Passive Pain, Active Gain Write-Up

“The stars are finally aligning”. So said Ian Simmons, repeating his contribution to the Financial Times’ article on EM’s outperformance in 2025. Together with Dominic Bokor-Ingram, the pair opened a roundtable session for UK intermediaries and institutional investors with an open mind to the opportunity set. “We are leaving no stone unturned”, said Dominic. “There is a lot of excitement around emerging markets right now, but there isn’t a shop in London that will take relative performance as currency. You need to generate absolute returns.”

Kicking off the roundtable in his usual perspicacious form, Chris Nicholas, Senior Vice President – Financial Intermediaries at Fiera Capital, and moderator of the roundtable, likened Fiera Capital’s OAKS strategies to a “flotilla of boats”. Independent boutiques with “independent skippers, and independent crews”, was what Dominic later described as having “complete autonomy”, with less time spent “out of the day job” and more to devote solely to  stock-picking.

This set-up is true of both the OAKS Smaller Emerging Markets and Global Emerging Markets Strategies, which Dominic and Ian were representing, respectively. It is also apparent in the top-decile returns profile of OAKS’ six current live strategies, which Dominic attributed to this “supporting infrastructure” in addition to an alignment of interest with investors that could only come from direct participation of the Founders – including Stefan Böttcher, who founded OAKS alongside Dominic. “We invest our own money”, Dominic said in summary. “Your positions are ours, irrespective of which OAKS product you invest in.”