It is my first time meeting Ben Peters, the other half of the dynamic duo behind boutique firm Evenlode Investment. Since launching their first fund in 2009, Peters and co-founder Hugh Yarrow have seen a meteoric rise in popularity.
Their Evenlode Income proposition has gone from relative obscurity in the UK retail space to a portfolio staple, catching the eye of major investors early on. The pair’s flagship fund now stands at a cool £2bn, a far cry from the modest £687,000 they started with.
Could he ever have imagined the Evenlode Income fund would get that big? Peters says: “No, emphatically not.”
“We thought it would be a nice project and that we would be managing £100m, maybe a little more, in time. To be honest, that would have been fine for us. We didn’t have any world-beating ambitions and we still don’t.”
Despite being seen as somewhat of an atypical fund house, based away from the hustle and bustle of the City in Chipping Norton on the outskirts of Oxford, the team is fairly traditional in its investment approach.
According to Peters, “It comes down to quite an old-fashioned idea: dividends growing dividends into the future. If you can find companies that pay a half decent yield today but can grow that yield, decent total returns will happen over time for our investors.”
A cool head
Last November, the boutique investment house launched its second fund, Evenlode Global Income, with Peters taking the lead role. It was a chance to step out of the shadow of brother-in-law Yarrow, who is the primary manager on the flagship income fund.
To say there is a lot riding on Peters’ debut as lead manager would be an understatement, but speaking to him, he is the picture of cool, calm and collected. After three months, his fund has grown close to £70m, a fact he says has “exceeded my expectations by many tens of millions”. After all, he’s in it for the long haul.
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