Fee-based firm looks to grow

New fee-based firm Foundry Asset Management is on the acquisition trail and is currently in talks with several firms.

Monday, August 10th 2009, 6:50AM 2 Comments

by Sonia Speedy

Foundry is the new guise of the former Auckland-based Investment Research Group Portfolio business, which was purchased by Macrocarpa Holdings, a subsidiary of The Business Bakery for $500,000 in late May.

Foundry senior investment adviser Stephen Rogers - who previously held the same role at IRG Portfolio - and former IRG director Grant Baker purchased the business with Baker's business partners Geoff Ross and Stephen Sinclair. Baker, Ross and Sinclair are the trio behind The Business Bakery and previously 42 Below vodka.

Rogers says the team bring a fresh perspective to financial services and that the firm is built around investment performance, not operating on a brokerage basis. Its investment committee is independently chaired by Louis Boulanger.

"If the clients do well, we do well," Rogers says.

He says Foundry intends to grow organically, but is also keen to bring other companies on board. It has already been in discussions with two advisory firms with similar philosophies that look likely to join up.

With a growth target "well north" of $500 million funds under management - it is currently at around $70 million - Foundry has "plenty of capital to buy the right acquisitions should they be available," Rogers says.

He says Foundry intends to grow the business with a different approach to what has been tried previously.

"Largely the industry is very much a cottage industry and eventually someone is going to institutionalise that and be very successful in the process. Certainly that is what our aim is."

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Comments from our readers

On 11 August 2009 at 4:37 pm Jonathan Weiss said:

What do they mean, "built on performance". From my association, they are using a wrap service so one is paying a fee whether you make money or not. "If clients do well" of course you make money, and if they don't you still charge clients the same going rate until you start making money for them again or they walk. What's the "different approach" that he is saying? I'll be interested to see what the new company does different than others. Steven Rogers has been around for a long time so there is nothing new there.

On 12 August 2009 at 9:02 pm Stephen Rogers said:

Thanks Jonathan for your comments.
What is different at Foundry is, is Investment performance. Our asset allocation is different, than most market participants. For starters we have commodities as a seperate asset class, (seperate from resource equities)and we also have no seperate allocation to Property. Listed Property funds are assessed purely on their fundamentals, if they stack up, they are included in our equity allocation, i.e they are treated as any other listed company. We also have an independant chair (Louis Boulanger)on our Investment committee. All of this has added up to positive performance for clients over the last few years. Jonathan, If you had the time to pick up the phone and have a conversation with us at Foundry, you would quickly learn that, by design, Foundry is significantly different than nearly all other financial advisery particiants.

We are allways happy to discuss.

Kind Regards,
Stephen Rogers.