Franck Hervé, director of development at Varenne Capital Partners, says that the asset manager’s research strategy includes 40 ESG criteria. Photo: Varenne Capital Partners

Franck Hervé, director of development at Varenne Capital Partners, says that the asset manager’s research strategy includes 40 ESG criteria. Photo: Varenne Capital Partners

Varenne Capital Partners now has two investment funds in Luxembourg, in the form of sub-funds of a Sicav. While they were initially offered to the French market, clients based in Luxembourg and Belgium can now invest in these funds.

The Luxembourg and Belgian fund markets are seeing a new player on 14 April. The French asset manager Varenne Capital Partners intends to make the Belux market its second domestic market after France, transferring its French fund Varenne Valeur to a Luxembourg Sicav. The asset manager had already carried out a similar operation with its Varenne Global fund last February.

Two of Varenne Capital Partners’ three funds--Varenne Valeur and Varenne Global--are now available in Luxembourg and Belgium as sub-funds of a Luxembourg Sicav. This means that investors can now access these two funds via their private banker. In the past, these two funds were already distributed on the Belux market, but only via funds of funds offered by banks, insurers, family offices and brokers active in the sector.

Varenne Capital Partners states that it structures its management team "by strategy and not by fund", based on a proprietary research strategy. Rather than having a management team for each fund, Varenne Capital Partners has opted for a management team for each of its investment strategies.

€400m under management in Luxembourg and Belgium

Franck Hervé, director of development at Varenne Capital Partners, describes the advantages of such a management team structure: "It allows traditional investors to obtain a much better risk-return profile.… We carry out very thorough analyses of the concentrated number of companies we invest in ourselves, including an ESG analysis based on 40 criteria."

This approach has led the management team to select between 20 and 25 individual company stock lines to make up the portfolio of the Varenne Valeur fund. The Global Value fund has between 40 and 50 stocks. For both funds, the management team selects shares of European companies or "other developed markets with excellent economic quality and high potential". "It is important to note that our managers invest a lot themselves in our funds, their interests being aligned with those of our investors looking for diversification and returns,” Hervé stated.

The asset manager Varenne Capital Partners manages €3.5bn, of which €965m was raised in 2021. In Luxembourg and Belgium, the amount under management is currently €400m. The three funds managed by Varenne Capital Partners have a five-star rating from the American fund rating agency Morningstar.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.