What made you start Vanilla Equity?

“I love working with driven entrepreneurs and I spend most of my spare time supporting local small businesses. It used to be only sports media related activities, but now, as I no longer work for a big financial corporation, I’m able to direct my passion also in the finance realm.”

So your background is in banking?

“Yes. I worked in three different countries with both private banking and institutional clients. My last position was here in Luxembourg where I headed a Fund Execution desk. I’ve been lucky to have experience from broader roles, that allowed me to get acquainted with all asset classes and client segments. In 20 years you get to see a lot of things.”

What exactly is Vanilla Equity?

“We call it a “gateway for aspiring portfolio managers”, but it’s basically solving a problem I had when I started investing in stocks privately. I could see that I was beating the indicies and the performance of popular funds. But the percentual gains where meaningless since I did not have much capital. It took years to build up my portfolio to finally see the benefits of compound interest. With Vanilla Equity I can help smaller investors get a head start and expedite their progress, so they won’t have that problem.”

Do you lend people money or how does it work?

“No. Our setup is quite unique and I haven’t seen it done on an entrepreneurial level. Maybe the best way to describe it is to compare it to the setup that banks use to manage their international funds. Let’s say that lots of clients of a bank in Italy want to invest in Japan. The Italian bank has no clue about the Japanese market but they want to meet their client’s needs. They set up a Japanese fund and contract a local portfolio management company in Japan to manage the investments. With Vanilla Equity we try to help investors become that portfolio management company in Japan. We basically want you to incorporate and then we will contract your company to manage a part of our portfolio.”

What inspired you to launch Vanilla Equity and what is the end goal?

“Vanilla Equity is sort of a passion project for me. I was looking for a way to help independent investors in the financial sector. A lot of people believe that they’re entitled to be employed. I want to support those that create jobs by starting businesses. I hope I can encourage part-time investors to start their own portfolio management companies. With Vanilla Equity, I give them a chance to get started, to make money and to build a track record. The end goal would be to have one of our portfolio managers call me in 5 years and thank me for helping them launch their hedge fund or landing them their dream job as a portfolio manager.”