La Financière de l'Echiquier launches Echiquier Go Local
1st global equity strategy focused on resilience and autonomy needs of strategic sectors.
Paris, 04.04.2023 ǀ La Financière de l'Echiquier (LFDE), a conviction-based asset manager for over 30 years, announces the launch of Echiquier Go Local1. This new equity strategy, managed by Nina Lagron, CFA2, invests in global companies seeking to address the global challenge of strategic autonomy needs, a challenge that now represents a real source of opportunity for companies and investors.
A new world order
In the current context of converging crises, the fragmentation of supply chains - through which 80% of the world trade flow - and the high concentration of production sites have revealed strategic dependencies and vulnerabilities that make autonomy an imperative. Thus:
- Technology and industry: 90% of the photovoltaic panel components are currently produced in Asia;
- Health: 75% of active pharmaceutical ingredients are produced outside the EU and the United States;
- Food: some fertilizers which are essential for agricultural production are mostly mined in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
This quest for resilience and sovereignty involves the relocation of goods, production sites and strategic know-how in order to reduce the industrial dependence that may affect certain sectors.
New business models and local ecosystems are thus emerging, a dynamic that has been fostered by technological change and massive government support schemes for strategic sectors, such as the IRA, CHIPS and the JOBS Act in the United States and the PLI Scheme in India.
An innovative international equity strategy
Echiquier Go Local focuses on three strategic axes - Technology and Industry, Health and Food - and concentrates on global companies, often with strong regional roots, benefiting from local infrastructure and operational proximity that give them competitive advantages.
The concentrated portfolio of around 40 stocks follows a flexible approach open to strategic opportunities, such as energy, and proves a diversified sector profile, consisting of growth stocks as well as cyclical or defensive stocks3.
As every LFDE equity funds, it takes an ESG approach that includes sector and normative exclusions, an extra-financial assessment following LFDE's proprietary ESG analysis methodology and engagement with the investee companies4.
Bettina Ducat, CEO of La Financière de l'Echiquier, says: "Echiquier Go Local is an answer to a global strategic challenge, the need for autonomy within key sectors and essential know-how. This launch is a concrete expression of our ambition to extend our international range and a part of a development strategy focused on innovation. It also meets our investors’ needs for diversification.”
Olivier de Berranger, Managing Director and CIO of La Financière de l'Echiquier, adds: "Echiquier Go Local stems from LFDE's expertise in identifying structural trends. Its dynamic, flexible and opportunistic approach is adapted to the poly-crises context that we are experiencing in the new global economic environment."
Nina Lagron, CFA, Portfolio Manager of Echiquier Go Local, adds : "The Echiquier Go Local strategy is exposed to companies with crucial assets such as local production or sourcing, strategic patents, as well as companies that have recently announced localized projects with government support. This resilient, stand-alone investment solution that targets sectors most affected by a need for relocation is a differentiating product."
1. Effective on 15.12.2022. The fund is mainly exposed to capital loss risk , equity risk, currency risk and to discretionary management risk. For more information on its characteristics, risks and fees, please consult the regulatory documents available on www.lfde.com.
2. The management team may change over time.
Press Contacts:
Olivier Duquaine
Gunther De Backer