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Wealth manager seeks smart money

By Zhang Ran (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-14 11:11

"I never made a good investment with bad management," legendary investor Warren Buffett once said.

Thomas W Van Dayck couldn't agree more. "It is all about finding a good idea and a good management team," SRI Wealth Management's senior vice-president explains in an interview with China Business Weekly. Holding a Chinese magazine in his hand, Van Dayck points to a picture of Li Xiang, the 25-year old Chinese billionaire and founder of the popular website pcpop.com. "Just like this guy," he says.

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Van Dayck is helping his private equity clients screen for qualitative investment portfolio companies, or, in other words, to look for "sustainable long-term value".

The investment banker, who paid his first visit to China with the US clean-energy technology trade mission last week, has met with a batch of clean energy companies, including NYSE-listed Suntech, for target customers, to which he hopes to provide financial services or to find investment opportunities.

Suntech, a solar energy firm, is a good company according to Van Dayck's "double bottom-line" judging criteria.

"Double bottom-line" means a company must not only meet traditional financial standards such as revenues, margins, cash flow, earnings, or debt to equity ratio, but must also consider environmental sustainability and treat employees as assets instead of costs.

"To pick companies, you have to screen out environment polluters, unsafe product or services, weak employer-employee relations, while to support companies that provide safe and healthy products and services, and have positive employee relations and strong community ties," Van Dayck says.

"The China market is huge. I believe more Suntechs will be born in the future," he says.

Van Dayck leads a team of seven investment professionals in San Francisco, consulting on nearly $1 billion in assets. The company is one of the top consulting groups in the country exclusively focused on social and environmental investing.

The senior executive says solar and wind energy are two of the most attractive sectors in China's energy industry. He hopes the company can soon help its clients find direct investment in the country.

Van Dayck has long been involved in clean technology investing and was instrumental in developing Piper Jaffray's Cleantech Ventures private equity fund when he worked for the leading securities house between 1997 and 2006.

SRI Wealth Management Group, now a subsidiary of RBC Dain Rauscher Inc under the RBC Financial Group, offers comprehensive investment strategies for sophisticated investors committed to social change. RBC Dain Rauscher is a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and one of the largest full-service securities firms in the United States.

RBC Wealth Management directly serves affluent and high net worth clients in Canada, United States, Europe and Asia, provides asset management and trust services through RBC and third-party distributors and has approximately $500 billion of assets under administration, 3,500 financial advisors and more than $130 billion of assets under management.