Luxury Indian Ocean LUXURY INDIAN OCEAN #7 EDITION 2018 | Page 93

Olivia Leclercq di Giovanni - General Manager, Shaheel Dilloo - Fund accountant, Paolo di Giovanni - Group CEO
Why did you decide to establish your head office in Mauritius?
Mauritius is ideally situated between Asia, Africa and Europe.
It’s the perfect place to build relationships between the
three continents, with good business standards and financial
regulations which could make certain major countries blush.
It’s an entrepreneurial and pro-active country, a democracy with
a reassuring level of political stability. Our role is to promote
Mauritius as an international financial hub, exploiting our
European experience and our geographical locations.
Could you tell us something more about your group?
We are a private and corporate independent asset management
company, working for both individuals and institutions. We also
manage investment funds in Mauritius (Odyssey Investment
Fund) and abroad (Skye Investment Fund SPC) in order to offer
our clients a wide range of solutions to meet their requirements.
We work in collaboration with major international banks, both
in Mauritius and abroad, to be able to offer the best cost-efficient
solutions.
What kind of services do you provide?
We offer asset management, financial and successional
engineering services, as well as upstream services. For example,
we have developed a concept which we call Doctor Invest – a
person, whether or not a client of ours, can contact us in order
to receive a summary report on his assets invested in one or
several banks. In the report, our analysts give a clear assessment
of the quality and risks, along with their recommendations. That
person can also obtain a totally independent opinion on his bank
in order to better understand his investments. We also manage
mandates on behalf of clients on a discretionary basis but also
intervene as advisers for most of our clients.
How important is it to be independent?
Nowadays, banks have optimised their revenue per client in
order to generate profits.We have shifted from an advisory
role to one of products marketing. That has created a conflict
of interest within the banks themselves so that the advice they
offer is misinterpreted and subordinated. VCM receives no
commission from banking institutions in order to avoid any risk
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of subordination or conflict of interest. We therefore always seek
the best solutions possible in the sole interest of our clients and
not ours or those of the banks.
How is your international network of benefit to your clients?
Within our group, clients can find full solutions to their
requirements thanks to branches in countries which are
economically and politically stable. Our commitment is to be
able to offer banking relationships with the large institutions
with which we work. The range of banks with which we
collaborate also enables us to offer the best service at the best
rate in accordance with what a client requires. It is a multi-bank
and multi-service approach and thereby tailored to the needs of
each individual client.
What’s behind the concept of a multi-brand boutique?
As with a shop, you come in to tell us what you’re looking for.
We then try to define what your wishes and requirements are
by exploring the nature of you and your family’s assets so that
we can define together a customised investment profile. The
boutique concept lies in the offer made from this assessment. The
solutions to meet your wishes and requirements will be multi-
brand. In the end, you’ll leave us not with just one product from a
sole provider, nor even necessarily one of our products, but you’ll
leave quite simply with what you need.
You favour active asset management. Could you explain this
further?
Once we’ve established your profile, proposed solutions adapted
to a client’s needs and set up an investment portfolio, our job
doesn’t stop there. We need to be pay attention to an investment
instead of waiting for it to pay off. Like a plant, you have to tend
to it regularly and help it grow so that one day you can harvest
its fruit. We provide a personalised monitoring on a daily basis
in line with market trends.
What is VCM’s leitmotiv?
Warren Buffett has said, “Only when the tide goes out do you
discover who has been swimming naked” – meaning that it is
when things go badly you can see who is best protected.
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