The company was set up last September as a 50:50 joint venture between Brazilian fund manager Victoire Brasil Investimentos and Aquico Wen, an emerging market investment expert and a founder and chief investment officer at Esemplia Emerging Markets, a Legg Mason affiliated firm.
In Asia, Victoire aims to service the professional investor market with a strategy focused on “investing in undervalued small to medium sized companies with direct exposure to domestic growth in South East Asian countries”, the company said in a statement.
The company claims to offer products with a “differentiated” approach to investing, “one which is a high conviction, performance driven, benchmark agnostic, absolute return orientated strategy, focused on investing in undervalued companies with supportive fundamentals and governance practices,” it added.
Wen said: “We see tremendous opportunities in Asia for the Victoire method of investing – one which is highly research driven and focused on investing longer term in a diverse range of no more than 10 to 20 Asian companies with market capitalizations ranging from $500,000 to $3bn.”
The fund management company said it has a “deep and extensive investment experience” in Asian markets given its three senior investors, Wen, Young Chow and Josephine Lam, have an average of 15 years of experience in the sector and have worked together for the past 10 years.
One of the significant aspects of Wen and also Victoire’s approach is their personal financial interests are “wholly aligned” to those of the clients.
“The HK based team not only has a 50% stake in the business but has invested most of their liquid assets in their own SMID (small to medium sized companies with direct exposure) strategy,” the company said.
Victoire’s funds and services are not currently available to persons residing in Hong Kong other than professional investors.
Based in Sao Paulo, Victoire Brasil Investimentos is an independent investment management company, specializing in equity portfolio management for institutional and private investors. The firm was founded in 2004 by investment professionals who worked together at SSB-Citigroup asset management, and has a principle to ensure perfect alignment of interest with its investors.
The firm manages assets on behalf of central banks, pension funds and private clients as well as US endowments.
It currently offers products such as Victoire Long Short Equity, Victoire Brazil Small Cap, Victoire Selection Brazil Equity, and Victoire Brasil Select Fund UCITS and over 70% of the clients are global institutional investors.
M&G Investments recently received a license to start operations in the country.
The Hong Kong government is taking steps to make the country an international asset management centre, and has recently proposed legislating for open-ended fund company structures to be established in the country. The idea is to offer market participants more flexibility in establishing and operating funds in Hong Kong and therefore attract more funds to domicile there.
