As of this week asset owners can turn to Anthos Fund & Asset Management. The asset manager places high demands on the intrinsic motivation of prospective clients, bearing in mind the original values of its owners, the Brenninkmeijer family, one of the richest in the Netherlands and well known for its C&A retail fashion chain.
“Everyone in the market is now working on the ESG parameters, but with us you do that, not because you have to, but because you really believe in it. As a client you really want to put your money to make the planet a better place”, CEO Jacco Maters of Anthos FAM said in an interview with Investment Officer.
Luxembourg, meanwhile, takes on a key position in Anthos’ transformation from a single-family office to a multi-family business. Anthos is regulated as an AIFM by Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF and has registered two reserved alternative investment funds, known as Raifs, which will serve as fund-of-funds investment mandates.
When was the decision taken to make this service available?
“We started thinking about it three years ago. After that you have to arrange all kinds of things to go from investing exclusively for your own circle of knowledge to opening up for third parties. That takes a lot of work. You do a lot of that behind the scenes and then you arrive step by step at today’s (Thursday, ed.) moment: ‘the grand opening’.”
Anthos has a clear conviction with whom it does and does not want to work. What are the parameters?
“The starting point for us is ‘values-based investing’. That is in our genes, but it must also be in the genes of our prospects. For example, everyone in the market is now working on the ESG parameters, but with us you do that, not because you have to, but because you really believe in it. In short, ‘put your money where your mouth is’. Impact investing goes beyond exclusion. It is about making a concrete contribution to solutions. If you are prepared to do that, then you are a “like-minded” client. That means that, as a client, you really want to put your money to work to make the planet a better place. Think nature, but also human dignity. That means we don’t want high profits made on the backs of people. That’s what we’re very focused on.”
Does that mean that you exclude specific sectors and companies?
“Yes, that is a very delicate matter. We have also formulated an exclusion policy for that. We want to contribute to the solution. That can be done through engagement, but also through managers who have a very specific strategy for that. An example is that we invested with an impact fund in a radio station in the Philippines. The impact was in the fact that the radio also provided education in the slums to children who had no access to education. This is a real contribution. It was just a commercial radio station that also earned money. The fact that the station’s founder won the Nobel Peace Prize proves that this impact was also seen and appreciated more broadly.”
Can impact also come at the expense of profitability?
“Not in the longer term. We believe that you can outperform the benchmark by default with this type of investment. We do not actually believe in the question you ask. It does not have to be at the expense of return. We have been doing this for more than 10 years and we achieve returns that are in line with the market or better with these impact investments.”
The importance of impact is in the Brenninkmeijer family’s genes.
“Indeed, it is important. We have been doing this for many years. We are the founders of many, many partnerships. This culture is also present in the people who work for us. They sincerely believe in impact investing. In that respect, we are truly different from parties that just do it. You can taste that in everything. And that is why we also want to see it in our prospects. We also notice this in the foundations, associations and dioceses with which we work. We have intensive discussions with them. What do they stand for? Is there a click?”
Do prospects have to contribute a minimum amount?
“Yes, we are not looking for private investors. All the solutions and strategies we offer are exclusively open to institutional investors. Our target group are clients who invest several millions in underlying strategies.”
You offer an ‘outsourced chief investment officer’. How does that work?
“That is what we call fiduciary management in the Netherlands, depending on what the client wants. He can purchase services and products such as the strategic asset allocation, the investment plan, strategy, composition of the portfolio, fund-of-funds, monitoring, compliance, reporting. You don’t have to buy all those services, but if you want full-fledged service you choose OCIO and you have the whole spectrum. However, you have to invest a minimum of 100 million, then you can have a similar portfolio construction as the family and internal clients, but the asset allocation can be different. With shares, for example, you invest in the same way as we do for the family.”
Clients worry about the portfolio construction. Clients are switching to private markets. How do you deal with that?
“We see that too. But we have been in private markets for 10 years, and in some other areas for 50 years: private equity, absolute return and hedge funds. The advantage is that in private markets, as well as through our external managers, the family has good access. That also applies to private equity. There is enormous demand for private equity, which often determines who can and cannot participate. Since we are a loyal party, access is a strong point we can offer clients.”
Anthos has a number of funds registered in Luxembourg. Those are fund-of-funds, right?
“That is correct, we have always offered them to existing clients. These are the best investors, selected by us. They are not white label funds, but funds and mandates in which we can adapt to our own views, for example with regard to exclusion or ESG. The Luxembourg funds are therefore fund-of-funds, or fund mandates. Our Luxembourg funds are therefore a basket of several funds or mandates.”
Do the funds and mandates comply with the SFDR classification of Article 8 & 9?
“We carry out this classification for all our managers. We strive for a minimum of SFDR 8 for most funds, and ideally it should be Article 9. We measure our impact, through a measurement methodology. We set that up in 2016, and it was said at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow that that’s what the Impact Management Project standards provide, a good way to measure impact.”
The original version of this was originally published in Dutch on InvestmentOfficer.nl.
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