Citywire Iberia Retreat 2026

Emerging market equities are experiencing a dynamic resurgence, fuelled by greater clarity in US trade policy, ongoing US dollar weakness, and robust earnings. With many of these factors still at large, rapidly brightening sentiment suggests this momentum could endure well into 2027.
Emerging markets are set apart by their distinct structural advantages: a youthful population, a growing base of middle-income consumers, and a leading role in future-facing industries such as artificial intelligence. Nowhere else can investors tap into these powerful trends at such compelling valuations and with clear potential for superior earnings growth.
With roots in emerging market investment stretching back to 1971, our suite of global, regional and country-specific strategies is designed to help investors access the opportunities presented by this diverse asset class.

Workshop Objective: In this session we aim to challenge misconceptions, whilst exploring the tectonic shifts that are occurring within EM, in what remains an asset class which offers a broad scope of bottom-up investment opportunities.

Company Profile: Barings is a $502 billion* global alternative asset manager that partners with institutional, insurance and wealth clients and supports leading businesses with flexible financing solutions. The firm, a subsidiary of MassMutual with a minority investment from MS&AD, seeks to deliver excess returns by leveraging its global scale and capabilities across credit, real assets, capital solutions and emerging markets.

*As of June 30, 2026

In the first half of 2026, the respectable 25% (US dollar) return of our MSCI Asia ex-Japan benchmark was trounced by the 74% return of its MSCI Asia ex-Japan Momentum factor-based counterpart, as chip stocks in Taiwan and Korea rallied, and rallied some more.

The standard response of a contrarian investor would be to avoid these stocks and buy more of the stocks that the market is “looking away” from.

This time however, the largest momentum stocks in our benchmark, even after the remarkable rally, remain exceptionally cheap relative to sharply rising projected earnings.

How should a bottom up, contrarian investor respond?

Workshop Objective: 

• Insight into a contrarian perspective on Asian equities.
• Exploration of Asia ex-Japan equities, focusing on countries and industries that have been overlooked or underweighted by global investors.
• Insight into the relative attractiveness of the entire region relative to other regions.
• Insight into which stocks are “ambiguously” v “unambiguously” cheap and why.

Company Profile: Federated Hermes is guided by the conviction that responsible investing is the best way to create long-term wealth. We provide specialised capabilities across equity, fixed income and private markets, in addition to multi-asset strategies and proven liquidity-management. Through our leading stewardship services, we engage companies on strategic and sustainability concerns to promote investors’ long-term performance and fiduciary interests. Our goals are to help people invest and retire better, to help clients achieve better risk-adjusted returns and, where possible, to contribute to positive outcomes that benefit the wider world.

EUR: €784.8bn in assets under management |EUR: €2,070.1bn, in assets under stewardship | 2,089 employees in 18 offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. We offer specialised investment capabilities in public and private markets, and pioneering stewardship services:

• Active equities: global and regional
• Fixed income: across regions, sectors and the yield curve
• Liquidity: solutions driven by five decades of experience
• Private markets: private equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure
• Stewardship: corporate engagement, proxy voting and policy advocacy

Source: Federated Hermes as at 31 March 2026.

With over a decade of track record and €3 billion AuM, OptoFlex and US EquityFlex are engineered to improve the performance of bond and equity portfolios. These liquid, UCITS-compliant funds focus on systematically capturing risk premiums to act as reliable yield enhancers in your strategic allocation.

In this session, our portfolio managers will show how these rule-based strategies generate consistent additional returns. A key advantage: thanks to an integrated tail hedge, the strategies provide extra stability precisely when markets face extreme stress.

Join us to discover how you can achieve reliable excess returns while maintaining a robust safety net for your portfolio’s most challenging moments.

Workshop Objective: Learn how to:

• Improve performance by systematically capturing risk premiums.
• Remove guesswork with objective, forecast-free strategies.
• Ensure flexibility through high liquidity and simple structures.

• Protect capital during extreme crises with an integrated safety net.

Company Profile: FERI was founded in Bad Homburg in 1987 as Germany’s first multi-family office.

Since then, we have grown to become one of the leading multi-asset managers in the German-speaking world, with more than €60 billion of assets under management and over 280 employees at eight locations. We offer private and institutional investors something unique: first-class asset management based on our own in-depth research.

At the heart of our investment approach lies a deep commitment to alternative asset classes. Our Volatility Strategies Team is widely regarded as one of Germany’s premier units, having defined the standards for excellence and innovation within the sector.

Dr Uwe Rathausky and Henrik Muhle were crowned Fund Managers of the Year 2024 and the first team to win the prestigious award for the second time since 2019. The team will explain how the successful and unique value event investment philosophy is applied in the global balanced fund GANÉ Value Event Fund and the global equity fund GANÉ Global Equity Fund.

Workshop Objective: Dr Uwe Rathausky and Henrik Muhle have developed the value event investment philosophy and implemented it very successfully over many years. The individual components and success factors of the investment approach will be explained in detail and the special features of the approach will be highlighted. The objective of the presentation is to provide an understanding of the consistent and proven working methods of Dr Uwe Rathausky and Henrik Muhle. Specific investment examples and deep insights into the engine room can be expected.

Company profile: GANÉ Investment-AG is a fund management company based in Germany. We are an event-oriented value investor. We invest in winners. It means that we invest in strong companies with sustainable business models, solid balance sheets and high margins, which allows them to create added value for their shareholders. The two founders, Dr Uwe Rathausky and Henrik Muhle are the fund managers of the year 2024 and 2019 in Germany.

 Jason will present Jupiter's Asia Pacific Income strategy and explain why the region continues to offer a compelling combination of income and long-term growth potential. The opportunity set spans world-class technology leaders in Taiwan and South Korea, developed markets such as Australia and Singapore, and India, which we believe remains one of the most attractive emerging markets globally. Jason's investment approach combines top-down analysis of macroeconomic, political and geopolitical developments with rigorous company research. The strategy focuses on identifying high-quality businesses with strong balance sheets, resilient business models, sound governance and the ability to grow earnings and dividends over time. Through a concentrated yet diversified portfolio, the strategy seeks to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns and long-term capital growth for investors.  

Workshop Objective: Explore the case for Asia Pacific equities as a source of income and growth, understand Jupiter's top-down investment approach, and examine how the strategy identifies long-term compounding opportunities across the region. 

Company Profile: Since Jupiter was established in 1985, we have sought to make a positive difference for our clients by helping them achieve their long-term investment objectives through high conviction, active management. From the start we understood the need to create a distinct, entrepreneurial culture that harnessed all areas of the business in the pursuit of this goal. As a new entrant in a competitive market, we wanted our clients to experience, share and benefit from the energy and focus of a young firm, full of talented individuals, eager to distinguish itself as a trusted steward of other people's money. Now, many years on, we have established ourselves as a leading specialist asset manager precisely because we have retained that agility and drive as we have grown. Our value remains in our people, our ability to adapt quickly to changing markets, and in our willingness to continuously challenge ourselves to deliver the best investment outcome for clients. 

James will explore the ups and downs of emerging markets in 2026 – from geopolitical shocks to the euphoria and subsequent anxiety surrounding the AI hardware cycle. He’ll also discuss how a disciplined, bottom-up approach has helped the M&G EM strategy stay grounded through the volatility: leaning into dislocations where sentiment overshoots, and resisting the pull of crowded trades.  

Workshop Objective:  The session offers a practical look at active management when the road becomes challenging. 

Company Profile:  M&G Investments is an international asset manager with an active, long-term investment approach. For over 90 years, the firm has helped its clients prosper by leveraging their capital and understanding their needs. In response to an ever-changing financial environment, M&G has developed a wide range of investment solutions in equities, fixed income, real state and multi-asset. Headquartered in London, M&G employees over 2,300 professionals, covers 28 markets and manages assets in Europe, Asia and the Americas. 

The Japanese market has continued to be one of the top performing markets in 2026, with the TOPIX appreciating over 15% in local currency terms through July. While the AI theme has been the main driver of recent returns, the market was resilient even during tech correction observed in July (compared to Korea which adjusted 20%). This is because Japan remains one of the most diverse single country markets with plenty of non-AI related opportunities, making it an ideal candidate to use when diversifying portfolios. The corporate reforms that have led to significant improvement in shareholder returns still have plenty of room to grow, which should continue to support long term returns across a wide range of sectors. 

Workshop Objective: Gain a deeper understanding of the Japanese equity market, and why it’s important to leverage the lack of coverage and abundance of market inefficiencies through active management.

Company Profile:

Company Profile: Founded in 1988, TT International is a specialist investment boutique, encompassing cross-asset emerging markets long-only and long/short capabilities alongside European equity and credit hedge funds. Having achieved strong risk-adjusted returns, we now manage around $5bn.

In 2020, TT was acquired by leading Japanese financial services organisation Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. This partnership provides resilience and strength, whilst preserving the benefits of our boutique approach.

We are dedicated to generating strong risk-adjusted returns for clients. To this end, our investment strategies focus only on areas where we hold clear competitive advantages, within markets where structural inefficiencies create opportunities for skilled active managers.

In emerging markets, understanding the interaction between macroeconomic forces and company-specific fundamentals is essential, as this interplay is often complex and under-researched. By integrating both top-down and bottom-up analysis, we can identify mispriced assets and capture the alpha that arises from these inefficiencies.

Whilst we offer a range of complementary strategies across asset classes, they are unified by an active, high-conviction approach.

To maximise our ability to deliver strong performance, all our strategies maintain a capacity disciplined process that allows portfolio managers to remain nimble and access opportunities that larger peers often cannot.

Walkthrough an attractive investment solution for emerging market debt, providing investors with a comprehensive solution to access the full emerging market fixed income universe through a single actively managed strategy. Investing across both hard and local currency debt, the fund seeks to capture attractive yields—currently around 6–8%—while enhancing diversification and managing risk through a controlled tracking error approach. Its unique multidimensional investment process combines top-down macro analysis with bottom-up security selection, creating a broad opportunity set across sovereign and corporate issuers. Managed by an experienced team with an average of more than 20 years in emerging markets and backed by a strong long-term track record, the strategy is designed to unlock the long-term growth and income potential of emerging market bonds through disciplined active management. 

Workshop Objective: Explore the investment opportunities within emerging market debt, understand the benefits of active management across hard and local currency bonds, and discuss how Swisscanto's investment process seeks to deliver long-term risk-adjusted returns. 

Company Profile: Swisscanto Asset Management International S.A. is the asset management arm of Zürcher Kantonalbank, Switzerland’s second-largest bank and one of the few financial institutions worldwide to hold a AAA credit rating from all three major rating agencies. With more than €381 billion in assets under management and over 150 years of heritage, it is also Switzerland’s second-largest asset manager. Swisscanto is recognized for its active investment approach, strong sustainability expertise and Swiss precision, and has ranked among Europe’s fastest-growing asset managers by net new assets over the past four years. The firm entered the Spanish market in 2025, opening a local office led by Gonzalo Ramón-Borja, Country Head for Spain, and Antonio Feito, Head of Sales, offering a broad range of equity, fixed income and multi-asset investment solutions. 

In a market increasingly driven by short-term macro narratives, identifying companies capable of sustaining above-average growth over many years requires a differentiated investment approach. In this session, Álvaro Llavero will explain how Wellington's European Quality Growth strategy seeks to identify exceptional businesses with durable competitive advantages, strong management teams and long runways for growth. Drawing on portfolio examples, he will discuss how the team combines fundamental research with a long-term investment horizon aiming to separate structural winners from cyclical beneficiaries, how investment decisions are made, and how the portfolio is positioned in today's market environment. The session will also explore how the team manages valuation discipline while investing in what they believe are some of Europe's highest-quality growth companies.

Workshop Objective: To demonstrate how a long-term quality growth philosophy, supported by rigorous fundamental research and disciplined portfolio construction, can identify Europe's enduring compounders while navigating changing market environments. 

Company Profile: Wellington Management is one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms, serving as a trusted advisor to over 2,500 clients in more than 60 countries. The firm manages more than US$1.3 trillion, as of 31 December 2025, for pensions, endowments and foundations, insurers, family offices, fund sponsors, global wealth managers, and other clients. Wellington aspires to provide excellent service to clients through a unique combination of independence enabled by its distinctive private partnership model; diverse perspectives through its unified, multi-asset investment platform; and relentless curiosity and intellectual rigor fostered by its enduring collaborative culture.