Institutional Framework
An institutional framework for specialist investment strategies
Block Asset Management combines investment research, due diligence, portfolio construction, quantitative capabilities and ongoing risk oversight within a defined institutional investment framework.
01 — Governance
Defined responsibilities, not an org chart
Investment activity at BAM sits within defined functional responsibilities, with oversight of investment, operational and regulatory obligations.
The firm describes functions rather than committees. Where a responsibility is held, it is stated; where a structure does not exist, it is not implied.
Senior Management
Accountable for firm strategy, resourcing and the overall control environment.
Investment & Research
Responsible for manager research, quantitative research, due diligence and portfolio construction.
Risk & Operations
Responsible for exposure monitoring, operational processes, service-provider oversight and reporting.
Compliance
Responsible for regulatory obligations, investor eligibility, marketing review and record keeping.
02 — Investment due diligence
Is the edge real, and is it repeatable?
Investment due diligence asks whether an approach is sound, repeatable and appropriately risk-managed — not whether it has produced attractive numbers in a favourable period.
In a young, fast-moving asset class, distinguishing genuine skill from a benign market is essential, so the assessment focuses on process rather than promise.
Strategy rationale
A clear, coherent explanation of where returns are expected to come from and why that source should persist, rather than a description of past outcomes.
Investment process
How ideas are researched, sized, executed and exited, and how disciplined and repeatable that process is across market conditions.
Risk discipline
The limits, controls and drawdown management that govern the strategy, and evidence they are applied in practice, not only on paper.
Team and alignment
The experience and stability of the team, the robustness of key-person arrangements, and whether incentives are aligned with investors.
Capacity and liquidity
Whether the strategy can operate at its asset level without dilution, and whether its liquidity profile matches the terms offered to investors.
Description against evidence
The consistency between what is described and what the return history actually shows — a stated approach and an observed return pattern should be recognisably the same thing.
03 — Operational due diligence
Operational risk is part of investment risk
A compelling strategy is worthless if assets are not properly safeguarded or if operational controls are weak. Operational due diligence examines the infrastructure around the investment.
This is where digital assets differ most from traditional markets, and a great deal of the genuine risk lives here.
Legal structure
The structure through which an investment is held, the jurisdiction that governs it, and the rights and protections that structure actually confers.
Custody and key management
How assets are held, whether qualified or institutional custody is used, and how private keys are secured, segregated and controlled.
Counterparty and exchange exposure
The venues, brokers and counterparties relied upon, and the concentration and settlement risk that exposure creates.
Administration, valuation and audit
The presence of a credible fund administrator, independent pricing and valuation policies, and a recognised auditor.
Controls and governance
Segregation of duties, cash and trade controls, reconciliation, and the governance framework that oversees operations.
Infrastructure and cyber resilience
The security, redundancy and resilience of the technology stack against operational failure and cyber threats, including business-continuity arrangements.
Findings on any individual manager or structure are confidential and are not published. What is described here is the process, not its results.
04 — Portfolio construction
Combination, not accumulation
A portfolio is built from distinct sources of return rather than from a collection of similar approaches. The conceptual principles are set out below; specific allocation rules and limits are not public.
Diversification across return drivers
Exposure is spread across distinct sources of return rather than across managers or models that resemble one another.
Concentration discipline
Limits govern exposure to any single manager, approach or operational dependency, set in advance rather than negotiated after the fact.
Liquidity awareness
The liquidity profile of underlying approaches is assessed against the structure that holds them, so that dealing terms and underlying realisability remain consistent.
Correlation, not just count
Diversification is assessed by how exposures behave together, not by how many of them there are. Several approaches that fail in the same conditions are one exposure.
05 — Risk management
Defined limits, monitored continuously
Exposure, leverage, drawdown and liquidity are governed by defined limits and monitored continuously.
Exposure and concentration
Monitoring of exposure at portfolio level and of concentration in any single manager, model, venue or operational dependency.
Liquidity
Assessment of whether the realisability of underlying exposures remains consistent with the terms of the structure holding them.
Leverage
Where leverage is used, it is monitored explicitly. Leverage magnifies losses as well as gains, and the risk it introduces is treated as a first-order consideration.
Counterparty exposure
Ongoing review of the venues, brokers and counterparties relied upon, and of the settlement and concentration risk that reliance creates.
Drawdown behaviour
Drawdowns are reviewed against what the strategy's stated risk profile would lead one to expect, rather than in isolation.
Strategy and model drift
Testing whether an approach is still doing what it was selected to do, and whether its behaviour has moved away from the original reasoning.
Risk management is a discipline for understanding and containing risk. It does not remove it. These are alternative investment strategies in volatile markets, and loss — including substantial loss — remains possible.
06 — Ongoing monitoring
Selection is the beginning, not the end
Managers evolve, markets shift and operational arrangements change, so due diligence is best understood as a continuous discipline of re-underwriting rather than a one-time gate at the point of allocation.
Performance behaviour
Reviewed against the strategy's stated objectives and risk profile, not in isolation, and tested for whether results remain consistent with the stated approach.
Risk within agreed bounds
Continuous testing of whether risk remains within the bounds that were agreed, and whether style drift has crept in.
Organisation and personnel
Prompt review of material changes to team, ownership or key-person arrangements.
Terms, providers and regulation
Prompt review of material changes to terms, service providers, counterparties, regulatory status or operations.
Acting on the evidence
Where the evidence warrants it, allocations are reduced, paused or redeemed. Monitoring that never changes an allocation is reporting, not oversight.
07 — Institutional infrastructure
The parties around each structure, named
Independent administration, audit, legal and depositary functions support the structures made available to eligible investors. The parties appointed to each are named below.
They are not the same across the range, and the differences are the point: an allocator should read each structure on its own terms rather than assume a safeguard present in one is present in another.
Luxembourg structure
Block Asset Management is the alternative investment fund manager, registered with the CSSF.
- Alternative investment fund manager
- Block Asset Management S.à r.l.
- Administrator
- Banque de Patrimoines Privés, Luxembourg
- Auditor
- Mazars, Luxembourg
- Legal adviser
- Eversheds Sutherland, Luxembourg
- Independent non-executive director
- None appointed
Malta structure
An authorised alternative investment fund manager is appointed, with an independent non-executive director on the board and a licensed depositary.
- Alternative investment fund manager and investment manager
- AQA Capital Ltd
- Depositary
- Swissquote Financial Services (Malta) Ltd
- Administrator
- Fexserv Fund Services Limited
- Auditor
- PwC Malta
- Independent non-executive director
- Appointed to the board
Certificate structure
A certificate, not a fund. It has no board and no depositary, and the safeguards that attach to a fund structure do not apply to it.
The terms on which each party acts are set out in the relevant offering documentation, available to eligible investors through Eligible Investor Access.
Diligence the framework, then the strategy
This page describes how BAM is organised to research, select and oversee specialist investment strategies. Product-specific materials — including offering documentation, reporting and performance history — are available to eligible investors through controlled access.