Investment Offering

Investment proposition

Multi-specialist investment boutiques:

• We have eight small, semi-autonomous specialist investment teams who take accountability for the performance they deliver.
• These teams interact, share ideas and engage in robust debate, ensuring that the investment ideas generated are a result of the interaction of a variety of investment professionals with rich and diverse skills and backgrounds.
• A key contributor to their performance is having access to a formidable and comprehensive research base, with teams devoted to asset allocation, macro-economic and equity research teams.

Investment Philosophy

SIM has a pragmatic value investment philosophy, the core beliefs of which are:

• Markets are inefficient.
• Main driver of inefficiency is sentiment.
• Different investor time horizons cause inefficiencies.
• Information is a commodity.
• Valuations are a key driver of prospective returns.
• Only a robust philosophy and consistent process will unlock value consistently.

Investment Process

We use a four-step investment process to identify assets that offer attractive investment potential in terms of our pragmatic value philosophy:

Step 1: Screening

We run a range of screening tools on a regular basis to identify investment opportunities. In terms of equity and fixed interest investments, the screening tools have been developed in house and are run by the quantitative equity team. When it comes to asset allocation screening tools, these are developed and maintained by the asset allocation research, equity and fixed interest teams.

Step 2: Fundamental Analysis

The equity and fixed interest research teams conduct fundamental analyses on individual stocks and fixed interest assets, while the asset allocation team conducts in depth fundamental analyses on the markets from a macro perspective.

Step 3: Portfolio Construction

Portfolio positions are sized based on the relative over and undervaluation of the different asset classes relative to the fair value of the asset through all market cycles.

Step 4: Risk Control

The risk exposure of investments in our portfolios is evaluated on a regular basis. In terms of equities, risks are analysed by using factor analysis. We also monitor the actual and marginal contribution to active risk of each stock.