2026 VIS – SLAM’s Florian Weidinger Pitches An Overcapitalized Fallen Angel In A Disliked Indonesian Market

The opening morning of the 2026 Value Investing Seminar in Trani took a  detour from European markets, as Florian Weidinger, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of SLAM (Santa Lucia Asset Management), a pan-Asian investment manager with over $1 billion in AUM and offices across Asia, took the stage to make the case for an obscure Indonesian microfinance bank that almost nobody in the room owned. With more than 20 years in financial services, a background that began at Lehman Brothers in London, and 15 years based in Singapore, Weidinger has spent his career doing what most Western investors avoid: hunting for value in Asian markets where equity prices systematically lag economic reality. His pitch focused on  an overcapitalized fallen angel whose credit problems are fully resolved, whose capital return is accelerating, and which is a quiet beneficiary of the geopolitics that has made Indonesia one of the most hated equity markets of 2026.

Why Asian Equities Reward Active Management

Before introducing the stock, Weidinger grounded his argument in a structural observation about Asian equities that he returns to at the start of every presentation. He displayed a chart comparing Asian real GDP against MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan equity returns on a cumulative basis from 1992 through 2015, showing GDP compounding at roughly 4.5 times while equity markets barely doubled over the same period.

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Weidinger argued that Asia is the only region in the world where equity markets have persistently and materially lagged the real economy over long periods. The cause is not bad macroeconomics but poor corporate governance: majority shareholders who prioritize their own interests over minority shareholders, weak capital allocation discipline, and an occasional disregard for the share price altogether. This is the gap that SLAM tries to exploit.

The firm focuses on three factors: value, high dividend yields as a signal of good corporate governance, and constructive corporate engagement to push companies toward better capital management and shareholder communication. The overall theme is alignment of interest with controlling shareholders, cheap valuations and high dividend yield, plus constructive engagement and long-term relationship-building with management to drive the stock higher.

The strategy targets Asian equities generating dividends in excess of 4% annually, aiming for a double-digit total return. Corporate engagement in Asia, Weidinger noted, cannot follow the Anglo-Saxon activist playbook because many Asian companies are controlled. The wins come from patient relationship-building, not hostile campaigns. Outcomes the firm has helped achieve include revised capital allocation decisions, improved disclosure, resolution of holdouts, and spin-offs.