Groupe La Française will acquire full ownership of Inflection Point Capital Management UK Ltd (“IPCM”), its London-based joint venture with sustainability veteran Dr Matthew Kiernan. The two parties formed the joint venture at the end of 2013 to accelerate the development of responsible investment research, advisory services and related investment products. This change in capital ownership will be accompanied by a change in brand.

The acquisition of IPCM reflects La Française’s commitment to further strengthen its Responsible Investment (RI) innovation capacity as a major European asset manager. IPCM successfully established the Strategically Aware Investment (SAI) approach at La Française in all equity portfolios and in selected fixed income products. The SAI methodology is at the core of La Française’s RI strategy. It combines the analysis of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors alongside strategic measures of adaptability and innovation, financial fundamentals and thematic research.

Research at IPCM is led by Roland Rott, PhD, CFA, who has 15 years of equity research and investment experience. A team of analysts works on dedicated sectors and sustainability themes combining a broad range of skills and topics including ESG risks assessment, energy transition opportunities and portfolio analytics. The team co-operates with fund managers on company engagements. The average tenure of the analysts is more than five years in different research roles.

IPCM’s sustainability expertise is embedded in the Group’s equity investment process through a proprietary internal research platform and the development of investment ideas and solutions with analysts, portfolio managers and product specialists working closely together.

As the Group’s hub for non-financial data IPCM analyses and quantifies the ESG quality of global corporate issuers and operates a data model for carbon analysis. This expertise is applied in the Group’s investment processes and in fulfilling the increasing Group-wide RI reporting requirements. In addition, IPCM’s RI experts represent the Group in industry associations like the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment, the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative Investment Committee and the Institutional Investors Group for Climate Change.

Dr Matthew Kiernan will retire at the end of June from his role as Chief Executive Officer. Patrick Rivière, Managing Director of La Française, said: “We thank Matthew for providing his vision as a true advocate of combining sustainable development with investment management. We are pleased to retain his advice as a non-executive board member of IPCM.”

Roland Rott, PhD, CFA, IPCM’s Managing Director who has been responsible for ESG integration and Responsible Investment research of the joint venture since July 2016 said: “Responsible Investing continues to grow strongly. With a simplified structure IPCM will be fully aligned with the Group’s investment strategy. We will jointly drive ESG integration and sustainable investment across all asset classes of La Française. Our focus is two-fold: managing non-financial data and generating respective investment insights in close co-operation with portfolio management teams of the Group.”

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