Alternative Investment Awards 2016

awards alternative investment wealth & finance2016 56 Capital LLP Company: Exception Capital LLP Name: Adrian Fairbourn Email: [email protected] Web Address: www.exceptioncapital.com AI16036 Exception Exception Capital is a boutique investment firm based in London and Los Angeles and was born out of a family office structure. Founder Adrian Fairbourn talks us through the firm and its investment strategy. Exception Capital manages The Family Fund, a unique global multi-strategy portfolio that is designed to mimic the asset allocation of a classic Family Office. As such the fund invests globally in public equities, private securities, direct lending structures as well as external niche alternative managers. Diversified by geography, asset class and positions it has, since incep- tion in Q3 2012, outperformed all benchmarks and indices but with lower volatilities and reduced correlations. Our work revolves exclusively around the management of this fund and ensuring we generate the best risk managed returns possible for investors. When managing risk, we take a view that you have to take some degree of risk in order to generate returns. We do not put ourselves forward as risk free, as we would not have been able to generate the returns we have if we were. Saying that we do have robust risk management controls and our main driver is diversification of the portfolio by strategy, geography, positions and size of positions. It has proved very effective and led us to having minimal correlation with the markets. Ultimately, as a business we have created a unique product within the financial services marketplace, which hasproven to be highly success- ful. We stand by our mission statement at all times based on Integrity and Trust. These factors pervade through everything we do. Moving forward, we are keen to continue with our current approach as we have proven over a number of years that our repeatable process works. The year ahead means more hard work finding and working on opportunities and turning those opportunities into hard performance numbers. From a business perspective we will be looking to grow the assets under management and the infrastructure of the firm. I have sat across from many hedge fund managers over the years and have seen so many with say $50m under management and based on that an all-encompassing infrastructure – numerous analysts, a good sized office, numerous Bloomberg screens etc. A few poor months of performance and it becomes impossible to raise AUM and as result they soon go out of business. I have always said I would grow the infrastructure as we grow the AUM. I consider that prudent business practice and it considerable de-risks an investment in The Family Fund. Best Global Multi-Strategy Portfolio (3 Years): The Family Fund & Most Innovative Investment Boutique 2016