Citywire Montreux 2023

Allspring believes that there is the need for a profound transition; rapid large-scale decarbonization is needed to limit global warming. Capital reallocation across all asset classes is required to facilitate that change, and fixed income investors can play a role in this without sacrificing performance via a climate transition credit strategy. Our climate transition framework goes one step beyond simple ESG integration to achieve Article 8 designation under the SFDR directive.

This session will focus on our new Climate Transition Global High Yield Fund. With a combination of high credit spreads and the expectation of low defaults with meaningful recovery rates, high yield represents a compelling investment opportunity in the face of a volatile rates environment. This fund is the second in our Climate Transition Credit range, following the successful launch of the Allspring Climate Transition Global Investment Grade Fund in 2019.

Gain an understanding of our unique approach to managing Climate Transition Credit portfolios and how our climate transition framework goes one step beyond simple ESG integration to achieve Article 8 designation under the SFDR directive.

Allspring Global Investments™ is an independent asset management firm with more than $465 billion in assets under management*, over 20 offices globally, and investment teams supported by 480 investment professionals. Allspring is committed to thoughtful investing, purposeful planning, and inspiring a new era of investing that pursues both financial returns and positive outcomes. For more information, please visit www.allspringglobal.com.

Innovation often drives exponential growth that surprises wider financial markets when it goes mainstream. But how can investors identify innovative companies without getting lost in hype and eye-watering valuations? 

Firstly, innovation is often confined to Silicon Valley and technology. But technology is only an enabler of innovation, which is found in every industry. Secondly, in the manufacturing continent of Europe, we are finding clusters of innovation thriving under the radar. For example, the European-made silicon carbide is enabling electric vehicles, while the future of digital payments, luxury, and healthcare is blossoming in Europe. 

Join portfolio manager Anis Lahlou to learn how his fundamental stock-picking approach that invests along the innovation S-curve can enable investors to identify tomorrow’s global leaders.

Learn how a differentiated bottom-up investing approach that focuses on investing along the innovation “S Curve” can harness alpha.

Company Profile: Aperture Investors is part of the Generali Investments platform.

Based in New York and London, Aperture offers actively managed investment strategies and a unique fee model that aligns fund manager incentives with client performance. The firm charges low, ETF-like fees when performance is at or below stated benchmark. A performance-linked fee is charged only when returns are generated in excess of a strategy’s benchmark. Investment teams are therefore compensated primarily on outperformance.

As private markets continue to grow, we believe that investors should rethink their strategic asset allocation frameworks to add or increase the use of alternatives in their portfolios to curb volatility and seek to enhance potential risk-adjusted returns. Join us to learn more about the current market environment, what this means for investors, and how to think about allocating beyond the 60/40 portfolio.

We will be using illustrations of funds created for wealth investors to demonstrate the benefits of allocating to alternatives within a portfolio.

Apollo is a high-growth, global alternative asset manager. In our asset management business, we seek to provide our clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum from investment grade to private equity with a focus on three investing strategies: yield, hybrid, and equity. For more than three decades, our investing expertise across our fully integrated platform has served the financial return needs of our clients and provided businesses with innovative capital solutions for growth. Through Athene, our retirement services business, we specialize in helping clients achieve financial security by providing a suite of retirement savings products and acting as a solutions provider to institutions. Our patient, creative, and knowledgeable approach to investing aligns our clients, businesses we invest in, our employees, and the communities we impact, to expand opportunity and achieve positive outcomes. As of December 31, 2022, Apollo had approximately $548 billion of assets under management. To learn more, please visit www.apollo.com. 

It feels like everyone is talking about trend following. Against one of the most challenging economic backdrops in several decades, trend following managers largely managed to deliver substantial profits to their investors in 2022. This has generated a rising tide of interest in the strategy.

Trend following is an adaptive, agile and resilient strategy with an inherently positively skewed return profile. The outlook is favourable and robust across a multitude of economic scenarios. The likelihood of the next decade being a return to the QE/ZIRP era seems remote as inflation, deglobalisation, decarbonisation, energy scarcity and significant geopolitical stress all tend to point towards a more dynamic market environment – one that potentially favours both the adaptability and the resiliency of trend.

Aspect Capital is a pioneering systematic investment manager founded in 1997.The company manages over USD7.6bn in a range of systematic investment solutions spanning four broad categories: Trend Following, Global Macro & Currency, Multi-Strategy & Customised Solutions and Volatility Solutions. 
Aspect is driven by a continuous research and development effort to provide innovative investment products that generate diversifying performance for investors worldwide. 
We work closely with investors to ensure our investment strategies meet their needs. We develop deep and long-standing relationships which allow many institutional investors, fund of funds and distribution partners from across the globe to benefit from our innovative investment solutions, high levels of transparency and market-leading standards of service.

2022 has been another volatile year for China equities; one of significant change and, perhaps, under-appreciated continuity. Market sentiment, as ever, has proven fickle: headlines announcing the “un-investableness” of the asset class appeared to be replaced by frantic calls to reposition oneself for the great reopening post zero-Covid. At Baillie Gifford, we think it’s important to remain level-headed in all market environments. A patient approach in the least patient market is the key for long-term success. We aim to look through the noise and identify long-term structural trends and the companies that benefit from them. China remains home to many of such companies.

• To build a conceptual framework for investing in China: how shall we understand China’s system of governance, regulatory scheme, and geopolitical position? 
• To explore some of the big opportunities that active stock pickers could take advantage of under such framework
• To discuss various options of accessing China: offshore vs onshore shares, domestic vs multinational companies, etc. 

Baillie Gifford & Co is a leading, UK based investment management firm, established in 1908. We are an independent partnership, with a culture underpinned by an enviable record of stability. Our investment teams manage specialist, concentrated global and regional equities, fixed income and multi-asset portfolios. We have a growth bias, and use fundamental analysis and proprietary research to construct portfolios from the bottom up. We have an established institutional client base across Europe in specialist global and regional equity strategies, and fixed income

Investors have embraced passive investment solutions in search of low-cost access to Emerging Market beta and market growth. We believe that the best approach to investment in Emerging Markets is in fact to be highly active, with a focus on long-term profitable growth, informed by structural themes. Indices are inherently backward-looking, and careful stock selection, and demonstrated favourable alignment of interest, is critical to identify future investment success. This is especially true given the seismic shifts that have occurred in demographics, geopolitics, and macro conditions over recent years. A portfolio which can concentrate upon the most compelling opportunities, informed by deeply fundamental research process, can generate superior returns whilst avoiding risks. 

The workshop objective is to illustrate the importance of an active investment approach in Emerging Markets in three rapidly evolving investment contexts: increased consumer wealth, deglobalisation, and a new interest rate environment. 

Brook Asset Management is an independent boutique asset management firm specializing in active equity strategies. We have three multi-award-winning fund management teams investing in Global Equities, European Equities and Global Emerging Markets. While independent of each other, all have an investment process driven by original research and first principles, by performance rather than asset gathering, and benchmarks play no part in portfolio construction. Brook Asset Management is a trading name and part of the Odey Group. 

Markets have been volatile amid concerns about rising rates, inflationary pressures and a possible recession. We believe a portfolio of real assets presents an attractive investment for today’s market backdrop—as well as for the long term.

Brookfield is one of the world’s leading alternative asset managers, distinguished by a 120-year history of investing in real assets. Brookfield’s Real Asset Solutions team leverages the Firm’s deep expertise and investment capabilities across real asset sectors, across capital structures and across the liquidity spectrum to create customized real asset solutions for investors.

A diversified real assets portfolio has performed relatively well in various market environments – high inflation, down markets, and tightening monetary cycles. We will highlight the merits of investing across real asset sectors, spanning the liquidity spectrum and the capital structure.

Brookfield Oaktree Wealth Solutions partners with financial professionals around the world to connect investors to the innovative solutions, expertise and insights of Brookfield and Oaktree. Brookfield is one of the world’s largest owners and operators of real assets and Oaktree is a world-renowned credit investor. 

From public to private markets, and across the liquidity spectrum, we aim to be the single point of entry to the best of Brookfield and Oaktree – with the goal of helping advisors and their clients understand how to navigate key investment decisions.

The concept of the Circular Economy is increasingly attracting the attention of businesses and institutions, as a response to the threats of climate change and environmental degradation, and as a concrete way to decouple economic prosperity from the consumption of finite resources. In this context, asset managers have a fiduciary duty to engage companies in Circular Economy and to integrate the estimated financial consequences of this transformation into investments.

During the workshop we will provide an introduction of Circular Economy thinking and elaborate on the challenges and opportunities for investors.

Eurizon Capital SGR is a prominent international player in the asset management industry offering a wide range of actively managed products. Eurizon is part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group. For 37 years, Eurizon has continually innovated to grow and expand its business. Eurizon adopts a diversified investment approach, with a highly accomplished capability for Euro and EM Fixed Income, Equity and Multi-Asset. Eurizon integrates SRI principles and ESG criteria in the investment process. Managing about 180 sustainable and responsible sub-funds classified as SFDR Art. 8 and Art. 9.

For at least two years we have identified five key risks involved in investing in China: tensions with the US; the potential for delisting of US-listed Chinese ADRs; the zero-covid policy, potential spill-over from the property market; and “common prosperity” (anti-business) policies. We argued that investors should invest despite these risks because of the cheap valuations on offer which we believed more than priced them in. Most of  these risks have fallen over the last six month - some sharply. A key one, however, remains – Beijing-Washington tensions. The question is what to do now. We will discuss the opportunities we are seeing using the unusual lens of a contrarian investment approach for Asian equities. 

• Why it is worth taking the risk of investing in China.
• Do the risks outweigh the rewards in China?
• Is “contrarian” synonym of value
• Why a contrarian approach is well suited to markets like China

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 liquidity-management solutions. Through pioneering stewardship services, we engage companies on strategic and sustainability concerns to promote investors’ long-term performance and fiduciary interests. Our goals are to help individuals invest and retire better, help clients achieve better risk-adjusted returns, and to contribute to positive outcomes in the wider world.

Commodities’ physicality distinguishes them from other asset classes. Investing in commodities requires a fundamental understanding of the factors that affect commodities’ prices and valuations. The essential roles that commodities play in disruptive, next-generation technologies, and the investment opportunities arising from this dynamic make this understanding for investors critical.
•    Copper is an essential input in electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, and other forms of next-generation infrastructure. 
•    Nuclear and uranium could help governments minimize fossil fuel use while building more renewable capacity.
•    Silver has long been viewed as a possible safe haven investment. It also has many practical applications in electronics manufacturing and other industries.
•    Disruptive materials power disruptive technologies, which may improve transportation, energy, and manufacturing systems.

This workshop aims to help investors navigating the macro environment and look beyond numbers.
•    Role of the asset class (energy transition, inflation hedging, portfolio diversification, etc.) 
•    Fundamentals (supply, demand growth, valuation, macro environment, etc.) 
•    How to play the commodities in a portfolio (a diversified approach through miners, etc.)
•    Commodities strategies offered by Global X

Global X ETFs is a United States-based company founded in 2008. For more than a decade, our mission has been empowering investors with unexplored and intelligent solutions. Our product lineup features over 100 ETF strategies and approximately $36 billion in assets under management[1].  While we are distinguished for our Thematic Growth, Income and International Access ETFs, we also offer Core, Commodity, and Alpha funds to suit a wide range of investment objectives. Explore our ETFs, research and insights, and more at www.globalxetfs.com.

Global X is a member of Mirae Asset Financial Group, a global leader in financial services, with more than $480 billion in assets under management worldwide [2].  

[1] Source: Global X, as of January 2023

[2] Mirae Asset, as of January 2023

An introduction to our core, actively managed global equity strategy.
Building on Impax’s 20-year legacy of investing in sustainable markets, the Global Opportunities Strategy invests in companies well positioned to benefit from the transition to a more sustainable economy. 
Idea generation is guided by the proprietary Impax Sustainability Lens, which ranks industries as high, neutral or low for both opportunity and risk.
Impax’s authentic and integrated approach to ESG is used throughout the process.
The strategy invests in companies possessing sustainable competitive advantages to achieve long-term capital growth while also providing attractive non-financial outcomes.

To learn how the Global Opportunities Strategy identifies the winners and losers in the transition to a more sustainable economy.

While 2022 was a challenging year for the asset class, the headwinds for emerging markets have begun to fade with inflation receding, China reopening, and risks of an energy crisis in Europe subsiding. These are positive tailwinds for emerging market growth that is expected to decouple from the rest of the developed world, as are economic fundamentals and monetary policy. This could create diversification opportunities.  
 
The presentation will reveal how investor perception of the asset class can be very different to reality. We will show the key factors that drive emerging market debt hard currency, why emerging market fundamentals in aggregate remain resilient, and our approach to assessing valuations.

To demonstrate the key characteristics and drivers of the EMD HC asset class, our approach to analysing sovereign credit risk and the opportunities in 2023.

Company Profile: Janus Henderson Investors (‘Janus Henderson’) is a global asset manager offering a full suite of actively managed investment products across asset classes. The notion of ‘connecting’ is powerful – it has shaped our evolution and our world today. At Janus Henderson, we seek to benefit clients through the connections we make. Connections enable strong relationships based on trust and insight as well as the flow of ideas among our investment teams and our engagement with companies. These connections are central to our values, to what active management stands for and to the long-term outperformance we seek to deliver.

The rapid increase in interest rates over the past year has boosted bond yields across the board from near zero. The anxiety around the banking sector has added another dimension to the fraught macro environment marked by stubborn inflation and lacklustre growth. While the Fed isn’t expected to tighten much further from here, will they succeed in engineering a soft landing by starting to cut rates this year? Can a severe recession be averted? Valerio Angioni, investment director, fixed income will emphasize why reading the tea leaves correctly in this environment is key to generate alpha.

To understand why it’s crucial to navigate the fluid economic environment with care and finesse and how asset selection is key to generate alpha while reducing downside risks.

Jupiter is a specialist, high conviction, active asset manager. We exist to help our clients achieve their long-term investment objectives. From our origins in 1985, Jupiter now offers a range of actively managed strategies available to UK and international clients including equities, fixed income, multi-asset and alternatives. Jupiter is a constituent member of the FTSE 250 Index, and has assets under management of £50.8bn /$62.7bn /€57.8bn as at 31/03/2023.
Independence of thought and individual accountability define us. Our fund managers follow their convictions and seek those investment opportunities that they believe will ensure the best outcome for our clients. They do this through fundamental analysis and research, a clear investment process and risk management framework, with a focus on good stewardship.

The current and forecasted economic environment may create opportunity for investing in innovation in equities. During this presentation we will walk through our economic and capital markets outlook, our approach to innovation investing, and a solution we feel is best positioned to take advantage of the opportunities across equity sectors.

Our objective is to showcase our unique approach to multi-thematic investing and the benefits of that approach in the current economic and capital markets environment.

Lord, Abbett & Co. LLC (“Lord Abbett”) is an independent, privately held firm with a singular focus on the management of money. One of the oldest money management firms in the United States, the firm has served the investment needs of generations of clients and their advisors since 1929. Currently, Lord Abbett has 49 executive members (“Partners”) and is currently led by Douglas B. Sieg, the tenth Managing Partner in the history of the firm, who is responsible for setting strategic direction and business management.

Nuveen is one of the largest and most experienced ESG/Impact bond investors globally, with more than USD15 billion across actively managed dedicated mandates. Nuveen launched its first RI bond account in 1990 and established the current impact framework in 2007.

Nuveen’s framework is designed to control the use of proceeds. The team seeks to include bonds that support decarbonization, transition, and myriad other societal/environmental outcomes, rather than looking for reasons to exclude investments. Nuveen has been instrumental in developing and scaling the Impact Bond market via inaugural and innovative new issues, including the first wildlife conservation, two of the first three blue bonds, and the first labelled orange (gender equality) bond. 

Workshop Objective: Educate investors on how to intentionally direct capital for positive environmental and societal outcomes via the public fixed income market while measuring results and without sacrificing performance.

Nuveen, the investment manager of TIAA, offers a comprehensive range of outcome-focused investment solutions designed to secure the long-term financial goals of institutional and individual investors. Nuveen has $1.1 trillion in assets under management as of 31 Dec 2022 and operations in 27 countries. Its investment specialists offer deep expertise across a comprehensive range of traditional and alternative investments through a wide array of vehicles and customized strategies. For more information, please visit www.nuveen.com.

“Bonds go up when equities go down” – modern portfolio construction, such as 60/40 portfolios, has relied on this assumption. 2022 demonstrated, in dramatic fashion, the shakiness of this assumption, with global bonds down 11% and equities down 18%. The volatile macroeconomic conditions which upended such long-held investor beliefs may be with us for some time.

How can investors protect portfolios against macro shocks in these conditions?

Trend-following can help: Nomura Cross-Asset Momentum, our multi-asset trend strategy with a long track record, posted outstanding returns last year. This was not a one-off: trend-following has historically done well when markets are volatile. 

With markets expected to remain turbulent, investors should consider using trend-following to diversify their portfolios. Alternatives like rates volatility can also help: buying long-dated interest rate swaptions can add “real” positive convexity with low cost-of-carry.

Nomura Alternative Investment Management (NAIM) is a Quantitative and Structured Asset Management company within Nomura, delivering investment solutions for investors via UCITS, AIFs, dedicated offshore funds and segregated accounts. NAIM started business in 2011 as an investment management company in the UK, dedicated to offering alternative quantitative investment solutions. In 2019, NAIM France was established as a French entity regulated by the French Authority of Financial Markets (AMF) to continue servicing EU clients post-Brexit.

NAIM, which is very well established in the Quantitative Investment Strategies UCITS business, uses best-in-class Quantitative Investment Strategies to pioneer products designed to deliver specific risk profiles, through various risk premia, across multiple asset classes and instruments.

Based on the work of Professor Shiller, the Barclays range of CAPE indices, accessible though Ossiam UCITS ETFs, offers a good risk-return profile on US, Europe & Global large cap equity universes. Experts from Barclays and Ossiam will walk you through the investment process, both in terms of sector selection and ESG features.

Present the meaning and usefulness of the Shiller Cape ratio for equity sectors - Explain the construction methodology of the Barclays Shiller Cape indices - Demonstrate the added value of ESG integration with such an approach.

Ossiam is a specialist asset management company that develops and manages investment funds, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs), based on systematic investment processes. Ossiam is headquartered in Paris, France and is a subsidiary of Natixis Investment Managers. Ossiam's total assets under management amounted to €7.8 billion at the end of 2022.

Barclays is a consumer and wholesale bank, supporting individuals and small businesses through our consumer banking services, and larger businesses and institutions through our corporate and investment banking services. Our Corporate and Investment Bank is comprised of the Investment Banking, International Corporate Banking, Global Markets and Research businesses; it provides money managers, financial institutions, governments, supranational organisations and corporate clients with services and advice for their funding, financing, strategic and risk management needs.

Since China’s reopening and COVID policy pivot, we have seen consistent investor inflows rotating into onshore A-shares, including year-to-date ~US$28 billion inflows from international investors via the Stock Connect as of April 14th 2023. With many more policy supported sector leaders in the hardcore technologies, green economy and industrial automation space, A-shares compared to traditional offshore China space, is also much more fertile ground for growth and with longer runway for rally as business and consumer confidence recover.

Emerging ASEAN countries are also riding the tailwinds of China’s recovery, and as silver lining beneficiaries from the US-China geopolitical tension. 

In this session, our Partner & Co-CIO David Lai will discuss China’s reopening trajectory, the policy-supported sectors that are gaining traction, and the investment cases for emerging ASEAN as beneficiaries and sources of uncorrelated returns. 

To discuss new ideas/ differentiated strategies for capturing uncorrelated returns from China onshore and ASEAN as the growth engine this year amid recession risk and higher for longer interest rate environment in developed markets.

Founded in Hong Kong in 2016, Premia Partners has emerged as one of the leading independent, pure-play ETF asset managers in Asia. As an ETF specialist, we are dedicated to building differentiated ETFs for Asia, as best practice, efficient building blocks with relevant use cases for investors. Our goal is to contribute to a better ETF ecosystem for investors to trade Asia in Asia.

As of April 14th 2023, Premia Partners manages 9 ETFs including Premia CSI Caixin China New Economy ETF which is the 4th largest China A-shares ETF in Hong Kong. For more information on Premia or Premia ETFs including strategies covering China, Emerging ASEAN, Asia Innovative Technology, Vietnam, China high yield bonds, China government bonds and US Treasury, please visit www.premia-partners.com

Warren Buffet has recently visited Japan to meet with companies and express his intention of increasing his investments in the country. This has renewed investor interest in Japan. As a bottom-up, fundamental investor, we agree with Warren that Japan has many overlooked and attractive companies that have become increasingly compelling given the new market environment we have entered. 

To introduce the bottom-up opportunities in Japan that we believe can grow in the coming market environment.

At SPARX, we believe in fundamental, bottom-up investing to uncover long-term growth opportunities across Japan and Asia. Founded in 1989, SPARX Group is one of the largest independent, Asia-focused asset management boutiques headquartered in Tokyo. Since establishment, we have focused our efforts and expertise initially in Japan and then across Asia, investing through a variety of market environments. Conducting thousands of company research activities per year, we draw on this experience to identify companies that can consistently generate excess returns. Our unique and unconstrained investment style serves a diverse client base of long-term oriented investors around the globe.

After the boom in the ‘80s, the Japanese market went through a prolonged period of under-performance. Because of the Japanese Keiretsu system, corporate management teams were not always motivated to make decisions to maximize shareholder value.

Thus many investors went underweight, and today Japan remains under-owned and undervalued. This, together with a lack of deep fundamental research coverage on 40%+ of the market, provides plenty of potential. 

The key to unlocking this potential is the ongoing corporate governance revolution, started by the Stewardship Code in 2012, which continues to gain momentum through market participants like the Tokyo Stock Exchange increasing pressure on companies regarding their inefficient structure and poor valuations. Companies are responding and the landscape is changing.  

To describe the compelling multi-year investment opportunity in Japan and how Zennor seeks to capitalise in this changing landscape.

Sycomore Global Eco Solutions invests in international listed companies across the entire market capitalization spectrum. The fund focuses on companies with business models that contribute to the environmental transition according to the Net Environmental Contribution (NEC) metric, covering a wide range of areas: renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification, mobility, natural resources, renovation and construction, circular economy, food, and ecosystem services. The fund excludes businesses that destroy biodiversity, contribute towards global warming, or display poor Environmental, Societal and Governance ratings.

Explaining why Sycomore Global Eco Solutions and our proprietary methodology NEC provide the appropriate investment positioning to align your assets with the green challenges the world is facing.

Company Profile: Founded in 2001, Sycomore AM is a French asset manager specialized on sustainable investments. Its expertise is based on a hands-on approach and a proprietary model to analyze companies’ fundamentals. This model includes both financial and extra-financial criteria embedded in a dynamic database shared by fund managers and ESG specialists. They assess a company’s overall performance with regard to its stakeholders. Sycomore AM signed a strategic partnership with Generali Investments Holding in February 2019, which aims to create the largest and most innovative multi-boutique platform in Europe.

Timing investment decisions has always been extremely challenging. We believe that long-term trends are much more reliable in producing investment returns.
Thankfully, Japan has a lot to offer in the way of long-term structural developments, and a multitude of companies that built growing businesses around these. Lower birth rates, ageing society, new technologies – there are a lot of identifiable investment opportunities around these themes.
In our session we will discuss how we exploit these trends in our investment strategy.

We hope you leave the workshop with fresh ideas about how long-term changes in Japan become investment opportunities through thorough on-the-ground research.

Company Profile: Tokio Marine Asset Management is one of the largest investment managers in Japan, overseeing approximately USD 80bn in assets (as at January 2023). The firm has an established history of over 30 years in providing institutional fiduciary and award-winning fund management services to a broad audience comprising pension funds, financial institutions and sovereign wealth funds all over the world. Our extensive local resources and strong in-house research capabilities have allowed us to accumulate significant investment expertise over the years, while our unwavering emphasis on fundamental analysis combined with thorough due diligence have remained the cornerstone of our investment strategy.

Investors face a difficult investment backdrop. Elevated valuations combined with much less supportive policy settings, owing to the return of inflation, leave risk asset prices vulnerable. The rise in interest rates globally underscores this material change. 
It may make sense for investors to allocate funds to a strategy that focusses on high quality companies that may provide more of a balance between income and capital growth. Such companies tend to be conservatively managed, financed and valued and have a resiliency that may be more valuable in the coming years. Similarly, the reliability of dividend income and the incremental contribution to returns may become more highly valued in the next decade.

•    To understand the current structural backdrop
•    To explore the implications for capital markets and how investors might think about allocating capital in this environment
•    To outline what sectors and businesses may be appropriate for the next decade
•    Ideas for the future should risk assets continue to be weak

Troy Asset Management is a privately owned, independent investment boutique. Our aim is to protect and grow our investors’ capital over the long term. The company was established in 2000 by the late Lord Weinstock and Sebastian Lyon to serve investors who shared the objective of seeking long-term absolute returns, whilst ignoring the distraction of short-term market noise and benchmarks. 
We manage concentrated, low-turnover portfolios of our best ideas, and stewardship is promoted by our approach to risk, focus on high quality, sustainable business franchises and long holding periods. Over the years we have attracted investors who share this patient attitude to investment. We manage over £14bn of assets in a focussed range of investment strategies covering multi-asset, UK equity income, global equity and global equity income, all of which share the same philosophy.

Our unique approach of blending independent and complementary frameworks comes from years of research and development, from our philosophy of solving equations differently, and from adding value at every stage of the investment lifecycle. With our extensive use of technology, we rely exclusively on internal origination and 100% proprietary research.
Our purpose is to deliver superior long-term returns with minimum necessary risk-taking and maximum added value. The central idea is to separate opportunities from risks and deal with them independently. 
We strive to achieve this goal by combining complementary investment frameworks in a single strategy. We seize the most favourable opportunities through our Long Equity, Short Equity and Merger Arbitrage sub-strategies while risks are managed through our Tail Risk Hedging.

We believe this unique combination is synergistic as Long Equity drives returns throughout the cycle, Short Equity adds idiosyncratic performance and Merger Arbitrage funds our Tail Risk Hedging budget 

Varenne Capital Partners (‘Varenne’) is a research and process driven investment manager based in Paris, France, where it was founded by its current management team in 2003. 
The firm first operated as an advisor to VEGA Finance – private banking unit of the CDC/CE Group – before establishing itself as a fully independent investment manager in 2007. 
With 8 nationalities in a team of 40 people, including 18 investment professionals, the management team fosters a culture of openness and diversity translating into very low turnover and an average tenure of 9 years in the investment team. 
All senior investment associates are shareholders or stock option holders in the firm and co-invest a significant portion of their wealth alongside our long-standing clients worldwide.