Values & Beliefs
Values & Beliefs
Business Principles
Excellence in investing
This is our most important aspiration and it is what clients come to us for. In our view, value-for-money considerations based on deep fundamental insights and occasional periods of investor irrationality are the main sources of superior long-term investment returns. Therefore, we will only invest in assets and businesses that we can thoroughly understand, that we can determine a value for and that offer a large enough "margin of safety" in their valuation.
In-depth knowledge and independent thinking
Generating value added requires a clear view of value for money and a knowledge advantage that comes from proprietary research and disciplined, independent thinking. We will use our own expertise, the extensive research network of our business partners and independent research houses to gain deep insights into long-term economic trends as well as asset classes, sectors and companies we invest in.
Alignment of interests with our clients
In order to ensure alignment of interests, we pay high attention to any potential conflicts of interest, try to avoid them if possible, or be transparent about them if we cannot avoid them. We put our clients' interests ahead of our own and treat all clients fairly. The partners and the key stakeholders invest a major part of their personal wealth along with clients.
Trust and strong personal values
The trust of our clients in us is our most valuable good. Therefore, strong personal values, integrity of each employee and a strong company culture are the foundation to build trust with our clients and to create a healthy and motivating work environment for our staff. The fruits of our work will always be shared broadly with our staff under a long-term incentive plan, that shall also help align interests with all stakeholders and clients.
Communication with our clients
The communication with our clients is key to promote a long-term partnership. It needs to be complete, transparent, timely and in an appropriate language so that our clients can thoroughly understand and evaluate our actions and recommendations, the rationales behind, as well as the results achieved.
Management fees
The fees we ask clients to pay should compensate us fairly for the services provided and the results achieved. As a result, they form the basis for a constructive and mutually beneficial business relationship. In order to treat all clients equally, all accounts of comparable size and complexity pay comparable fees.
Profits are the result of what we do
Our profitability is not the main focus of our activities but should rather be the result of all of the above. Our profits should only grow if we achieve excellence in investing and if we treat and serve our clients well.
Investment Philosophy
General Principles
Avoid the short-term gamble and invest for the long term instead
We avoid the short-term gamble and focus on long-term fundamentals, as short-term markets are mostly driven by investors' emotions, while true value added is created over the long term.
Disciplined, but flexible approach to investing
While discipline is key in investing, an investment framework that is too rigid tends to lead to money being deployed inefficiently at times. Therefore, we apply an active and flexible approach aiming to allocate assets where we see long-term value while being compensated for the risks taken.
Benefit from active and passive approaches
We combine the benefits of active and passive investing in our portfolios. We only invest actively, when we have high confidence that active management will produce value added over time.
Principles when investing actively
Focus on quality and what we know
We typically invest in quality businesses/assets below their fair value, while we try to avoid to invest in poor businesses/unpredictable assets. We only invest in what we can understand and value. This reduces the risk of bad mistakes. In-depth knowledge, discipline and patience are essential.
Focus on value-for-money and margin of safety
Valuation is key in investing and has a significant impact on future returns for many years to come.
We are looking for a good margin-of-safety when investing in order to invest defensively and mitigate potential forecasting errors.
Take advantage of irrational market moves
Short-term markets can be irrational at times. Sooner or later fundamentals will act like the force of gravity, bringing markets back to their true long-term value. Therefore, we look to take advantage of the opportunities created by occasional periods of investor-irrationality.
Diversification is important, but avoid over-diversification
As there are things/events we cannot forecast, we take advantage of the basic benefits of diversification. At the same time, we avoid over-diversification as this tends to dilute returns for very little additional benefit.