It has been about a year since Anthos Fund & Asset Management, the investment vehicle of the Dutch C&A family Brenninkmeijer, opened up as a multi-family office. It was quite a switch to fully open the doors as a closed stronghold, said top executive Jacco Maters (photo) in an interview with Investment Officer.
In May 2022, Anthos announced it was opening its investment platform to third parties, after a century of providing its services exclusively to the Brenninkmeijer family and a group of affiliated pension funds and philanthropic institutions. Maters, recruited by the Brenninkmeijers in 2018, initiated the strategy change from single family office to asset manager during 2019.
According to Anthos, the decision was taken to «accelerate the transition to a more sustainable society» by offering its services to «like-minded institutional investors». And by like-minded, Anthos means clients who value sustainability, as the firm has a long tradition of creating sustainable economic and social value.
Anthos› clients now include a charity, a Swiss institutional investor, a number of European families and several faith communities in Germany.
The funds that it offers from Amsterdam are structured under the umbrella of a Luxembourg Reserved Alternative Investment Fund, the Anthos Fund II RAIF-SICAV SA. This Raif, registered in December 2020, attracted nearly 200 million euro in subscriptions during 2021. (See box at the end of this article)
The asset manager does not disclose client names, but top executive Jacco Maters does hint that Anthos has attracted ten new clients, clients that were not only acquired in the past year. Several years prior to the “grand opening” last May Anthos already had conversations with potential clients. Most of the current clientele therefore consists of clients who were already there before the doors opened properly.
Incidentally, the Brenninkmeijer family itself does not notice any new clients. The family office for the Brenninkmeijers is completely separated from the asset management branch. Maters even speaks of a ”Chinese wall”.
Hundred-year-old startup
The preparations took place in the middle of the corona crisis, a period when there was little appetite for switching asset managers. “There were far fewer asset owners looking for a new asset manager then, so the whole market kind of fell silent,” said Maters. Anthos had the name as the asset manager of the Brenninkmeijer family along with it. The Brenninkmeijer name helped just as much, not least because the family itself also helped in the search for new clients.
Maters: “Although we are a new player on the broad market, we have been around for a long time. We sometimes joke that we are a hundred-year-old startup.”
The top executive sees the market gaining momentum again this year, both here in the Netherlands and in the other core markets Germany and Switzerland. Will that lead to an acceleration in new customer acquisition? “It is still too early to speak of an acceleration, but we do expect that development.”
Without friction, no shine
In recent years, Anthos attracted a lot of new talent to drive growth. A spider in the web is Ben Kramer, the former country manager of BMO Asset Management, who has been appointed to bring in clients. A newly created business development team supports him in this.
Inevitably, this has given the company a more commercial slant. Together with a rejuvenation of the employee base, this changed the dynamics on the shop floor.
“From time to time, there were some struggles, but without friction, no shine,” said Maters, adding that the main challenges stemmed partly from the tough, commercial deadlines the asset manager now suddenly had to deal with. ”In the beginning, it is also always a matter of who picks up what. We all had to get used to that.”
According to Maters, however, the biggest challenges for Anthos lie in the latest market developments. “The financial markets are constantly changing; a year like 2022 is a good example. Then oil and energy companies were doing great on the stock market and then you have a tough time as a sustainable party, especially when compared to standard benchmarks. But those are short-term risks that come with ESG investing.”
That sustainability aspect is also immediately the common denominator between Anthos and its clients. The asset manager says it looks very clearly at the profile of potential clients before deciding to partner. “Does the client fit with us and vice versa? We find that question very important, especially in the current initial phase. The client base determines the face of Anthos.”
Has Anthos already had to turn away clients? “Well, not really turn them away. Usually it doesn’t come to that, because we look carefully in advance at who we are going to talk to.”
Shadow portfolio
As a new player in the market, Anthos simultaneously understands that potential clients still have some cold feet and offers outsourced chief investment officer (ocio) fiduciary management for them. This is a main service for Anthos, in addition to the various investment funds it offers. With ocio, the firm sets up a shadow portfolio for a client, giving the client an immediate idea of what the portfolio under Anthos› management would look like.
“This catches on enormously. The advantage is that in such a process you get to know each other very well,” said Maters. “Clients appreciate the fact that they get a complete overview of their assets through ocio. For many clients, their assets are spread over several funds and thanks to ocio they can receive one clear report. That is greatly appreciated.”
Maters acknowledged that the investment climate and realised returns have also helped to win clients over. “I don’t think you end up winning clients on high returns alone, but it is a prerequisite for success, yes.”
Anthos posted a return of 18 per cent in 2021 for the most offensive investment profile, while a negative return of seven per cent was realised in 2022. According to Anthos, this is significantly better than the performance of a peer group of 13 over the same period.
«We saw early on that interest rates would rise at a rapid pace, upon which we decided to allocate more assets to uncorrelated investments. That did not hurt us,” said Maters, referring to a hedge fund as an example, where you go long in companies that are low-carbon and short in the same sector, with companies that are actually polluting.
Maintaining such a shadow portfolio is cost- and time-intensive, Maters acknowledged. “We therefore don’t do it for everyone.” There has to be a picture beforehand that the potential client and Anthos could theoretically fit together.
Anthos› investment strategy, incidentally, has not changed significantly in recent years. “The current strategy is literally a one-to-one copy of what we were already doing. As a new player in the market, we also don’t think it is wise to offer all kinds of new products. Then we might as well have started from scratch.”
This article originally appeared in Dutch on InvestmentOfficer.nl.
Luxembourg umbrella for Anthos’ funds
The funds that Anthos Asset Management offers from Amsterdam are structured under the umbrella of a Luxembourg Reserved Alternative Investment Fund, the Anthos Fund II RAIF-SICAV SA, first registered in December 2020. Anthos also registered a second fund at the time, the Anthos Fund I RAIF-FCP, but this fund was deleted from the Luxembourg register last August.
During 2021, the Anthos Fund II fund attracted nearly 200 million euros in new subscriptions, leaving it with total assets of 208 million euro at the end of the year, according to Luxembourg filing dated July 2022.
Anthos, according to its website, added two additional funds under this umbrella in January last year: an impact fund and a real estate fund. These funds complemented the mix of its global high yield bond fund, its euro investment grade bond fund and its equities active fund set up in 2021.