Wealth & Finance International - Fund Awards 2015

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 53 Best Owner - Managed Asset Manager Incrementum AG Liechtenstein is an asset management company founded in 2013 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. As inde- pendence is a cornerstone of their philosophy, the company is one hundred percent owned by its partners. They have no affiliations with any banking institutions, which enables them to implement their investment strategies autonomously. We spoke to Ronald-Peter Stoeferle, Managing Partner and Investment Manager at Incrementum AG, about how their independence works to the advantage of both themselves and their clients. Company: Incrementum AG Name: Ronald-Peter Stoeferle Email: [email protected] ; [email protected] Web Address: www.incrementum.li Address: Landstrasse 1, 9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein As a boutique player with lean hierarchies, we are able to execute our strategies and respond to regime changes swiftly. Our partners practice what they preach, and all of our partners are invested in the funds they manage. Incrementum AG’s partners are highly qualified and have over 140 years’ of combined banking experience. Prior to joining the company, the partners held positions at UBS, Lombard Odier, Darier Hentsch & Cie., Bank Leu, Pictet & Cie., Bank Sal. Oppenheim, Merrill Lynch and Société Générale. We are in the comfortable situation that our clients very much understand the way we view the current state of the world, which is a world of extreme distor- tion and potential systemic risks. Asset prices have become highly inflated as a consequence of the creation of tremendous amounts of fiat money. However, we have yet to see the consumer price inflation that ensues such money creation. In our view, the art is to set up a portfolio in such a way that one is prepared for a paradigm shift in the markets, that will occur as a by-product of rising consumer price inflation. As a result, we are very flexible with our exposure towards financial assets including stocks, bonds and inflation-sensitive assets. Within the current paradigm, financial assets are temporarily benefiting the most from the monetary experiments that are being conducted by the world’s central banks. This will fun- damentally change once the monetary inflation results in consumer price inflation. In our view, this poses the greatest risk for conventional ‘balanced portfolios’. As an owner-managed boutique, this enables us to conduct completely unbi- ased analysis of the state of affairs and allows us to communicate our thoughts very concisely. This is extremely important for us as our views are often con- sidered non-mainstream and out of the box. Within the coming five years, we expect our business to grow incrementally, however, we will remain independent because this is a critical factor for us as company. In order to be one step ahead and early in a trend, we believe that it is important to avoid the daily chatter and noise while conducting our research and to con- centrate on the fundamentals. In doing so, we avoid investing in “vogue” trends that are often short-lived. The constantly changing regulatory regime is a challenge and a burden for the entire asset and wealth management industry. However, as a boutique player in this industry, we are very happy with the strategic decision we took: we are 100% focused on the management of investment funds and do not offer private banking services. This renders things rather easier on the regulatory front compared to the especially demanding compliance tasks with which one is confronted in the private wealth management space. In our view, we are entering an environment of an increasingly unstable global fi- nancial architecture. The current FIAT-money system has led to huge distortions of capital allocation and enabled governments to engage in reckless spending sprees. The artificial price fixing of interest rates has lead to malinvestments on a grand scale and among others to a gigantic debt bubble. Going forward we will witness - and in fact we have already begun witnessing – much extremer waves of deflation and in inflation than during the past 30 years. As for our philosophy, our views are heavily influenced by the Austrian School of Economics as well as by Complexity Theory. Both disciplines are seldomly taught at mainstream universities today. We have written extensively in our re- search notes and published a book on this topic (Austrian School for Investors). Consequently we are now launching our own multi asset strategy combining assets in a way that is more robust to the extremer scenarios which we are an- ticipating. This strategy will include strategic allocations in equities, commodities, managed futures and even some fixed income. We are a company that is committed to transparency, which means our fee structures are clear, transparent and easy to understand. We do not solicit or accept any hidden fees. Any and all fees offered to us by 3rd party providers are credited directly to the fund and thus to our investors. Moreover, our team of fund managers believes that the funds we manage are unique and that they will grow as expected, and are hence invested in each of the funds they manage. We have maintained a strong work ethic over the past 12 months and are certain that this is why we have won this award. We are very proud about this great honour, and it’s a confirmation that our boutique approach that combines unconventional thinking with state of the art asset management skills is really unique. We evaluate all our investments not only from a global economy per- spective but taking the current state of the global monetary regime into account. This analysis produces what we consider a truly holistic view of the state of financial markets.