Stewardship

We consider ourselves stewards of our clients’ capital. Stewardship serves as a powerful philosophy that is focused on what really matters to our clients: generating long-term returns from investing in companies based on quality, value and sustainability.

Financial markets suffer from systemic problems and inefficiencies. Both asset owners and asset managers are well- placed to identify issues and implement change. Stewardship is as much about responsible ownership as a considered approach to selecting investments.

As long-term investors, we believe it is critical to take a holistic view of the underlying financial performance of an investment, the risk and the sustainability.

When we invest on behalf of our clients our core principles are:

• We are long-term in our approach to managing money. As active managers, we look for quality and value in businesses that will deliver absolute performance and create enduring value.
• We have a clear focus on direct investments in stocks and bonds, complemented by selected non-correlated income driven funds in certain strategies.
• We focus on underlying fundamentals, financial performance and sustainability of competitive advantage. We believe that environmental, social and governance factors also play a material role in determining sustainability over the long term.
• We seek out and support strong senior management teams with a track record of value creation but hold them to account where we have concerns.
• We aim to actively own, as opposed to trade, these companies. We have a truly long-term investment horizon withholding periods of five, ten, twenty years or often longer.
• We focus on absolute rather than relative performance as we believe this is what ultimately matters for our clients.
• We have a clear, simple and transparent approach that fully aligns us with our clients. We do not use hedging, leverage, short selling or derivatives as part of our core investment approach. 

Our process is consistent with emerging best practice codes including the UK Stewardship Code and the EU Shareholders Rights Directive II. The 2012 UK Stewardship Code, to which we are signatories, aims to enhance the quality of engagement between investors and companies by setting out a number of principles of effective stewardship for institutional investors. The EU Shareholders Rights Directive II aims to promote shareholders’ long-term engagement and enhance transparency around stewardship and investment strategies.

The UK ​FRC has awarded us Tier 1 status on our commitment to the UK Stewardship Code.

https://www.frc.org.uk/investors/uk-stewardship-code/uk-stewardship-code-statements/asset-managers