Who we are
History
Rothschild & Co has been at the centre of the world's financial markets for more than 200 years. Today, the group is in its 7th generation of family control, chaired by Alexandre de Rothschild.
Family control
This family control gives us stability and a long-term mindset not matched by many of our peers. We are not driven by quarterly or annual results and can afford to take a genuinely long-term perspective, investing in our relationships with clients, our people and our business. The R&CoWM business model is based on seeking to advise clients according to what we genuinely believe to be in their best interests; we have no capital markets business, which means we have few of the conflicts of interest which trouble so many of our peers.
R&CoWM focuses on managing discretionary investment portfolios for a range of private clients, family offices, charities, trust and company structures. As at 31 December 2024, we manage £16.6bn of assets under custody. Client portfolios range from £2m to £500m. Irrespective of client type or portfolio size, our clients look to us to preserve and grow their wealth in real terms (ahead of inflation) and to be a safe and secure home for their assets.
Our service offering
Discretionary investment management is our focus, accounting for 92% (£15.3bn) of our assets under management.
In addition, we offer the following services:
· Strategic investment advice and other investment services
· Cash management
· Banking
· Lending
We often find ourselves acting as a sounding-board to clients on a range of matters, including currency, income needs, asset purchases, planning for the next generation and philanthropy. In addition, we are well placed to make introductions through our extensive network, working alongside our clients previously established professional advisers.
What we do
We believe that wealth preservation must focus on real returns ahead of inflation after all costs, not beating arbitrary benchmarks on a relative basis before fees. As such whether we are running low, medium or higher risk portfolios for our clients, outperforming inflation through an investment cycle is our primary objective and informs much of our thinking.
The structure of the portfolio may be different to others your client might be considering and is organised into two distinct parts. One side focuses on investments that seek to grow your capital; we call these ‘Return Assets’ because we expect them to generate inflation-beating returns over time. They include equities and investments with equity-like characteristics (either owned directly or through third party funds) which we expect to move broadly in line with equity markets. We spend considerable time researching each opportunity before we invest, engaging with management, staff, former employees, suppliers and competitors to fully understand the business and its competitive advantages.
The other side of the portfolio focuses on assets that are intended to either provide protection during periods of market stress or generate returns that are uncorrelated with equity markets. We call these 'Diversifying Assets’. They help us manage downside risk, smoothing some of the inevitable highs and lows of being invested in equity markets.
Our approach is unconstrained, and we look globally for the best investments available to meet the investment objective, regardless of asset class, sector, or geography. This approach is known as ‘bottom-up’ investing, whereby the asset, sector and geographical mix is an output of investment decisions, not the starting point. We only invest in assets we believe will help us deliver our clients' investment objectives.
We focus on finding great companies with sustainable business models, excellent management teams, trading on attractive valuations, that we can own for the long term. We evaluate companies according to three key criteria: business, management, and price.
Our fund selection process is equally rigorous. We partner with a very select group of third-party fund managers across our portfolios and typically look for the same characteristics and investment philosophy that we apply for our own direct company holdings, a i.e., focus on long-term sustainability through deep, fundamental research. Entrusting our clients’ capital with an external fund requires a high degree of conviction. The starting point for a relationship is to get a sense of partnership and build trust in the people and the process, thus we spend a lot of time getting to know our managers well, so we can be confident we fully understand their investment approach and processes. This will allow us to invest with a fund manager over the long term.
The managers we invest in must – at a minimum – satisfy the following three criteria: Alignment, Integrity, Transparency and access.
Ultimately, we are looking for managers we can partner with for many years. We believe our approach to fund selection is highly differentiated to that of many of our peers, who do not insist on this type of partnership, or level of transparency and direct and regular contact with external managers.
We monitor the companies and funds we own closely and conduct detailed annual reviews. Sell decisions are driven by either the initial investment thesis no longer being valid or our expected forward returns being too low. We conduct a post-mortem of all investments – good and bad – following a sale to understand what went well and what we may have missed.
