2023-10 Vermeer Partners - Brochure

I
RMEE R E PARTNER S

THE ART OF
INVESTMENT
ABOUT US
At Vermeer Partners we do things differently because
we believe that our clients deserve more. More of
our focus, more of our commitment and more of our
passion for what we do.
We set up Vermeer Partners in 2018 because we
didn’t like how client focus was being eroded at larger
organisations in favour of profitability. We are a uniquely
independent and focused investment management
business.
Unlike other firms, we have no shareholders, no parent
company, we are 100% owned by our partners many of
whom are also our investment managers - the people
managing your money.
We ask clients to trust us to look after their money and
their future, and the only way to truly replicate that
trust is to be aligned. Our success relies on us getting it
right for our clients.
1

MANAGEMENT
TEAM
Simon Melling is our CEO and he has held Board level
roles since the early 1990s, most recently as CEO of
AIM listed stockbroker Cenkos.
“Our absolute focus at Vermeer Partners is on you,
the client. It really is as simple as that. Despite
this, it’s a fact which many larger organisations
increasingly seem to overlook. There may be a
business advantage to treating clients as a single
commodity, but we are not focused on economies
of scale, we are interested in serving and meeting
the needs of the individual – each and every one
of our clients. This personalised approach extends
to our investment philosophy which isn’t driven by
benchmarks but, given our collective passion for
stock picking, we all work to add real value and
insight to the process.
I am extremely proud to lead such a dedicated
team of professionals, all of whom are committed
to delivering an appropriate and truly personal
service to our client base.”
BESPOKE
PROACTIVE
TRUSTWORTHY
INNOVATIVE
ROBUST
PERSONAL
3

VERMEER PARTNERS
IT’S NOT JUST
WORDS
Vermeer Partners is a partnership of individuals
passionate about investing. We needed a place where,
through hard work and a love of what we do, we could
make the most of our experience.
Collectively, we wanted to continue to hone our
investment skills and approach, pass that onto our next
generation of investment managers, all with the goal
of achieving the best results for our clients now and for
their future.
BESPOKE PORTFOLIOS
We set up Vermeer Partners because we believed
investment solutions were becoming commoditised and
benchmark based.
We build bespoke investment strategies based on
research, our collective investment experience and a
passion for stock picking.
Individual investment managers have the flexibility and
discretion to tailor your portfolio to your requirements.
However, they do not operate in isolation, but inside
a core process that monitors their performance and
ensures that a consistent and high-quality service is
delivered.
This investment governance framework comes under
the supervision of our Chief Investment Officer and
Investment Committees.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
At the heart of our philosophy is a fundamental belief
that equities will deliver the most attractive, inflationadjusted
returns compared to other asset classes over
the long term. Moreover, we are passionate about
investing. We undertake research to identify the very
best companies around the world regardless of where
they are domiciled, rather than sticking only to the UK.
Our investment philosophy relies on diversification –
spreading risk across industries and regions – to offer
protection and growth to our clients’ portfolios. This is
particularly important in today’s unstable environment.
We recommend portfolios are invested on an
international basis to benefit from exposure to a range
of high quality, global companies.
Our investment managers have flexibility to design
a portfolio that will meet your specific needs. Sitting
behind that, is our investment process which provides
a robust governance framework incorporating risk
management, due diligence and regular peer review.
These checks and balances ensure your portfolio remains
in line with your investment objectives over time.
YOUR REQUIREMENTS
Our process is designed around what is important to
you. We ask our clients to share with us their personal
circumstances, their professional goals now and for the
future and together we discuss risk: how much you’re
comfortable with and what is appropriate for your
circumstances.
All these factors are combined to create an
investment strategy that meets your needs and
your aspirations. Of course financial priorities
and personal circumstances change over time.
We commit to our clients over the long term
and believe that regular communication
and review is a priority to enable us to
anticipate those changes and to adapt to
accommodate you.
We want you to make the most of us always
being available to listen and offer guidance,
and by actively managing your personal
portfolio we provide you with the comfort
of knowing you are our priority.
YOUR TEAM
We do not have client relationship
managers, your first point of contact is your
Investment Director. Only by developing a
personal relationship with you can we fully
understand your investment goals.
And we take personal service and attention to
detail even further. Each Investment Director is
supported by a team who have all worked together
for many years and you have direct access to every
person in your team. Whether you want to review your
portfolio, have a specific stock you want to discuss or
just need to reset your password, your entire team is at
your disposal.
We don’t want you to ever speak to someone you don’t
know, or who doesn’t know you.
THE ART OF
INVESTMENT
4 5

INVESTMENT PROCESS
First and foremost, we treat our clients as individuals
and the construction of their portfolios will always
take that into account. Our investment managers have
the flexibility and discretion to curate portfolios to
meet clients’ specific investment objectives. However,
they do not operate in isolation, but inside a core
process that monitors portfolio construction, risk, and
performance to ensure a consistent and high-quality
outcome. We feel that this approach is only possible
within an independent partnership with a high degree of
alignment between investment manager and client.
Our investment philosophy relies on active management
and diversification - across themes, regions and asset
classes - to offer protection and growth to our clients’
portfolios while managing risk.
We favour companies that are financially strong, have
dominant market positions and can generate rising levels
of cash-flow, which can be returned to shareholders on
a consistent basis. These global investments will form
the bedrock of all client portfolios and as such we expect
portfolio turnover to be low.
We concentrate our investment process on long-term
investment ideas designed to protect and grow clients’
wealth, combined with bottom-up research into the
companies we invest in. We avoid making frequent
or major allocation calls, preferring a bottom-up or
thematic approach; but where our views change, we
are not hesitant in taking action. We consider all our
investments from a global perspective, continually
seeking out the very best companies and fund managers.
“In terms of our investment process we always seek
out suitable opportunities on a global basis. Not
only will this enable us to achieve a diversity of risk
and exposures but more importantly we believe will
lead to longer term outperformance. Put simply, in
the modern global economy in which we operate we
need to find the very best companies regardless of
where they are domiciled.
We are not restricted by benchmarks and are
looking for companies which have exceptional
franchises, are financially strong and have the ability
to generate rising levels of cash-flow. This can then
be invested in their businesses and returned to
shareholders.” Simon King, Chief Investment Officer
We always look to invest via direct securities rather than
collective funds and this helps to keep transparency
higher and overall costs lower. Where we do not have
direct expertise in certain asset classes or equity sectors,
we use collective funds. We are genuinely openarchitecture
and can invest in funds, both large and
small, from all the major fund groups around the world.
This includes investment trusts as well as larger openended
funds. Our size allows us to consider investments
that preclude larger investment firms from investing and
we believe this provides us an investment advantage.
Our investment process is designed to ensure that
investment managers are empowered to curate the most
suitable investment portfolio to meet the needs of their
clients. Our process is a collegiate, pragmatic, thoughtful
framework developed by a team of highly experienced
investment professionals, many of whom have worked
together for a number of years.
AT THE HEART OF
OUR PHILOSOPHY IS
A DESIRE TO KEEP
THINGS SIMPLE
AND DEMONSTRATE
THAT TO GENERATE
HIGHER RETURNS
WE DO NOT NEED
TO TAKE ON
UNDUE RISK
7

PRIVATE CLIENTS
We pride ourselves on offering a bespoke portfolio
service and believe in treating you as an individual, so it
is rare for two portfolios to be identical.
We understand your needs will change over time and we
offer support through every step of that journey to:
– Work out your long-term objectives
– Provide you with reliable income
– Accommodate your future expenditure
– Preserve wealth for future generations
– Ensure you understand the potential risk and
reward in your portfolio.
We structure our investment teams to support you now
and for future generations.
PENSIONS
We are highly experienced in managing pension
investments particularly Self-Invested Personal Pensions
(SIPP), Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes
(QROPS), Small Self-Administered Schemes (SSAS) and
other corporate pension schemes.
Our systems ensure that communication between all
associated parties functions seamlessly.
We have agreements in place with many third-party
pension providers and it is possible to add further new
relationships upon request.
ISAS
To reduce your overall tax liability* we encourage our
clients to run an ISA portfolio alongside their personal
portfolio. Your investment manager will run each
portfolio under a single strategy, which will be agreed
with you at the outset. Pooling these two investment
portfolios ensures your money is managed efficiently,
your personal allowances are maximised, and over
exposure to any one investment is avoided.
JUNIOR ISAS & BARE
TRUSTS
We provide a complete investment service to allow
our clients to have all the family portfolios managed in
one place by one team. As with all our services, your
investment portfolios are tailored to meet specific
requirements, whether it is to fund school fees, university
costs or first homes.
* Vermeer Partners do not provide tax advice and you will
need to seek advice from your independent tax adviser.
Not all clients may benefit from a separate ISA portfolio.
9

TRUSTS
We have a wide range of family trust clients, with whom
we work, which includes offshore trusts. Our investment
managers support both professional trustees and
members of the family to find the right approach to
meet their objectives in terms of growing their capital,
preserving their wealth and generating income.
Trustees can be confident of measuring our performance
against the benchmarks they set to achieve the trust’s
goals, because our reporting is always clear and to the
point.
Solicitors and accountants will also find us supportive
when seeking the documentation they require for
the filing of reports and accounts. Our portfolio
management services are also open - and would prove
highly beneficial - to family partnerships and other types
of corporate structure.
We know every trust has been set up to fulfil a purpose
and that the trusts come in different shapes and sizes.
Our experience in managing trust portfolios has been
accumulated over several decades and includes: Bare
Trusts, Discretionary Trusts, Will Trusts, Family Trusts
and Court of Protection Portfolios.
ADVISERS
We manage investment portfolios introduced by a
wide range of professional intermediaries including
financial advisers, solicitors and accountants. This often
includes probate work for solicitors; managing complex
tax wrappers such as offshore bonds or family OEICs
for clients of financial advisers; or managing court of
protection assets.
We focus exclusively on investments and do not offer
tax advice or financial planning services. We have many
years’ experience in the professional intermediary sector
and have developed strong and lasting relationships
with many of the leading financial adviser, solicitor and
accountancy practices both in the UK and in offshore
financial centres such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of
Man.
We always remember who introduces clients to us and
respect the boundaries between our professions to
avoid compromising each other’s client relationships.
We do not own any solicitor, accountancy or advisory
businesses, so there is no conflict of interest, nor danger
of losing referred business to in-house competitors.
We always remember whose client we are working for.
OUR INDEPENDENCE
IS ONE OF OUR KEY
STRENGTHS AND
THIS GIVES US THE
ABILITY TO REFER
OUR CLIENTS
TO THE BEST
PROFESSIONAL
ADVISERS
CHARITIES &
FOUNDATIONS
Charity trustees face increasingly complex governance,
operational and regulatory challenges. We seek to
reduce some of those challenges by ensuring the
investment portfolio operates at peak efficiency to meet
your charity’s objectives.
Our investment managers draw on their considerable
experience to understand your charity’s objectives, risk
profile and ethical investment requirements.
We then work with the trustees to construct or
implement an investment policy statement and help
to ensure individual investments within the portfolio
do not contravene the charity’s stated operational or
ethical objectives.
We offer clear and concise reporting to charity trustees
to enable you to assess performance against stated
benchmarks and to review individual holdings against
your investment policy statement.
Communication is essential, especially regular and
face-to-face meetings with charity trustees. We do not
employ relationship managers because we want you to
have confidence in your investment managers and we
believe you cannot have that relationship via a third
party.
The range of charitable sectors we have experience in is
very broad and includes education, religious orders, and
environmental.
RESPONSIBLE
INVESTMENT & ESG
Some clients seek to incorporate certain ethical, religious
and/or sustainable investment criteria into their portfolio
that are particularly important to them. These may extend
beyond our general responsible investment approach
by seeking to exclude particular companies or industry
sectors from a portfolio.
We use a third party ethical screening company to help
us exclude companies that profit directly from tobacco,
weapons manufacture, etc. It also helps to highlight
those companies that demonstrate commitment to
achieving the highest standards and are proactive
in areas such as corporate ethics, social justice and
environmental impact. Each client has their own ethical
criteria and yours will be applied when you meet your
investment manager.
We do not use a one size fits all approach, ensuring that
you will not feel obliged to invest in any area that you
are not comfortable with.
11

RISK &
SAFE CUSTODY
RISK
Ultimately, the level of risk in your portfolio is determined
after discussions with your investment manager and is
based on your attitude towards and appetite for risk.
However, all investments can rise as well as fall.
All portfolios can experience volatility in the short term,
so our investment managers focus on understanding the
risks and act to minimise them. These might be a move
in interest rates affecting the housing market, a new
technology disrupting a mature sector, or geopolitical
relations influencing the mood of investors.
This requires a deep understanding of each investment
and its risks. Diversification by sector, asset class and
geography help to further mitigate specific risks.
The investment timeframe you determine will be
considered by your investment manager to ensure you
can weather any short-term volatility and achieve your
investment objectives.
PERSHING
To ensure your assets are wholly ring fenced from
creditors and administrators of the investment manager,
these are held by Pershing Securities Ltd (“PSL”) and
Pershing (Channel Islands) Ltd (“PCI”) rather than in
Vermeer Partners’ nominee account. Pershing is part of
The Bank of New York Mellon, one of the world’s largest
and most secure custody banks.
CLIENT CASH
Pershing uses a carefully selected panel of 10 to 12 high
quality banks to minimise institutional risk.
OPERATIONS
In addition, PSL looks after our trading, clearing and
settlement functions:
• trading is covered on a 24-hour global execution
basis through desks in London, New York and Asia,
to which we have direct access
• access to clearing and settlement of a wide range of
instruments across more than 40 markets
PSL also provide our investment management software,
reporting and investor portals. Pershing is a leader in
these fields, allowing us to concentrate on managing
clients’ investments.

Vermeer Partners
T
E info@vermeerllp.com
The information and services described in this publication are not intended for persons outside the United Kingdom.
The value of investments and the income derived from them may go down as well as up and you may not receive
back all the money which you invest. The investments and investment services described may not be suitable for you.
Any information relating to an investment or an investment service is not a reliable indicator of future performance
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