Our history

Founded in London as J.F. Schröder & Co in 1800, our first 100 years saw us building a client base around the world. We were busy financing trade between America and Europe and funding major infrastructure projects like railways, ports, and power stations. And moving into new areas such as bonds and corporate finance.

In 1924, we formed our first investment trust and started managing investments for clients. Our listing on the London Stock Exchange followed in 1959.

By the start of the 20th century, we had clients across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. By the 1970s, we had a presence in the major financial markets, including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, and many more.

In 2000, we sold our investment banking arm to specialize in asset and wealth management. Today, we’ve also expanded into private markets, opening up a new dimension to our clients.

Acquisitions have always been part of our growth story, adding key capabilities and helping us meet the evolving needs of our clients and drive growth in an ever-changing world.

With more than a dozen transactions since 2016 alone, we’ve expanded our expertise in private assets, from real estate to infrastructure financing. We’ve expanded our wealth management offering, including a market-leading offering for financial advisers. And we’ve grown our specialist expertise in solutions, where we aim to be the provider of choice for pension plans, offering an end-to-end solution through to buy-out.

Our secret to success? We only make acquisitions that fit with our overall culture and values. It’s about adding to our expertise rather than simply buying for growth.

We’re always thinking of new ways to use intelligent, active management to get our clients where they want to go.

Like winning our first pension fund mandate in the UK in 1947. Or launching our first property fund in 1971 to access the world of alternative products. We offered the first of our diversified growth strategies in 2006. A year later, we introduced our Global Climate Change Equity fund. And in 2009, we launched GAIA, a platform designed to give investors easier access to hedge fund expertise.

Today, our multi award-winning sustainability investment framework – designed in-house – is embedded into our investment processes. And the data scientists in our Data Insights Unit bring cutting-edge insights to our investment teams, placing us at the forefront of active investing.

Partnerships have further broadened our horizons, coupling our investment expertise with our clients’ distribution networks, to meet the needs of their customers. Our partnership strategy gives us access to new distribution opportunities around the world, including some of the world’s highest-growth markets.

Like our 2005 joint venture with the Bank of Communications in China, our 2012 partnership with India’s Axis Asset Management, our relationship with Hartford Funds in the US with 10 sub-advised strategies tailored for US customers, and our joint venture with Nippon Life delivering benchmark-beating returns for clients in 2021. There’s also our recently established joint venture with Lloyds Banking Group, which employs more than 600 financial advisors in the UK.