Investec Asset Management has expanded its business into Portugal and revealed an exclusive deal with a distribution partner.
Investec AM said it had an exclusive distribution arrangement with Capital Strategies Partners (CSP) and had been working with a dedicated team from the firm since 2017 to build its local client base.
The team from CSP is led by Pedro Costa Felix and Investec said that “during the past year alone” its assets under management have grown by about 40%. The firm currently has €119 billion of assets under management.
Investec AM announced the strategic partnership at an event held in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday (6th) and said that it planned to grow Portugal and Spain into “key components” of its continental European business.
Costa Felix said the launch of Investec AM in Portugal provided investors with access to a “new suite of global and regional solutions”.
Richard Garland (pictured), global head of advisor at Investec AM, said investor interest in defensive total return multi-asset solutions and Asian equities is “particularly on the rise give uncertainty in markets”.
In November last year, Investec hired CSP’s former head of institutions in Italy, Andrea Panfili, to its Italian office in a newly created role.
Italy has been one of Europe’s strongest markets for fund sales in recent years. Portugal’s population, however, prefers to keep its money in bank accounts, according to a Schroders survey.
“A lack of savings and a poor set of long-term financial goals are still very common”, the Portugal Association of Investment Funds president, Jose Veiga Sarmento, wrote in Funds Europe in 2016.
But he also said the association and the Portuguese government had been striving to create products and solutions to meet market needs, particularly real estate investment trusts, or Reits.
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