Investment Thesis
Focus on curating a portfolio of exceptional companies, family- and founder-led businesses, emphasizing powerful brands, with strong governance, and long-term growth at a fair valuation.
Tailored for investors with a long-term outlook, including family offices and institutions, who are willing to harness the power of compounding through a disciplined buy-and-hold strategy.
Families Outperform
Family and Founder-owned businesses outperform, most prominently in Asia, among first and second generations. Families are excellent capital allocators, investing for the long term, while avoiding excessive leverage.
Brands Outperform
Strong brands outperform. Powerful assets are beacons of trust, and are resistant to inflation and disruption. National champions are being built while global brands are expanding their reach into new markets.
Governance Outperforms
Strong governance is a significant differentiator during times of drawdowns. Great companies which exceed regulatory requirements, win both the trust of consumers and investors.
We are an investment firm focused on finding the winners who will gain from the addition of one billion people joining the middle classes over the coming decade. This development will create new leaders and brands which can compound for decades, leading to opportunities for significant gains.
Investment Philosophy
Asia Asset Management seeks to maximise long-term total returns by investing in businesses with both durable economic advantages and first-class leadership, most often founder or family led.
Investment Approach
We are active and believe outperformance is possible for those willing and able to look beyond Indices. We believe this is best achieved by being significantly overweight the best in class local companies which will grow faster than their sector.
As high conviction investors we spend our time focussed on understanding the key themes driving growth and concentrate on selecting the best in class companies within their respective fields.
We believe partnering with proven families, founders and managers - often with decades of track record - is key to outperformance and the avoidance of trouble.
We read widely and conduct in-depth, on-the-ground, fundamental research, including regular meetings with management, country and company visits to develop our watch list. We will invest when we believe these companies offer attractive value and a margin of safety.
Investment Philosophy
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Wesley Richards
Wesley has worked with LTG since 2014 after starting Frontier Asset in 2009, a research and consulting service focussed on emerging markets. He now runs an in-house Asia equity fund with Rupert with an emphasis on the Asian middle class growth, formalisation and premiumisation trends.
Before becoming a financial services professional, Wesley worked for eight years in the non-profit sector for a non-denominational church and registered charity. He also served as a Local Councillor, 2015-2019, for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
Wesley has a BSc in Economics from the University of London and an MSc from the London School of Economics. He later completed a Graduate Diploma in Law at BPP University Law School and was Called to the Bar by the Middle Temple. He is a CFA Charterholder.
A former international rower, he now supports his sons from the towpath.
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Rupert Foster
Rupert has worked for LTG since 2014 and Blue Coast Capital since 2017 where he runs an in-house Asia equity fund with Wesley. Between 2018-2021, they achieved top decile performance and currently top quartile.
Rupert started his career at Mercury Asset Management (now Blackrock) in 1994 where he worked in both London and Tokyo running Japanese equity funds.
From 2001 until 2015 Rupert managed three hedge funds in London, Tokyo and Western Australia (The Japan Pragmatist Fund, Matrix Asia Fund and Azure Asian Pragmatist Fund), running over $1bn of assets for those funds. He was nominated for Asia hedge fund of the year in 2005.
Rupert graduated from Edinburgh University with a MA Hons in History. He is a keen cricket fan, playing for his local village and supports Rajasthan Royals in the IPL.
