Agecroft Partners was founded by Don Steinbrugge (pictured), who has 30 years of experience in the institutional investment management industry. Agecroft specialises in consulting and third party marketing for hedge funds.
"Agecroft has changed the model of hedge fund third party marketing," says Steinbrugge. "Most third party marketing models are based on leveraging personal relationships and doing extensive entertaining. Ours has been to build a global brand with a reputation as an industry thought leader, strong institutional investment knowledge and representing very high quality managers.”
Steinbrugge has been a prolific writer of industry thought pieces and white papers, having written or appeared in more than 500 articles in the last few years. Often asked to share his thoughts with the media on the hedge fund industry, he has also been a regular guest on Bloomberg News and CNBC and has spoken at more than 100 leading industry conferences since Agecroft's inception.
"This has helped us to attract some of the highest quality hedge fund managers to represent and has also allowed us to access many institutional investors that other third party marketers simply cannot access," states Steinbrugge.
In their latest article Agecroft predicted that the hedge fund industry would add $250 billion in net new assets over the next 12 months and outlined various reasons for their prediction. People can read it by clicking this link.
Agecroft utilises an institutional quality due diligence process in manager selection.
Unsurprisingly, manager selection is highly discerning. Steinbrugge says that out of the 300 to 500 managers that Agecroft is in contact with each year only "one or two" are ever chosen.
"95 per cent of hedge funds can be screened pretty quickly. It's the remaining 5 per cent that take a lot of time to do deep due diligence," says Steinbrugge.
Once a new manager is added, Agecroft works to add value to its clients by focusing on the following three components:
- Quality of product
- Quality of message
- Distribution strategy.
To be successful at raising assets, managers have to have a high quality product that ranks well across each of the selection factors that investors use.
In addition to that, a manager needs a concise clear message that articulates what their differential advantage is across each of those selection factors.
"One of our main objectives is to make sure that the product is strong – to address any weaknesses – and second to ensure that the marketing message is as strong as possible to enhance investor's perception of the fund.
"The third component of raising assets is the marketing strategy. Reaching out to a wide selection of investors and setting up qualified meetings. It also requires making sure that we have the right follow-up strategy in place for each prospect. Building momentum in asset growth is vital to successfully raising assets. I'd much rather represent a hedge fund that is going from USD75 million to USD175 million than one that has been at USD800 million for the last few years," says Steinbrugge.
On winning the award again this year, Steinbrugge remarks: "We are honoured to have won this award five years in a row. Most importantly we are happy that the market place is happy with the job we are doing."
