Laurence Hulse

We had a good performance track record as a team and it came to sort of late 2021, 2022 and I really observed that the world, the financial world, as well as the wider world was changing quite fundamentally and that really hung around interest rates.

You'd had for the first period of my career when I was there,

cheap money lots of it and it was really a multiple expansion market whereas i had been taught to invest during my time at gresham house around catalysts and engagement and being a truly active manager and in you know in a world of rising interest interest rates as was about to happen and went on to happen

Those elements of an investment thesis become much more important because you can't, and as many high profile managers are finding out at the moment, you can no longer rely on multiple expansion and liquidity to drive a thesis.

And I spotted really a good old fashioned gap in the market to do this for investors, for clients using my experience at Gresham House.

The time I spent there, they had a fantastic journey of growing products for clients.

I got to witness that take part in it.

original employees.

And I combined that with the sort of stock picking techniques I'd learned there to launch a fund.

And here we are.

You're right, there are quite a few, but we've been outperforming the majority of them and at points in the first three years of our fund's life outperforming them materially.

And that really loops back to what I was describing before.

We have got a slightly different or more specific specialist way of investing in these companies.

And yes, many of them remain difficult and cheap, but some clearly aren't given our investment returns since we launched.

and it comes back to this idea of i call them the gems amongst the rubble it is undoubtedly a difficult market that slightly appealed to the contrarian in me to have a go and and resign and and try and launch this at 29 years of age we just about did and it's gone on to good things since but and i know you talked about this on the podcast before therein lies the opportunity i think the thing i'd love to add today

for the listeners beyond what's been talked about in previous podcasts, which is around how cheap it is.

I think that's just the start of any investment thesis.

I think what we've been showing and demonstrating alongside some other fund managers is actually what can you buy within that value?

And if you have a strategy like ours that is pretty concentrated,

pretty hands on.