Iveagh Ltd, the family office created to manage the Guinness family wealth, has launched its first retail fund, the Iveagh Wealth Fund.
Iveagh Ltd, the family office created to manage the Guinness family wealth, has launched its first retail fund, the Iveagh Wealth Fund.
In keeping with the culture of the oldest private family office, and in contrast to a traditional fund management business, the fund’s prime objective is wealth preservation, aimed at families seeking to protect their assets and pass wealth from one generation to the next.
John Ricciardi, Fund Manager, Iveagh Wealth Fund, says, ‘Our primary objective is to preserve and enhance our clients’ wealth, and we do this by seeking to manage risk and provide protection and growth in good and bad market conditions. We believe this requires a profound understanding of asset price cycles and investor psychology, so our approach combines valuation and behavioural analysis, helping us to achieve absolute returns over a market cycle.’
The fund seeks annualised returns of 9.5% with constrained risk using a multi-asset approach.
Managed by John Ricciardi, Cambiz Alikhani, and the Iveagh Investment Committee, the Iveagh Wealth Fund aims to replicate the returns obtained by the Iveagh wealth management portfolio, employing portfolio optimisation and asset allocation strategies currently used by Iveagh for its high net worth clients. This is illustrated by the fund’s low exposure to equities in November 2007, which protected the fund against recent market volatility.
The optimised portfolio universe is drawn from alternatives (private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and structured products), real assets (precious metals, natural resources, global real estate), major market equities, emerging market equities, bonds and cash. The fund invests almost entirely in daily dealing quoted securities.
The tactical asset allocation strategy aims to increase the portfolio return and reduce downside risk by making tactical adjustments to holdings on a quarterly basis. This strategy makes use of highly liquid instruments such as exchange traded funds and the direct purchase of government bonds.
Furthermore, the Iveagh Investment Committee forecasts the direction of major markets by using proprietary research and drawing upon the additional views of two of the oldest sovereign wealth funds.
The Iveagh Wealth Fund is a bi-monthly dealing OEIC, domiciled in Dublin (Ireland) and is UCITS III qualified. Minimum investment is £50,000, or the currency equivalent. The fund offers income and accumulation shares, subject to 18% CGT for UK investors. The annual management fee is 1.5%, and the performance fee is 10% over hurdle.
Lord Iveagh, Chairman, Iveagh Ltd, says,’The Iveagh Wealth Fund is a bold and exciting step forward for our company, which has a proven track record of providing sensible returns for clients. The investment team is dedicated, experienced and knowledgeable, and we believe that by replicating our multi-asset portfolio for the retail market, UK investors will share the experience and rewards of our private clients.’
