One of Europe’s leading multi-family offices was born from the merger of Stonehage and Fleming Family & Partners
When Stonehage and Fleming Family & Partners merged in 2015, the resulting institution became one of Europe’s largest multi-family offices which today manages more than $175 bn on behalf of some of the world’s high net worth dynasties in 14 geographies.
Tom Jeffcoate, who serves as the fund’s head of equity funds today, joined Stonehage before the merger in 2009, working side-by-side with Gerrit Smit, the Global Best Ideas lead fund manager and head of the company’s global equity offering. He is also responsible for company research within the equity management team, with a special focus on in-depth, bottom-up research covering firms across all sectors, for their $4.3 bn Global Best Ideas strategy. Prior to Stonehage, Jeffcoate held positions at ZAN Partners, Sigma Capital and PwC.
He talks to IR Impact about how the fund management industry has changed in recent decades, why he has a love-hate relationship with earnings season and why he values investor days so highly.
You’ve been in the fund management industry for some time. How have things changed?
One of the most interesting dynamics that’s changed is that when we started the strategy in 2009, 60 percent of the fund was in consumer staples, and whilst our philosophy has remained totally unaltered, today a number of very high-quality technology companies have essentially become the modern-day consumer staples. Companies such as Alphabet and Microsoft are today massive cash generating machines.