Family offices take the direct route to PE investing
It's family offices to the fore this week with a guest feature from Rosalyn Breedy, a Partner at law firm Wedlake Bell, exploring how the potential to earn attractive returns, which tend not to be correlated with the public markets, in a low yield interest environment, makes PE an important asset class for family office investors.
Direct investing though is not without its challenges, says Breedy, and family offices find that often they have to "hire in investment analysts to carry out the due diligence and financial modelling tasks in addition to developing sophisticated and robust risk management models to identify, monitor and mitigate the idiosyncratic risk associated with private equity".
Wealth advisers too, have a growing appetite for private equity and other alternative investments, according to a new survey from PPB Capital Partners (PPB), which says that 98 per cent plan to increase or maintain client exposure to alternatives in the coming year.
"PPB is committed to providing value-added solutions to wealth advisers as they look to provide the benefits of alternative investments to their clients," says Founder and CEO Brendan Lake.
We also have news of two companies going down the tech route to 'democratising' access to alternative investments – BITE Investments and Delio.
The new BITE app for advisers, HNW investors, and sophisticated investors, provides access to investments, the latest industry news, insights, and developments, and a due diligence service with summaries of fund information and key strategy materials.
Delio meanwhile, has come up with a new investment structuring solution which allows financial firms – including asset management companies, private banks, family offices and investment clubs – to provide their own private equity and alternative investment funds, without the need for prior experience or expertise.
"Working with Delio means that an organisation can offer access to private markets and satisfy the increasing demand from their clients, without having to invest the time, money and effort to hire a complete team of in-house experts," says Alessandra Ricagno, co-head of structuring solutions.
Cryptocurrency too, is increasing in popularity, with over 60 per cent of UK investors saying that they plan to buy bitcoin in 2021 according to new data released by financial markets platform uk.Investing.com. Thirty per cent expect the cryptocurrency's price to top USD100,000 this year, while only 17 per cent believe that bitcoin has already reached its peak for 2021.
The disruption wrought by the coronavirus pandemic seems to have impacted the financial plans of HNWIs, with a new report from accountancy and advisory firm BDO revealing that over half (57 per cent) are "planning either significant or thoughtful alterations" to their wealth planning strategies.
"Private clients have always had to find a careful balance of risk and opportunity in the face of uncertainty and change," says Wendy Walton Head of Global Private Client Services at BDO. "In 2020, this became truer than ever."
Wealth Adviser
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Global ETF launches 28.01-04.02.21 | Thu | 4 Feb 2021, 15:56 | One of this week's new launches gives investors access to both pre- and post-merger Special Acquisition Companies (SPACs), or blank cheque companies, through the first ever ETF from EXOS Financial, the Morgan Creek – Exos SPAC Originated ETF. Other newcomers include four physically-backed metals ETCs from Global Palladium, Ossiam's Food For Biodiversity ETF, a low-volatility equity income fund from Truemark, and for crypto fans, the world's first Polkadot ETP from 21Shares. |
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