An Interview With Scot French, Founder Of Hopewell Investments

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With private market funds aimed at reliable returns with minimal risk, Hopewell Partnership Investments, founded by Scot French, helps executives and fund managers with their financial goals and long-term planning.

Below is our recent interview with Scot French, founder and CEO of Hopewell Investments.

Q: What is Hopewell Investments?

Scot French: HP Investments was the company I always wanted to start. That’s why I named it after the city of my childhood: Hopewell, Illinois.

After working in finance for others and learning the ropes, I had the knowledge to start a company that could help New York City’s financial managers meet and maybe even surpass their financial goals. Now we have clients throughout New York State and have begun expanding throughout the country, and I’m happy to say that the company has a bright future.

Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?

Scot French: Our angle is providing a range of options for investors while also making sure we continue to specialize in the areas in which we exceed. We are a boutique firm, so we don’t cater to every possible investment service. We focus on what we do best, which is private wealth management solutions. We want to give investors a clear path for accessing the private markets asset class with a minimal amount of risk — or work — on their end.

That means financial analysis up front, looking not only at their goals, but at their existing resources, other investments, the state of their industry, and then the state of the larger economy and the forces likely to impact it in the foreseeable future. From there, we can make recommendations for diversifying their portfolios in a way that works for them and their capacity.

Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?

Scot French: Well, I can’t say too much, but I will tell you that HP Investments plans to add some additional services.

Alternative investments are at the top of that list. More of our clients, and more investors in general, have been looking for opportunities that don’t involve the equity and bond markets that have long been the bedrock of private market investments.

Generally, that means medium and long-term investments in real assets. These bring premiums for the lack of liquidity and their complexity, along with some specific risks. Examples of alternative investments could be real estate or infrastructure, but we’ll be focusing more on opportunities in the renewable energy sector and private equity.

In addition to that, we’re in the early stages of considering services for semi-professional investors to diversify our offerings further, but that’s not a certainty at the moment.

Q: What is the best thing about your company that people might not know about?

Scot French: I think the best thing about Hopewell Investments is something that only our clients could know, which is the level of service and communication we offer. Technology might make it easy to constantly communicate at a distance, but it’s not the only way we talk to our clients.

That’s certainly a part of our service, and if a client only wants meetings on the phone or with video conferencing, we have team members who excel at using Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other virtual conferencing tools to deliver world-class presentations.

However, since we started as a boutique firm in New York, we developed a culture of meeting in person, when possible. We also check in with our clients as frequently as we can to make sure they’re goals are being met and to ensure they understand our strategy, how it works and where we’re going.

Every company talks a big game about their customer service, of course, but I would say that few people know how studiously we work on behalf of our clients. You’ll have to give us a try to find out.

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