The former head of State Street Banque in France and the ex-partner of H2O Asset Management have set up a global macro ESG management company.
Almost six months after setting up their management company in Monaco, Raphaël Remond and Jérémy Touboul are taking their first steps in France. The two founders of Lior Global Partners, known for their work with State Street and H2O Asset Management respectively, have just obtained approval from the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) for their Luxembourg-registered fund, Lior GP - Alpha Fund. This product combines global macro management with an environmental, social and governance (ESG) approach.
The Lior project - light in Hebrew - was born in early 2020. Jérémy Touboul, who had left H2O AM at the end of 2019, approached Raphaël Rémond, whom he had known for some twenty years, and told him of his intention to create his company around a global macro ESG process. " I was interested in the venture for several reasons," Raphaël Rémond, former Managing Director of State Street Banque S.A. France, tells NewsManagers. He was attracted by the idea of developing a global macro ESG fund, an approach that was " original and avant-garde " at the time. He also agreed with Jérémy Touboul's intention to donate 10% of the company's profits to charity. Finally, it was an opportunity for him to put the skills he had acquired in major international groups to good use in a personal project.
The company will see the light of day in March 2021. It is currently owned by its two founders. Jérémy Touboul is CIO and Raphaël Remond COO. The duo have surrounded themselves with several collaborators. The management team includes Pierre-Jean Rouleau, recently head of macro-trading at Pictet Group Americas, and Gad Moyal, a quantitative fund manager who has worked at Edmond de Rothschild AM and Société Générale CIB.
Professor of applied mathematics Helyette Geman, former head of macroeconomic research at the European Central Bank Lucrezia Reichlin and consultant Pascal Koenig complete the team with advisory roles.
Further recruitment is planned in various areas as the company grows.
International ambitions
Lior's founders logically positioned themselves in global macro, Jérémy Touboul's specialty. The integration of ESG was just as natural. " It was important for us to stand out from the crowd," explains Raphaël Rémond. " ESG is a key element in risk management today, and is increasingly in demand from investors," he adds. For ESG on a global macro, the challenge was to have a uniform approach across all asset classes (equity, credit and sovereign). To this end, the company developed an in-house model and called on Sustainalytics to supply the data. " This supplier's ESG approach was risk-based, and their coverage of the three universes was the most extensive," explains Raphaël Remond.
This fund, in which the founders have invested some of their own money, is to be part of a range that will offer several variations of Lior's management process. " The idea is to create a range of funds based on a global macro investment process. Initially, we will have funds with different volatilities to meet the diverse expectations of investors. The first one we've launched is more of a middle-range product in terms of volatility. We also want to offer funds with lower and higher volatility. We may also add thematic funds," explains Raphaël Rémond.
In both the UK and France, Lior is targeting the wealthy end of the market and wealth management advisors, who are likely to be interested in this all-purpose fund. But the company is also talking to institutional investors, and is about to launch a white-label fund with a French investor.
In the UK, Lior relies on a local partner, but in France, Raphaêl Rémond and Jérémy Touboul are currently relying on their own address books. In the future, working with a service provider is not out of the question.
Lior doesn't intend to stop at France and the UK, and Raphaël Rémond is already thinking about expanding elsewhere in Europe and beyond. " All European countries are of interest to us in the medium term: Southern Europe as well as Northern Europe. I'm not forgetting Germany, which is a key market, and one in which we'll position ourselves when the time is right," he anticipates. " We're not ruling out discussions with partners in Asia, the Middle East and the United States either ," he adds.
Raphaël Rémond prefers to remain discreet about the company's numerical targets, but he assures us that its ambitions are " strong ". In any case, one of them is to be able to pay out " substantial " amounts to help several associations working in the fields of youth, education and health.
Interview: Former H2O Manager Who Ran $8 Billion Starts His Own Macro Fund
2021-03-15 08:02:44.908 GMT
By Nishant Kumar
(Bloomberg) - Jeremy Touboul, a former portfolio manager at H2O Asset Management, has started his own macro trading firm that will focus on sustainable investing. Monaco-based Touboul, who once managed more than 7 billion euros ($8.3 billion) across multiple funds at H2O, has set up LIOR Global Partners with Raphael Remond, the former head of State Street Corp.'s France unit. LIOR started trading on Monday and expects to manage as much as 300 million euros within 18 months, Touboul said in an interview. "Covid created a bigger inflection point in a market that was already witnessing economic and market fragility, and as we look forward, global macro has a strong role to play," Touboul
said in a separate statement. Touboul's fund uses a similar trading strategy as hedge funds, betting long and short on credit, equities, and sovereign bonds across the globe. He is getting into the market following a year when his macro peers exploited market volatility to produce stellar returns. The money manager said a focus on environment, social and governance factors and exclusion of investments in sectors such as coal, tobacco and controversial weapons will differentiate his firm. LIOR also plans to donate a 10th of its profits to charity.
Good Year
Pressure on capital raising is easing after money managers such as Caxton Associates, Brevan Howard Asset Management and Chris Rokos's investment firm posted some of the best results ever in a banner year for funds that bet across asset classes. Investors poured about $3 billion into macro hedge funds in January after pulling out $11 billion last year, according to eVestment.
This article appeared on News Managers