How Famille Capital’s Andrew Hagger sources investments for wealthy clients

With clients that ski in Aspen, climb the Andes or eat strawberries at Wimbledon, sourcing investment opportunities for the ultra rich is both an art and a science, says this industry leader.

Andrew Hagger is the executive chairman of Famille Capital. Picture: NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

Advisers to high net-worth clients scarcely need to remind them that there’s a big world out there. For their clients ski in Aspen, climb South American mountains, eat strawberries at Wimbledon, and track cheetahs while glamping in the Masai Mara. Yet sophisticated advisers to the wealthy need an exceptionally solid grip on the world; in an investment sense, they need to be even better travelled than their client.

A highly credentialed new venture fund out of Silicon Valley? A build-to-rent platform in Amsterdam? UK data centres? Highly prospective mining projects in far-flung places? An Asian consumer private equity fund play?

Find out who made the Top 150 list. 

This article is from The 2024 Barron’s Top 150 Financial Advisers magazine which is published in The Australian in full on November 21.

There’s much to consume across brutal time zones and, given the 24/7 nature of global markets, many advisers are up early and retiring late in the search for opportunities. Spare corners of the house do double duty for late night video conferences involving London or early calls to New York.

Advisers are continually on the international hunt because a domestic investment approach often won’t cut it. In equity index terms, our ASX All Ordinaries Index has doubled over the past 12 years, while the Dow Jones Index has done the same over seven years and the Nasdaq over four.

In this period, Australians have become generally well invested overseas, even if many may not fully appreciate it. The money deployed by Australia’s superannuation funds is enormous. A decade or so ago Australian Super held approximately $80bn in assets. Today, it has more than that allocated just to international equities; that’s $80bn plus, across an asset portfolio of $350bn plus. Add just five more funds – Future Fund, Australian Retirement Trust, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation Aware Super, and UniSuper – and voila, there is more than $1.5 trillion in total assets under management, of which a healthy amount is allocated overseas. Another trend is the growth of in-house teams established by the superannuation funds in global financial centres.

Most of the ultra-high net worth clients I know typically expect their portfolios to perform better for them than the headline returns achieved by these large superannuation funds, even if it’s an apples versus oranges comparison given their bespoke needs, investment horizons, risk appetites and liquidity requirements.

Navigating conversations tailored to client wishes and circumstances, is both an art and a science for advisers.

These wealthy clients might be of the patient, long-term type, with endowment-like philosophies nurturing and protecting capital for future generations. Other family patriarchs or matriarchs are adventurous and much more opportunistic. Increasingly, we see additional overlays applied to investment choices. They include impact investment, weighting investments towards particular passions of the family, and investments encouraging the upcoming generation. A gender empowerment fund? A small operating business to encourage entrepreneurship? A climate hard-tech opportunity? All of these are in the mix.

As they hunt for options, top advisers and family offices draw on effective networks, internally and externally, to identify appropriate, attractive investment opportunities. These networks are a combination of firms like ours which offer bespoke opportunities; plus in-house wealth management capabilities (if part of a global firm for example); and the global contacts made through international travel.

The principals in one family office I liaise with pound the pavements in international cities regularly. It’s not for fun, and largely unglamorous, but they do so to uncover attractive private market opportunities they would likely not have sourced from the comfort of their Australian offices. Quality introductions to trusted networks and deal/investment opportunities are valuable and are sought after by clients and advisers.

Entrepreneur Daniel Petre recently identified three areas of future innovation: AI, climate tech, and biotech/biomed.

I will make two predictions: firstly, the vast percentage of winners in these innovation waves will turn out to be companies based outside Australia; and second, Australian companies will once again punch above their (relatively small) weight globally. There are thus two sets of opportunities available. One is to discover Australian-headquartered entities and funds best placed to scale globally in any one of AI, climate tech and biotech; they exist, and they are emerging. The second opportunity is to craft a sensible strategy that brings into consideration the global opportunities afforded by these innovation waves, which may include international investment.

Navigating conversations and strategies around all these aspects, tailoring to client wishes and circumstances, is both an art and a science for advisers – the best of whom must be masters of both in order to build and retain their client’s trust.

Andrew Hagger is the executive chairman of Famille Capital, a firm recently launched to serve the interests of ultra-high-net-worth families. He is a former group executive of National Australia Bank (including as CEO of MLC and NAB Wealth, and chair of JBWere) and former CEO of the Forrest family’s Tattarang and Minderoo Foundation.