The staff and expertise of consultancy EFIRES are to be folded into Amiral Gestion.

Amiral Gestion announces its merger with EFIRES, a consultancy offering specialist strategic advice and operational support in the areas of Responsible Investment (RI) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Efires is renowned for its responsible finance expertise and has carried out large-scale assignments for key market players ranging from private banks to asset managers and representing over € 750bn of advised assets under management on a cumulative basis since the consultancy was founded in 2013.

By incorporating EFIRES' team, Amiral Gestion will be able to step up its transformation in the field of responsible investment which it initiated in 2015 with SRI mandates managed on behalf of ERAFP (Établissement de Retraite Additionnelle de la Fonction Publique, a supplementary pension institution for civil servants) and then FRR (Fonds de réserve pour les retraites, a pension reserve fund) in 2019.

"The idea here is to expand our responsible investment footprint by speeding up our efforts to develop a proprietary ESG integration process. Our aim is to generate positive and tangible impacts by intensifying our shareholder engagement with companies, especially small and mid caps. For this reason, we began working with EFIRES in 2019 as part of a consultancy assignment and we are delighted to now be able to entrust its two co-founders with executing Amiral Gestion's RI/CSR strategy which we built up together."

Nicolas Komilikis, Managing Director of Amiral Gestion

This new IR/CSR management team, initially set up with the arrival of Véronique Le Heup in September 2020 and with Nadia Tihdaini scheduled to join in 2021, will be responsible for developing Amiral Gestion's RI and CSR practices. Their role is to lead the debate on RI processes by ensuring that they are implemented and adhered to and always up to speed. The team will also bring its CSR experience so that the asset management company can continue achieving its CSR goals and become an exemplary advocate of responsible investment.

Véronique Le Heup and Nadia Tihdaini, co-founders of EFIRES, look forward to their future at Amiral Gestion:

"This merger has come about as we were truly won over by Amiral Gestion and by the sincerity behind its approach. We are delighted to join the firm with its strong convictions and inherently responsible corporate culture, which we were able to observe at all levels when performing our assignment. This is a new challenge for us and reflects a desire to work towards a common goal in a healthy and stimulating company by collectively raising Amiral Gestion up to the highest standards of responsibility".

And this is no vain wish on the part of these born believers, since EFIRES' mission statement was to "inspire our clients to adopt a conviction and impact-based approach so that they can engage in responsible investment for the long run: this has been our purpose from the outset. Our approach helps to resolve the issues of economic viability and social and environmental equilibrium, which are so closely intertwined." Such a mission statement has certainly struck a chord during the unprecedented public health crisis we have experienced since the first quarter of 2020.