Wealth Advisory | Building Resilient Portfolios

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Okay. So,

hello Sune. Hi, Claire. We meet again.

We meet again. Today we are going to walk through the wealth advisory side of Bespoke Group. Uh we're going to talk

about what we do, why we do it the way we do, and how we serve our clients by

really building around them. We exist in an industry, as you know, many know we

talk about where many are still pushing products and we very consciously at Bespoke take a different approach, which

is what I'm excited to talk to you about today. uh an approach where um an approach that

is holistic, independent, and grounded in long-term outcomes. So, that's the lens for today's chat.

I'm joined by Sune Senen, our managing director of Bespoke Advisory, who's

going to help unpack all of this. I thought you covered it all right there in the intro, so we might be done.

All right, that's a wrap. No, it's um yeah, it's an interesting

it's an interesting space to start off, I think, because I think there's some key pieces that we

need to lay down as kind of the grounding for the conversation because I think when when people hear that we do

in when I do hear that we do investment management, they often come with the assumption of kind of the standard approach to it. And so I think the the

conversation generally tends to shift to a different direction once we start outlining kind of what it is we actually

sold for. And as you outlined, we build around our clients. Um and so our

clients are gener generationally wealthy uh clients and so it's it changes how

you think about the word investment and the activities that come with it. Um one is just the longevity of it. you

have much longer time horizon and when we first started building our Bespoke advisory I've spent a long time in in

the industry both on kind of more the product side um but when we started building our Bespoke advisory we were

asking ourselves these questions about you know what is it that we truly solve for what is the value add in what we do

um and who are the people we serve and then we start with one person or one family and really started building

around them and then obviously there were some commonalities that then translated to the second one but mostly

You have to come at it almost like a unique project every time we take on a client family. And so the first one that

we do have in common is if we do our jobs correctly then they will have wealth beyond their their the

principal's life and potentially into second, third, fourth generations. Um and so you get this much longer time

horizon where what seems to be important in if you switch on financial news which I generally avoid completely is kind of

what's happened the last 3 months and what might happen you know next week or 3 months from now. you know those things

are not super relevant to the types of clients that we serve in terms of how you think about the wealth and I think the other piece to it is

you know we find clients where they are and that means they have if they have generational wealth it's very rare that that will be sitting in cash you know I

just sold my company in most cases it comes with a connect you know collection of existing assets sometimes the

business they build um other things and so you got to start with that you don't get to start just with I have x amount

of dollars that I want you to do something with and I think those are the two differences is really you find the client where they are and that's a

different place than most people cuz they've achieved something extraordinary in some way or the other. And then the

different thing is that when you're starting to think forward you're not thinking quarter or 6 months or 12

months you're thinking 12 years 20 years even beyond that if you're thinking about the philanthropic side of of a

family's wealth often. So before we get into the assets actually you know there's something interesting right it's

like you meet the client where you where they are and every client's experience is different so it's going to look different hence our name Bespoke um it's

very a tailored approach but there are some pillars that I think that are um

how do you say uh that that apply throughout and so maybe we can look at

those you know you highlighted a long-term horizon which is unique because I think longterm typically an

industry will be like 6 months. Um, and what we would consider short-term, but

um, and then you know there's there's global a global approach utilizing other

jurisdictions and currencies. I mean I think some other pillars just to kind of

set the stage of the conversation is resilience. Um, yeah feel free to chime

in on those. Yeah, I think again the starting point for me would be that in truth we are

generally risk managers first because the client is already done the hard part which is they build generational wealth

which is again an extraordinary outcome just statistically and so my job is not

to go out and load up on risk or build some kind of standard portfolio. Um it is essentially to say well done.

Generally when the client comes to us if they're looking for asset management services they're looking for something beyond uh they're looking for someone to

hand off to if they want to be spending their time doing other things and so my starting point is risk and then

obviously opportunity and I think the when we talk about risk which I think is

important to define and again something we focused on initially when we started building out the solutions I think people associate my industry associate

risk with volatility oh the price went up 5% it went down you know 10% And you

know those are risks if you have short time horizons. if you're leveraged because you'd be you're you're trading alongside those things. You're a trader

not an investor in my mind. We are investors first and so for me volatility of price is actually opportunity because

I can buy when others are fearful to use a very common sort of theme which again sounds easy much more difficult to do

and to do it consistently over decades takes you know a rules-based approach and and sometimes getting a little lucky

here and there but the um so volatility is not our risk so to speak it's maybe

our opportunity in some ways what is a risk is permanent loss of wealth and that can take the form of actual

realized loss us it can take the form of debasement or lack of loss of purchasing power. So the currency component which

we can talk a little bit about and then you know other aspects which I think is probably covered in some of our

wonderful series of podcasts that focus more on the how to own the where to own where the actual the primary risk of

permanent loss of generational family at least needs to be guarded against in that space before you even get to the

assets. And so we think about risk in that context first and then from the investment side the kind of stuff that

takes away generational wealth in big chunks. One is the negative compounding

of the debasement of the currency. So we think about that and we can spend some time on that. And the other pieces um we

tend to look top down at two aspects. One being geopolitics and by geopolitics

most actions in geopolitics and we live in a very rich vein of noise in the geopolitical area right now but most of

it doesn't actually truly have any lasting impact on markets. It may have big swings because people get emotional

about it in the short term but in most cases if you track back in most case the best thing you could have done was probably buy the things you liked at

those times and you know hold on to what you had. Geopolitics is really

translatable into two things from a risk perspective. One is currency and so again we can have big swings in short

spaces and sometimes they remain big swings downwards and they continue in that journey and so it can be an inflection point for for a currency

versus other currencies or versus hard hard assets. The other one is just this more sort of common aspect which is a

gradual debasement of the currency. Um and so we deal with that. Uh geopolitics can also specifically if you invest in

emerging markets it can lead to a lack of rule of law and so you could have a loss through confiscation etc. which to

be honest is also increasingly a risk in developed markets where there's a soak the wealthy type mentality and we're seeing what I would say is overreach in

certain areas of of how you tax how you punish how you how someone

should think about the ownership of their assets in that environment. The other big one that can destroy and

create wealth in equal measure is uh technology trends or innovation trends

uh creative destruction is very real. If you again thinking longtime horizons if you look at the top companies 30 years

ago, 20 years ago and 10 years ago, they're not the same companies in most cases. And so that's because businesses

change. And so you know that's also the wealth creation that generally leads to to a generational wealth is you know

building a business in the right industry at the right time and harnessing some kind of growth in technology. But when we start is

obviously the question we ask ourselves is, are we sitting on the right side of geopolitical trends as we see them now and in the next decade? Same question

around the technology trends. Is this portfolio geared for yesterday year or is it geared for the future? Um and

that's kind of the top down on the risk side and obviously it's a double-edged sword. So what is risk in this case can

also be an opportunity. So again sitting in the harder currency sitting in real assets can be that counter and potential

profit making tool for the geopolitical risk and same with being on the right

side of long-term technology trends can be a real wealth creation opportunity.

So do you want to introduce the I mean you mentioned geopolitics you mentioned being um ahead of kind of the or or

looking forward to the technology the future of technology can you highlight

um Bespoke's deep research capabilities that support this I mean

in action yeah I think again our actual application of this is obviously for our

clients and so we are not here to sell something on CNBC so no one should be taking notes and take this as investment

advice. But you know again I'll start where it all began which is when we started building Bespoke advisory. And so obviously once you realize that these

are the risks you're managing and the opportunities you're trying to harness it makes sense that you should be building a research team research

capacity to try and understand and ideally have informed opinions around what is the future and no one has a

crystal ball. But when we started building the team, I was very much thinking I need very smart people who

understand technology and very smart people who understand geopolitics and we need to create an environment where we

can think differently about these aspects because if everyone agrees then there's no opportunity and so it's for

us to to put together these these thoughts which often means understanding across industries across geographies

what's really taking place. Um, and that's just a starting point because once you kind of have the big picture

idea of we want to be in robotics because we feel automation is

is leaning in and there'll be certain um catalyst we could see across different

areas within technology that might make this a real interesting area to be in in terms of kind of a general purpose technology being unleashed in key

industries. Well, that's cool, but what are you investing in? Because there's not like one thing you can buy

now. Wall Street and financial industry will sell you some kind of product which supposedly captures AI is the popular

thing right now but you know how do you actually invest and so that's where the second piece to our research came in we

realize we have to do the work we active managers over longtime horizons and so we have to do the work you have to truly

do fundamental work on the companies we we take an ownership mentality which by that I mean I'm not here to speculate

I'm not here to try and you know figure out the market I'm here try to figure out what is good business in now and in

the future. Um, and within good business there are many ingredients to that and we have some thoughts on what that looks

like at a company level, whether it's a private company or a public company. Um, and then it's really about building

understanding and building conviction about what you understand to be true because you're never going to have perfect information. And so in this

case, you're making decisions with imperfect information based on probabilities. And the more informed you are in those probabilities of outcomes,

generally you're going to have better and better outcomes over time with that type of approach. And that's really what we've been building

around is basically understanding those three pieces, the two big top down trends and then to be able to actually

do the work on the areas we think is interesting.

Okay. That's what I was going to ask you is you you said top the top down. Can

you can you put that in simpler terms for me? What you really mean by that? Top down is where we started. So my

general start would be geopolitics which is a fancy word in some ways but it's kind of what how do we think about that

it's kind of which geographies which currencies do we want to be in and which one do we not want to be in and so

that's the big picture now let's say I'm excluding x amount of countries now instead of my analyst team at the bottom

up side having to literally analyze every single company in the world we now can take half of the world away

and now we have let's say Switzerland Japan Singapore the US Korea whatever

That might be okay. So, it's flipping it on its head. It's going macro to micro.

Exactly. I want to, you know, I think again, you can only know so many things in this world and most times you're probably going to be wrong anyway or at

least directionally you can be right, but in like the specific application, you you're going to be wanting to have

uh some room for error built into your thinking and your allocation. And so, we generally start what I always

start with is like why shouldn't we do this thing? Again, back to what is my premise. I'm not here to make someone wealthy overnight. down here to protect

what someone spent 30 years of their life building. And so my starting point is let's get rid of what we have pretty

high conviction is not a good place to be from a currency from a market from a rule of law perspective. And then the

same with technology overlays where I don't really want to be doing spending my time just because until the facts

change as I see them these are not areas that are going to be conductive for the returns that I'm seeking or the income

I'm trying to generate. And now I got a smaller pool to think about. And then I can unleash the uh the people who are

now actually going to do bottom up work i.e. take those companies apart understand their technology their mode

their IP their balance sheet and so that's kind of the approach to it.

Okay. Another question about our approach is, and I'll need your help

kind of shaping this, but I've been thinking about how when it comes to wealth management or asset management,

you hear about philanthropy, and you hear about giving it all away, and then you hear about investing, which is like

getting as much growth as possible. But I think that there is this interesting space in between that isn't maybe is

explored less often. And that's kind of what comes to mind when I hear about our work. Am I getting that right? Do

you see that it's kind of like this middle area where there's, you know, where you are still generating uh income

and uh return, but it's not like growth

for growth's sake, you know. I don't maybe you can slot in here. Yeah. Because I think it starts again

back at the client where we find the client and each client that we have and most that I come across have some

personal values and as a family they have values and so when we start talk about finding where our client starts

and trying to basically start by seeking or to understand you know yes we can understand we need x amount of cash flow

we need you know to protect what we created um etc etc which is more you

know those are metrics you can map out that's not super complicated But often what is a little bit more complicated is

two things. One is family and the other one is kind of values. And family really involves next generation, any dynamics

within the family. What might stop them from making good decisions and how can you help um help them make informed

decisions um and maybe balance some of their their intuitions. Often if you build wealth, significant wealth,

you might have been a risk taker. And so you might kind of have that same mentality. And sometimes you try and offset that with what we do is to

balance, you know, decision- making. But what you ask me about is really more the value space and so again getting to know

someone you get to understand them. Some have very formed ideas and there's sort of a whole industry built around what is

unfortunately kind of labeled as ESG etc. which I think is you know again like anything it could be taken turned

into a product and it has been but that's not what we do. I think for our clients it's really more about are there

some things you don't particularly want your money to be building around and on the flip side are there some things you

do want to support and often our clients are entrepreneurial so they've seen the power of putting capital to work in certain areas maybe to support certain

innovation and so they want to do more of that it's not like a trade-off so I think to the first point I think there

is a general assumption that you can't have impact investing or a values based lens and also have optimized returns I

think that that's flawed. I think that's lazy thinking. I think if you do as an asset manager lean into that, you can

find ways to have above average returns. It takes creative values 100%. And it there, you know, every lens

you add to a portfolio is extra work, but it's the work you get paid for in my profession or where we sit. And so

we lean into that and that that does mean that that's probably where it's most different. And so like when we talk about the technology trend and the

geopolitics and the bottom up work while that will be different to each client it's kind of the same exercise but when

the values lens gets laid in then the Rubik's cube gets some more layers and now suddenly we're trying to figure out

how do we then get this across while still kind of staying around our core risk principles.

Yeah, it's a um it's a challenge to incorporate all of those layers. It kind

of it becomes a bit of a puzzle to solve and serious creativity that's required. So it kind of makes sense to me why you

know uh um I mean it's an easy plug plug and play. It takes a lot of creativity.

Yeah. I mean for me personally this is why I enjoy it. I mean again if it's all solved and you know then why why why

bother? This constant puzzle was what attracted me to the industry in the first place. And I think many people

who find the industry thinks that that's what they're going to be doing. I think you're very fortunate if you actually end up in a job where you're somewhat

unconstrained and you actually get to do that work because unfortunately the way the financial industry is very siloed.

Many young people end up specifically when they start in the industry just doing something super narrow and it often gets turned into a product that

then gets sold and they're so distant and such um they're such distance from the end investor that you don't really

get to have that. We are like the complete opposite of that. I literally sit on the same side of the table as this family. I get to hear their

stories, their ups and downs and understand how they got there. and you take that as an added responsibility and

to be honest, to be trusted with something like that. Um I think that's pretty powerful that makes you want to

do your job very well and I think then the fact that you get to do interesting work across assets globally um you know

you get to learn from extraordinary people in terms of their entrepreneurial background often. So you know for me

it's good. I don't think it's for everyone and I think again if you were to build an optimized business in the

investment space it's certainly not the short-term most profitable business to do what we are doing. It does take a lot

of work but generally it leads to long-term relationships but a lot of value that is maybe not just about 1% up

this last quarter or 2% down.

Yeah. But I find it so I find it really

exciting this um this coming together of of creativity and then like what was

typically a really uh rigid kind of world. Anyway, so okay. Okay. So, you

said something that was um you know sitting on the same side as the client and you've talked around you know you've

you've painted the picture of the type of work and the approach to the work that you're doing with these clients but I was wondering if you could just

describe how you see your role because you're really guiding clients through these informed asset decisions across

asset classes and it's super client centric right like no client is the same

at I mean with their assets or their circumstances their challenges their family dynamics, their hopes, their dreams, their, you know, maybe they want

to simplify their life, maybe they want to, you know, buy land and start a tree farm, like I don't know. So, so you

there's this, you're in this really interesting role. Can you describe that for me? Yeah. And again, I think we should to

kind of show I think probably the scope of the work. So, obviously we have investment team while I insist that they

are very engaged with clients and participate, they're primarily doing bottom up work or doing research and

getting into those types of things. So then we got the client facing team and I sit and strattle both because they

primarily sit within Bespoke advisory and so my role with our families is generally one of an advisor and that

means I sit with the clients um you know when things are being designed and built

and we seek to understand there's a lot of time spent there then we're implementing and then the investment

team gets on with the work within the blueprint and then we are there in the client's corner whether we sit on their

investment committee or some less formal framework work for it, but we are there then with them on this journey into the

future. Um, and ideally we help them make informed decisions along the way and if they entrust us to manage the

wealth, you know, ideally we do a good job at that in terms of being primary decision maker across the the total

assets. Um, and so that's a different role. It is a role that involves, as I said, both being a trusted adviser and

again some of our clients have active business interests, other you know have maybe given most of their wealth into

philanthropy. Actually, there was one thing I wanted to kind of add to that. You know, when you have generational

wealth, you're never really giving the

money away. It doesn't disappear. It either gets put into a vehicle that's going to be doing some kind of philanthropy. So, whether it's a

foundation that supports a specific, you know, museum or uni, you know,

university or hospital or some other activity or whether you're kind of putting into a charitable vehicle and

then over time doing continuous giving from there. we manage those types of structures whether it's donor advised

funds whether it's foundations or whether it's endowments um and it's kind of the same thing so

within that concept the money may be moved away from the personal use of first generation or second generation

but it's either placed with a third party foundation or philanthropic uh institution or it resides within the

philanthropic vehicle of the family and then we you know we we have the same

mandate to manage those assets a little different because generally your tax exempt in there so you can make a little

bit different decisions but again for

most of our clients they want the same approach protect what is here it's even more important because this is something

that really supporting the community the stewardship I want to have maybe for generations and the second thing is

they're like I want why should I be giving to let's say something in the health care space and then you go and

invest in cigarettes or like something that's damaging to health no I want the same impact the same lens to apply

within my philanthropy vehicles and so we build and run port 40 like that within the actual part that is doing the

giving and so I think that that's an important thing that is you know there's no just hand it all off I mean you could

do but then if you're handing it off to a charity that charity has an investment manager and they're doing something with that money until they actually go out

and put it to use in in their specific field um and so I think that's a that's

an important nuance around some of the work we do at that site I want to spend a moment you mentioned philanthropy on this is not the

philanthropy episode. You can find that in the collection. But, you know, again, it's all related. It's all connected.

And I think, you know, when I I asked you about your role and you highlighted kind of the advisor position sitting on

the same side and then, you know, the investment team um that is doing the bottom up work. But when we are talking

about this level of wealth and uh like

the scale of the projects that we're talking about are

reflect the level of that wealth, right? Like lots of money, lots of needs, lots of resources. And I'd love

to hear you talk about, you know, I don't we don't need to get deep into the weeds or the specifics of the the most

recent um adventure to far corners of the world that you went on, but I think

that it is uh I would love to highlight the lengths that you and our team go to

uh to make sure that this capital is deployed

in a way like that it has the intended impact. Um, and

impact has become such a, I would say, empty, frivolous, like almost dirty word. I notice as I'm, you know, when

I'm in the world and I'm speaking to investors and I ask them about impact and it's empty. Like people don't even

believe like, you know, it got a bad rep probably because bad decisions were made and there was a lot of lack of creativity and it was a product to sell.

But I'm on the ground floor of witnessing actual authentic impact. And there's impact whether you want it or

not. You know, there's good impact, there's bad impact. impacts happening regardless. Anyway, so this is kind of a quick moment to shine the light on on

what impact looks like at Bespoke and the lengths that we go to to build for that level of wealth.

Yeah, I think you hit on something really important. There's impact, you know, it's like risk. Risk doesn't go

away. You can move it around and ideally you know where it goes, but the impact is always there. And so the question is

just are we intentional and directional about it? Are we not? Um and then what does that look like? And again

back to you know that might be fine that we identify that we feel the client feels that you know agriculture has gone

the wrong direction and we're not putting healthy food in front of people themselves their family their community

or you know healthcare is not available to the people who need it the most or you know we have this range of diseases

and no one's solving and I want to step into that or at least be part of the solution you know and then you know it's

a big that's a big idea it's a big concept that's a big impact and And that's like okay well actually my job

and our team's job is to then sit down and say actually tomorrow this is what we're going to be focusing our research

on. This is what we're going to try and find investable concepts around. These are then the managers. These are the

companies. This is the credit. These are the different opportunities we're going to be allocating to. Now, we got to understand them and really do the work

on it. And again, so back to the work, you know, there's no hiding from that. There's no easy solution because

the easy solution is the product sales that essentially is an empty shell with a nice brochure website. Um, and our

clients are not interested in those things. And so, you know, so it starts with all of that work. And again it's

obviously different for each of them. I think some of the areas where you know I think

I think some of the interesting areas to highlight is that there are obvious areas for example within our investment

themes around innovation where innovation in the right industries can obviously change things dramatically for

the better and specifically around things like healthcare education. And you can just look at kind of longevity of life, quality of life for the broader

humanity over the last and call it 100 years. And you can go and look at different companies, different

innovators, different IP that was created and that solved some problems that you know philanthropy can be great

for firefighting, but if you're long-term going to have a lasting impact on big problems, generally some combination of some form of government

um and some form of innovation and then smart people at entrepreneurial level

who's figuring out how to use some of those elements of government support or flexibility around certain areas at

various times of history. then combined with some kind of IP that may have come out of government, out of university or

out of an entrepreneur themselves. And so that's pretty powerful. That's kind of interesting to think about. And then

it's like how can I identify more of those that are related to what the client wants. Um and so a lot of the work goes that direction. There's areas

that are sort of lowhanging fruit. But there's also sometimes we had a client where she's super focused around inequality and um things like human

trafficking. I mean a lot of her philanthropy is focused around those. And so when she first came and said, "Look, I've seen significant amount of

wealth here and I'm really, you know, I want to continue to be giving. So I do want you to manage my wealth effectively, but I want this lens on it,

all of it." And at first it's kind of like one of those where, well, this is a pretty niche area in terms of, you know,

at least that was my assumption when I started, lazy assumption to be honest. um that it was going to be a

very narrow space and it was going to be difficult to allocate without taking a crazy amount of risk or being very concentrated and then we spent some time

I think you done some another in our wonderful series with Alli who who leads really the impact side with with Bespoke

advisory um but we spent some time just how can we be honest with this woman first I was like maybe we have to tell

her that this is not actually we can't do hundreds of millions of dollars like at any time range that looks feasible to

her in terms of her mission um and then the more time you spend on it, we started thinking, you know, as it often

is with any investing, it's not the obvious. It's the second third order effect of some of these things that are actually much more interesting, whether

it's from an investment perspective or from an impact perspective. And so when we started exploring it, we actually

started finding more and more ideas and one idea led to another. And a lot of the time it was just going out having

conversations and then learning about how other people thought about different things. And at the end, you know, we still um you know, we still build a

portfolio where we have various what we call shades of different types of green and the darkest green is the pure impact

and then we kind of work our way from where we gone from a portfolio that was I think two 2% when she first came to us

that we would at least describe as being aligned with her values to flipping that

all the way around the other way around. But obviously a big chunk of that is what we would call lighter green.

traceable impact but not as effective as some of the direct stuff we've done. And

so I thought that was a really interesting journey. It was kind of for me an eye opener of what's possible if you actually spent the time. Um and so

that would be kind of one I would flag really more because I think that was where I was first questioning whether we

would be able to truly have impact without kind of being wishy-washy around some of the implementation ideas. Um so

it is possible but it does take work, creativity. Um and again it's not done

overnight. It's obviously it's a process. Yeah. And uh you know I think what we're

talking about in this level of creativity can also be you know overwhelming for somebody who's like

wait I'm trying to simplify my life. So how do you respond to that? I

think it's where the advisory role often comes in to be honest. I think again

it's very different to manage your own wealth and to manage someone else's wealth and it's just it just is there's

an emotional attachment to what money can create for you you and your family

and it doesn't not necessarily negative I think sometimes it can really make you focused and you know drive people to

incredible strength and length of commitment to something but I do find that sometimes it's easier to get more

emotional and to make be make take have reactions to things and I I think when I'm managing wealth with some experience

at the states um and a team um it is more balanced it's more thoughtful it's

more there's a plan there's some rules based how we think about certain components of

the activities we do and we stick to those unless there's like dramatic differences in where we started those

those those walks into into the future and then there's just I think specifically around some of these things

where sometimes the initial is the reaction is the reaction and then it's whether you can

not pull the trigger when you feel the reaction and often my job with a client is let's not pull the trigger until we

100% on this we have really high conviction that we've seen significant shift um and I think sometimes the value

in my job when I think back over decades is often the things we don't do versus

the things we did do because the things we don't do sometimes is the role of the gatekeeper so if you're a wealthy person

and the world knows that then you will have no end of opportunities or people coming to you with things and sometimes

that can be very tempting specifically early on or if it's people you think you can trust but most of the cases it's

what you don't do in some of those too good this sounds too good to be true type opportunities it's one of the risks

that I would have with generation level wealth is either use a lot of leverage or you for some moment of weakness lean

into something that is too good to be true And often I sit in that let's do

the work and why is it too good to be true type conversation. But then sometimes you are having to manage expectations with a client who really

wants to do something. And that is sometimes the value add I would say in the relationship. It's not always well

liked because no one likes to be told no or like I found some issues with something you thought were great and now

we're going to have to talk about it. And again, at the end of the day, the client made this well if I'm there to advise and but I would say a lot of the

time there is a value at to making sure we are making good decisions consistently or we have a framework for

making decisions and then sticking to it. Yeah. And I think it's a great signal to highlight that Bespoke isn't selling

specific products. So it's it you can kind of trust more where where the you can you would never do this job if I

had a product to sell because then I am the problem in that mix. You see what I mean? So uh that can never be you know

you can certainly have some preconceived ideas about you know a specific currency or real assets or things that you feel

right now this decade is going to be nice to hold but there can be no product because the moment that I have that then my

incentive start shifting and I like to say when I analyze different businesses or different opportunities

show me the incentives and I'll show you the likely outcomes over a period of time and if my incentives are not aligned with the client it's just I'm a

human being you eventually will start making decisions to start looking better and better whatever it is that you have that is more profitable for you to

present to a client. And again, nothing wrong with that, but at least be clear

if you are actually selling a product, you cannot be an ad, you can be an adviser on that product or that firm that creates this product and you can

advise them just like you go to a clothing store and someone says, "Can I help you show you around?" Well, you may

step into a financial services business and the person calling themselves an adviser is an adviser on that product

that is aware of it in their wonderful shelves. um in their you know beautiful

offices but they're not your advisor your advisor works with you for you and

they're sitting on the same side of the table and again when I speak to our team it's this is one of the key things when

someone new comes to us specifically if they have financial industry experience is there is a culture shift there's a

mentality shift where you are the gatekeeper now you are the person that

are with the client not here to promote some kind of offering uh for profit in the short term.

Yeah. So, let's continue to compare and contrast um I think our work a bit to the kind of existing services and

advisory offerings that exist. I mean, you know, one is that we're not selling a product. We talked about uh

what a long-term horizon looks like to us and how that's our focus. I think we touched lightly on, you know, how we

treat our clients as direct owners of the companies we invest in. Maybe there's any something uh else to add

there or any other kind of clients and their unmet needs I think is the way I would describe it because that's what

essentially what's happening when people are coming to you or you know in our team. I would say there's a couple of things

that makes us different. Um and you know again a lot of this here is not like there's no there's nothing as the old

saying goes there's nothing new under the sun in financial services that you know and so we certainly not like we

haven't rediscovered some incredible truthful thing we're just very good at a few things and I think we're very good

for the types of clients who are looking for solutions and advice and who want to build long-term who want to be stewards

of their capital um and there's great other financial services companies that will do other things that will be you

know 2 and 20 model who will take a lot of risk will be super smart laser focused on some narrower area and they

are they are tool in the toolbox for total wealth but they're not managing total wealth and we manage total wealth

in most cases so the things I would say that is different one is a fundamental

belief that I've learned over the years which is I favor liquidity over ei liquidity and what I mean by that is

you have this toolbox and some of the tools within that so it is in a financial toolbox as I like to call it.

They are really kind of three things. One is equity, one is credit, and one is real assets. And then there's different

types of markets. You can participate in those tools. While some are public, some are private. Public, again, you got to

understand each of those public markets that you play in. Some do have very deep liquidity, meaning you could sell at

scale without dropping the market onto yourself and vice versa when you're buying. uh others have thin liquidity

but there is the ability to transact in a public price discovery space when you want to participate in

the market. I favor those markets first because of the price discovery, because of the liquidity, because my main job is

risk management. And it's very hard to manage risk if you can't move. Specifically, if you're thinking decade

plus long time horizons, it's counterintuitive because most people who are in my space, they push illiquidity.

There's been this belief that there is a liquidity premium to be had. And it was almost granted as you like gravity.

It's like a universal law of some kind. it just must be if I can't take my money out there must be a premium attached to

it and I think many people unfortunately are finding out now that that is not the case perhaps the opposite and and it

started out in a good place as most things in finance does you know the idea that I went to a guy who had a lot of

forest land in New Zealand and I said we want to participate in this with you as an owner and he said well you know

you're not going to get out these trees grow really slow but I'll give you a little bit of a discount on valuation

because of that and so I'll say cool I got decades So, let's put some money with you. And because I was giving a

better price of entry because he recognized and I recognized that this was not going to be something that we were going to, you know, leave next

quarter when I had some other great idea. Um, and over the next 20 years, we

see beautiful trees grow. And, you know, because I had my discount, I had a premium, I was excited. Those days are gone

in most things in the private market in my opinion. And unfortunately what took its place for my good friend with the

farmland or the forestry land in New Zealand, people who are asset gatherers, people

who are building, you know, AUA aum specifically with um sort of profit

participation in their model. They came in and said, "Cool, you should be in venture. You should be in private equity

or you should be in some kind of infrastructure product that we manage for you and we will charge you 2% and 20% on profit or whatever the the split

is." And the problem with that model is back to the incentives. So, think of that

now. I give you millions of dollars for 10 years and you decide whether 10 years is actually how long because you can

probably extend it if you don't read the fine print in your PPMs. Um, so now I'm locked in. You're taking 2% every year

out of it in cash money. I'm getting paper statement that shows up and to the right because we are not having a liquid

price discovery market where I can actually have transparency and visibility. H that's a pretty good business. I don't

have no clients leaving me because they've agreed to not leave for 10 years. I get to take 2% of their money no matter what really happens. is I get

to send them statements that at least on paper and level free accounting which essentially is put my finger in the air

and it feels like the wind is coming in from the east so the price must be going up uh type accounting in my book and so

unfortunately I think a lot of people are pushing this liquidity premium because it was a great business model for financial services because if you

are leaving your client if you have confidence in your ideas you leave your client 100% liquidity if you're not

delivering value the client will move but when you do this other they can't move and so for me

if I'm building an idea I start with liquidity and so that's always so again that's not to kind of but I think it's a

problem right now I think many families that come across uh you know in the last couple of years have gone 30 40% ill

liquids and they can't get out and most of the work I've been doing illiquids yeah so most of the work I've been doing

in illiquids in the last couple of years is trying to renegotiate reposition

create value sometimes create the tax loss harvesting that we can do by actually getting some resolution to some

of these mal-investments. um because I think that there has been a tendency to push these products both in the family

office space but also increase significantly in the endowment space where again it was the endowment model was to overway into liquidity and it

worked for a while when they were going to my friend in New Zealand to be participating in his farm or his his

forestry but less so when you started playing around with leveraged sort of acquisitions of companies in private

equity or whatever it might have been and so I think we have some issues in this space but take that aside I think

That's a sign of where we are in that cycle. Just as a principle, if I can find so back to our idea generation, if

I can find the geographies on the technology trends and now we're going to be looking at allocation opportunities.

My question would always be, can we harness these ideas through public markets where I can be liquid so I can

be wrong, I can get out. If something changes, I can get out. The family's circumstances may change, we can get

out. So it's always can I get out? Because when you make, you know, there's

kind of two sets of decisions you can make. One is a one door decision and the other one is a two door a two-way door

decision. And at least in liquid allocation is a 10-year long one-way

door where you hopefully can get back out through it. And so it shouldn't just be taken willy-nilly that decision that

now I'm going to lock away a certain amount of my capital because I may never be able to come back through that door.

I may be able to come back through that door with only very little in my pocket and I have definitely have to wait a

long time. Whereas if I can get a two-way door, then I'm kind of like, okay, we we we went there for a couple

of years. It was wonderful. Something changed in technology. Something changed I hadn't thought about

in geopolitics. Something changed within what the family sets as expectations. Well, let's go back out that though. And

so our first starting point is always can we do these? How many ways can we harness these ideas through liquid public markets? Now sometimes you do run

into tip of the spear innovation particularly or real assets where you

can't really truly harness it. You can get close in some areas, but you know, often a lot of the really good early

stage innovation, if that's something you want to capture, you are going to have to go private market, early stage startup, and nothing wrong with that,

but it should be sized appropriately. And again, you should be understanding you're making a decision where you're giving up control or at least the

ability to have optionality to leave. And that's part of the decision- making.

Um and so for me the liquidity thing is a major difference because I think most specifically supposedly sophisticated uh

wealth managers have and continue to lean to private credit to private equity

to private venture whereas we tend to lean towards public markets. So that would be one

there's two things I want to pull that would be one there's two things I want to pull on

here. One is I'm is I couldn't help but think to myself as I was listening to you, wow, these families and individuals

who are coming to you must have serious trust issues. And I truly can't blame them. But the other piece that I

wanted to say is that you're receiving a lot of kind of like fixer I mean what you're I'm hearing fixer up like it's

like you're getting these portfolios and then you're you know going on a fixer up mission. I'd love to hear you

talk about those two things. Sometimes it's a journey for the client. You know, again, some clients

have some awareness of this or they literally run into it and that's why they're leaving their current asset manager and looking for someone else and

that's often when I meet them or at least they're curious about something different. Um, and often maybe whether

they have admitted it fully or not, there is obviously often you know again it's it does happen that a client just

sold a company and like I will cash and let me go and find someone to work with. But in most cases they already work with

some advisers and then you know we have very productive relationships where there is a set of advisers and again I'm

not tarnishing everyone here. There are great private equity, great venture, great you know real asset managers out there and we work with a lot of them in

in a symphony for a client if you like. Um but yeah most of them come because there's some there's a stone in the shoe

and you know maybe they have identified it, maybe they're just feeling the pain and then often my first conversations

are really well that looks like a pretty big stone in that shoe there. Maybe we should get that out of the sho out of

the shoe. And so then it becomes like a journey of realization and conversations about how can we deal with this? How how

do we end up here? Um and then how do we build something better going forward? How do we start gradually changing away?

Because again, as I said, sometimes I inherit like all of those positions because we can't get out. And so it's

like I may be managing those investments longer than the initial manager did because we're going to have to build an

exit out of it in some way. And so that you know personally I kind of I don't enjoy the fact that my client is in that

situation but I enjoy the puzzle of that journey sometimes. I think it's interesting opportunity you can turn some of it around and but

it does take like creativity and very different thinking maybe than how you went into those investments initially. Um and so that would kind of be my my

piece about the the understanding of this um and how you start these conversations and often this journey

which is again as I said we we spend a lot of time in the intake to understand what is what is it you own. I would also

just highlight like they also come with amazing assets because that's why they have generational wealth and so many of them have done build an incredible

business and they still have interest in that one. Um, and I learned a lot that I can then apply maybe to some of the

other stuff from those types of clients. And we have clients, for example, who very young got very curious about things

like Bitcoin and bought a lot of it and held on to it. And so again, incredible asset that they bought at like below $10

or whatever they mined. And so, you know, it's not it's not all, you know, that that's a different type of illiquid

because of the capital gains outcome if you were to liquidate that. But that's kind of a good problem to have. Again, it's a liquid asset, which I like. Um

and so that's just a little bit on the kind of the asset mix um piece and how that starts.

Okay. Did that hit the fixer upper piece do you think? Yeah, I think there's there's with

everything there's some fixing up even within our own portfolio just in the context that time moves and it's kind of like what are we looking at here you

know and we always kind of challenging is this the right place to be? Yeah. Taking out the taking the stone

out of the shoe. Okay. So now let's get into currencies. I think you know Bespoke views currencies as its own

asset class. Did I get that right? Is that safe to say? Might be a stretch. No, I think that that's absolutely 100%

correct. Yeah. So I want to hear from you what our house view is and uh specifically maybe you can introduce our views on the

Swiss Frank Singapore dollar and anything else you might want to add. Yeah and is a good segue because that

was be my other point which is the the liquidity versus liquidity question I

think is a major differentiator and what we do. The other one is we think globally in terms of like when I'm looking for investable how do we harness

these ideas. I don't just look at one geography as I said actually geography is one of my first risk metrics and so

you know I think it's it's inherent in everywhere you go like people tend to invest mostly in their home markets and

specifically in the US um and so many clients come to us and they have literally not an asset that is not

denominated in US dollars and so they have a 100% long US dollar structuring

as as a default and not in a thoughtful way just because that's how other managers tend to focus um and is often

where they build their business, where they bought their real estate, etc. And so it's it's a it's a thing, but one of our first conversation often kind of the

the differentiator in conversation early on besides the liquidity liquidity question that we have is well, what are

we doing internationally? And they'll be like, well, you know, we've done some ETFs, you know, in Asia or Europe. And

I'm like, well, where are they listed? And they're like listed on the New York Stock Exchange, so they're a US dollar asset in a US market. And so I'm like,

no, that's not that doesn't work. We need to own assets that are denominated in other currencies. And so I would say

the idea of harnessing ideas unconstrained globally is another major differential in terms of how we approach

investing and we manage portfolios. And then that leads to the currency question because you can't do any of these things

without having to think about the currency where you start and where you are going to be going towards. And so you

know again we analyze again for that geopolitical layer. What are some nations that have stronger currencies?

Why do they have stronger currencies consistently? And so, you know, again, as we're

running up against time, I will highlight a couple, if you like, which is Switzerland, and this was Frank and the Singapore dollar and Singapore. And

these are smaller countries that rely on capital inflow. So they have they are seeking different outcomes than pretty

much all the large economies because the large economies are trying to roll debt um and debase their currencies gradually

and these are trying to achieve the opposite of that. And so when you take two opposites against each other there's a real bounce up in in the harder

currency. Um and so that can be that's why we think of currency as an asset class. For me it's not just something

that you have sitting ill which is often when a clients first come to like we don't want to be 30% in cash. we want to

be deploying. We want it to be working for us. And I'm like, well, I want optionality. I want flexibility. The

most liquid thing I can have is cash. But it doesn't mean I don't get a yield from it in a risk adjusted way. Um, but

also I'm using these currencies to buy assets denominated in those. And so my best currency diversification is not

sitting in the cash. It's sitting in the equities listed in Switzerland or listed in Singapore. Um, where I now get to

hold that currency because that's what I'm going to get when I sell it. And I'm going to ideally get some income

distributions while we hold it in terms of dividends. And now I'm getting hard currency back into a client who may be

spending a softer or weaker currency like the US dollar. And so I win on the currency. I can win on the price of the

company that we've done our work on. And if I'm getting a dividend while doing it, I get cash again while we're holding

it. Or I can roll it back in and compound it, which can be very powerful. And so like just to use like the Swiss Frank and like the US has been in its

primacy probably for the last 70 years and the last 20 has kind of been a softening and I think some would argue

that we really kind of in an escalator down. Um you know I think it's it's more of a stare down than elevator down but like

if you look at the Swiss Frank you know last year was obviously a pretty horrendous year for the US dollar even

against things like the euro um which is I think you were down around 14% 13%

just in the currency flip. And so like if you think the S&P 500 was up 14% in US dollar terms in truth you had no

return if you factor in the underlying debasement of the currency. So you

taking risk with no return. I don't think many US investors when we first talk about that has that front of mind.

But like last year was a unique year. I think like the Swiss Frank was at its highest level or the US dollar

on some of that and it just shows you like being in one currency whether it's the US dollar I

mean the British pound also had a pretty horrendous year last year and the euros had its issues and so we think long-term

most of the major currencies will be debased probably more stairs down than elevator Um,

it's wild because I I I've been hearing stories too about how, you know, people are going to their advisers about this

and raising the flag and they've raised the flag. You mean even almost like years ago, let alone months ago? Months ago and years ago. And the adviser is

like, "Oh, you know, as if they have their long-term thinking cap on being like, no, no, it's going to settle. It's going to settle. Like, we're going to

be, you know, and it and so you're I mean, what you're saying right now is very much uh that is not what you're

saying." No. And again, back to the reaction. And I don't think people should be like sell everything tomorrow and just blindly

cross over. And so again, for a lot of our time when we have a mandate to go more global. Um the first question that

our investment team then deals with is we got a lot of US dollars right here and when can we find some exit points

into some of these harder currencies where we're not giving up as much. So you're then waiting in a thoughtful way to deploy to shift to currency and then

from the currency you can start buying these assets that we actually really want to be holding which is generally equity participation which is maybe the

last point again back to my liquid preference. We also have a preference for equity versus credit. Um, credit

you're a lender. I'm not super interested in being a lender. It has a lot of risk attached to it and the upside is more limited. And we again

have this idea that entrepreneurs and business building solves problems long

term. And so the idea of being directionally long alongside human ingenuity over the long term has been a

winning formula. And it doesn't mean we don't do credit. We would do credit for some income in some format. And

sometimes for impact you know credit is much more traceable. So municipal bonds etc can be interesting from an impact

perspective while giving you some yield. But our again our starting point is equity and specifically public equity uh

versus pretty much any assets. And maybe just to round out the other way to do the the basement of the currency is the

real assets. And for us real assets again the best ones in our view in terms

of as an allocation tool are the liquid ones which is primarily physical gold held in Zurich Switzerland with a liquid

gold market attached to it. So I own the actual gold and I can liquidate the actual gold with very low friction. The

other one has increasingly become Bitcoin. Bitcoin have the mathematical

um framing of physical gold. It is a scarce asset inherently and it is liquid

365 days a year and now at sort of levels where you can move large holdings

in and out of it and so outside of that is things like you know real proper real estate with no leverage in enduring

places you know I mentioned my friend with the farmland and forest land in New Zealand you know arts you know big fan

but you know those are illiquid real assets and again they have a role within the toolbox of a total portfolio but

again you got to size them appropriately and specifically only the ones that I liquid. All right, I'm going to keep going.

Actually, I have two more questions and if I get kicked out of this room, then I then uh we're going to wrap it.

But, um I want to try to squeeze in two more questions. People are coming to you with real estate. I mean, how are we looking at that

positively? I mean, again, it's having a nice home. Back to what is the really important thing like we've talked a lot

about the wealth here, but true wealth is the time you have specifically with people who matter to you and a community

that matters to you. You can't make more of that time. You can make more money ideally if you have a good asset manager. Reach out if you don't. Um but

you know the you know so I think where where the real estate often starts for most families is the home and absolutely

you should do that. I don't think you should be using leverage if you have generational wealth and ideally you're buying a home that maybe becomes the

home of your children or becomes some important piece of whatever that is. So net net love real estate again there's

obviously timing market leverage all these things. It's a broadly real estate

market in the shorter cycles is credit driven. So again depending on interest rate etc. So you want to be thinking you

want to be thoughtful about acquisition of it but again it's on one of those things that a lot of our clients want to

build and hold long-term a portfolio of often in different geographies and so you actually get currency

diversification whether you're renting it out in that currency um or not. So like Swiss real estate can be a

beautiful thing it takes. Oh very interesting. Oh so you can think of it like a real asset. You can think of it again as an

enduring asset. Again, it's often it is illiquid to the sense that I'm relying on some other person coming falling in love

with that piece of real estate at that particular moment in time and us meeting its price. So again, it's not it needs to

be sized appropriately. Um but yeah, we like real estate for the real asset piece. I love real estate for it being a

gathering space for family or somewhere you raise your children or something that has like a unique, it's one of those assets you can actually be inside. It's

not much fun to own some shares. I mean it's great but you don't get to you know if the forest I can go for a walk in it

the home I can I can have my children in those are those are qualities that I think you should be considering so that's real

estate for you high level again there's specifics and different ways you can go about it um but that's how I think about it

okay and then can you talk about why the Bespoke approach particularly helps

endowments and foundations when it comes to providing structure and liquidity because I think that it's actually the

approach to endowments and I know we help endowments is actually similar to how we approach the family.

Yeah. And again, I think it starts where we began this conversation. Endowment have forever time horizons. Um, you

know, ideally um and they need some cash flow every year to support what they're doing. But again, just like with a

family's wealth, you don't want to be eating the seed corn uh to have those

outcomes. And so ideally, you find a way to protect, compound, generate organic,

sustainable cash flow that can be used for good things. And so our approach is pretty much the same. And then as I

said, I think that when I hear the problems, if I close my eyes and I'm not sitting in an investment committee

meeting at a foundation or something, I'm sitting in a family meeting, the this the stone in the shoe is kind of

the same. Similarly, it's the liquidity. It's the no diversification of currency at a time when that's pretty important.

And so I would say that they're very similar in what you're actually doing. Actually in some ways the endowment is so much easier because I don't have the

tax consequence to making changes that I do in in the private side of someone's

portfolio and so similar kind of stories unfortunately on the negative and but on the positive and in terms of the scope

of the work and what is really interesting is the same things yeah similar opportunities

um and it's also an advisory role I mean you know many smaller endowments they don't have a full investment committee of you know full hour full-time

professionals and so when we work it's often not just us managing a certain strategy within a portfolio, it's also

the advisory and the support in terms of trying to make informed decisions just like it is with a family. So there's two

pieces to it, advisory and management in most cases.

Okay, my last question for you Sune and then I'll let you go uh is more of a

practical one. Um correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe our minimum asset uh is 5 million.

Our minimum. So again, we serve different types of clients. What we've been talking about here today is sort of total welfare in a family office piece.

So that will be under what we call advisory u as a core mandate. We we do

manage specific strategies. So if someone said look I already allocated but I really like this idea of not having US dollar or I really want to

lean into a Swiss portfolio whatever it might be. can build that for you. And that minimum generally starts at $5

million and within that they get bought initially and they get kind of a tail of

strategy still and generally we open up a bank account with one of our selected custodians around the world that again

can be a value ad specifically with clients who want Swiss banking for example it's very popular clients want

to hold assets not just the currency in a in a non US country or non USD country

some people have want to have a plan B or they just generally want to spread their eggs out a little bit wider in terms of the baskets and so you know the

Swiss bank account is often sort of the nest egg for families and so we we have relationships there and we can open up

accounts and so normally it's an account plus an allocation strategy and also we have some clients where that's where

they start the relationship and then they get more comfortable with us our model and then the you know we start

talking about you know stones in the shoe and more more yeah and the relationship can grow I just wanted to highlight you know for

those for anyone who's listening and their you know everyone's position is different and Bespoke can serve those

with five million and all the way to 500 million, 900 million and those solutions are obviously incredibly different.

Yeah, I think the family office becomes relevant where we would say the lower end of that is and the family office

means many things which we could do a whole other podcast on but like we have an episode on it. I'm sure we do. You should check it out

if you're listening to this one. Um but I would just say like there are early stage founders for example where they

come like I'm you know people associate family office with like multiple yards and planes and like you know you're like

no family office essentially is just an organizing principle and some kind of team operational system for your wealth

and you may not need 100 people and 10 different trust you may just need two or

three things and some advice while you go back and build your business and ideally you move up and I would say you

know 100 million plus is kind of where we start leaning in in the full services for most of our clients. Um,

and then it depends a little bit on what states of life the family is at. If there's a single individual, it's

a little bit less complex in some ways. Um, then again, depending on their asset mix when they come with us, you know, if

it's all tied up in their foundational business, you know, it's a different role we have, but we can certainly help there as well.

Okay. Well, thank you Sune as always. It's been a pleasure. I think that it's been, you know, we've explored how we're

doing things differently in terms of, you know, Bespoke being a trusted partner and and long-term building and a

lot more. So, thank you to everyone who joined us today and thank you Sunei and we'll see you next time.

Thank you, Claire and everyone who listened to the whole thing here.