When Paris headquartered La Française, a 48€ billion multi-class asset manager, and London-based Inflection Point Capital Management (IPCM), a specialist firm focused on Strategically Aware Investing (SAI) joined forces in early 2014, their objective was twofold:
- to create La Française Inflection Point (LFIP), an asset manager specialized in SAI equity funds and
- to integrate the SAI philosophy into the investment process applied by LFIP.
Today, they have reached a significant milestone.
Just one year after the signature of their strategic partnership and the creation of La Française Inflection Point, La Française has launched its first line of SAI equity funds, an extensive line covering four geographic regions: Euro, Europe, Emerging Markets and Global, representing close to 1€ billion in assets under management and offering various investment themes (a low carbon theme is work in progress). LFIP and its eight-person international investment team, headed by Laurent Jacquier Laforge (CIO), have successfully transformed the SAI concept into a hands-on and operational investment process. IPCM supplies extra-financial data on over 900 global companies that together with LFIP, they interpret and integrate with traditional financial criteria. LFIP then selects the best in class candidates for each of its funds.
Strategically Aware Investing goes beyond the analysis of traditional Environmental, Social and Governance criteria to include three additional factors that truly reflect a company’s long- term perspectives: innovation capacity, the ability to anticipate and adapt to changing trends, and a company’s positioning relative to existing global trends. With this more comprehensive analysis and the global coverage afforded by both the IPCM and LFIP teams, La Française offers truly sustainable investment solutions to strategically aware investors.
The SAI methodology, developed by IPCM, whose team includes three of the most influential environmental investors, can be applied across all asset classes. La Française and IPCM continue to collaborate on alternative SAI investment solutions and are in the process of fine-tuning an SAI methodology which will soon be applied to fixed income investment funds.