SOLUTIONS

What We Deliver
Manama Skyline, Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

SUMMA Limited provides insight of unusual breadth and depth across the institutional investment field

 

We deliver a superior perspective by harnessing decades of hands-on investment practice

 

This combines an insider's view of the buy-side at top pension and sovereign wealth funds

 

Extensive knowledge of the sell-side at investment banks and asset management firms

 

And acquaintance with a blue-chip, global clientele

 

 

A Joined-Up Perspective

 

 

SUMMA offers board and expert services, institutional consulting and advice on strategy risk and governance across asset classes, techniques and styles

 

Exploiting  privileged, first-hand, acquaintance with critical investment functions, governance and compliance at leading funds

 

And informed by commitment to continuing professional education and research

Board & Expert Services

 

Our CEO has been a director of investment company boards since 1989, including at a large US investment bank and as a Global Partner in the largest quoted European asset manager, where he took his team in 1994

Board Advisory

 

Chairing and participating in key committees for investment company and SWF boards since 1989 has nurtured a "helicopter" quality imperative to success  and honed by advising founders of asset management boutiques as diverse as a European corporate engagement pioneer, US consulting and fund-of-funds firm and an Eire-based transaction origination and placement company.

Marketing

 

Marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department.  Striking a mutually profitable balance between client need and business competence is the wellspring of innovation and paramount goal. I have extensive experience of marketing and sales value-chains across clienteles, products and geographies and have retained or won many blue-chip accounts against fierce competition.

Expert Services

 

As a practising member of The Academy of Experts (TAE), I have been retained under Civil Procedure Rules Practice Regulation 35 (Experts and Assessors) to provide testimony through initial, supplemental and joint expert reports, as well as having provided testimony in person in a $1.2 billion case in the English High Court.  

Sovereign Wealth Funds

 

Having been the senior expatriate in multiple funds at various phases of development, I understand how investment policy themes like asset allocation, enterprise risk, and return attribution relate to multi-manager selection and oversight as well as to  organisational change, compliance, best practices, policies, procedures and new technology.

Pension Fund Start-Up

 

I have been instrumental in the establishment of the national pension fund for a MENA state, designed to assimilate dozens of legacy funds to a single, harmonised best practice platform. Which entailed organising RFI, RFP, vendor selection, financial analyses, actuarial, asset consulting, project management and all other components to effect a seamless transition.

Asset Allocation

 

Any long-term investment endeavour is only as good as its foundations.  On reasonable assumptions about asset class risk, return and sponsor risk appetite, strategic allocation latitude is surpringly constrained; and so too is stock selection, in terms of permissible active risk. It is imperative that such exercises are  properly framed and internally coherent, but most of all that they form an integrated whole.

Policy

 

Defining strategy goals requires care because systematically assuring their attainment entails orchestrating many diverse elements. From coherent benchmarking, performance measurement, performance attribution and associated trade execution to style and factor analyses; together with robust provision for support and comprehensive reporting.

Procedures & Compliance

 

General Rules I codified for a leading SWF in 1998 from disparate guidelines covering its many hundred portfolios, together with other principles regulating personal trading, conflicts of interest and ethical standards, later formed the basis for an industry-wide standard. But such initiatives must be intrinsic to an organisation and form a coherent whole.

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Our Services

Institutional Consulting

 

SUMMA Limited provides comprehensive asset, strategy and change management advice covering the creation, organisation and management of pension, endowment, sovereign and other wealth funds

Board & Expert Services

Transactions

 

Having straddled the buy and sell sides is invaluable in providing discreet placement advice across multiple asset classes and industries for deals of up to US$20 billion, including conceiving a third-party Middle East marketing platform, sourcing funds to buy-out of one of the oldest European private equity buy-out companies and to restructure a US$600 million European Investment Trust.

Change Management

 

No one knows better than an investment manager that all worthwhile projects can look like a failure half way through. It takes thought-leadership, stewardship, planning, virtuosity and grit to "get over the hump". I am  restless to streamline and raise the game of the organisations I work with by embracing new new ideas and taking a coherent, joined-up approach to delivery in challenging areas.

Judicial Office, UK, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Institutional Consulting

Best Practices

 

In my capacity as senior expatriate executive at four SWFs I have had extensive first-hand experience in this field and recently advised on best practices for a Middle Eastern state development fund, for which consultants are designing a comprehensive blueprint to assimilate multiple, regional legacy funds to an ambitious, unitary development vision.

Portfolio Restructuring

 

Markets do not stop for organisational change. And neither should the performance and risk measurement and management. Working with a world-class clientele across pension and sovereign funds to transition assets led me to create controlled portfolio restructuring as an end-to-end service.  The same  thinking animates my change management consulting.

Strategy, Risk & Governance

Risk-Budgeting

 

Allocation and risk budgeting are two sides of the same coin.  Together they should consistently inform the entire investment selection and review process.  Proper benchmarking, performance measurement and risk management must express a fund's strategic goals in a way that facilitates timely exploitation of market opportunities.

Practice

 

The tenets of institutional investment practice are often poorly elaborated or shared and understood among all relevant stakeholders. Success hinges on a joined-up approach to policy stewardship. Front and back office practices must be codified and provision made for timely tools and metrics; including enterprise-wide risk and return management.

Platforms

 

Exploitation of information technology for business advantage has been a constant theme at every stage of my career. I have led several very high-ticket projects, integral to business change and process improvement. These ground-breaking initiatives have lent added emphasis to the importance of taking a holistic approach to data management.

Strategy, Risk & Governance

 

Since 1996 our CEO has participated in or chaired the investment committees of the biggest SWFs in MENA and Asia. Overseeing classical assets as well as some of the largest buy-side alternative portfolios

Product Development

 

The confluence of finance theory and information technology is a consistent theme in delivery of innovative client solutions. These include advances in: specialist equity and style rotation funds, tactical asset allocation, currency management, derivative overlays, controlled portfolio restructuring, stratified optimisation, consensus indexation, option substitution and synthetic indexing.

Project Management

 

Leading a successful multibillion dollar transfer of undertakings from an investment bank to Europe's largest quoted asset manager under six months in 1994 taught me a a lot about project management. And I have had ample  experience since; both in initiating and leading critical, high-ticket programmes and chairing the user groups essential to their success.

SWF Start-Ups

 

Both experience joining the Qatar Investment Authority as asset headon the cusp of its strong growth, reporting directly to the board,  and subsequent investment stewardship at the first federal SWF for the UAE, afforded invaluable lessons in managing start-ups. Every large intergenerational fund brings both a unique vision and familiar challenges.

 

 

SUMMA Limited is able to advise on all of these and many more aspects of institutional investment management

 

Please contact us for more information or for a complimentary exploratory discussion

 

Strategy

 

In the course of my long career in institutional investment management I have provided strategic input to numerous blue-chip client organisations. SUMMA Limited draws on this experience and expertise to provide, for instance, regular strategy consulting input to the umbrella body marketing one of the world's foremost strategic commodities.

Processes

 

Institutional asset management is a holistic exercise. For allocation and instrument or manager selection to be effective it is essential to harmonise and cohere the goals and processes of portfolio construction.  It is also imperative to streamline operational infrastructure and third-party platforms. 

Governance

 

The legacy of almost four decades in investing for the world's foremost companies is a grasp of the need to get things right that no one ever teaches, like how to build a portfolio or a fund. Passion to pursue this, fired by experience as an expert witness led me back to research and a wholly new take on governance.