Who We Are

    Established in 2015, Index & Cie is a specialised boutique Asset Management firm located in the heart of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). As a company regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), we adhere to the highest standards of professionalism and integrity.

    At Index & Cie, we pride ourselves on being fully independent. This means we are the architects of our own structure, investment research capabilities and portfolio management decisions, without the interference of third-party agendas.

    Our setup empowers us to provide bespoke and tailored solutions designed to meet the unique requirements and needs of our clients. We understand that every individual investor has specific goals, preferences and risk appetites. Whether you are an individual investor, family office, or institutional client, Index & Cie is focused on providing you with the highest level of investment management services and attention.

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    One of the key strengths of our firm is our ability to provide multiple international jurisdictional custodianship. With a focus on Europe, the Middle East and Africa, we have developed a network of custodial relationships in various regions and with primary players. This allows us to efficiently protect and manage our clients’ assets while ensuring compliance with strict regulations of some of the most protected jurisdictions. .

    Our team of experienced professionals provides decades of experience in active capital management along a modern version of the Value Investing philosophy. Experience is key in this domain, as clients can leverage on the lessons our team learnt through economic recessions, shocks, bubbles and changes in paradigms. We believe in delivering our services while building long-term relationships on trust, transparency, fairness and mutual success.

    We invite you to explore our range of services, learn more about our expertise, and get in touch with us to discuss how Index & Cie can assist you in reaching your investment objectives.

    Welcome to a world of personalised independent asset management at Index & Cie.

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    Listed Markets

    A modern interpretation of Value Investing

    • We build investment strategies across equities, bonds and commodities listed in all major public markets
    • Our investment team operates under a modern interpretation of the Value Investing philosophy
    • Our strategies begin with macroeconomic analysis, continue with asset-specific research and are optimized via proprietary quantitative tools
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    Private Markets

    Access is key

    • Index & Cie is an investment partner of a top-20 sovereign wealth fund
    • We co-invest in exclusive opportunities presented to top global investors
    • Access is essential: the best startups and private companies in the world want to be invested in by the best VCs funds in the world, and Index & Cie co-invests with the best VCs in the world
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    Infrastructure

    Asset protection, reasonable costs

    • Safety of client assets is our top priority
    • We can custody assets either with final depositary institutions in developed Western countries or with major intermediary banks
    • Our independent core banking system allows us to maintain control of all flows without depending on any intermediary bank
    • Because of the quality of our partnerships, we managed to offer our services at a very competitive cost

    What We Do

    At Index & Cie, we take pride in managing our clients’ wealth across public and private markets. Our approach to capital management is based on a modern version of the Value Investing philosophy. We perform our own macroeconomic, bottom-up and quantitative analysis, without depending on third-party research.

    What sets us apart from our competitors is our intellectual independence from external influence. We believe in challenging the status quo and constantly seeking excellent companies or assets to best protect and growth our clients’ capital. In addition, our commitment to independence allows us to act on our clients’ best interests, ensuring unbiased and genuine recommendations.

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    Our comprehensive offering includes a range of services designed to meet the diverse investment needs of our clients:

    Public Markets

    We are primarily investors in global listed markets, which include, equities, bonds, currencies, derivatives and funds. Our strategies are built along the lines of a modern interpretation of the Value Investing philosophy, which aims at buying unique businesses with a very long runway of growth and cash generation, and a strong downside protective feature.

    Private Markets

    Through a strategic partnership with one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, we provide our clients with direct access to private equity, venture capital, and alternative investment opportunities. The key feature here is access: the opportunities we offer are hard to come by and are limited in size. The objective is to diversify the portfolio exposure by participating in assets that are minimally correlated with listed markets.

    Property Investment

    We have exclusive access to a diverse range of property investment opportunities. This is the result of our direct relationships with niche luxury property developers outside of the mainstream ones. We exclusively deal with small, high-value projects in prime locations across major cities. This is a great chance to diversify asset allocation and capitalize on attractive real estate investments.

    Discretionary, Advisory & Execution

    The relationship with our clients can take three forms: we can manage their portfolios on their behalf (discretionary), or we can advise them while choosing investment targets and portfolio allocations (advisory), or we can simply execute our clients’ investment orders (execution). Our highest value-added service can be found in our discretionary investment strategies. Designed to cover most risk-return profiles, these strategies focus on major listed asset classes and provide varying degrees of allocation, concentration and risk-taking. All are built with a long-term investment horizon in mind and with intrinsic protective features to limit potential downsides over the course of time.
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    Discretionary

    Our Investment Team manages the client’s capital according to three different mandates, designed to address a wide range of risk/return profiles via diversified or concentrated allocations in major asset classes. Macro and quantitative overlays are then applied.

    Conservative

    A diversified portfolio, overweighted fixed income instruments, with an emphasis on capital protection.

    Balanced

    A diversified portfolio with a mix of fixed income, equity and commodity instruments, with an emphasis on protection and upside growth.

    Global Value

    A concentrated portfolio focused on stock picking and quantitative overlay, with an emphasis on upside growth.

    Advisory

    The client calls the shots after discussing his or her risk/return profile with our Investment Team, which advises on how to allocate into asset classes via diversified instruments or single securities

    Execution

    The client chooses independently what to trade among ~6,000 listed equities, ~12,000 listed and OTC bonds, major listed precious and base metals and foreign currencies

    How We Do It

    Our Chief Investment Officer and team come from the Value Investing school of thought. The goal is to invest in companies, assets or projects that exhibit a sustainable competitive advantage, a large moat and a large enough margin of safety. This approach focuses exclusively on fundamentals of the investment targets and their industries.

    While deep fundamental research is still central in our philosophy, direct experience in capital markets over the course of decades motivated our team to add a strong macroeconomic overlay and a quantitative optimisation to the Value Investing approach.

    These tools inform our entire investment process and contain the following key elements:

    Value

    While the Value Investing philosophy begun in the early 1900s with not so much a focus on quality, but on the price paid for a business, we interpret value as buying only excellent, unique and dominant businesses. We would rather buy a business with high margins, market share, return and growth at a reasonable price than a normal business at a cheap price. In addition, excellent businesses have historically lower drawdown risk, high market price performance and moderate volatility.

    Capital protection

    By investing in excellent businesses, historical evidence shows the capital invested, suffers less mark-to-market losses than any other type of business. This is an intrinsic protective feature of our picks since investors have a collective price minimum in mind under which the price will not go.

    Investment horizon

    The excellent companies we aim to buy usually enjoy the effect of compounded growth. This means our portfolios partially display an exponential growth trajectory, dictated by both expanding aggregate earnings and increasing interest from investors, which drives up the valuation. This trajectory is possible only with a long-term investment horizon. In addition, a horizon longer than 12 months is the luxury of the intelligent investor. Global markets adjust about 12 months in advance to any development, allowing a long-term oriented investor to look into 2 – 5 years of earnings on any specific company. This difference allows for valuation discrepancies that amount to substantial margins of safety. The downside of it is that it takes a solid mind and cool blood to face momentary market downturns, especially when the underlying investment thesis on a company remains intact and positive.

    Unbiased investment approach

    We are generalists by nature, and do not focus on specific asset classes, industries, geographies and market caps. The only companies we do not invest in are micro and small caps. Whatever industry is dominant in our strategies is only a reflection of higher value we found in them, instead of signalling a preference. Cash is allocated flexibly and within stated ranges in asset classes. This stance allows us to look at any opportunities with objective eyes and to choose the relative best asset class at any given point in time.

    Multi-asset class approach

    All asset classes are correlated by way of interest rates. In an environment of zero rates, equities and bonds tend to move in a similar manner, since the fixed income class no longer provides an adequate remuneration, nor protection. Our strategies have ranges of allocation among asset classes that allows us to allocate capital opportunistically and safely.

    Global reach

    Our clients deserve access to the most liquid and efficient marketplaces in the world. This is a must, not an extra. Our team has been trained in the best marketplaces and is consummate in the Western technique to evaluate businesses. For those markets that exist outside of the Western capitalistic philosophy, Index & Cie has direct partnerships with top local institutions that work similarly to us in the management of their clients’ capital.

    Risk management

    Our risk management tools are far beyond those employed by the average asset manager. We developed a quantitative optimisation framework that has protection as its main feature. The framework is designed to close out single positions that have reached an overbought state, thus zeroing the contribution of volatility and drawdown risk of the security to the overall portfolio.

    Cost

    The asset management industry has gone through many years of decreasing fees. This has been a natural path towards an acceptable bottom for both operators like us and clients. We believe we have reached a reasonable balance in the quality of service we provide and its cost. We also designed our revenues to coincide with the investment success for the client, thus aligning our interests with theirs.
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    Sustainable Competitive Advantage

    • A company with a unique product or service, which are substantially superior to those of the competition;
    • Sustainability of superiority through time, which ultimately translates into superior and constant growth and returns through the years;
    • Balance sheet solidity, a measure of competitiveness since interest repayments directly impact earnings.
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    Moat

    • It takes years of research and large capital expenditure for competition to replicate the product or service;
    • Market share is large and position is entrenched in specific markets;
    • Concentrated industry or geography, where players are entrenched.
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    Margin of Safety

    • Only buy when a large discount exists between expected future economic value and current market valuation;
    • Only sell when competitive advantage or moat are deteriorating, but market valuation does not reflect that.

    Investment Views & Research

    Market Newsletter

    Our monthly view and interpretation of global markets, with an eye on long-term investment opportunities

    Discover

    Thematic Research

    Deep dives into the fundamentals of entire industries, visualizing the future from historical analogies

    Discover

    Meet The Team

    A united group of dedicated and experienced professionals

    Our Senior Management comes from decades of top managerial positions in the financial, consulting and commodity industries across the globe

    Our relationship managers have established strong relationships with our clients that today form the core of our long-term oriented business

    Our investment professionals come from more than 50 years of managing capital for individuals, families and institutions with bulge bracket investment banks, asset managers and multi-family offices in the US, UK, Europe, East Asia and the Middle East

    Index & Cie - News

    News

    The-Tenth-Annual-WealthBriefing-MENA-Awards-for-Excellence-2023
    21
    November
    2023

    The Tenth Annual WealthBriefing MENA Awards for Excellence 2023

    I was pleased to announce some of the winners of The Tenth Annual WealthBriefing MENA Awards for Excellence 2023 were announced last night a prestigious gala dinner.

    17
    May
    2023

    Top Independent Asset Managers 2023

    What is your investment philosophy?
    Everything begins with a first layer of global macro analysis and continues with a second layer of bottom-up fundamental research on single companies or assets we seek to have in our portfolio. Finally, we conduct a third layer of quantitative, algorithmic optimisation. Our target companies are high quality, solid, ever growing, best-in-class businesses that have managed to maintain a competitive advantage in their respective industries for years. Once we find them, we try to maximize our capital performance by buying when an irrational negative sentiment hit markets indiscriminately, and trading around positive and negative momentum.

    Are the local regulatory conditions conducive for setting up an IAM?
    The current regulatory conditions to set up IAMs in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) are straightforward and accessible by modern financing standards. We have also noticed an increased flow of both professionals and clients getting out of Europe and China and into the UAE – flows totally unrelated to Russian wealth.

    What services do you value the most from an intermediary bank?
    A distinction must be made in stage of evolution for IAMs. At inception, intermediary banks are necessary and sufficient to perform the job. The vital services are custody, brokerage, segregation, and core system, leaving the IAM time to focus on investments. At a non-startup level, things can be quite different. An IAM might still need these services centralised in its partner intermediary bank, but the price can be questioned.

    In our experience and in the study of history of the past 10 years, banks have essentially lost all revenue streams from interest rates. Most of them managed to survive by either overcharging on commoditised services, or by launching a brokerage online platform. The question of how much you pay for these services becomes central for non-startup IAMs, such as us.

    We chose to challenge the intermediary bank model by splitting it into three main parts. Today, we receive custodial services for cash and assets from two different custodians. We also place our market orders with several pure brokers. In addition, we have our own internal core system to aggregate all client data. This means we do not depend on any intermediary bank to digest and present data to us and our clients.

    What are the challenges for IAMs in the region?
    Setup and operating costs, competition, clients and the talent pool. We are talking about a substantial investment in cash and time to set up a well-developed infrastructure. Less thorough infrastructures risk a collapse due to personal relationships breaking down. Dubai and the DIFC are over-served markets, with lots of players already entrenched for decades now. Observation shows that clients tend to stay put from a jurisdictional point of view for several years. This means that capital rarely flows around major cities. In turn, the same clients are served by many providers, making competition high. With one of the most varied cultural melting pots in the world, the UAE offers wildly diverse ranges of professionalism. As with everything, looking for the highest professional and ethical standards is always a challenge, but the UAE might surprise on the upside.

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