Structuring and Arranging Opportunities

The objective of this part of our business is to provide investment opportunities to institutional clients that seek to improve their overall risk adjusted portfolio return.

Our primary investment focus is on fixed income, and more particularly credit based assets, plus selected alternative investments. We look for opportunities in GBP, EUR and USD across cash based investments (including Money Market Funds), government bonds, corporate bonds, asset backed securities and sub-investment grade corporate bonds and loans.

Careful selection of the appropriate asset type and the right investment manager in this diverse area is crucial to ensure that the risk/return balance is optimised.

• We have extensive experience of credit markets from basic money market instruments to sophisticated portfolio and fund structures that are constructed using structured finance techniques and credit derivatives.
• We have a strong understanding of the causes and effects of the on-going dislocation of financial markets and the opportunities and risks that this presents. This provides a useful backdrop for our evaluation and identification of those asset classes which we believe offer the prospect of good risk-adjusted returns.
• We are not in the investment management business per se, in that we do not manage money for clients, but we aim to direct clients towards what we regard as best of breed asset managers in our favoured asset classes. Our definition of best of breed does not constitute who is currently top of the return tables, but is based on a more measured assessment that takes into account the consistency and sustainability of the returns over time, which will reflect our evaluation of the quality of the asset manager and their personnel.

In fast moving markets we believe rapid identification and execution of opportunities is key to enhanced investment performance.

The traditional approach used by many institutional investors, based around a fixed asset allocation and a time-consuming manager selection beauty parade, is not cut-out to support a more dynamic investment process. IIA's approach to investment arrangement recognises the market realities and is designed to help investors to capitalise on what may be valuable, but fleeting, opportunities.

Our arrangement process typically consists of the following steps:

• Identify current investment opportunities
• Identify best of breed asset managers in the area of opportunity and determine how the investment is best structured (including the prospective asset management fees, which we prefer to be performance related to ensure a close alignment of interests)
• Undertake an initial assessment of the appropriateness of the investment for specific clients, or client groups with similar investment requirements
• Approach pre-screened investors with the:
• Investment idea, and
• Proposed asset manager
• Support institutional investors with the evaluation of the opportunity
• For institutions that decide to invest we will provide execution assistance in liaison with the asset manager

In general, IIA's work in this area is success fee based, with fees only being paid if an investment is made. IIA is fully independent and is not tied to any investment manager, although IIA will usually be remunerated for providing these services by taking a share of the successful investment manager's fees.

We have arranged investments in funds and segregated accounts for institutional clients in the following areas:

• Money market funds
• Enhanced cash funds
• European Residential Mortgage Backed Securities
• Asset Backed Securities (European and US)
• Collateralised Loan Obligations (European and US)
• Infrastructure debt
• High Yield Bonds (European and US)
• Large Cap bank loans (European and US)
• Private debt / direct lending (European and US)
• Absolute Return bond funds (European and US)