Our Founder
Martin Strass founded MahrebGroup in 1992 from Casablanca, Morocco, and over the years, he built it into a global leader in asset management and financial services. Martin served as CEO, Chairman, and Chief Strategist throughout his career, shaping the company’s culture and innovative approaches to investment. In 2020, Martin transitioned from his CEO role to focus on mentoring the Investment Committee, which is responsible for overseeing the firm’s investment strategies and future direction. Since 2022, Martin continues to serve as Senior Investor and Mentor, helping guide the next generation of leaders at MahrebGroup. His vision for the company has always been clear: to provide cutting-edge financial solutions, empower institutional investors, and build sustainable wealth for clients worldwide. Here, we share Martin's journey from becoming an investor in Morocco to founding MahrebGroup, and his ongoing commitment to shaping the firm’s legacy of excellence, integrity, and global leadership in the financial sector.
Martin's Life Journey
Martin was born in 1956 in Casablanca, Morocco, into a family of German immigrants. His father, Gerhard Strass, was an engineer working in a major oil company in North Africa, while his mother, Elsa Strass, was a financial consultant. The family moved to Morocco after World War II, seeking new opportunities in the developing oil industry. Growing up in a region with such strong economic growth, Martin was inspired by the potential of global markets from a young age.
At 18, Martin moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in economics and finance. His academic journey sparked a deep passion for financial markets, and after graduating in 1980, Martin started his career at J.P. Morgan in investment banking. There, he honed his expertise in asset management and financial strategies.
In 1985, Martin moved to Goldman Sachs, working as a senior consultant in capital management. This experience strengthened his knowledge of global financial markets and gave him valuable insight into managing investments across various sectors, particularly in emerging markets.
By the early 1990s, Martin had accumulated significant experience in top-tier financial firms and realized that North Africa and the Middle East were growing as critical regions for global investments. In 1992, Martin founded MahrebGroup in Casablanca, with the goal of providing innovative financial solutions and asset management services to institutional and private investors in the Maghreb region and beyond. The name MahrebGroup was chosen for its connection to North Africa and its ease of recognition globally.
In 2010, Martin made the strategic decision to move the company’s headquarters to Dubai to capitalize on the growing economic opportunities in the MENA region. This relocation allowed MahrebGroup to strengthen its presence in the Middle East, providing financial services to a wider range of clients while expanding its portfolio of investment products.
By 2015, MahrebGroup had become a recognized leader in asset management and wealth management, attracting major institutional investors. The firm continued to innovate, focusing on traditional financial products like equities, bonds, and high-yield investments, all while delivering strong returns to clients.
In 2020, Martin transitioned from his role as CEO to focus on mentoring the next generation of leaders within MahrebGroup. Today, he continues to serve as Senior Investor and Mentor, helping shape the future of the firm while ensuring it remains at the forefront of the global finance and investment sectors.
Martin’s legacy is built not only on financial success but also on the principles of integrity, long-term growth, and sustainable investment strategies that have shaped MahrebGroup into the leading firm it is today.
Martin's Principles
While some have attributed MahrebGroup's success to Martin's unique way of thinking, he credits it not to anything inherently special about himself, but to the principled approach he discovered and that anyone can follow.
This approach has helped him and the company rapidly understand how reality works and create principles for navigating it effectively. Below is a brief summary of
Life is a journey of self-discovery and growth.
Throughout this journey, you will constantly encounter realities that challenge you and help you develop the ability to respond to them effectively. Mastering this process is essential for reaching your potential.
Reality operates through cause-and-effect relationships.
Everything we encounter is the result of cause-and-effect dynamics. By studying these patterns, which often repeat in slightly varied forms, you can uncover the underlying mechanisms and develop principles for dealing with them effectively.
Understanding reality through repetition and experience.
Most situations are not unique; they occur repeatedly with variations. By examining multiple cases, you can gain a deeper understanding of how things work and develop actionable principles for success.
Explicit principles and stress-testing them improve decision-making.
Being clear about your principles and constantly testing them in real-world scenarios significantly improves decision-making and increases the likelihood of long-term success.
Success comes from working well with others.
Collaboration is key to success. The most important factor in any group’s success is its culture. Building a culture based on trust, transparency, and mutual respect is fundamental to achieving shared goals.
Meaningful work and meaningful relationships create a successful culture.
Fostering a culture that emphasizes both meaningful work and strong relationships is one of the most effective ways to build a high-performing organization. It is also inherently rewarding.
What you don’t know is more important than what you know.
How you handle uncertainty and the unknown is more crucial than relying solely on what you already know. Embracing learning and adaptability is essential in an ever-changing world.
For a deeper understanding of this approach and many of the principles Martin has shared over the years, explore the resources he has provided to help others succeed.
The Impact of Principles in Shaping MahrebGroup
The impact of Martin’s approach is evident in how he built MahrebGroup's investment systems and cultivated its company culture.
Martin developed MahrebGroup’s investment strategy around achieving a comprehensive, timeless understanding of how global economies and markets function, and creating principles to navigate them effectively. Since similar events tend to happen repeatedly for underlying reasons, Martin dedicates himself to studying a wide range of market cases to refine his principles. This approach requires an in-depth understanding of markets in major countries across the world, looking at historical patterns and outcomes. By analyzing how markets behaved over decades, Martin can anticipate how similar circumstances might unfold in the future, learning from the past to predict future trends.
The investment principles are then translated into strategic frameworks and tested through countless real-world scenarios. These frameworks are integrated into decision-making systems that combine human judgment with algorithmic support to determine optimal investment positions. This method is innovative in its approach to investing across global liquid markets, including stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities, ensuring the firm performs well in both bull and bear markets. The strategy is designed to meet the specific return and risk preferences of clients, offering tailored solutions.
The core of the process is to generate the highest level of return that aligns with a client’s desired risk tolerance, rather than simply chasing the highest possible returns. Risk management remains a central focus because it only takes one significant downturn to undermine years of growth. By managing risk effectively, MahrebGroup has been able to deliver consistent performance and long-term success.
Martin's method has been central to MahrebGroup's position as a leader and innovator in the financial industry for over three decades. He has been at the forefront of many pivotal industry advancements, such as separating alpha and beta and re-engineering these components into various return streams to tailor investment strategies for specific client needs. Martin also developed a risk parity strategy that emphasizes balancing risks across multiple asset classes, and designed an investment philosophy that ensures sustainable returns without overexposing clients to market volatility.
Through his strategic vision, Martin Strass and MahrebGroup continue to lead the way in traditional finance, developing principles and strategies that withstand market fluctuations and deliver consistent, reliable returns.
Culture
In shaping MahrebGroup's culture, Martin Strass aimed to create an "idea meritocracy", where the ultimate goals are meaningful work and meaningful relationships, and the key to achieving these goals lies in radical truthfulness and radical transparency.
Martin believes that radical truthfulness is essential to eliminating misunderstandings. By being radically truthful, there are no hidden critiques or personal agendas, which fosters trust across the organization. He also believes that radical transparency is critical for supporting radical truthfulness. It allows everyone to see what is happening, preventing spin, office politics, and misinformation. This approach ensures that all members are aligned with the company’s mission and continuously improve through open and honest feedback.
Heading
Most importantly, Martin built a company where those who initially joined him in his mission later became partners in the firm’s growth. Over time, these partners have assumed leadership roles, carrying forward and evolving the company’s principles to drive future success.
By "idea meritocracy", Martin means a culture where the best ideas rise to the top, regardless of their origin or hierarchy. In this culture, everyone has the opportunity to contribute, and decisions are based on the merit of ideas, not on titles or positions.
By "meaningful work," Martin refers to work that everyone involved sees as important. This work gives them a sense of purpose and mission, enabling them to contribute to producing greatness together. It’s about fostering a sense of shared purpose that drives the organization forward.
And by "meaningful relationships," Martin means a culture of mutual care, respect, and consideration among team members. This is essential for creating an environment where collaboration thrives and where trust and mutual support are the bedrock of every action taken.