Spanish boutique plans LatAm expansion

Spanish firm March Gestión is looking to spread its business and begin to offer some of its funds to investors in Latin America.

The Madrid-based group adopts a specialist approach to investing and its expansion plans will mainly involve three of its Luxembourg-domiciled global funds: absolute return fund Torrenova , wine fund Vini Catena and the Family Business Fund.

Speaking exclusively to Citywire Global, José Luis Jiménez, the firm’s CEO which is the asset management arm of Spanish bank Banca March, said interest is growing in the region.

‘We are working with several institutions in Chile and Colombia,’ he said, adding that they were not necessarily going to be registering their funds in these countries.

‘There are many ways to sell our funds there and people know Banca March and its reputation, despite the crisis that is affecting Spain.’

However, Jiménez says that before Latin America the next step for the €2.1 billion firm is entering the UK market. It is currently in the process of registering its Luxembourg-domiciled funds for sale in the UK.

‘We know the UK is a complex market, there a lot of players but we have a very different offering to others.’

He said their offer is mainly tailored to investors looking for a very defensive approach with low volatility and market correlation.

The Torrenova fund is a global absolute return managed by Juan Berberana and aims to offer regular income through investing across the global bond and equity sectors.

The Vini Catena fund is a thematic fund that invests in stocks and bonds linked to the wine industry and looks to benefit from the positive trends in the fine wine world. It is run by José Antonio Méndez Roth and formerly Citywire AA-rated manager Francisco Javier Pérez Fernández 

The manager duo also manage the most recent addition to the group’s Luxembourg offering, the Family Business Fund, which was launched in early 2012. It invests solely in listed companies where more than 25% of ownership is held by a single family.

Since 2008, Jimenez says the group’s asset under management have increased by 80% while the Spanish fund industry assets dropped 35% and in 2012 they are in place to be the second firm in Spain in terms of inflows.