Emerging manager acceleration specialist NewAlpha Asset Management and Emergence, France’s seeding fund sponsored by 15 institutional investors, have made a strategic investment in Finaltis.
With EUR35 million provided by Emergence Actions, the Finaltis EfficientBeta Euro fund is now able to meet the needs of French and international institutional investors. The certification granted by Emergence allows Finaltis to improve the visibility of its brand and to become an active player within the French long-only asset management landscape.
Finaltis EfficientBeta Euro is positioned in the fast growing arena of Smart Beta, a widespread invetsment style in northern Europe and in the US. Smart Beta accounts for 16 per cent of assets in US equity funds (versus 3 per cent in Europe) and has been growing at almost 40 per cent annually over the last 10 years.
Launched in December 2013, the objective of Finaltis EfficientBeta Euro is to outperform in the medium term with a similar level of risk the EUROSTOXX NR index made up of the largest Euro zone equities. The fund favours low volatility stocks and adjusts the weights in order to construct a portfolio which optimises its risk reward properties.
Finaltis’ expertise exploits a particularly robust investment process, built on a systematic, quantitative and innovative technique to estimate the volatilities and correlations, and allocate the capital within a minimum variance framework. The process is the result of 12 years of proprietary research, conducted by a stable team of talented French mathematicians, who have succeeded in combining sophisticated modelling with active management.
The FCP Finaltis EfficientBeta Euro outperformed the EUROSTOXX NR by 12.5 per cent in 2014 and is currently ahead of its benchmark by 10 per cent since the beginning of 2015 while maintaining a level of volatility below the index. This places Finaltis EfficientBeta Euro first within the Euro Zone Large Caps category both in terms of absolute and risk-adjusted performance.
Finaltis founder Denis Beaudoin (pictured) is also one of the most active promoters of quantitative investment management. He is also well known within the investor community and the academic world, in France and abroad. Under his leadership, Finaltis has developed a solid and efficient infrastructure for processing and analysing data and for real time risk control. Finaltis deploys its proprietary approach through dedicated mandates and open-ended funds for professional investors.
Structured as the previous partnerships with Focus Asset Managers, Financière Arbevel and Talence Gestion, this fourth strategic investment provides investors the performance of the selected fund and a participation in the growth of the investment firm via a revenue sharing scheme. Finaltis is the ninth company to be incubated by Emergence through its two sub-funds – equities and absolute return.
