Gold Magazine June - July 2013, Issue 27 | Page 83

Gold: Tell us about Meritkapital’s main
activities.
P.I.: Meritkapital Ltd is an investment
firm licensed by the CySEC. Our main
activities include brokerage, custody, asset
management and most recently dealing on
own account. We are based in Cyprus but
cater to an international clientele which is
predominantly Russian. As such, our line
of services is much in line to the services
offered by other Russian brokerage houses
with a similar client profile. Due to the fact
that a large number of licensed Russian
brokerage houses are also based in Cyprus,
the close proximity of our operations has
been beneficial in a number of ways. We
have established credit lines, accounts of
various types amongst other collaborations
with one another and this has provided us
with an insight into their standards and
services and has enabled us to benchmark
against them. We have thus developed considerably through them.
Gold: In the asset management part of
your business, do you operate using a
single strategy or do you have to adapt
considerably according to the client?
P.I.: We have been through two crises – the
sub-prime loans and the euro debt crisis –
and we have clients that mainly have high liquidity needs and short investment horizons
so their funds must be made easily available
to accommodate their respective operational
needs. We thus have, mainly, a single strategy that encompasses a conservative approach
to investment which is predominantly fixed
income, though we do vary the type of
underlying instruments as per the ensuing
economic environment. For instance, we
increase allocations to convertible bonds that
are tied to equities in a bullish market, to
floating rate bonds in global central banks’
monetary easing policy environments, in
higher yielding bonds on a ‘risk on’ market,
and perpetual bonds with a bet on the yield
to call date in changing legislative times, as
per the latest BASEL III amendments.
Gold: You have recently expanded into
the brokerage business. What made you
take this decision?
P.I.: We have expanded into the brokerage business and particularly the electronic
trad