EI Sturdza Investment Funds has launched of the EI Sturdza Strategic European Smaller Companies Fund, which will be managed by Bertrand Faure and his team of European equity investment experts.
The new fund will hold a concentrated portfolio of 20 to 30 investments selected from a universe of approximately 2,000 Western European small and medium capitalisation companies. This specific universe has been covered on a daily basis by the Investment Adviser’s team for more than 13 years.
The Investment Adviser will seek to invest in securities of companies with reliable management teams and priced significantly below their intrinsic value. This investment philosophy relies on the belief that, over time, a company’s stock price converges with the company’s intrinsic value, likely to be close to the private market value that an acquirer would be willing to pay for the company.
The fund will utilise a “bottom-up” approach focusing on individual companies in making its investment decisions, rather than focusing on specific economic factors or specific industries. The fund seeks companies with strong management teams, defendable market shares, pricing power, sound balance sheets, significant free cash flow generation, and high return on employed capital. In order to select investments that meet the criteria described above, the Investment Adviser uses independent, in-house research to analyse each company.
Capital preservation and satisfactory risk reward patterns in every position will dictate the investments selection by the Investment Adviser for companies with a maximum market capitalisation of EUR5 billion.
Georges Gutmans (pictured), managing director, EI Sturdza Investment Funds, says: “We are pleased to offer the EI Sturdza Strategic European Smaller Companies Fund to our client base and extend our product line-up. Bertrand Faure has been managing European equities since 2002 and has a tremendous experience and understanding of the European small and medium capitalisation investment universe.”
Bertrand Faure, portfolio manager, EI Sturdza Strategic European Smaller Companies Fund, says:
“As Investment Adviser of the EI Sturdza European Smaller Companies Fund, we are extremely excited about the opportunity to deploy our long-term investment philosophy with EI Sturdza. Over the past 13 years, all our efforts have been dedicated towards the Western European small and medium capitalisation universe. A significant goodwill was built in that investment space, structurally under-researched, very broad in terms of industrial coverages and constantly nourished by new opportunities.”
The fund is currently registered for sale in Switzerland, France and the UK, with plans to expand fund’s availability in other European jurisdictions.
