Jaume Sabater, CEO of Stoneweg, in his offices in Barcelona on Wednesday.Albert Garcia
It's not the best day for Jaume Sabater (Andorra, 44 years old). Her little boy, five weeks old, was infected with the virus. It's nothing serious, but the little one is still very young, he is in Switzerland with his wife and they cannot travel, which has disrupted the family's plans to meet in Barcelona for the holidays. “We have to do this,” he says with a shy and resigned smile in his office in the Catalan capital. Sabater is CEO of Stoneweg, an investment fund about which you will hear a lot about the cultural turnaround that his investments have made, with milestones such as the America's Cup of Sailing – which will take place in Barcelona in the summer – the cultural center at the Godó factory i Trias in L'Hospitalet, the Palau Martorell Museum and even a failed project that caused a lot of stir: the Hermitage Museum that the city of Barcelona was supposed to have. Before taking the step to set up his own fund in 2015, the investor worked for a decade in Switzerland at Rothschild Bank, where he was responsible for managing the alternative investment division.
Questions. The first question is obligatory: What the heck is alternative investment?
Answer. Well, it is an alternative to traditional investments: stocks, bonds… The alternative is a very wide range: venture capital, investments in private companies, commodities…
Q In 2015 he founded his own fund.
R. That's right, with some of my colleagues we founded Stoneweg and looked for alternative investments. Initially we focused on the real estate market. Our focus is on creating a platform that can operate in multiple countries. And with the opportunity to focus on multiple investment areas. Spain was the first country where we started our operations.
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” has been an integral part of our investment reflection from the very first minute. Let me give you an example: In the United States, we manage 20,000 households. But we don't see them as buildings, but as communities: they are not square meters, but a community that lives and interacts in them. This means we look for services that offer added value. And we're not talking about luxury, but about courses, training and cultural offerings in these communities. The same goes for hotel investments: we think about the experience. And we see that we gain value through this experience. In 2017, we were presented with the project of bringing the Hermitage to Barcelona and were seduced by the possibility of bringing a world-class museum to the city. From that moment on, we took action, realizing that this content gave us access to new opportunities, and we created an ecosystem of resources and teams thinking about museums. Not only culturally, but also educationally and personally; It is an investment typology with a long history.
Q They raised the elephant in the room. Is the Barcelona Hermitage an abandoned project after the dispute with the city council?
R. Yes, at all. It is a shortened project, but it changes our entire philosophy of focusing on cultural projects. He later helped us with projects like the Copa América.
Q Would you never have left without the Hermitage experience?
R. If we hadn't worked on and supported the Hermitage project, our entire role afterwards would be very different.
Q Now that you mentioned it, how did 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 win first three times in a row; The event was already held in Auckland and consideration was given to moving it to another city for the 37th edition. It wasn't 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 restored an unused space to educate citizens about the importance of the America's Cup.
Sabater, in the Stoneweg offices in Barcelona. Albert García
Q What does the cup mean for Barcelona?
R. It is a great opportunity for the city. It is one of the most important sporting events in the world. It is expected to have an impact of 1.2 billion, 20,000 jobs… not to mention the thousands of volunteers. The city hasn't seen anything like this since the Olympics.
Q His cultural philosophy can also be seen, for example, in the L'Hospitalet Hub.
R. It's a strange room. A factory that was shut down after many ups and downs, with many projects that were not implemented. But we will restore it: we will create a hub that combines culture and education, 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 region.
Q Another project that is already working: the Palau Martorell Museum.
R. Yes, it opened in January and it is Marc Chagall's third exhibition after those of Joaquín Sorolla and Alfons Mucha.
Q Do you think you will invest in things other than real estate in the future? Are you talking about education, technology…software?
R. Definitely. Ultimately, we want to have the ability to generate content on the continent. That means making collaboration agreements, creating joint ventures to create immersive experiences… What we want are 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 that are challenging and that we want to push forward. We have interesting projects, in Spain and internationally.
Q Are investments in Barcelona, in Catalonia, a sign that investments are returning to the region after a few years of leaving them?
R. Well, I don't want to go into politics, but we are looking for opportunities. There are things that show up and things that don't show up. We also have many projects in Madrid, for example Playa Surf [la futura playa urbana más grande de Europa].
Q Of course the Copa América is taking place in Madrid…
R. Man, it's more complicated there! [ríe].
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