INDÉPENDANCE AM

INDÉPENDANCE AM

Indépendance AM was founded in 2010 by William Higgons and Arnaud de Ménibus, two investors who had previously worked together at major financial institutions in Paris. The firm was established as an independent asset management boutique — hence the name — with a singular focus: investing in European listed small and mid-cap companies. From inception, the founders positioned the firm against the grain of mega-cap consensus, arguing that smaller European companies offered superior growth potential and were systematically under-researched by the large sell-side banks and generalist fund managers. The firm runs a concentrated, high-conviction equity strategy centered on European small and mid-cap stocks. The portfolio typically holds between 30 and 40 positions, built entirely through bottom-up fundamental analysis. The team looks for companies with strong market positions, high barriers to entry, and management teams with significant equity alignment. Sector exposure is an output of stock selection, not a top-down input, though the portfolio has historically shown an inclination toward industrial technology, niche manufacturing, and specialized business services. The geographic footprint spans the Eurozone, the UK, Switzerland, and the Nordics, with a willingness to invest wherever they find the best risk-reward profile in the European small-cap universe. Indépendance AM operates as a lean boutique from a single office in Paris. The investment team is deliberately small in order to maintain an agile decision-making process and a flat hierarchy where every analyst and portfolio manager is directly responsible for idea generation. The firm has not publicly disclosed its total assets under management, nor has it launched a broad family of ancillary funds. In recent years, the firm has focused on deepening its research capacity on the small-cap opportunity set, a segment that has faced structural outflows from passive and benchmark-constrained active mandates across Europe (per public record). What distinguishes Indépendance AM structurally is its refusal to diversify away from its original mandate. While many boutique managers either close to new capital or broaden their charter to attract institutional flows, the firm remains entirely focused on European small and mid-caps. The governance structure — owned and operated by the two named founders — eliminates the conflict between investment conviction and asset-gathering incentives that shapes larger multi-strategy houses. Succession and long-term stewardship hinge entirely on the partnership between Higgons and de Ménibus.