Shah, who is on International Adviser’s intermediary panel and has 30 years of experience in the industry, said he has left Christchurch on friendly terms and that he has “watched OakTree grow over the last five years and shares similar beliefs to their approach to portfolio management and client relationships”.
OakTree is a boutique discretionary manager and financial planning business co-founded in 2008 by former Invesco Perpetual head of fund of funds Ian Brady and Jeremy Arthur, whose background includes advising high net worth clients on tax planning.
The initial plan for the international division is to target mainly the European Union where UK expats are looking to move back into the UK but also wanting to keep some assets offshore.
Arthur said Shah’s international experience will allow OakTree to access the new markets in the expatriate world where there is a strong need for quality financial planning involving offshore trusts and non-domicile clients.
“We already run some money offshore for a few non-dom clients so it was a natural extension to create the division which will enable the investment proposition to be available to a wider market,” he said.
When setting up OakTree, Arthur said both he and Brady both felt there was a gap in the market in providing a level of service that many private banks and stockbrokers were not delivering.
Brady’s experience in asset allocation and institutional fund management combined with a financial planning service also sets OakTree apart from other advisers, Arthur said.
OakTree currently has 12 staff with £60m funds under discretionary management and another £15m under advice. The average client portfolio size is £650,000 which Arthur wants to raise to £1m over the next few years with a client base of 500.
