For investment professionals only - not for use by retail investors
Alternatives: Diversifition in
a complex investment world
Our Team
Andrew McCaffery
Global Head of Alternatives
Peter Lawrence
Strategic Director – Alternatives
Averell Mortimer
Strategic Advisor – Alternatives
Graham McDonald
Head of Private Equity
Russell Barlow
Head of Hedge Funds
Kang Puay-Ju
Head of Property Multi-Manager
Gershon Cohen
Head of Infrastructure Funds
Jim Gasperoni
Head of Real Assets
As of December 31, 2015. Includes affiliated persons operating
under an inter-company agreement.
Introduction
Confronted with a low interest rate environment and news of lackluster economic
growth from many countries around the world, institutional investors are
increasingly seeking alternative sources of return to diversify portfolios and
weather potential market downturns. In fact, the popularity of “alternatives”
reached an all-time high in 2015, with $6.3 trillion invested in this diverse category
that encompasses many different asset classes, regions and types of vehicles.
Aberdeen Asset Management, as one of the largest money managers in the world,
offers an array of alternative investment strategies and private capital solutions
across private equity, property multi- manager, infrastructure, real assets and
hedge funds.
Why invest in alternatives?
By adding appropriate alternative investment strategies to their portfolios, investors can
benefit from:
• An expanded opportunity set. Alternative investments can offer access to a larger range of
strategies that aren’t easily found in the traditional publicly-traded sphere, such as real assets,
private equity and venture capital. This larger universe of opportunities can help investors seek
a wider range of investments with the potential to help enhance portfolio returns.
• Greater portfolio diversification. Alternative investments typically have low correlations to
traditional investments such as long-only equities and fixed income. This diversification can help
promote growth with the potential for lower volatility across various stages of market cycles.
• Skilled professional management. We believe the most successful alternative investment
strategies are managed by professionals with unique experience in identifying value within a
vast opportunity set. Access to experienced, talented investment managers can help
investors realize the low correlation, diversification and return potential they seek from
alternative investments.
A truly global alternatives platform
Aberdeen’s comprehensive global alternatives platform features dedicated teams of investment professionals based around the world. Across
the alternative strategy spectrum, more than 100 investment professionals are focused on multi-manager research, selection and portfolio
management for hedge-fund strategies (including liquid alternative strategies), private equity and debt, property and real assets, as well as direct
investments in infrastructure projects. We believe our global, multi-strategy perspective creates a unique execution advantage in meeting client
specific objectives.
Our Philosophy
Our Process
• We use intensive research to proactively source best-in-class
investment opportunities and specialist managers.
• A long-term strategy outlook is developed and maintained for each
type of alternative using information gathered from regular market
and strategy reviews.
• Our team approach encourages the sharing of proprietary research
across our alternative and traditional investment teams.
• We conduct rigorous pre-investment due diligence and actively
manage portfolios post-investment in order to enhance returns (e.g.,
secondary sales and purchases, post-investment portfolio
optimization, etc.)
• We continually monitor multiple types of risk within the portfolio to
stay abreast of any changes that might occur as markets evolve.
• After conducting one-on-one interviews with potential managers,
we select best-in-class managers to invest a portion of our portfolios.
• Our alternative investments team constructs balanced portfolios of
managers with complementary skills and mandates.
• After implementing the investment strategy for a particular
portfolio, we continuously monitor the portfolio and conduct
ongoing due diligence visits to help ensure good results.
Aberdeen is a long-time adopter and signatory of the United Nations-sponsored Principles for
Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI), demonstrating our commitment to comprehensive
environmental, social and governance investment standards.
Private Equity and Venture Capital
Private equity (“PE”) and venture capital (“VC”) have the potential to
offer high returns, but the investment strategies take time. Now, more
than ever, we believe the industry’s top performing managers are
either difficult to find, difficult to analyze and/or – most notably –
difficult to access.
Our Private Equity investment teams take an experienced regionspecific approach and construct portfolios with specialization in
global lowermiddle markets, seeking to capitalize on opportunities in
what we believe are the least efficient segments of the private equity
market. Our Venture Capital team builds strategically concentrated,
global portfolios of funds that are most likely to invest in the leading
technology companies of the current and upcoming innovation cycle.
Advantages of Private Equity:
• Comprehensive private markets offering with specialization in
global lower-middle markets
• Multi-generational team that can produce strong returns with a
global reach and a local understanding
• An emphasis on proven, operationally-oriented managers that are
typically either hard to find, hard to diligence and/or hard to access
• Proactive, thesis-driven and research-oriented manager sourcing
2
Alternatives: Diversification in a complex investment world - April 2016
Aberdeen also offers concentrated portfolios of global venture
capital funds that it believes are most likely to back the next wave of
gamechanging companies.
Advantages of Venture Capital:
• Early recognition of the shifting manager landscape to create access
to what we believe is the best of today’s up and coming managers
• Extensive fund selection experience
• Dedicated team with direct investment experience and a strong
reputation in the venture capital community
• Targeted focus on early-stage venture capital investments with
lower valuations to drive potential for good returns
Real assets
Infrastructure
Within real assets we seek to invest globally with fund managers
who have particular asset-type and operational expertise across
the following natural resources sub-asset classes: energy (including
upstream and midstream oil and gas, power, and infrastructure assets),
mining and minerals, timber, and agriculture. These managers tend to
be difficult to find, present challenges in diligence and/or are hard to
access, rendering the strategy ideal for an outsourced solution.
We specialize in investments underpinned by long-term government
contracts predominantly in social and economic infrastructure projects.
To date our investments have been concentrated in Europe, the US and
Australia.
Advantages of Real Assets:
• Targeted focus on the less efficient pockets of private natural
resources investment
• Deliberate attention to opportunities presented by different
manager styles and underlying asset type
• History of identifying and partnering with managers who bring a
specific skill set to a particular natural resources opportunity
Advantages of Infrastructure:
• Pioneered the public-private partnership (“PPP”) infrastructure
strategy investment
• Proven, demonstrable, track record having invested in more than
120 PPPs globally*
• Experienced manager of 15 years with 25 investment professionals
worldwide*
• Quasi-PPP includes PPP-like infrastructure assets with ability to
potentially achieve higher rates of return in return for an elevated
level of risk
• Diversification without diluting performance
Property Multi-Manager
Aberdeen’s property multi-manager strategies are actively managed
portfolios comprised of both emerging and established managers.
We seek to invest with managers who add property level value, have
micromarket expertise, and are less reliant on capital markets and
global real estate trends. We have a global team with offices in the US,
Europe and Asia and we manage fund-of-funds, bespoke solutions as
well as separate account mandates and across strategies, from core
to opportunistic. We have made around 200 investments and we are
today invested in over 100 funds across the globe.A
Advantages of Property Multi-Manager:
• Focus on niche funds where the manager’s expertise can generate
good alpha for our investors
• Portfolio optimization for performance and exposure
• Exposure across a broad spectrum of property types and
geographies
Hedge Funds
Aberdeen seeks to invest globally across a full range of hedge fund
products with varied degrees of liquidity options. We can deliver
compelling value in our institutional-quality investment platform in
event driven, relative value, equity hedge and global macro verticals.
We manage both fund-of-funds, bespoke solutions and separate
accounts.
Advantages of Hedge Funds:
• Tenure, reputation and deep networks can provide advantageous
manager relationships
• Portfolios constructed using rigorous framework that avoids
reliance on backwards-looking return data
• Funds are subjected to stress tests while risk monitoring enables
early warning of negative trends
• Investment teams comprised of strategy specialists that combine
top-down market analysis with bottom-up manager due diligence
Intelligent Diversification
A vast array of investment vehicles and complex structures can make it difficult for investors to select the right strategies for
their portfolios. Our alternatives strategies can offer a number of benefits to our clients including risk adjusted enhanced
returns, reduced volatility and tail protection.
Aberdeen’s experienced Alternative Investments team can help you access best-in-class opportunities within alternative
investments that fit your specific needs and portfolio objectives.
A
As of December 31, 2015
aberdeen-asset.ch3
Global reach, local understanding
• We know global markets from the local level upwards, drawing on around 2,800 staff, across
37 offices in 25 countries.B
• Investment teams are based in the markets or regions in which they invest, bringing local
knowledge backed by our global perspective.
• Our 750 investment professionals around the world provide a complete picture of financial
market trends, risks and opportunities.B
• Investment teams champion original thinking and knowledge with investment decisions on
extensive proprietary research.
• Close-knit teams, clear investment processes and flat hierarchical structures are important to us.
• As a group, we have the scale to provide global coverage of financial markets; yet are small
enough to focus on each and every investment decision.
• Most importantly, we seek to grow our clients’ assets in a way that is manageable and
sustainable over the longer term.
B
At Aberdeen, asset management
is our primary business.
Aberdeen Asset Management is a global
asset manager listed on the London Stock
Exchange since 1991. Today, we manage
more than $428 billion of assets from our
global offices as of December 31, 2015.
Our clients include retirement plans,
state and local governments, hospitals,
insurance firms, multi-employer plans,
endowment and foundations, and other
institutional and private client investors.
We engage with all clients using a
consultative approach focusing on a
rigorous investment discipline, risk control,
and a commitment to transparency.
As of December 31, 2015
The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up and your clients may get back less than the amount invested
Contact details
Should you require any further information, please visit aberdeen-asset.ch for details of your local Aberdeen representative.
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