Photo Michaël Sellam © IRIS Finance
Built on a 30-year legacy and a strategic footprint across five European countries, IRIS Finance International Group, chaired by Michaël Sellam, rejects the industrial model in favour of what it readily describes as an “artisanal” approach. Far from being a mere semantic flourish, this positioning sits at the heart of an agile strategy, offering a tailor-made alternative for both institutional and private investors.
IRIS Finance’s story began in France in 1994, when the firm obtained its first authorisations from the Commission des opérations de bourse (now the AMF), laying the foundations for a regulated and rigorous expertise. Over the following two decades, the company refined its management methods, built a reputation for seriousness, and succeeded in attracting a top-tier institutional clientele. It was in 2012, however, that the group reached a decisive milestone by opening up to European markets. This internationalisation was far from a simple growth story; it answered a strategic need for diversification. While the historic French base remains a solid anchor, IRIS Finance has woven an intelligent network across the continent’s most dynamic financial centres.
Today, this ecosystem rests on a presence in Luxembourg — through entities such as IRIVEST Investment Managers and Createrra Finance — in Switzerland with Compagnie Financière Genevoise 1855, as well as in Belgium and Monaco. This geographic expansion reflects a drive to diversify and to anticipate. For Michaël Sellam, internationalisation was not an option but a necessity to protect clients’ interests: “We chose to extend our footprint beyond French borders so as not to remain captive to the cycles of a single market. This multi-site presence allows us to capture innovation where it emerges and to share a global vision that ultimately benefits each local client.”
What fundamentally sets IRIS Finance International Group apart is its open-architecture positioning. The group does not seek to impose its own products at any cost: it selects the best instruments available on global markets, even incorporating third-party funds when doing so serves the client’s interests. “We don’t pretend to be experts in everything,” Michaël Sellam admits with characteristic candour. “We take the best products and try to offer them to our clients.” In reality, this strategic humility is a strength: it ensures allocation objectivity and shields investors’ interests from any commercial conflict.
The group’s historic flagship remains institutional asset management, with a client base comprising leading banks, insurance companies, pension funds and retirement schemes. Yet it is in private wealth management that the group’s philosophy is most fully revealed: an artisanal approach built around each client’s specific objectives.
The comparison Michaël Sellam likes to draw is with the Hermès artisan — a meticulous selector of raw materials, maker of unique pieces, wholly resistant to mass industry. “We are artisans of asset management,” he explains. “We are not industrialists. We do things at our scale, with care, and that makes for genuinely effective bespoke management.” In practical terms, this means the ability to build bond portfolios line by line, to craft tailor-made asset allocations, and to adjust strategies in real time according to market developments and each client’s individual needs. This approach is not merely a marketing stance: it responds to a concrete critique of the industrial banking model. When group management teams impose uniform directives on their portfolio managers, clients are deprived of the market’s best opportunities, regardless of their own convictions. IRIS Finance, by contrast, adapts each portfolio to the constraints and preferences expressed by the investor themselves.
IRIS Finance International Group is not simply one asset manager among many: it is a model that has demonstrated, decade after decade, that independence, performance and humanity can coexist in a sector too often dominated by standardisation and industrialisation. A conviction-led craftsman, serving a demanding clientele.
Chahine Funds Equity Europe, managed since 1998, has delivered an average annual alpha of +3.6% against its benchmark, dividends reinvested. The Chahine Funds Equity Continental Europe (ex-UK) fund, launched in 2006, has also outperformed by +3.6% per year for nearly twenty years. Chahine Funds Equity Europe Smaller Companies, focused on small and mid caps, has beaten its index by +5.2% annually since 2016. As for Chahine Funds Equity US, it has generated an annual return of +12.8% since 2017, with a portfolio deliberately more diversified than the S&P 500. These performances are no accident. They rest on rare analytical discipline and a deeply embedded culture of results. “It’s 30 years of experience speaking,” Sellam sums up. “We know how to select the most appropriate stocks. We keep a cool head, sound reasoning, and we stay close to our clients even when markets get carried away.”
Find all our articles Business Culture
