated business model, coupled with our highly skilled and motivated team, produces sustainable returns for our investors and positive experiences for our tenants, our people and the community. We invest in our people and our business so it is the place for people in property and to develop innovative, award winning investment vehicles that deliver exceptional results over the long term.
Our strong track record is demonstrated by our funds consistently beating their benchmark. Charter Hall Direct’s Investment Fund series average return of 14.8% over seventeen years and 5% above its benchmarks. DOF itself achieved a 32.0% total return in the previous 12 months, which compares favourably to the benchmark return of 10.0% over the same period. Over a 5 year period DOF achieved a 15.0% total return, compared to the benchmark return of 9.7%.
We believe the passion and vitality of our people and their ability to build long-term, trusted relationships with investors, tenants and communities is fundamental to the sustainability of our business, and we want to support and empower our people to perform to their potential.
It is great that this award recognises the role the property funds management industry plays in building the wealth for investors. We think that the advantages of commercial property investment (via a direct or unlisted property fund) is under reported and awards like this help to increase awareness in the investing public. Advantages to direct property investment include the potential for capital growth over the long term, and it can provide an attractive income return relative to cash and fixed interest. In an increasingly global economy, the opportunity for overseas investors to invest into DOF and gain access to Australian commercial property fund, can be an attractive tax effective option.
We believe Charter Hall is unique for various reasons, including: • We are Australia’s largest third-party manager of both office space and supermarket-anchored retail centres, and second largest in industrial properties. • The scale of our business ensures we see all property opportunities that are being sold on or off market. • We have specialist property expertise to access, deploy and manage assets in the office, retail, industrial and hospitality sectors. • We have a vertically integrated model including fund, asset and property management with a national approach to tenant relationship management. • Our highly skilled, motivated and local team have diverse expertise across property sectors and risk-return profiles. • Our income streams are from real properties, and are secured by long leases to tenants with fixed annual rental increases.
At present, the capital market environment is very conducive for investment in high quality Australian commercial property assets. Charter Hall remains in a strong position to continue to access, deploy and manage capital invested in Australian commercial property and we are well placed to deliver sustainable and growing returns for investors.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Craigmore Sustainables Name: Nick Tapp Email: nick.tapp@craigmore.com Web Address: www.craigmore.com Address: 17 Hanover Square, LONDON, W1S 1BN, UK 47 Waterloo Road, Hornby, Christchurch 8042, NZ
Best Farming Investor
Craigmore Sustainables One of the unusual features of the Craigmore business is that all the principals come from a farming background, and most have spent their whole career in either the production agriculture or food supply chain or both. Operational agriculture is about very fine attention to detail, for which local experience is essential, and we have a very high degree of local knowledge. Craigmore has pioneered structures with a very high degree of alignment of interest, and such structures are unique to the agricultural sector. Craigmore is a specialist investment manager, also providing handson farm management for investors into New Zealand agriculture. The Craigmore Farming Partnership farm portfolio is spread across the major sectors of NZ farming, with a principal focus on irrigated South Island dairy farming. On behalf of our investors, Craigmore own and manage around 10,000ha of farmland, producing milk, sheep, beef, pumpkins, apples, kiwifruit and blackcurrants. Investors in the Craigmore Farming Partnership are a mix of private and institutional investors.
The particular structure developed by Craigmore to seek maximum alignment of interest is very uncommon in the wider agricultural industry, which is unique in farmland funds. We work in a culture that is based on continuous improvement. Farming can be a lonely business, and we provide a very high degree of support to our farming team which enables them to share the best practice, learn from others, and improve performance in an environment that encourages innovation and the sharing of ideas.
We buy and manage farms in sectors, for which New Zealand has a local, regional or global competitive advantage. We secure high quality assets, which are not performing to their full potential, and invest in delivering that potential. And we align the interests of investors, Craigmore and our senior operational managers through equity participation.
Farming is a particularly heterogeneous industry, where each farm is unique facing individual challenges. In this environment, daily decisions have to be made on the farm not in the Head Office. Our Head Office team provide information and support functions to farm managers, while giving them delegated authority to make and own the daily operational decisions.
Most of our investors are new to farmland investing and unfamiliar with the details of operational agriculture. Therefore, we seek to keep them very well informed about the day to day activities on farm, with regular limited partner updates, as well as the normal quarterly reports. Our aim is to be responsive to investor queries and to keep them well briefed about the industry in which they have invested.
Lower commodity prices have placed the industry under a degree of pressure. However, this has highlighted the competitive advantage enjoyed by the best operators in a low cost environment. We are close to First Close for a second New Zealand farming fund – Craigmore Dairy Partnership II, and are in early development of a Permanent Crop strategy across the major permanent crops in New Zealand. In terms of the award, we appreciate the recognition of our achievements in a sector which is new to many investors. Sectors which are unfamiliar are, understandably, treated with a degree of caution, and recognition of our success is a very useful validation.
Agriculture is an unusual industry, with a high degree of daily change against a slow moving physical and commercial backdrop. Operational farm management requires very intensive attention to detail on a daily basis. An old industry saying is that “Successful farm management is about making 20 small decisions every day – and getting 19 right”. However, tools which collect and analyse information to assist daily decision making are becoming increasingly common, and farmers in New Zealand are among the early adopters of the most useful new technologies.
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Company: Delta Capital Name: Greg W. Ye, Managing Partner Email: greg@delta-capital.cn Web Address: www.delta-capital.cn
Best Chinese Growth Fund
Delta Capital is a leading growth equity investment firm in China, managing funds for institutional and individual LPs both from China and beyond. Over the last five years, they have managed three funds with total asset around USD 300 mm, and have delivered average gross IRR over 25%. With these results, they have been consistently named top growth equity fund managers in China by various industry research firms in China. We got in touch with Greg Ye, Founder and Managing Partner at Delta Capital, to speak about their success and more. When working on a fund, there are a number of considerations we keep in mind. Firstly, we leverage the firm’s strong reputation and the partners’ extensive network to broaden the deal sourcing channel. To control risk, we implement and continuously strengthen a rigorous screening and due diligence process. We are also proactive in post investment monitoring and providing value added services to ensure each portfolio company deliver on their business plan and growth target. Lastly but certainly not the least, we recruit, train and retain the best talents in the industry to build a strong team.
In terms of what makes us unique, we focus on the early growth equity investment strategy as well as insisting on a value investment approach and emphasise post-investment value-added services. Furthermore, we continue to build a professional team with good combination of investment skills and strong operational experience. Through our unique positioning, strong sourcing and value added capability, as well as consistently good track record, we have become the best choice for foreign LPs to participate in the private equity industry in China, with consistently high returns and low volatility over the last five years.
When working on limited partnerships, our philosophy relies on three key pillars. Firstly, we strive to deliver the best returns in the industry. Secondly, we are both transparent and proactive in our communications. And thirdly, we cherish and foster a long term relationship built on trust.
We are very proud of the success we have achieved so far and it is a true honour for us to receive this award. Awards such as these are very important and particularly to the private equity industry in China in general. Recognition such as this will help overseas investors to find great fund managers in China, and hopefully add to our client base.
My partners and I try our best to lead by example, and endeavour to be proactive in coaching our younger professionals. We think it’s also very important to encourage open communication throughout the organisation. We have a strong entrepreneurial culture, yet we are very systematic in terms of investment process and risk management, and we believe that this combination has been key to Delta’s success so far.
Looking towards 2016 and beyond, the future of Delta Capital looks very bright indeed. We intend to promote our brand name to a broader set of international LPs, and grow our LP base to capture numerous opportunities to China.
Achieving success is an ongoing process and we promote a learning culture within the organisation that encourages everybody to keep an open mind in following industry trends and learning new industry developments. We also leverage our broad network within the investment and entrepreneurial community to closely follow the latest trends in our target investment sectors. One of the main trends in our industry that we currently have our eyes on is that the industry is starting to see consolidation, and only firms with unique strength can survive and grow. In this environment, entrepreneurs demand investors with strong value added capability. Another emerging trend is that In spite of volatility in the stock market, exit channels are becoming better and better
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Earth Capital Partners Email: info@earthcp.com Web: www.earthcp.com Address: Earth Capital Partners LLP, 3rd Floor, 34 St James’s Street, London, SW1A 1HD Telephone: : 020 7811 4500
Best for Sustainable Asset Management - UK
Earth Capital Partners ECP is a part of SET3, which is a platform that supports investment into sustainable projects and businesses. This includes renewable energy, energy efficiency, agriculture, logistics and clean technology. We provide our investors with an attractive financial return, but also clearly expressed and identified social and environmental returns.
What makes us unique is our approach to sustainability at a financial level, a social level and from an environmental perspective. Our analysis combines normal financial investment practice with rigorous measurement of the social and environmental impacts of our actions before and during the time of our investment. We also support our investments in improving this performance over time.
Sustainable asset management is a new sector with significant growth and risk adjusted return opportunities, with clear demand from investors. The sector is at an early stage of development, driven by a range of stakeholders from politics and non-governmental organisations to consumers, science, industry and finance. Key factors include: • • •
In terms of our clients, we primarily work for corporations and sovereign wealth funds. Other investors include pension funds, family offices and development banks.
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Our goal is to provide access for our clients to high quality investments whilst also meeting local goals for economic growth and betterment.
Concerns over energy, food and water security Climate change Increased investor interest in the environmental, social and governance performance of their investments Increasing cost of fossil fuels Increasing cost of a full range of raw materials and soft commodities and the emergence of ‘circular economy’ technologies and business models Significant underinvestment in sustainable infrastructure Government policies and related financial incentives The falling cost associated with maturing sustainable asset technology options
Our biggest challenge at the present period to both educate and inform clients that it is possible to make sound sustainable investment decisions without compromising targeted returns.
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This philosophy of sustainable development is at the heart of the ECP investment model. In responding to increased investor demand for transparent, sustainable investment products, ECP has developed the Earth Dividend TM - an annual reported measure of the contribution investments make to sustainable development.
The importance of climate change and food, energy and water security is now recognised by policy makers worldwide. With our strategy, we support these developments as well as providing attractive returns for our investors.
ECP is focussed towards renewable energy infrastructure which includes both clean technology venture and expansion capital as well as sustainable timberland. Our investors participate via funds, or managed accounts which invest in all or a sub-set of funds or specific assets. We offer access to institutional investment vehicles in the sustainable asset sector. We facilitate capital flows between investors and asset owners and developers as investment adviser to a range of funds and investment structures. These investment products create value by building, managing and growing sustainable assets.
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Company: GNE Management Email: info@gnemanagement.com Web Address: www.gnemanagement.com Address: 9 Bennett Ct, Marlboro, NJ 07746 Telephone: 732-851-3525
Best Trading Program - S&P Futures and Options Strategies & Best for Actively Managed Futures Accounts - USA
GNE Management GNE Management, LLC is a commodities trading advisor (CTA) specializing in trading S&P futures and options contracts on behalf of clients in managed futures accounts or a commodities pool. They are registered with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a CTA and is a member of the National Futures Association (NFA). We got in touch with Michael Reznick, Founder and Managing Member of GNE Management, to find out more. • •
From our experience, a client would normally open an account with a futures broker of their choice and allow GNE to trade on this account on their behalf. Since all accounts are separate, a perspective client has an opportunity to tailor the leverage, risk parameter and even some aspects of the trading strategy to their individual investment goals, risk tolerance or diversification strategy.
At GNE Management, client service is of the utmost importance to us. We want our customers to be able to sleep well knowing that their money is well managed. Unlike hedge funds, customers in managed futures accounts have full visibility into daily trading activity. As such we have to be a lot more engaged with our customers, especially when markets are volatile. We have to understand their goals, fears and frequently be their trusted advisor to ensure that they don’t get hurt jumping off the train before it arrives at its destination. Client service is not just something we do, it is the reason why we exist.
The manage futures industry is very similar to hedge fund industry where seasoned professionals manage funds on behalf of customers trying to earn above average returns or achieve specific diversification goals. The main difference is that unlike a hedge funds, managed futures accounts are independently owned by each customer.
Our primary goal is to manage our client’s funds the way we would have liked our own money to be managed. Trading performance is irrelevant if one is so stressed out by the process that it becomes impossible to enjoy it. We strongly believe that an educated customer is a happy customer. We ensure that they understand how our strategy works, where the pitfalls are and how it fits with their overall financial goals.
As such there many advantages in opening a managed futures account vs participation in a hedge fund. They include: • The managed futures industry is regulated by CFTC and participants have to pass proficiency certification and comply with various rules designed to protect an investor. • The trading is done in predefined (in a disclosure document) extremely liquid instruments traded on the commodities or futures exchanges (we trade on Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)) with daily settlements. • Clients have full access to daily records provided by their broker, as such these accounts offer full transparency. Clients can review advisor’s trades daily to ensure that trading on their account does not deviate from advisor’s trading approach documented in the disclosure document and agreed on by the client. • Clients can enjoy daily liquidity, the ability to add / withdraw funds and even close their account with limited notice to an advisor (we offer ability to close an account with 24 hour notice). There are no lock outs. • Transfer of funds is limited between the client and the broker. Advisors do not have access to a client’s funds on the account for any purpose other than trading of those funds using predefined trading instruments.
Catering to our clients’’ needs is something we constantly work on, and because markets are changing all the time, trading futures and options on futures is an on-going learning process. Nevertheless, our underlining trading and risk management philosophy does not change, and it is rather the tools and techniques that change continuously as we learn new things and better technology becomes available. We constantly collaborate with other professionals in our field to ensure that we can test many new ideas as they become available, even though most of them are not adopted into our strategy. As for the award, we are honoured to be recognized, and we believe the reason behind our successes is our trading approach. Investing my own funds and working on a hedge fund in 2008 has taught me an expensive, but valuable lesson that diversification across asset classes does not work in a market crash environment. This is something I experienced personally, when all asset classes collapsed at the same time during the fall of 2008. I spent the next two years studying market behaviour during significantly volatile conditions to identify trading approach that will first withstand significant volatility spikes, and second benefit from them.
From our perspective, getting a fund to perform to its full potential is all about risk management. We strongly believe that we can frequently achieve above average risk adjusted returns providing that an impact from a once in a while statistical outlier event does not cause irreparable damage. We manage risk in a variety of ways, and they include: • •
Max loss exit parameters. Perfectly negatively correlated trading strategies.
With this unpredictability of the markets in mind, we never pretend to know what the future holds. As traders, we build the strategy for the long term and then concentrate on day-to-day implementation. Our client focus ensures that we continue to improve our trading techniques. In the long run successes of our customers will build and maintain our own success.
Limiting entry parameters to filter out trades with lower probability of success. Position sizing. We enter every trade with the end in mind. Our position is sized such that providing the worst possible outcome the loss sustained on the position will not exceed a predefined loss parameter. 47
Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Fundadministration, Inc Address: 4175 Veterans Memorial Hwy., Suite 204, Ronkonkoma, New York 11779 Telephone: (631) 737-4500 Fax: (631) 737-4513 Email: info@fundadministration.com Web: www.fundadministration.com
Best Hedge Fund Administrator
Fundadministration, Inc. Not just a service provider, Fundadministration acts as a service partner to the finance industry. We spoke to Denise DePaola, Chief Executive Officer at the company, and Nick Neri, Chief Operating Officer, to find out more.
Fundadministration was founded in 1999, and is a premier fund administrator. They have clients in the United States of America and across the world. Furthermore, they have a group of seasoned and trained professionals, where everybody within the company has on average 20 years industry experience and has been with the firm over 7 years.
Alongside their high level of expertise, the structure of the firm is something that really benefits their clients. “In being privately owned, there’s not a lot of layers of complexity and therefore we‘re able to service our clients much better than anyone else,” says DePaola. “If you deal with a big firm, there’s a department for this, a department for that, and the person who brought your account in never sees you again.” “We are so closely knit that it does not take three days to get our clients an answer because we don t have to go through four levels of leadership to get them a response. If someone says that their fund is not doing so well, or the fees are too much and they need to regroup, I can make that decision right there and then on the phone. We can do these type of things without it being a big ordeal.”
“I would say that the key thing behind our company is our people, and our technology,” says DePaola. “Our technology is very sophisticated, as we have a fully integrated platform where we can handle front, middle and back office functions for our clients in a single system, so we’re not welding different platforms together. As a result, we can turn things around pretty quickly, and it helps that we have no turnover of staff.”
Another differentiating factor is the flexibility of the firm, which Neri believes allows them to maneuver more quickly when needed. “We can be exceptionally nimble, so when adjustments or changes need to be made, and when we have conversations with our investment managers, we’re able to implement changes very quickly.”
With the level of experience and expertise at the firm, this allows the company to provide a diverse range of services for their clients. “We not only service different structures but all different types of asset classes as well,” explains DePaola. “Many of the fund administrators you find are good at long/short equities or something specific, but we’re good at almost everything. Our greatest area of expertise is foreign exchange, commodities, futures, and we are also getting into different asset classes like FinTech funds, credit funds, bond funds, fixed income and many more. Other firms might shy away from these asset classes, but we have no problem handling any of them.”
Fundadministration believes that this award is a testament to the success they have built and maintained over the past decade, and will drive them onto even greater heights in the future. “It’s a great accomplishment,” says Neri. “It really talks about what we’ve done over the past several years to get to this point, and being able to provide and source not only outstanding associates, but to train them appropriately and provide world class service regardless of our size and the scope of the engagement.”
“Although there’s nobody at our firm that knows absolutely everything, within our team there will be someone who will know what is required. With my auditing background, I know what the auditors are looking for, how to value things and simply know what’s acceptable and what is not. So when we’re bringing on engagements, I know the risks involved already by way of my background, where other firms might not, and would be afraid of what they’re getting involved with.”
Speaking about the award, DePaola added: “For me, I spent the last ten years building this brand and we finally feel like we’re accomplished and we’re where we want to be. We have the technology, we have the people and we have the infrastructure. As a result, people are recognizing us and acknowledging our success, and this is something that makes us feel really good.”
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Company: Ice Farm Advisors Name: Justin Hester Email: jhester@icefarmcapital.com Phone: 001 212 202 5624
Best Concentrated Global Macro Fund - Ice Farm Global Master Fund, Ltd
Ice Farm Advisors Ice Farm Advisors, LP was formed on December 23, 2013 as the Investment Advisor for the Ice Farm Global Master Fund, LTD (the “Fund”). The fund is a concentrated discretionary global macro fund that utilizes cross-asset expertise as a fundamental tenet of its portfolio construction. The investment approach is predicated on top-down analysis, focused on identifying secular trends, while utilizing the information content of derivative markets to capture profit opportunities emerging from regulatory, business cycle or market events. We got in touch with Justin Hester, Chief Financial Officer at Ice Farm Advisors, to find out more.
the discipline to do this, and investors have responded very positively to having that level of access to our thought process.
Our view is that the greatest secular opportunities will be created by the unique demographic shifts occurring over the next three decades and their impact on economic performance and macroeconomic policy. Our goal is always to identify the non-economic buyers and sellers of assets, to understand the structural drivers of behavior and to construct high return, risk mitigated trades to efficiently capture the available returns. This will often lead us to invest in a contrarian style, but that is an output rather than a goal of the investment process.
As an organization, while bound by the high intensity of a young firm, we strive for balance. While the majority of our team is from the Millennial generation, both Mike and I have families and it’s important to communicate both through words and actions the importance of a life outside of work. In fact, the name “Ice Farm” derives from Mike’s vacation property – a 19th century ice harvesting operation in Pennsylvania where he goes to unwind from the stress of markets and NYC. To facilitate communication, in addition to the daily thoughts shared by Mike with research, we start each week with a full team meeting for personal updates, to update investment ideas for the past week, thoughts for the current week, and collaborate to see what the best way to trade those ideas are.
Our research process is unique and scalable; generating both proprietary economic, industry and company research in part derived from derivative pricing that allows for the generation of actionable investment ideas. This approach was developed by Michael Green over the last 15 years while acting as portfolio manager at Canyon Partners LLC and other institutions.
In our industry, it is our hope and goal to stay ahead of what everyone else is doing. From our perspective, the largest barrier to entry for a new hedge fund manager is back office operations and compliance. With that we have invested in building an institutional back office through staff and service providers and brought on significant compliance assistance to try and keep up with regulators.
Currently, our client base is primarily United States based high net worth investors, endowments, family trusts, and fund of funds. We have also been marketing outside of the US and are optimistic about our potential globally. Our philosophy behind client service is simple: we work with each client to ensure all their questions are always answered – transparency in approach and process. As a newer fund it’s imperative that we clearly communicate our differentiated approach to macro. Our CIO, Michael Green, has a background in software (he previously co-founded and sold a software company in the 1990s). He describes writing as “an algorithm for structuring his thoughts” and daily sends out a written analysis of current macro events that we compile and send out as a weekly update on Sunday morning to our investors. Few other managers have
In terms of major trends, we are seeing increased regulation and due diligence by investors. Investors no longer want to know only about our trading and track record, but are much more interested in all aspects of the business. We are pleased to have our progress recognized. Our focus continues to be on delivering superior investment performance and growing our capabilities. We look forward to anticipated capital inflows which will give us the opportunity to add to our headcount at the start of 2016.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Wellian Investment Solutions Name: Alan Durrant – Chief Executive Officer Email: sales@wellian-is.com Web Address: www.wellian-is.com Address: The Garden Suite, 77 Mount Ephraim, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN4 8BS Telephone: 01892 550600
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Best Aggressive Portfolio
Harwood Capital Harwood Capital is a rapidly expanding asset management business that offers clients a multitude of ways to access our fund of fund portfolios. They manage two unit trusts (Discovery Balanced, Discovery Managed Growth) a series of model portfolios (actively and passively managed), white labelled OEICs and bespoke models. They also offer consultancy services to financial advisers as well as their bespoke “In-Sourced Investment Director” facility as well. Their CEO, Alan Durrant, was at hand to speak about their thriving business.
When we look at a fund, we see it from a number of angles. Of course, we see if the investment approach undertaken by the fund manager stands up to the scrutiny of our investment team due diligence. However, we also look to see if the fund has the ability to operate within the portfolio as a part of the whole. By employing proprietary screens known as SEMAFOUR and Portcullis, we can see if the fund can add value as a part of the portfolio as well as on its own. These screens help us filter the more consistent funds to choose from. We are willing to devote time to understand how a fund will work with the other portfolio holdings and potentially forgive shorter-term underperformance to gain longer-term outperformance.
is easier to lose a client than gain one, so we look to hold onto the ones we have and not give them the desire to want to look elsewhere. Two important lessons we have learned from our experience is that no two markets are the same and no two days are the same either. Regulation is constantly evolving, and the demands on our time change like the direction of the wind. If you are not moving forward you are standing still, and our investment team is very experienced and in constant contact with the fund management profession. They have worked for large and small companies and both managed and overseen several billion pounds in their careers in a number of different geographical locations for private clients, retail funds and institutional mandates. Our “little black books” are extensive; we know we work in a service industry and that means both up and down the chain.
We are different in a number of ways. We have developed unique tools to assist us in the portfolio construction and filtering of funds so we can spend quality time doing in-depth due diligence on managers whom we believe have the ability to add value to our clients. Also, we focus our approach on risk management. We believe that if you fix your asset allocation then you must be prepared to accept variable volatility. We would rather fix the volatility and accept variable asset allocation and this means our clients gain a greater understanding for why we increase or reduce exposure to certain assets, asset classes or managers for instance.
The past year (from a front office point of view) has been very much about the unwinding of quantitative easing (QE) in the US and UK and how this will impact the capital markets of the world. QE has distorted the equity and debt markets for many a year and as we get closer to economic cycles normalising and interest rates rising, the management of the transition will be both interesting and to a certain degree painful. From a corporate perspective, regulatory change always have to take the top spot.
By undertaking this approach we differentiate ourselves from our competitors. Markets are volatile by their nature and our unique tools also assist us in creating diversity across the markets whilst still maintaining risk control forcing us to make changes when the pre-defined guidelines dictate.
As for the award, it is a wonderful honour to be awarded “Best Aggressive Portfolio” in the 2015 Fund Awards and a great message to highlight to both existing and potential clients that we have the ability to deliver portfolios that are independently recognised as worthy of such praise. The main thing we strive for is to provide clients with high quality portfolios that are broadly diversified, risk controlled and forward looking. We are successful because we care about our clients, we communicate with them and we offer a first rate service.
Furthermore, we are a young, vibrant and dynamic business operating in a complex profession where challenge and change is ever pervading. To stay on top of all the developments you have to stay focussed and nimble whilst offering a first rate service. We purposefully keep our costs under control and delegate responsibility and accountability throughout the company so every individual feels wanted as well as valued in the smooth operation of the business. This is not a nine to five profession. These are not nine to five jobs, but ones where real decisions can make the difference between a happy retirement or a few extra years in the workplace. As a result, this is something we don’t take lightly, and are constantly striving for better results in every aspect of the company.
To win any award is a sign that the services we provide meet exacting standards and is something to both strive for and be proud of. It shows our clients, peers and competitors that we have the ability to compete in an incredibly complex market and our approach and philosophy to portfolio construction stands up against the rigours of dynamic markets. We have grown our business successfully in the past both organically and through acquisition and this approach is unlikely to change in the future. With ongoing regulatory change and compliance becoming an even larger part of the cost base, the profession is likely to see further consolidation. Our business plans to continue to offer first rate service, continue our communication, deliver products and services that our clients are happy to buy/own and build upon our standing in the market place.
The financial services sector demands a high standard of service and is something we take pride in delivering every time. This is achieved in a number of ways. Firstly, having a happy, professional and driven workforce who are proud of what they do is essential. Secondly, investing in quality tools to make their work better helps. Finally, we also like to frequently communicate with our clients as we know dealing with an individual’s financial assets is an incredibly emotive subject. We know it
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: HB Sconyers and Company, owner of HBS Multifamily Managers, LLC Name: H. Brian Sconyers Email:Bsconyers@hbsconyers.com Web Address: www.HBSMultifamily.com Address: 201 Fifth Ave South Franklin, Tennessee 37064 Telephone: 1-615-595-5836
Best US Student Housing Fund
HB Sconyers is the management company for HBS Multifamily Managers’ student housing businesses. They service their clients by building their investment pipeline, and negotiating all purchases and sales of assets. Primarily, they manage the day-to-day operations of the companies, customer relations, marketing outreach, as well as working with their partners so that they have a full understanding of their companies. We spoke to them to find out more.
Our company embraces the old adage: “Invest in what you know.” One of the first decisions our company’s founders made was that we were to focus on the South-eastern United States. This region has seen, and continues to see, unprecedented growth. Immediately following our founding, we set out to the university markets in this region to begin identifying properties we wanted, building relationships with universities and developers, identifying potential hazards and risks, and, finally, building a classification system with which we could compare like properties of completely different style, size and price. This system allows us to know where the prime assets are, who has them, and which properties will best fit in our portfolio.
in every meeting to discuss every detail of our investments. Additionally, investor reports are sent monthly. Over the past nine years we have seen unprecedented new money moving into our space. We saw new construction in 2013 of over 60,000 new beds delivered to the market. That was the first time the market had ever crossed the 50,000 bed plateau, and, as a greater comparison, prior to 1999 we had not seen more than 20,000 new beds in a single year. Furthermore, we saw more than 60,000 again in 2014. Though the last 12 months have slowed down considerably from the high in 2014, we are still much higher than our national average. There is a great deal of money and building still going on in student housing this year, and, though it will be fun to compare returns at some point in the future with many of these new players, they are making it difficult to make responsible investments for a long term investor.
Our company believes that the best culture is one where everyone clearly sees the company’s goal and has the same incentive to achieve that goal. Every person working with our student housing company to date is a partner, they are all very clear on what is needed to be successful and they are never surprised by new agendas. And, mostly, we all share in the results.
Due to our planning, and the work we have put in throughout the Southeast, our acquisition strategy is still very successful. Our company will continue to be a buyer of property, in the right situations, for the next 20 to 30 months. We will also spend that time streamlining the businesses in our portfolio. Following that point, we will make the decision of how to best exit the investment. That could include a public offering, a roll up to a larger company, or simply to be long term owners of the portfolio. There are many good developers and operators in our space, so be considered one of the best of the best company in the student housing space is a great honour. Our industry has grown so much in the past 10 years, it is hard to keep up with all the new companies and all the new areas of focus. I feel that one reason we continue to be successful is we never get distracted from what we do well. Our team is very focused and very disciplined. Also, it helps that we are a small private company, and we are still in a position to move quickly.
Performance of our company depends on constant management of many moving parts. First, we find and employ the very best people to oversee each area. These people are made partners in the company so that we have aligned their interests and those of other partners completely. From there we closely manage every detail from day-to-day management to marketing to construction of our property pipeline. All members of this senior team make up the oversight boards of each department. This has created a system of teamwork that keeps everyone accountable and very attentive of each duty being performed at any time. I firmly believe that client service is an area where we can all be better. We have taken a different approach with our clients, where they are truly looked at as partners. Either themselves or a representative is present
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Company: Incrementum AG Name: Ronald-Peter Stoeferle Email: rps@incrementum.li; mjv@incrementum.li Web Address: www.incrementum.li Address: Landstrasse 1, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Best Owner - Managed Asset Manager
Incrementum AG Liechtenstein is an asset management company founded in 2013 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. As independence is a cornerstone of their philosophy, the company is one hundred percent owned by its partners. They have no affiliations with any banking institutions, which enables them to implement their investment strategies autonomously. We spoke to Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Managing Partner and Investment Manager at Incrementum AG, about how their independence works to the advantage of both themselves and their clients. As a boutique player with lean hierarchies, we are able to execute our strategies and respond to regime changes swiftly. Our partners practice what they preach, and all of our partners are invested in the funds they manage. Incrementum AG’s partners are highly qualified and have over 140 years’ of combined banking experience. Prior to joining the company, the partners held positions at UBS, Lombard Odier, Darier Hentsch & Cie., Bank Leu, Pictet & Cie., Bank Sal. Oppenheim, Merrill Lynch and Société Générale.
100% focused on the management of investment funds and do not offer private banking services. This renders things rather easier on the regulatory front compared to the especially demanding compliance tasks with which one is confronted in the private wealth management space. In our view, we are entering an environment of an increasingly unstable global financial architecture. The current FIAT-money system has led to huge distortions of capital allocation and enabled governments to engage in reckless spending sprees. The artificial price fixing of interest rates has lead to malinvestments on a grand scale and among others to a gigantic debt bubble. Going forward we will witness - and in fact we have already begun witnessing – much extremer waves of deflation and in inflation than during the past 30 years.
We are in the comfortable situation that our clients very much understand the way we view the current state of the world, which is a world of extreme distortion and potential systemic risks. Asset prices have become highly inflated as a consequence of the creation of tremendous amounts of fiat money. However, we have yet to see the consumer price inflation that ensues such money creation. In our view, the art is to set up a portfolio in such a way that one is prepared for a paradigm shift in the markets, that will occur as a by-product of rising consumer price inflation. As a result, we are very flexible with our exposure towards financial assets including stocks, bonds and inflation-sensitive assets. Within the current paradigm, financial assets are temporarily benefiting the most from the monetary experiments that are being conducted by the world’s central banks. This will fundamentally change once the monetary inflation results in consumer price inflation. In our view, this poses the greatest risk for conventional ‘balanced portfolios’.
As for our philosophy, our views are heavily influenced by the Austrian School of Economics as well as by Complexity Theory. Both disciplines are seldomly taught at mainstream universities today. We have written extensively in our research notes and published a book on this topic (Austrian School for Investors). Consequently we are now launching our own multi asset strategy combining assets in a way that is more robust to the extremer scenarios which we are anticipating. This strategy will include strategic allocations in equities, commodities, managed futures and even some fixed income.
As an owner-managed boutique, this enables us to conduct completely unbiased analysis of the state of affairs and allows us to communicate our thoughts very concisely. This is extremely important for us as our views are often considered non-mainstream and out of the box. Within the coming five years, we expect our business to grow incrementally, however, we will remain independent because this is a critical factor for us as company.
We are a company that is committed to transparency, which means our fee structures are clear, transparent and easy to understand. We do not solicit or accept any hidden fees. Any and all fees offered to us by 3rd party providers are credited directly to the fund and thus to our investors. Moreover, our team of fund managers believes that the funds we manage are unique and that they will grow as expected, and are hence invested in each of the funds they manage.
In order to be one step ahead and early in a trend, we believe that it is important to avoid the daily chatter and noise while conducting our research and to concentrate on the fundamentals. In doing so, we avoid investing in “vogue” trends that are often short-lived.
We have maintained a strong work ethic over the past 12 months and are certain that this is why we have won this award. We are very proud about this great honour, and it’s a confirmation that our boutique approach that combines unconventional thinking with state of the art asset management skills is really unique. We evaluate all our investments not only from a global economy perspective but taking the current state of the global monetary regime into account. This analysis produces what we consider a truly holistic view of the state of financial markets.
The constantly changing regulatory regime is a challenge and a burden for the entire asset and wealth management industry. However, as a boutique player in this industry, we are very happy with the strategic decision we took: we are 53
Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Ivy Realty Email: contactCT@ivy-realty.com Web Address: www.ivy-realty.com Address: 35 Field Point Road Greenwich, CT 06830
Best for Non - Core Value - Add Office Assets Acquisitions
Ivy Realty Ivy Realty was founded in 1996 to acquire commercial real estate in the North-eastern United States and later expanded into South-eastern Florida. Since our inception, we have built a reputation as one of the finest real estate operators in the market having acquired over $1.5 billion and 11 million SF in commercial real estate assets. We employ a patient and focused investment strategy concentrating in areas where we have superior market knowledge and value-added relationships. This focus enables our operating company to uncover and create value at the asset level. Our “on the ground” presence is essential in enabling us to consistently outperform the macro market and deliver superior returns to our investors.
focused approach. Furthermore, we believe that Integrity, dedication and professionalism form the basis of successful investing. Ivy has dedicated itself to its core beliefs and the result has been consistent and outstanding performance. We hold steadfast to our core beliefs and approach the future with the same dedication, integrity and passion. Our investment strategy is based on three main principle: buy right, stabilize and maximize value and sell right. In terms of buying right, we acquire non-core value-add office assets from $10mm to $50mm focused on established markets in the Northeast Corridor and opportunistically in Southeast Florida. As for stabilizing and maximizing value, we execute our business plan with an established and successful operating platform. With regards to selling right, we obtain the highest sale price by selling stabilized assets to core investors.
In 1996, Ivy Realty’s co-founders, Anthony P. DiTommaso, Jr. and Russell F. Warren, Jr., set forth certain core beliefs which formed the foundation for Ivy Realty. “Your interests Aligned with Ours”, Ivy’s original mantra, recognizes the importance of aligning the firm’s interest with its investors. In a world of “other people’s money”, Ivy invests a significant amount of its own capital in all of its investments, side by side with its investors. We have strong operating capabilities combined with fully developed market relationships which are essential in creating value at the asset level. We understand that deep value investing requires a patient and
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Company: Laureola Advisors Email: info@LaureolaAdvisors.com Web Address: www.laureolaadvisors.com Address: 30 de Castro Street Road Town British Virgin Islands VG1110
Best Credit Investor - Europe
LAUREOLA INVESTMENT FUND: Dedicated to Life Settlements
The fund, regulated by The Bermuda Monetary Authority offers an Investment minimum of $100,000, with follow up investment of $25,000.
The news has recently been negative from equity markets around the world. The S&P 500 was down another 2%, the FTSE All-World Index in now at a two year low, and the FTSE Emerging Index is down 21% in the past three months.
The insurance companies are opposing the regulation, but, if it passes, Georgia will be the 8th State to make Life Settlement Consumer Disclosure compulsory, which both protects consumers and increases the supply of attractive policies for investors.
Most Hedge Funds also lost money, with some of the more popular examples down the most. Greenlight Capital ($11bn per aum) was down 17% in September; Third Point ($17bn per aum) was down 4% for the month; Pershing Square ($14bn per aum) was down double digits over the summer. Overall, the industry had its worst month since the 2008 crisis.
The Fund gained 0.8% in September and is up 17.0% ytd, surpassing the target return of 15%, as it has in every year since inception. Double digit performance, combined with moderate risk, is an attractive combination that most investors will find acceptable. The added bonus with the Laureola Fund is that their investors have enjoyed this risk/ return combination in 2015, when most other Funds lost money.
There does not appear to be much “hedge” in most Hedge Funds, nor much “alternative” in most Alternative Funds. While investors must be resigned to losing money on their stock portfolios when markets decline, they have been promised some combination of absolute returns, non-correlation, and superior risk control from Hedge Funds, making these losses even harder to swallow.
The Fund continues to attract capital, and the Investment Advisors have been able to put this capital to work buying some very attractive assets. Three more policies were added in September, bringing the total number currently held to 27. The future value of the assets is now $15ml, five times the current value of $3ml. The Fund has more cash to invest, and will continue to be selective. The purchase of each policy is an extensive process that takes weeks from beginning to end, and sometimes months. This long and often inefficient process can at times be frustrating for both investors and asset managers, but it does provide important benefits: it keeps the more speculative capital and the “big players” out of the game, thereby protecting future returns.
Independent investors looking for a genuinely alternative source of returns - in a truly non-correlated asset class - are increasingly allocating to Life Settlements such as the Laureola Investment Fund. This is because the Life Settlement markets are still healthy, with increasing support from US legislators.
The Laureola Fund continues to be an attractive option for investors with a 3 year time horizon. It has the proven ability to generate double digit returns, and to do it when others can’t, with the fund’s investors able to look forward to many years of stable returns.
AAP reported an increase in the average IRR last month, although much of the increase was due to a different mix of polices than usual. The IRR was 20%, up from 17%. While this appears to be a significant difference, it must be seen in the context that it is only an average; policies regularly trade in a wide range between 12% and 25%. The Georgia State Legislature has introduced “Consumer Disclosure” legislation which would force Life Insurance companies to inform their customers of the option of Settling their unwanted and unneeded policies.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: LCM Partners Ltd Name: Paul Burdell Email: PaulBurdell@lcmpartners.eu Web Address: www.lcmpartners.eu
Best Credit Investor - Europe
LCM Partners LCM Partners is an alternative investment fund manager which specialises in buying credit and unlocking value from its portfolios through active portfolio work-out. By providing access to wholesale credit markets through the purchase of performing, semi-performing and non-performing loans in a fund structure, LCM has now opened up this market to institutional investors. Investing in 2000 portfolios of loans since 1999 and with eight offices across Europe, providing on the ground origination capability, LCM is uniquely placed to offer the institutional marketplace scalability through its Luxembourg domiciled fund range. LCM Partners has an interesting history in that we began life as a balance sheet investor sixteen years ago. While the investment team has worked together since the early days and we have had third party institutional investors for 10 years, June 2014 saw the launch of our investment strategy in a fund format via LCM Partners’ Credit Opportunities Strategy. A year on and we are fundraising for our third close, within the LCM Credit Opportunities Strategy, which will be a commingled fund.
a straight look through to individual loans to enable truly active portfolio management. It also ensures that social governance, which is a cornerstone of the LCM approach, is clearly monitored and adhered to. This is a unique advantage when compared to investment houses which have recently entered this investment space. Financial technology solutions are extremely important to the success of our portfolios and to the fund’s overall performance. Our proprietary in-house application (LDMS) has been built specifically for our needs and is used in every local office and manages the tracking of the underlying portfolios and indeed the underlying customers. This application provides LCM a distinct competitive edge and allows us to invest in a broad range of difficult loan portfolios where value may be harder to unlock. Staying at the forefront of Fin Tech is at the heart of LCM’s current and future success and enables us to offer greater upside reward to our investors.
With a sixteen year track record delivering an unleveraged average 14.4% IRR through all market cycles, including the Global Financial Crisis, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and more recently the repercussions felt from China, LCM is proud of the consistency of returns it continues to achieve. This, combined with significant levels of yield, intrinsic to loan repaying portfolios, has created an attractive proposition for pension schemes and other institutional investors looking for capital repayment and yield from their investment portfolios.
We are very pleased at the success of the LCM Credit Opportunities Strategy both in terms of fundraising to date and more importantly in the delivery of returns to our investors. Our immediate priority is closing our commingled fund offering, which is expected to have its first close in December.
The LCM Credit Opportunities Strategy offers numerous ways to unlock potential value from loan portfolios. Firstly, the range of assets LCM can invest in cut across the spectrum of performing, semi- performing to non- performing loans. Secondly, these loan types vary from consumer to SME to larger transactions. Thirdly, we have capability across European geographies. These three components together create a breadth of opportunity that is un-paralleled and more importantly for our investors this ensures we are able to source good transactions in all market conditions. This combined with the depth of our investment professionals’ expertise and the quality of static pool data we have built during our sixteen years of investing, provides insight into the underwriting and due diligence process for this asset class that is second to none.
Beyond this, LCM as an entrepreneurial business is always looking for new ways to apply our knowledge to the credit markets. Our investment team typically includes people with investment banking, M&A or accounting experience which gives us a diverse skill base of entrepreneurial individuals who are constantly looking for interesting deals. Indeed, the strength of our sourcing capability has often led to interesting and unusual ventures. For example, we were with Funding Circle at the beginning - providing an outsourced middle and back office. Similarly, we work closely with the European Central Bank and were integral to developing and creating the European DataWarehouse. Our advisory team still work as a special adviser to the ECB on its loan level data initiative.
Indeed it is the multi-faceted nature of the underlying investment portfolios that have ensured that there has never been negative performance in an annual vintage cohort since our launch in 1999; a track record few asset managers can claim. Furthermore, our heritage as a balance sheet buyer means that our business was first and foremost built to buy, on-board, and manage these types of portfolio. Not only do we have a wealth of experience in sourcing and pricing these portfolios, we also have a sister company that has been built to manage the underlying loans and direct customer base within these portfolios. Our loan servicing company provides us with
At LCM we firmly believe that the quality of our people and the continued development of in house expertise will enable us to repeatedly punch above our weight and to develop and lead the credit markets in Europe. We are delighted to have this achievement independently recognised in the 2015 fund awards.
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Company: STI Wealth Management Web: www.stiwealth.com
Best for Wealth Management - Hong Kong
STI Financial Group STI Financial Group (Cayman) (“STI”), founded in 2005, is a fully fledged investment advisory and asset management firm. STI is proud to bring the unique innovation to the market and provide wide range of professional financial services to our valued investors. The rapid expansion of STI during the past few years is propelled by cutting edge technology innovations in our proprietary trading systems.
STI has strong focus on quantitative strategies and quality researches. The dedicated product development team strives to bring the best in the investment universe to our clients. Also, STI provides professional tailor-made investment service and wealth planning solutions to our clients. The company’s motto is “Only the Best (Services) for the Best (Clients).”
vation and investment research will pave our way to success. We strive to drive changes, and to position ourselves as a true pioneer in the alternative investment industry. In terms of our values, we have an uncompromising determination to maintain high ethical and professional standards. Excellence is the single word that expresses everything we do, and our clients receive the only the best when working with us.
STI’s core investment philosophy is based on CPPT (Clients, Products, People and Technologies), which places our valued clients’ interests at the center. STI acknowledges the client relationship as the core asset of the company.
We become a true pioneer in the alternative investment industry by continuous innovations. We firmly believe that meritocracy and diversity are two important values to foster innovation. Advancement depends on merit and we promote diversity; people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Furthermore, we leverage our people at both individual level and as a team, and encourage individual creativity and constantly achieving synergy in teamwork as well.
Our clients have been the building blocks for our continuous growth. Our business is built around our clients, and their concerns are also our concerns. Furthermore, our passion, dedication and expertise are the essence for us to stay in the forefront in this competitive industry. We also believe outstanding client services are delivered by outstanding people, excellent products, and cutting edge technologies. Our seasoned investment professionals listen to the needs of our clients. STI believes that attention to our clients’ needs is essential for providing the right products and services. We at STI strive not only to meet but go beyond our clients’ expectations. At STI we also believe in integrity, honesty, strong ethos, social responsibility and sustainable investing. Globalization brings greater challenges to the financial market. We choose to take an opportunistic view and a proactive stance in the rapidly changing environment, aimed at exploiting the opportunities that come along with the challenges. We embrace changes and with the belief that our dedication and commitment to continuous inno-
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Strattam Capital Name: Adrian Polak Email: info@strattam.com Address: 106 East 6th Street, Suite 900 Austin, Texas 78701
Best for Core Enterprise It And Services Buy Outs
Strattam Capital Strattam Capital is a modern private equity firm that takes an innovative and focused approach to investing in underappreciated companies within the business IT market. We spoke to Adrian Polak, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Strattam Capital.
Bob Morse and I founded Strattam in September of 2013 because we were seeing so many opportunities in the small to mid-sized range that we really felt that we needed a fund with a dedicated focus to maximize the return potential. Many of our historical IT investments had been in the small to mid-sized range and we took the most satisfaction and enjoyment from working with those companies.
equity, often uses the same tools that have been the standard since the industry really took off about 20 years ago. At Strattam, we look to match the challenges presented by a dynamic, growing space with a modern set of investment processes and a really differentiated model that resonates with entrepreneurs. Part of our process is to define the sub-sets of the larger business IT universe where we believe we can have maximum impact, and where we expect to be able to map the entire peer group. We also have to remain current with trends in our sub-sectors, which means we spend a lot of time in the field, and a lot of time talking to key people up and down the customer chain to get a deep understanding of critical buying patterns and levers.
We also felt that by combining the strategy that had made us so successful in our previous investments, which takes a modern, entrepreneurial approach to investing, and combining that with the very disciplined and rigorous processes that have become part of our DNA from our backgrounds at very institutional firms, we’d have a highly differentiated approach that would produce great outcomes for our investors.
We see ourselves as the preferred partner to top management teams, and belive this is a critical part of our edge. The segment that we invest in is huge, and highly fragmented. At the same time, highly skilled and motivated management teams are a scarce resource, so good companies led by great managers tend to be able to pick their partners. We offer more than just capital to the companies we invest in, we offer a roadmap to building our companies into peer group leaders. Not only does that create value on a numerical basis, the challenge is what gets the best CEOs out of bed in the morning.
Our philosophy for managing a fund is distinctly similar to what we look for in a management team. We believe that the people are critical to making the difference between a strong premise and a winning strategy. We’ve assembled a terrific team at Strattam, which combines very strong institutional backgrounds with entrepreneurial mindsets; that combination allows us to be consistent and disciplined, but agile enough to react quickly to changing market dynamics.
Our track record of building value, through up and down cycles, by building leading companies resonates with entrepreneurs and owners, which is a distinct edge. Finally, the focus we’ve developed as specialists has allowed us to successfully invest with conviction across the economic cycle. We believe that ability to deploy and return capital in markets that aren’t always friendly compounds over the long term in a very meaningful way. Sellers recognize who is there for the boom times, and who is there for the long haul.
The next layer is incredibly focused on the business of our business. We recognize that that no one area of our operations is any more or less important than any other. While outstanding returns are the reason we’re here, if the cost is out of control expense ratios, regulatory risk, and poor client relations, we won’t be able to maintain that level of performance for long. We’re faced with a bit of a catch-22: while much of the industry we invest in, business IT, is built to create new and improved tools to solve long-term business problems; the industry we’re actually in, private
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Company: Tactical Global Management Web: www.tgm.com.au Address: 20/10 Eagle St, Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia Phone:+61 7 3239 2777
Best for Rebalancing Overlay Management - Australia
Tactical Global Management Tactical Global Management (TGM) is a specialist manager in the areas of currency, rebalancing overlay management and global tactical asset allocation (GTAA)/global macro. TGM also distributes socially responsible impact investment funds in Australia and New Zealand. TGM’s main office is in Brisbane, and is regulated by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.
TGM offers a range of beta management services including rebalancing and currency overlays and balance sheet management services. The objective of these is to assist clients in the management of their underlying assets and associated cashflows relative to their strategic benchmark.
TGM has recently added a distribution capability for socially responsible impact investing. The first fund to be offered is the Mirabaud Opportunities Emerging Markets Fund. The fund supports the work of Interpeace (www.interpeace.org). At TGM we are committed to excellence in all aspects of our business. Integrity is critical and we act honestly in the best interests of our clients. We invite you to register on our website www.tgm-global.com to learn more about investing with TGM.
TGM is also a leader in the application of global economic and financial market modelling to alpha generation. Using this approach we have successfully been generating alpha for 18 years by exploiting mis-pricings in the global equity, bond and currency markets. To access our alpha strategies, clients can invest via tailored managed accounts.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Best Long Term Performing Credit Fund & Recognised Leader in Cat Bonds and Private Insurance-linked Securities
Company: Twelve Capital Name: Joshua Rosen Email: joshua.rosen@twelvecapital.com Web Address: www.twelvecapital.com Address: 23 Hanover Square, London, W1S 1JB, United Kingdom Telephone: +44 203 693 5265
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Twelve Capital is an independent investment manager with an exclusive focus on insurance investing. Twelve Capital’s investment capabilities range from liquid and private transactions in collateralised reinsurance (Cat Bonds and Private Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS)) to debt (including public debt and private placement bonds). The firm offers access to these comprehensive investment opportunities through fund solutions or tailor-made mandates. Twelve Capital was founded in 2010 and is majority owned by the partners of the firm. Its client based includes public and corporate pension funds, family offices, banks, corporations and fund of funds.
Twelve Capital is a leader in insurance investing and the largest dedicated investor in insurance debt. As Twelve invests a significant amount of assets on behalf of their clients across the balance sheets of insurance and reinsurance entities, they are a major facilitator of financing for these organisations and therefore not only help to drive convergence of (re)insurance and capital markets, but also bridge traditional and alternative investments in the insurance space. Leveraging their dedicated expertise and broad access to investment opportunities supports the team’s constant efforts to extract superior and sustainable risk-adjusted returns for their clients. Working in this industry also presents a number of unique opportunities. Insurance-Linked Securities provide returns with low correlation to wider financial markets, complementing traditional and other alternative assets. In addition, the asset class exhibits favourable characteristics like low duration, contained counterparty risk and unrivalled intra-asset class diversification potential among various perils. As in the traditional space, alpha generation is largely driven by their proprietary analytical capabilities. Despite a challenging market environment, Twelve has enjoyed a considerable amount of success over the past 12 months. First and foremost, the firm has seen strong absolute and relative performance across all portfolios and, on the back of such strong performance generation, they have experienced continued and substantial growth in assets under management. As well as this, Twelve has completed the successful launch of their Insurance Private Debt strategy and the proof of concept and launch of their Best Ideas strategy, which aims to leverage the team’s insurance investing expertise across the whole (re)insurance balance sheet to exploit best relative value in the insurance space. And, of course, winning this award is also substantial recognition for the hard work of the whole Twelve Capital team. They are grateful for the award and very much appreciate the recognition. Such success is only possible thanks to the trust of their clients and the dedication of their highly skilled people. Furthermore, the firm view these successes not only as the result of hard work, but also as a platform to move Twelve Capital forward. Given theirskills-based approach, they continue to expand the team’s capabilities, and through innovation they continue to explore structural inefficiencies in insurance-related assets whilst, at the same time, making these investment opportunities accessible to their investors. At Twelve, they constantly strive to ensure that their firm offers clients the best possible service at all times to enable them to reach their goals. When looking for a firm such as theirs to work with, clients should obtain a clear view of the added-value from partnering with such an asset manager. Specifically, the capabilities of the asset manager and how those are translated into tangible-results should be a key criterion in the selection process. At Twelve Capital, they pride themselves on being exclusively focused on the insurance sector and, as such, they offer innovative and carefully selected investment opportunities yielding systematically attractive returns. Their added value is Twelve’s pool of talent which focuses on generating superior returns for their clients via a multi-pillar, well-governed and repeatable investment process. Agility is particularly important within their industry, given the changes they see occurring over the coming months and years. The overall macro environment is a low-yielding one and, as a result, investors will continue searching for investment managers that are able to deliver superior returns over the next 12 months. For them, this is yet another excellent opportunity to prove to their clients that through Twelve’s unique access in the insurance sector and intellectual capacity, they can achieve such returns in excess of market expectations.
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Wealth & Finance Fund Awards 2015
Company: Whitefield Capital Management Pte Ltd Name: Benjamin Ng Email: Benjamin.ng@whitefield.com.sg Web Address: www.whitefield.com.sg Address: 22 Malacca Street, #04-02, RB Capital Building, S048980 Telephone: (65) 65341978
Best for Equity Markets In Asia Ex Japan - Whitefield Asian Opportunities Fund (WAOF)
Whitefield Capital Management Benjamin Ng started Whitefield in 2000 after 18 years in the investment industry and a couple of years with his family trading company. Benjamin attributes his investment style to his time with the family business which helps him to think like a businessman when he invests. We spoke to him about this mindset and more.
Based in Singapore, Whitefield is a long-only Asia ex-Japan equity boutique. In Whitefield’s investment world there is no stock market index and no esoteric modern financial theories, and everything comes back to basics. Questions such as whether the company has a sustainable business model, or if the company has an attractive asset, or what is the right price to pay for the business or the asset all preoccupy Benjamin and his team. To answer these questions, they scour the Asia ex-Japan universe looking for cheap growth, cheap assets and cheap cashflow.
Whitefield’s clients are mainly institutions including an Asian sovereign wealth fund, wealthy families, charitable trusts and foundations. High net-worth individuals make up a smaller part of the assets under management, and the lion share of the assets is from Europe. Other client domiciles include Asia, Australia and the US. Whitefield’s clients have access to big global asset management firms but chose Whitefield because of its niche investment style. The key to success in investment, in their opinion, is firstly to distinguish between what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘sustainable’. Hot trends (new emerging markets, new technologies, new fashions) attract a lot of investors’ attention often resulting in excessive expectation and over valuation. From their perspective, investors catching hot trends tend to end in tears because such trends do not last.
Whitefield’s hunting ground covers companies of all sizes but the team tends to be biased towards the small and mid-caps. This is primarily because they tend to be overlooked by sell-side research. However, investing in overlooked companies requires lots more work. The team resorts to primary sources of information such as quarterly reports, annual reports, prospectuses, company announcements and chairman statements. It involves painstaking effort to understand how a particular business is run, investigating aspects such as growth drivers, competitive landscape, competitive advantage of the company, cashflow and capital management, corporate governance, risk of the business. Meeting management is not done until the last stage after there has been thorough research on publicly available information.
Rather than trying to be the first to catch nascent trends, Whitefield focuses on sustainable long-term trends. Such trends may not be described as ‘sexy’. To Whitefield a predictable long-term 10% growth rate is preferred to an expected low-conviction 20% growth. This helps Whitefield to avoid unnecessary risk by overpaying for an investment, which is in line with the firm’s bargain-hunting orientation. At the same time, that orientation helps Whitefield to be alerted to ‘bargains’ early enough.
Because of the intensity involved to arrive at an investment idea, the number of names in Whitefield’s portfolio tends to be small. Right now there are only 18 names. Fewer names mean bigger positions, and this makes the team think more thoroughly and critically before investing as well as sharpening the thinking process. In contrast, a 100-stock portfolio means an average 1% position size and one can be lulled into complacency trusting in the law of diversification.
The second key to successful investing for Whitefield is not to try to look for trends in all industries. Instead Whitefield trains its resources on those industries it understands and which possess the moats and characteristics that it likes. Not all businesses are investable and worth researching going by Whitefield’s criteria.
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With a small but experienced team, Whitefield’s key members have been around for a long time. The organisation has a flat, informal structure, and the smallness of the organisation allows for good interaction and discussion. It promotes teamwork not star-performers. That being said, latitude is given to senior team members so as not to stifle creativity.
Clients have been with Whitefield for a long time, some dating back to its incorporation. They are more friends than clients now and many have acted as references for Whitefield’s prospects. For that they are most thankful and satisfied. As for the award, the firm find it encouraging to be recognised. Furthermore, they find it very satisfying to practise what they strongly believe in and see the positive long-term result. Winning this award is a recognition that the long-term, index-agnostic, value-oriented investment approach can work in what is often touted as high-beta Asia-ex Japan equity markets which favour short-term trading investment style. They hope this award can serve as an encouragement to all value-oriented long-term investors in the industry – both managers and clients.
The long stay of senior team members (in an industry where staff turnover tends to be high) is testimony that Whitefield has done something right in terms of management style. Whitefield plans to remain a boutique and operates in a sweet spot that the big boys cannot because of their size. The firm likes working closely with long-term clients who understand and appreciate its long-term investment approach. Without stable money, the style will not work.
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