Chpt. 0000
Introduction
There is a moment when vision becomes choice, and choice takes shape as responsibility. It is in this space that Kairos Partners SGR is born.
In Greek thought, kairos represents the decisive instant: the right, unrepeatable moment in which intuition transforms into action, in which a decision can change the trajectory of things.
A name that already contains a direction. It is the direction of those who choose to dwell within complexity with clarity, refusing shortcuts in order to pursue a lasting meaning.
Kairos was founded on the need to return a deeper significance to finance, one capable of holding together discipline and relationships, method and vision, numbers and people. It represents a cultural gesture before an entrepreneurial one. Managing wealth means taking a client’s trust as a commitment to a continuity that withstands time.
HOW has chosen to tell this story because it recognizes in Kairos one of the most authentic forms of applied vision. A company that has grown without losing its human touch, and that continues to question itself every day on how to keep its actions aligned with a changing world.
A reality in which a culture of risk intertwines with respect for individual journeys. A place where every collaborator, although part of a complex system, retains the space to propose ideas, contribute with a unique voice, and imagine new paths.
It is also this ability to remain open to intuition, to seize the moment, that makes it clear Kairos is more than a name. It is an operating principle. It is a way of being in time.
In an economic landscape that often confuses speed with value, Kairos reminds us that the difference is made by those who know how to pause, look deeply, and choose when it is the right moment to act.
Because true time is not something to be endured. It is something to inhabit.
This is HOW, number five.
Chpt. 0001
Three Visions, One Model: The Birth of Kairos
By the late 1990s, Italy’s financial industry appeared to have all the answers. What many investors still lacked were the right questions.
It was within this space for reflection — before it became an opportunity — that Kairos took form: the expression of a clear conviction that finance could unite rigour with vision, method with relationship.
Three perspectives, three temperaments, three distinct ways of understanding finance converged into a project without precedent in the Italian landscape.
Paolo Basilico, Roberto Condulmari, and Guido Maria Brera transformed a professional and intellectual friendship into a company founded on one essential principle: that to manage wealth is, above all, to take responsibility for another’s trust.
Kairos was created to redefine the meaning of asset management — combining strategic vision, operational independence, and a deep culture of risk. A structure capable of engaging with international markets without losing its identity; one built around the client, not the product.
From the outset, its purpose was not simply to offer an alternative model, but to bring back to Italy an evolved approach to the management of significant wealth — an approach that, until then, many had sought abroad.
The underlying goal was to help stabilize these assets’ financial exposure, making them less vulnerable to market volatility and more coherent with a long-term perspective.
In a period of systemic transformation — marked by the imminent arrival of the euro, the acceleration of capital flows, and the consolidation of major banking groups — Kairos defined itself, from day one, as a cultural initiative before an entrepreneurial one. Its ambition was not merely to compete on the market’s own ground, but to introduce a different approach — one focused on the quality of relationships rather than the quantity of results.
The complementarity among its three founders became the true infrastructure of the project: strategic vision, a lucid reading of economic cycles, and exceptional analytical capacity.
This equilibrium enabled the growth of an independent Italian company able to stand alongside Europe’s major players without compromising its essence — a place where decisions never reduce to numbers alone, but remain anchored to people.
With its integration into the Anima Group, part of Banco BPM, Kairos entered a new phase — entirely Italian once again.
As two of the three founders pursued new paths, the company strengthened its roots in the country and reaffirmed its original mission.
More than twenty-five years after its founding, Kairos continues to draw inspiration from its founding values and balance, now within one of Italy’s leading groups in asset management.
Chpt. 0002
Finance as a Shared Commitment: The Values Behind Every Choice
There are moments in a company’s history when operational decisions coincide with a declaration of identity.
From the very beginning, the path traced by Kairos has never been separate from a precise idea of responsibility — towards its clients, the market, and itself.
When the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 shook the foundations of global finance, that principle was put to the test.
While many institutions sought to shield themselves by suspending redemptions — activating the so-called “gate” mechanism — Kairos made a different choice. Less protective in the short term, but profoundly consistent with its vision, it chose to honour its commitments fully towards its clients.
It was not an obvious decision.
It was a gesture that transcended defensive logic, revealing a deep system of values rooted in what the company is — and what it intends to remain.
Within that choice lies a precise idea of finance: one that resists the automatisms of self-protection and restores the relationship of trust to the centre of every action, even when doing so entails effort, sacrifice, or complexity.
The way Kairos navigated that crisis made unmistakably clear a value structure that precedes any tactical choice and profoundly guides its daily actions.
It is a form of rigour that does not exclude initiative, but ties it to a multilayered reading of reality — where managerial competence, team sensitivity, and awareness coexist.
To hold strong ideas, here, never means moving recklessly ahead; it means building contexts where innovation rests upon solid foundations, continuous dialogue, and shared responsibility.
It is an approach that demands balance, adaptability, and above all, humility — three qualities that reflect a distinctly Italian disposition: attention, listening, and respect for cycles.
As Guido Maria Brera once remarked, “You shoot only when you’re sure you’ll score.”
A phrase that condenses a whole mental posture — the awareness that finance is not a game for solitary visionaries, but a practice that requires lucidity, coherence, and the freedom to change one’s mind when necessary.
To this, a third and quieter dimension must be added: the ethical weight of decisions. In many cases, choices are not driven solely by a risk-return calculation, but by a broader reading in which people, consequences, and context carry real significance.
At Kairos, numbers matter — but they do not tell the whole story. Sometimes a moral decision gives meaning to what pure calculation cannot explain.
From this perspective, finance appears as a space of recomposition: a positive, though never naïve, vision in which one can help restore coherence and purpose. It is the recognition that what one defends — a way of being in the markets, a way of choosing — must be protected every day, with discipline, patience, and conviction.
It is not a battle that always rewards those who fight it, nor a vision that easily finds fertile ground today. Yet it is a path Kairos continues to follow — even when it means going against the current.
Some principles, once chosen, are never questioned again. They are kept.
Chpt. 0003
New Generations and Financial Awareness: An Inheritance to Cultivate
The ethical grounding that guides Kairos’s actions translates into a commitment that extends beyond day-to-day management — a commitment to fostering a renewed relationship between finance and society.
It is an engagement that naturally involves the role of new generations, called to interpret and inhabit this landscape with awareness and purpose.
Among those entering the world of work and adult life today, one recognises an authentic desire to make a mark — to occupy a real, not merely formal, space.
A will that springs from strong ideals and demands both guidance and listening.
When young people choose a direction, they often do so with genuine conviction. Yet that energy risks being dispersed if it does not encounter the right tools.
Among these, understanding the language of economics and finance is perhaps the most overlooked — though one of the most decisive — elements for navigating the present and the future with clarity.
Finance now permeates every aspect of daily life. Whether one seeks it out or not, each of us inevitably engages with economic mechanisms — from credit and pensions to savings management and purchasing choices. And yet, education in these fields remains too often superficial, fragmented, entrusted to moments that come too late or too partially.
Kairos recognises the value of widespread, lasting awareness — one grounded in the ability to make informed, lucid decisions.
This commitment takes form in the company’s long-term relationship with families and in its efforts to prepare younger generations to understand the meaning and weight of what they will one day be called to preserve.
The question of generational transition makes this urgency even clearer. An increasing number of young people will soon find themselves — in different ways and at different times — taking responsibility for a patrimony. Sometimes that means managing what others have built; in other cases, giving shape to something entirely new.
In every scenario, it takes competence, vision, and a shared language that can bridge generations. It is an educational challenge, one that connects financial heritage with cultural continuity — helping to preserve and project into the future the very system of values that has guided Kairos since its beginnings.
It is through this lens that finance can rediscover its original vocation: a tool in service of vision, capable of generating continuity and responsibility.
Chpt. 0004
The Beauty of Working at Kairos: A Future to Grasp Together
In a landscape too often dominated by sameness and automation, what sets Kairos apart is its ability to remain true to its essence — a vision of finance grounded in responsibility, foresight, and the conviction that every action can help shape the future.
It is a stance that runs through every chapter of the company’s story and continues to guide its evolution.
The strength of this mindset lies also in the structure of the organisation itself: each person, while part of a wider ecosystem, is placed in a position to cultivate their own entrepreneurial approach. Ideas are not trapped within the boundaries of role or title; they are free to circulate, to influence, to find new resonance.
In an environment where decision-making proximity is real, individual proposals can become collective initiatives. Within this balance between autonomy and collaboration, a model takes shape — one that sacrifices neither precision nor ambition.
In a financial world of growing complexity, where easy solutions too often prove perilous shortcuts, knowledge stands as the only true line of distinction.
To understand where, how, and why one’s capital is employed is no longer a privilege for the few — it is a shared necessity.
And it is here that the role of those who manage wealth with clarity and transparency becomes decisive: to restore to savings their original dignity and their most authentic meaning — that of being a lever for the future.
Chpt. 0005
Conclusion
The story of Kairos teaches that there will always be a future for those who know how to recognise the right moment — and turn it into lasting value.
In a sector often driven by immediacy and the pursuit of profit at any cost, Kairos proves that another way of doing finance is possible: one in which time becomes an ally to be inhabited with awareness; one in which values guide every decision; one in which mutual trust is the most precious asset of all.
Today, Kairos Partners SGR continues along that path — deeply rooted in its identity, yet open to change and to the challenges ahead. The vision and discipline that defined its origins still illuminate its course, confirming that finance can rediscover its human and responsible dimension.
To tell the story of Kairos is to enter a conception of finance where numbers and people coexist — where every investment is also a moral commitment. It is an invitation to pause, to observe, to understand: because only by knowing what lies behind a financial choice, a method, a story, a company, can we truly grasp its real value.
In an age where so much risks being reduced to surface, Kairos stands as a reminder — an invitation to look beyond, to rediscover the deeper meaning of finance, and to guard it each day, with courage and conviction.
