Aikya Investment Management co-founder Ashish Swarup has explained why he and his colleagues are not concerned with amassing assets for their Global Emerging Markets fund.
Aikya was launched last year by Swarup and his former First State colleagues Tom Allen, Alan Nesbit, Michael Summers and Alex Khosla, as well as with former Fidelity fund manager Rahul Desai. The Global Emerging Markets fund was launched in October 2020.
In the latest Portfolio Adviser video interview, Swarup explains how the team seeks to invest alongside good quality entrepreneurs and business families in the EM region. This typically involves buying companies that are owner-managed and have a large majority shareholder.
But he says this approach does not lend itself to running lots of capital and he delves into how previously working for large institutions taught the team the importance of being “investment driven” – that is to be majority owned by the investment team.
“We need to be driven by the need to generate investment returns and not pursue asset growth, which unfortunately a lot of our industry is focused on,” he says.
Elsewhere, Swarup reflects on why the portfolio is underweight China and why he doesn’t like large tech players like Samung, Tencent and Alibaba.
He also touches on how ESG has always been a part of the process and the team’s approach to being an Article 9 fund under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).
Watch the video above for more and find more PA videos here.
