It is not the best day for Jaume Sabater (Andorra, 44 years old). His little son, five weeks old, has caught a virus. It's nothing serious, but the little one is very young, he is with his wife in Switzerland and they can't travel, which has disrupted the family's plans to get together for the holidays in Barcelona. “It's what he plays,” he says with a shy and resigned smile in his office in the Catalan capital. Sabater is CEO of Stoneweg, an investment fund that will be heard a lot about due to the cultural turn that its investments have taken, with milestones such as the America's Cup of sailing – which will be held in the summer in Barcelona -, the hub cultural in the Godó i Trias factory in L'Hospitalet, the Palau Martorell Museum, and even a failed project that caused a lot of talk: the Hermitage museum that the city of Barcelona was going to have. Before making the leap to found his own fund in 2015, the investor spent a decade working in Switzerland at the Rothschild bank, where he was in charge of directing the alternative investment part.
Ask. The first question is obligatory: What the hell is alternative investment?
Answer. Well, it is an alternative to traditional investment: stocks, bonds… The alternative is a very broad spectrum: venture capital, investment in private companies, raw materials…
Q. In 2015 he set up his own fund.
R. That's right, with some of my colleagues we created Stoneweg and looked for alternative investment. At first we focused on the real estate market. Our focus is to create a platform capable of operating in multiple countries. And with the ability to bet on several investment areas. Spain was the first country in which we began to operate.
Q. And how do you go from a real estate investment to a cultural investment?
R. Because of the relationship between container and content. Look, the vision of “experience” is something that is an integral part of our investment reflection, from minute zero. I'll give you an example, in the United States we manage 20,000 homes. But we do not see them as buildings, but as communities: they are not square meters, but rather a community that lives in them that interacts. That is, we look for services that provide value. And we are not talking about luxury, we are talking about courses, training, and having a cultural offer in these communities. The same with hotel investment: we think about the experience. And we see that through that experience we gain value. In 2017 we were presented with the project to bring the Hermitage to Barcelona, and we were seduced by the possibility of bringing a world-class museum to the city. From that moment on we became active and saw that through this content we can access new opportunities, and we have been creating an ecosystem of resources and teams that think about museums. Not only culturally, but also educationally and leisurely; It is an investment typology with a long history.
Q. You have brought up the elephant in the room. After the dispute with the City Council, is the Hermitage of Barcelona an abandoned project?
R. Yes, at all. It is a project that is truncated, but that changes our entire philosophy of betting on cultural projects. He has helped us later, with projects like the Copa América.
Q. Would you never have left without the Hermitage experience?
R. If we had not worked and supported the Hermitage project, our entire role a posteriori It would be very different.
Q. Since you mention it, how did bringing the Copa América come about?
R. The winner chooses a venue and usually takes it home for the next edition, but Team New Zealand can be the first to win three times in a row; It was already held in Auckland and they began to consider moving it to another city for the 37th edition. It was not easy for Barcelona to be a candidate, but all the factors helped: Barcelona Global, civil society… we became part of the project. In parallel, we built the America's Cup Experience Center, in the port of Barcelona, where we recovered a disused space to bring citizens closer to what the America's Cup means.
Q. What will the Cup mean for Barcelona?
R. For the city it is a huge opportunity. It is one of the most important sporting events in the world. An impact of 1.2 billion is expected, 20,000 jobs… not to mention the thousands of volunteers. The city has not seen anything like it since the Olympic Games.
Q. Its cultural philosophy is also seen, for example, in the L'Hospitalet Hub.
R. It is a curious space. A factory that was disused after many ups and downs, with many projects that had not come out. But we are going to recover it: we will make a hub that combines the cultural and the educational, based on art and new technologies, with immersive experiences. There will be artistic workshops, and even artist residencies. And it shows our commitment to the Barcelona area.
Q. Another project, which is already working: the Palau Martorell Museum.
R. Yes, it opened in January, and it is in its third exhibition, of Marc Chagall, after those of Joaquín Sorolla and Alfons Mucha.
Q. Do you see yourself investing in things other than real estate in the future? Talk about education, technology…software?
R. Definitely. In the end, we seek to have the ability to generate content on the continent. That is, make collaboration agreements, form joint ventures to create immersive experiences… what we want is to have spaces that allow us to host events with this cultural purpose.
Q. So what can we expect from Stoneweg in the future?
R. We have many projects underway, which are demanding, and we want to see them advance. We have interesting projects, in Spain and internationally.
Q. Is investment in Barcelona, in Catalonia, a sign that investment is returning to the area after a few years in which it has left?
R. Well, I don't want to get into politics, but we look for opportunities. There are things that come up and things that don't. We also have many projects in Madrid, for example, Playa Surf [la futura playa urbana más grande de Europa].
Q. Of course, in Madrid the Copa América…
R. Man, it's more complicated to do it there! [ríe].
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