La Financière de L’Echiquier (LFDE) wants to gain a foothold in the Netherlands, following in the footsteps of Belgium and Luxembourg. The boutique manager from France focuses on medium-sized pension funds and wholesale in the Netherlands. The French argue that their niche thematic strategies can offer added value as a ‘satellite’ in the asset allocation of such parties.
“We are marketing ourselves as LFDE instead of La Financière de L’Echiquier,” says Commercial Director Stéphane Van Tilborg (pictured left) laconicly during the interview, “because many clients in Austria, Germany and I suspect the Netherlands, too, have difficulty pronouncing our rather unusual company name correctly.”
The French, who have been active in Belgium and Luxembourg for ten years with a team of three commercial employees, now want to conquer the Netherlands as well.
They will not be opening an office in the country, but will serve their clients from Brussels and Paris.
“We are a relatively small structure and from Paris it is only a 2.5 hour train ride to Amsterdam. We manage 12 billion instead of 7,000 billion like the big boys, and this makes us more flexible and closer to our clients,” says Van Tilborg.
Client base
In Belgium, LFDE focuses mainly on wholesale and a number of institutional end customers, such as a few universities and an institutional insurance company. “We are not well known in the Netherlands yet, unlike in Belgium,” says sales manager Peter Jansen (on the right in the photo).
Van Tilborg emphasises that the market in the Netherlands has a very different structure than in Belgium. For example, there is a ban on retrocessions (commission). LFDE will therefore offer clean share classes in the Netherlands.
The market in the Netherlands is quite different from the Belgian market. According to him, the Dutch also have been investing much more in passive funds than in actively managed funds in recent times.
LFDE is a resolutely active manager and does not offer passive investments. “We can make the difference with specific niche strategies that invest in the themes of the future, such as our Artificial Intelligence fund and our recently launched Space fund, which invests specifically in the space value chain. This makes us the first European manager to offer such a strategy.”
In the Netherlands, LFDE will primarily target Tier 2 pension funds looking for specific niche strategies that are actively managed and can deliver significant alpha. More the satellites in their asset allocation than the ‘core’, in other words.
“I am convinced that these parties can get added value from stock-pickers who look beyond the established FANG stocks and know specific themes from needle to thread. We do not have the ambition to target the very largest pension funds,” says Van Tilborg.
Dutch mandates will also be offered on the Dutch market for clients with specific investment restrictions. In addition, LFDE can also offer mandates with external funds on the Dutch market. An internal team of five specialists selects those funds.
Sustainable
In addition to thematic investments, LFDE also attaches great importance to sustainability and the integration of ESG factors. Van Tilborg emphasises that LFDE was there early on and did not get on the train for greenwashing reasons.
“We signed the UN PRI back in 2008 and have been integrating ESG criteria into our funds for more than 15 years, half of our thirty-year history,” he said.
It is a source of return, which LFDE charts annually in an internally developed study that goes to clients.
Van Tilborg is convinced that the Netherlands is a pioneer in the field of sustainability, much more so than southern countries such as Italy and Spain.
In Italy, according to him, the Morningstar Globes are looked at more often, but “that only gives a picture of the existing portfolio at a certain moment. It does not take much account of the ESG investment strategy. Northern Europe is much more sensitive to that.”
The client segment in the banks is said to be very interested in ESG, and institutional parties are also increasingly so. Retail clients are still lagging behind for the time being, but they are catching up.
Van Tilborg concludes: “I hope that a European ESG label will be introduced. Now half of our assets have the French state sustainability label, and in Belgium the Towards Sustainability label, but there should be more standardisation.”
About LFDE
- Founded in 1991
- EUR 12 billion AUM
- Focus on actively managed niche strategies
La Financière de l’Echiquier