Bousfield joined Ravenscroft in 2008 from Brewin Dolphin in Guernsey, where he was head of discretionary portfolio management, and he has fully bought into the story.
“I own two things: Ravenscroft shares and Huntress funds. We are in and expect that of all our fund managers,” he says. “Staff own 62%, then there are families, friends and clients. I am wondering if there is anyone who owns shares who is not a client or [is affiliated with Ravenscroft].”
Mark Harries is the most recent addition to the set-up, having joined the firm in 2016 from Aberdeen Asset Management where he was head of multi-manager. He was introduced to Lansdown by an “old friend” and echoes Bousfield’s sentiment on the culture, saying a “real passion” of his, having skin in the game, is essential.
“If you are trying to encourage investors in, you need to put your money alongside them,” he adds. “That is the way it should be.”
Harries explains how in his previous guise at Aberdeen he was responsible for more than £15bn of assets and often struggled to offer the type of bespoke client service Ravenscroft holds dear.
“I had 44 different mandates at Aberdeen and the problem is you get very disconnected from the end client. When I first met with Mark we went around the corner to the pub and there were three or four clients in there,” he says. “The client is absolutely at the heart of everything Ravenscroft does.”
Bumping into clients in the pub on a small island like Guernsey is all well and good, but how does the firm plan to deliver the same level of service across the length and breadth of the UK?
“The dynamic doesn’t change,” Harries says. “The key thing for me is we build up a relatively small number of strategic partnerships, we work very closely with them and service will be at the forefront of what we do.”
Crucial to this will be building solid relationships with IFAs. “I won’t be meeting people in Waitrose in Hull, for instance,” adds Bousfield, “but we want to build relationships with IFAs and intermediaries so they understand everything they own and can work with us.”
Ravenscroft runs four offshore global funds comprising three multi-manager portfolios – the Huntress Diverse Income, Huntress Balanced and Huntress Growth – and one high-conviction direct equities portfolio holding 25-30 stocks, the Huntress Global Blue Chip Fund.
In July, it launched the Balanced and Global Blue Chip funds in the UK to mirror their offshore equivalents. According to FE data, the offshore version of the former has delivered 53.5% over five years while the latter, launched in 2014, has produced 49% over three years.
The Blue Chip Fund currently holds 26 of what Ravenscroft terms “shopping trolley” stocks. These are companies such as L’Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft and Novartis: big blue-chip companies that pay out dividends. The thinking, Bousfield says, is that these firms will stand to benefit from the emerging consumer over the decades to come.
“The real-world numbers are significant,” notes Harries, pointing to the three billion people anticipated to move out of poverty in the developing markets during the next 20 years, and the fact that the global population is set to grow 25% by 2050.
“That will have a massive impact on companies producing low-ticket items that have strong pricing power, advertising spend and customer loyalty like Procter & Gamble.”
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