The Grand Duchy hosts few portfolio management operations, despite being a world leader for cross-border asset and fund servicing. Banque de Luxembourg Investments (BLI) is an exception. According to managing director Guy Wagner: “We are a small boutique asset manager with private banking DNA.”
Although Luxembourg’s fund industry can now boast more than €5 trillion in assets under management, only a fraction of this is managed from the grand duchy. BLI are one of the exceptions. More than 30 funds featuring €18.4bn worth of assets are run out of the Luxembourg operation by a team of 22 investment professionals.
“Small boutique with private banking DNA” is how Guy Wagner characterises the operation. Its principal role is to serve Banque de Luxembourg clients, the private bank owned by the Crédit Mutuel – CIC group. As well as these funds (which are also open to outside clients) the team also manages funds for individual families in an independent fashion.
Keeping it simple
“We only invest in what we understand both in terms of their activities and the source of their competitive advantage,” Wagner explains. Using this close insight of each business they are better able to judge whether any particular asset is undervalued or overvalued, and thus will represent an opportunity to buy or sell.
“There are some sectors we don’t invest in due to our inability to correctly value them,” he said. Financial services businesses are too opaque he argues. “Banks are so big and complex it is practically impossible to assign a fair value to them,” Wagner noted. “Utilities companies are often quasi government agencies, meaning their businesses are at the whim of governments or regulators.” The likes of steel and automotive are also avoided as being too reliant on the fluctuations of the business cycle.
Becoming a stakeholder
More than becoming a shareholder, “the fund manager acts as a stakeholder with a long-term view,” he says, adding “when an entrepreneur invests in a business, it would never occur to them to sell their stake six months later.” Hence the policy of avoiding market fads by building knowledge in limited areas and focusing on that. “Market timing is a fool’s game, as the price paid determines the return. We invest to make money, not to beat a benchmark,” he explained.
Clearly this is a different strategy those employed by large institutional and retail funds. The gains BLI can make are sufficient for their clients, but their methodology is hard to scale for funds with tens of billions under management.
Why Luxembourg?
This strategy will take time to align with new EU ESG investing regulation, not least because these rules have yet to be clearly defined. “We are moving in the right direction, but we are also aware that this is an ever-evolving field that requires significant adaptive capacity and the ability to stay the course based on solid and sustainable (financial and extra-financial) management principles,” Wagner said.
Moreover, BLI are by culture wary of anything that seems like a fashionable trend. “ESG has become more of a concern, but not to the degree that the media seems to imply,” he notes. Nevertheless, he points to the firm having signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI) in 2017 as a sign of a long-term commitment to sustainability. “We believe that any company or bond issuer committed to sustainable growth and that respects the interests of its employees, suppliers, customers, the wider community and the environment, should in the long term perform better through reduced exposure to ESG risks.”
While appropriate for its own needs, BLI’s business model probably doesn’t represent a blueprint for how Luxembourg could develop a major portfolio management sector. Their operations satisfy a niche requirement, so it’s hard to see how the country could use this model make a breakthrough to challenge the major investment capitals.
Indeed, if anything, BLI are aligning themselves more with Luxembourg’s core business of asset and fund servicing. From the start of this year they took over the third-party fund management company Coventum Asset Management, to create the brand Conventum TPS. These services will be used internally and also offered to other asset managers seeking to outsource the provision of these regulatory requirements.