Rene Beltjens (Alter Domus): The Power of Decisive Action
Success takes decisive action. As Rene Beltjens, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Alter Domus explains, that applies as much to nations as it does to investment funds.
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What makes Alter Domus special as a company?
Our activity is centred around alternative investment funds, where we specialize in private equity funds, real estate funds and depth and capital markets, not doing any kind of hedge funds. This has allowed us to carve out a distinct niche, administering not only funds but also special purpose companies used in acquisitions. Vertical integration lets us serve clients at different levels while staying focused on our core business, and that’s led to great success. Last year, we secured $5.3 billion in investment from Sinwen, earning us praise as a Luxembourg unicorn.
What is your strategy for success in this field?
We started with the administration of special purpose companies, but very early on decided in a defensive and offensive move that we needed to do the administration of the funds themselves. This led us to a vertical model, serving the same clients up and down an extended value chain. The timing of this move in 2008-9 was critical. We could have said, OK, let's wait to see how things are going, but I'm convinced that we would then have been too late. And we’ve made other bold moves since, like extending into the US in 2016-17 and acquiring Courtland only a year later. All of this is driven by a culture of efficiency. We keep meetings short, people turn up on time, and we implement any decisions quickly. This lets us make decisive moves, like when we invested in tech company Easy Whiz then sold it to competitors and turned it into a client.
“We could have said, OK, let's wait to see how things are going. I'm convinced that we would then have been too late.” – Rene Beltjens, Alter Domus
How do you see the future of finance in Luxembourg?
I think about the future by learning from the past. The Walloon region in Belgium, where I come from, was a global innovator only 150 years ago, but fortunes rise and fall. Just because Luxembourg is a fantastic place to live today doesn’t mean it will be ten or twenty years down the road. The world is changing fast and we need the right decisions now to secure Luxembourg’s future. That includes focusing on the energy sector, replicating how Great Britain powered its industrial revolution. Look at what’s happening in the US, with Google, Meta, Amazon, they’re going for nuclear power because artificial intelligence is consuming so much energy. We need subsidies to develop technology such as small nuclear reactors. That would give Luxembourg the power it needs to compete globally.