Italian fund manager Anima has landed in the Spanish market, with the registration of its Irish Sicav in the Spanish regulator, CNMV. In this interview with Funds Society, Andrea Mandraccio, Head of Institutional Clients Division at Anima, explains its objetives for the future.
Why have you made the decision to enter in Spain now?
Anima is today a reference point in the Italian asset management industry with a total AUM of 65 billion euros (data as of July 31, 2015). Through a combination of diversified and complementary backgrounds and know-how, Anima’s products and services figure among the widest available on the Italian market. The range of products includes wealth management services both for retail and institutional clients. Anima offers Italian mutual funds, open-ended umbrella funds domiciled in Ireland and in Luxembourg and pension funds.
Having achieved a significant reach in the Italian market we are moving our first steps abroad since mid 2014 through our Institutional Client Division. As of today we have clients in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg. We’ve targeted the Spanish market as the first country to approach with a structured effort through the partnership with a solid operator such as Selinca, since the structure of the market (relationship between Asset managers and banks), size and culture is similar to our own.
What are your objectives in the Spanish market? Is it a big potencial market for you?
We think that through the partnership with Selinca, we can potentially achieve an interesting penetration of the Spanish market. Spanish market is very similar to the Italian market by structure with a particular focus to the fund buyers space. Similarities between our economies and needs of savers other than their historical experience and culture make us think that investment solutions studied for the Italian market would be viable also for the Spanish market.
To get them, what does your sicav look like?
For the Spanish market we’ve just registered our Irish Sicav. The main strategies we want to present in the Spanish market are the essence of our best capabilities: Anima is a leading player in the equity market – in particular with a European focus. Our CIO Lars Schickentanz who’s running our long only flagship European fund and absolute return European fund has more than 20 years of experience in the management of such products and a proven track record.
Our offer will also include Absolute return strategies in the fixed income space which are becoming a specific need for asset allocators going forward, where we can as well show proven numbers and a different approach vs our main international competitors.
Finally we think the Italian equity market – one of the most de-rated of the past years – today offers interesting pockets of value which could be disclosed through a dynamic and absolute approach. Our team has a long standing experience and excellent numbers on their side in out domestic stock market.
You registered also a sicav in Luxembourg in 2006 that is in CNMV…
In the Spanish market we’ve decided to register our Irish Sicav funds, since those products are historically the clones of our Flagship Italian vehicles. New strategies are today launched through our Irish branch, so we think this is the best tool to approach a new market.
Being Anima the result of mergers between multiple Asset managers we have also a Luxemburg sicav coming from another of our constituent Asset Managers.
Who will be your distributor in Spain?
Our distributor in Spain is Allfunds Bank S.A.
Animais an historical player in the Italian asset management industry and today is a leading independent operator in the field. The company was born in 2012 from a process of mergers between Italian Asset management companies. Since April 2014 the Holding of the Anima Group was listed in the Italian Stock Exchange and today roughly 70% of the capital is owned by the market. Anima Sgr is headquartered in Milan, but it is also present in Ireland and Luxembourg, through its subsidiaries Anima Asset Management and Anima Management Company respectively.
Anima is a reference point in the Italian asset management industry, with more than one hundred distribution agreements and one million customers, with strong partnership with leading banking groups.
For Funds Society, Madrid