About Cartesian Capital Partners
Cartesian Capital Partners is an investment boutique based on traditional values and independent thinking. The experienced Cartesian fund management team employs an unconstrained approach to identifying the best opportunities across the UK equity universe. This incorporates the careful, diligent aspects of fund management that the reputation of Scottish investment management was built upon.
The Cartesian approach, while traditional in part, is at the same time innovative and free thinking. The partners retain a healthy degree of scepticism of consensus market views and have consistently uncovered opportunities missed by the wider market. The team runs high conviction, concentrated portfolios, which, while possibly unsuitable for more risk averse investors, have the potential to generate high levels of outperformance.
Cartesian’s investment process, developed by the team during their time at SVM Asset Management, has produced almost a decade of consistent outperformance from both a long only and long/short perspective*. This has attracted strong institutional support over the years, testimony to the validity of the process.
A dynamic team with strong backing
The Edinburgh-based Cartesian boutique was launched in December 2005, and is a 50-50 joint venture between Cartesian’s David Stevenson, Andrew Kelly, Jeremy Hall and Susan Rafferty on the one hand, and Ignis Asset Management on the other. The partnership enables Cartesian to focus entirely on investment management while Ignis, which has around £69 billion of assets under management**, delivers the distribution, sales, marketing and back office operations. Cartesian has approximately £475 million of assets under management***.
*David Stevenson has outperformed in 9 out of the last 10 calendar years. Source: Lipper, bid to bid net income reinvested. 2000 – 2005 are in respect of SVM UK Opportunities managed by David Stevenson. 2000 is 9 months to 31/12/00 and 2005 is in respect of 11 months to 30/11/05. 2006 – 2009 shows performance in respect of the Cartesian UK Opportunities Fund. The FTSE All Share has been used as a proxy for the period (14/11/05 to 29/12/05) when no fund was managed. **Source: Internal, at 31/03/10. ***Source: Internal, at 31/05/10. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The value of units can fall as well as rise and is not guaranteed.
The Cartesian investment approach - standing out from the crowd
- 40 years' combined experience
- Analytical rigour - two accountants and an actuary
- Deep understanding of companies and markets - assessed with a business ownership mindset
- Investment approach employed successfully for over a decade
- Careful, diligent approach to risk
