A new home but an unchanged commitment to positive impact investing
At the end of January we announced that WHEB will be joining Foresight Capital Management. While WHEB will no longer be a fully independent business, the investment team, the investment strategy and the brand will live on as part of a much larger group.
While there are aspects of being independent that we will miss (and we will sadly be leaving our lovely offices in Cavendish Square), we are also tremendously excited about the opportunities that joining Foresight will bring. We believe that as the market for sustainable and impact investing evolves, clients will want access to a broader range of products and asset classes backed by firms with established distribution, risk management and institutional backing. Within Foresight, we will be able to provide a more complete offering to clients in a way that would have taken us many years to build ourselves within WHEB.
Why Foresight?
In fact, WHEB has been looking for a strategic partner that can provide this broader platform for some time. We believe that Foresight is a superb partner for WHEB. First, and most importantly, Foresight has a significant focus on impact investments. This includes renewable energy infrastructure, place-based private equity and the nascent Foresight Capital Management (FCM) that focuses on liquid investment strategies and of which WHEB will become a part.
As a well-funded bigger business, the company has the ability to think long-term and invest counter-cyclically in impact investing. The acquisition of WHEB is a clear example of this.
On the business development side too, Foresight has real strength. They have deep relationships in the independent financial advice (IFA) market as well as with local government pension schemes (LGPS). FCM itself has a distribution team of four and we will also benefit from sales support across the wider Foresight business which is ten times the size. This obviously brings opportunities for new product development as well and we are excited about the potential to launch new sustainability investment products that target different return profiles and that complement WHEB’s core global equity strategy.
What does this mean for WHEB’s culture and brand?
Over the 16 years since its foundation, WHEB Asset Management has built a powerful reputation for authentic impact investing combined with radical levels of transparency. This approach will not change once we are part of Foresight. The investment strategy and personnel will not change and our ambition to be leaders in impact investing in listed markets remains undimmed. Our hope is that by joining forces with FCM we will be even better-placed to deliver world-class strategies for our clients.
What practical changes will there be?
Our expectation is that clients will see very little change. WHEB’s funds will not change their names and the underlying strategies and investment teams that implement them will not change either. There will also be no change in fees or focus. The WHEB team will be fully integrated into FCM. The WHEB partners will all be made Managing Directors and will report to Nick Scullion, Partner and Head of FCM. All three partners remain deeply committed to WHEB and heavily incentivised to lead the next phase of growth. Clients will also still receive the same quality of support from WHEB. Our reporting will remain the same and the client team of George Latham, Jaya Govindan and Susie Winstanley will continue to support client needs and requests. This group will be embedded in the larger FCM business development team led by Tom McGillycuddy, another recent joiner to Foresight.
A final word
It has been quite a journey for WHEB Asset Management. We are hugely grateful for the support that our investors have shown us. We have sought to develop a fresh approach to impact investing both in terms of the depth of research that we do, and also in the transparency and reporting that we provide to clients. We hope that notwithstanding the vicissitudes of the stock markets, we have provided clients with investment products that have aligned with their values and met their needs.
The business launched in 2009 with no assets to manage, and just three people, but also a new vision for what could be achieved. At the end of 2024 the WHEB team had grown to 20 and assets under management were just shy of £1bn. We have won pretty much every industry award available and were particularly pleased to be the first listed equity strategy to use the FCA’s ‘sustainability impact’ label at the end of last year.
We are tremendously proud of what the team has done and the contribution that we have made over the past 16 years. We now look forward with real energy and excitement to the next chapter within Foresight where, within a larger organisation, we will remain committed to WHEB’s original mission to advance sustainability and create prosperity through positive impact investments.
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