We are deliberate about flying below the radar and accordingly don’t overtly market the firm as we generally find face-to-face interaction more relevant as personal chemistry is important in developing relationships. We are proud that most of our clients were referred to the firm by existing clients or introduced by a mutually trusted third-party in our network.
Importantly, we don’t have a ‘standard’ offering as each client family makes use of our services in a slightly different manner.
Notwithstanding the above, we believe that by adhering to a guiding framework we ensure that a tailored offering is created for the unique circumstances facing each client:
- Engaging to properly understand existing perspectives on family strategy, governance, lifestyle, wealth management and philanthropic issues
- Leading a discussion around the concept of strategic resource allocation and extracting the priority issues specific to each client
- Understanding a family’s cash flows as the key input to investment risk management
- Helping formulate investment objectives and the resultant asset allocation and investment strategies
- Working with our clients to implement the resulting investment strategy by sourcing, researching, sizing and recommending appropriate investments
- Determining the reporting and infrastructure appropriate to maintain and administer each family’s ‘private investment office’
Our approach is to co-create a portfolio of compelling, risk-adjusted opportunities, across a range of asset classes for our clients that resonate with their individual needs, risk parameters and investment objectives. Our clients give us no discretion (neither do we ask for it) but rather we work, together with each family, as an extension of their internal team where every opportunity is researched, presented and approved prior to execution – in this way we differentiate ourselves from the typical ‘fund manager’ proposition.
A further differentiation from a typical fund manager is that it often takes an extended period for us to get fully invested (as we exercise strategic patience and wait for specific buying opportunities) whereas with a fund manager you are fully invested the moment you deploy your capital and the units in the fund are purchased.
We articulate our core investment principles and philosophies as follows:
- Capital preservation is fundamental – the rationale being that the wealth has already been created (or continues to be supplemented via other wealth creation assets) and thus the predominant focus is on not putting at excessive risk that which has been accumulated.
- Capital allocation is accordingly dependent upon a careful evaluation of the relationship between risk and return.
- A strong absolute value focus – the thinking being that nobody lives off relative returns.
- To ensure that the aggregation risk within the portfolio (the risk attaching to similar economic, competitive or regulatory forces impacting the underlying investments at the same time) is understood and compensated for in the portfolio construction.
- We do not believe in traditional diversification guidelines purely ‘for diversification sake’ but prefer rather to ensure that aggregation risk is managed by avoiding or minimising exposure to speculative excesses or bubbles and ensuring each constituent investment is compelling in its own right – all the time remaining cognisant of the underlying asset class exposures and any associated aggregation risk.
- To deliver a compound rate of return over time commensurate with each client’s risk / reward appetite.
