Employees at Vancouver’s Steadyhand Investment Funds Inc. are heavily invested in their own funds, according to the firm’s latest disclosure of the levels of co-investment among its employees and external managers.
The firm reports that its employees and their families have over $25 million invested in the firm’s funds. And, that for employees that have been with the firm for over a year, the average level of co-investment is 84%; in other words, 84% of their investment portfolios is in the firm’s funds.
“These figures illustrate a significant personal commitment to our approach and managers,” it says.
“A small portion of some of our portfolios is invested with other managers in support of friends and firms that we know well and respect. A few of us also have individual stock holdings in companies that we follow closely and have a personal interest in,” it adds. “By and large, however, the majority of our money is invested alongside our clients’ money and our interests are well aligned.”
As for its sub-advisors, Steadyhand says that the lead managers of of its equity fund and its small-cap equity fund have over 75% of their personal liquid assets invested in their model portfolios.
The manager of its global equity fund does not make his holdings public, it notes, adding that he does have equity ownership in his company, “whose success depends largely on the performance of the portfolio he runs for his clients.”
High levels of co-investment was one of the criteria it used in selecting external managers for its funds, the firm says. “We wanted the key stock pickers to be invested alongside our clients and our employees. In addition, we wanted our managers to have an ownership stake in their company, which is another important form of alignment between investor and manager,” it says.