Citywire Swiss Wealth 2023

Sentiment towards Emerging Markets remained weak for much of 2022. Geopolitics, tightening of monetary policy, US dollar strength and a slowing growth outlook in China took centre stage. Periods of excessive pessimism also coincided with the point of maximum financial opportunity. In our experience, volatility does create opportunities for our stock picking approach. Emerging economies are showing healthy fundamentals and trade on discounted valuations to other parts of the world. With catalysts for growth on the horizon, opportunities for investors exist. 

Workshop Objective: Raheel Altaf will talk about investing in Emerging Markets, focusing on his contrarian approach and highlighting the importance maintaining a valuation discipline, whilst trying to identify the winning companies in this space.

Company Profile: Artemis is a leading UK-based fund manager, investing in the UK, Europe, the US and around the world. The firm opened for business in 1997 and manages some €29.1 billion* across a range of funds, two investment trusts and both pooled and segregated institutional portfolios. A number of these are now available to investors in continental Europe and Singapore. Independent and owner-managed, Artemis’ aim has always been to offer exemplary performance and client service. All Artemis’ staff share these two precepts – and the same flair and enthusiasm for fund management.  *Source: Artemis as at 31 January 2023

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. 

Workshop Objectives:
•    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.

Gregg Guerin will focus on an investment in the energy transition megatrend. The ETF combines growth and profitability with attractive fundamentals and tracks the Nasdaq® OMX Clean Edge® Smart Grid Infrastructure Index.

Designed more than a century ago, when energy was scarce and communication was one-dimensional. Smart grids will be essential in powering our future electricity-dependent world. The smart grid is fundamentally a renovation of the electricity supply chain that is intended to modernise how we produce, transport, use, and store energy. Renewable energy growth and the need to charge electric vehicles necessitate a more flexible, "smarter" grid. Companies that provide smart grid infrastructure, we believe, will benefit.

Gregg will detail how this ETF can provide exposure to forced future and current expenditures in the public and private sectors.

Workshop Objective:
Introduce Clean Edge
Explain what the smart Grid is and why it is important
Highlight the diversification and profitability GRID brings to portfolios

The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to nearly double from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million by 2060, rising from 16 percent to 23 percent of the total population.  
For 50+ years, the population growth in the Southeastern U.S. has outpaced the country’s growth rate by nearly 40%, with growth even higher among those 65+. 
Finally, the shift of healthcare delivery from inpatient to outpatient continues, with more than half of hospital revenues now derived from outpatient visits, up from less than 30% just 25 years ago. 
Collectively, these trends present compelling real estate opportunities. Flagship’s private REIT and vertically integrated service platform allows for greater market and industry knowledge, stronger provider relationships, and a higher volume of proprietary pipeline opportunities. 

Workshop Objectives: Flagship seeks to demonstrate how population growth, aging demographics and increased utilization of outpatient medical facilities provides investors with low-correlation, low-volatility real estate investment opportunities in the US.

After several challenging years, value stocks proved to be resilient in a tough environment and outperformed the broader market in 2022 by a substantial margin. Investors now ask themselves whether the value rebound can continue. In our view, there are several reasons to believe that value investing remains attractive. This is particularly true for Europe, where the valuation discount of value stocks relative to their growth counterparts is still extraordinary large. Therefore, we believe that the recent period of outperformance was not just a short-term phenomenon but rather the beginning of a new longer lasting style shift in favour of value stocks.

Company Profile: M&G Investments has been investing for private and institutional clients for 90 years. Our principles of long-term investing, responsible asset management and active fund management have always formed the basis of our approach.

We consider it our responsibility to strive for long-term, sustainable returns in line with our clients' investment and asset accumulation goals. We find that investors are increasingly striving to align their investments with their environmental and social values. With a whole range of funds, we help to meet this need.

Trend-following indices posted a strong performance in 2022 among significant market challenges. Trend-followers are flexible and directionally unbiased, making them the wingman of traditional investors. 
We will show how trend systems generate their "Crisis Alpha" and boost the defensive properties of a portfolio. We will discuss what signals trend-followers look for, how relying on risk predictions instead of return predictions can improve returns, and how trend-following can fit into a portfolio.

Workshop Objective: Create understanding and knowledge of trend-following and on how it can fit into a portfolio

Company Profile: Man Group is a global, technology-empowered active investment management firm focused on delivering alpha and portfolio solutions for clients. Headquartered in London, we manage $143.3 billion and operate across multiple offices globally. We invest across a diverse range of strategies and asset classes, with a mix of long-only and alternative strategies run on a discretionary and quantitative basis, across liquid and private markets. Our platform is underpinned by advanced technology, supporting our investment teams at every stage of their process, including alpha generation, portfolio management, trade execution and risk management. Man Group plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker EMG and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Further information can be found at www.man.com

With global central banks entering a more mature stage of their tightening cycle, and more tangible evidence of economic and financial stress, is now the time to extend durations and allocations to bonds? Are there market or maturities that appear attractive and how should investors balance the attractive carry in many credit sectors with increasing recession and re-financing risk? 

We look to answer these questions and introduce our well-established Global Opportunistic Bond Fund which can benefit globally from the diverse opportunities presented by current markets in areas like sector dispersion and security selection. 

Workshop Objective: Provide a comprehensive review of current macro-economic and credit themes and how they can be utilised to the benefit of clients in more flexible global bond portfolios. 

Company Profile: In 1924, MFS launched the first US open-end mutual fund, opening the door to the markets for millions of everyday investors. Today, as a full-service global investment manager serving financial advisors, intermediaries and institutional clients, MFS still serves a single purpose: to create long-term value responsibly for clients. That takes a sustainable investing approach built on:
•    Collective expertise – teams of diverse thinkers who actively debate ideas within a culture of shared values and collaboration
•    Long-term discipline – conviction over longer time horizons to broaden opportunities and performance incentives aligned with client outcomes
•    Risk management – the potential to recognize material risks and opportunities while managing long-term performance for clients

-Present Mirabaud and the Investment Team
-Macro views, where do we stand
-Discuss about the portfolio’s performance
-Educate on the asset class if need be
-Deep dive in the fund and its DNA

Workshop Objective: The objective of this workshop is to help multi-asset investors deepen their understanding of the convertibles asset class, explaining to them why they should invest and how to get exposure successfully, as this asset class remains strong on a risk-adjusted basis and has the ability to generate strong returns.

Company Profile: Mirabaud Asset Management is part of a private owned partnership, originally founded in 1819. We provide a range of investment solutions across Fixed Income, Equities and Private Assets, to Institutional and Wholesale investors in the UK and Europe. A common philosophy applies across each of these areas of expertise, which is an active, high conviction approach to generating long term risk adjusted returns. A focus on managing risk and a commitment towards environmental, social and corporate governance principles are important constituents of our heritage.

We operate in Europe’s key financial centres: London, Paris, Geneva, Zurich, Madrid, Milan and Luxembourg.

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.

Company Profile: 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 Mar 2023 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. 

The bond market entered a transitional period throughout 2022, which reset yields at the highest levels for a decade with bonds now looking alluring again. However, recent market volatility reminds investors of the importance to balance higher-yielding assets and higher-quality assets, which perform differently in varying growth environments, to help weather the challenges of changing markets. In this presentation, PIMCO will explore the key macro-themes and considerations at this stage of the cycle, consider the opportunity set across the fixed income spectrum, and introduce our flagship fund, the GIS Income Fund. 

Workshop Objective:
•    Current macro-environment and core factors within the bond markets.
•    Valuations and opportunities across the fixed income spectrum.
•    How the PIMCO GIS Income fund can be utilized in portfolios to balance opportunity with resiliency.

Quaero Infrastructure Securities offers exposure to a sector with unique characteristics: low correlation to markets and the business cycle, high correlation to price indexes, diversification benefits within an equity portfolio and protection in difficult markets. It aims to be a conservative investment strategy for equities, as long-lived physical assets with useful lives of several decades generate a long-term source of income; demand for most infrastructures is highly inelastic; very high barriers to entry often lead to local monopolies or oligopolies; prices are mostly CPI-indexed which offers inflation protection; business models are highly cash generative with earnings visibility over a 5 to 10-year horizon and high dividend yields. 

Workshop Objective: Workshop’s objective is to discuss with investors the wide-ranging investment opportunities in the universe of companies active in building, maintaining, and operating infrastructure, which generate stable and recurring returns.

Company Profile: QUAERO CAPITAL is an independent, specialist fund management firm which brings together independently-minded managers who use original research to propose actively managed strategies for clients in the institutional and wholesale markets. 
The company was founded in Geneva in 2005 and is 100% employee-owned. We manage close to CHF 3bn AuM. 
Our high-conviction investment strategies spread across 15 UCITS funds, with strong expertise in the European small capitalizations, global Infrastructure equities including Clean Energies and Net Zero Emission strategies,as well as Asian equities (Asia ex-Japan, China and Japan equity strategies)
We also offers non-listed strategies in European Infrastructure and French Real Estate investments.

Over the past three years sustainable investing has evolved alongside the growing desire to support the development of a more sustainable society. How has the investment landscape changed within sustainable equities and what are the potential opportunities moving forward?

RLAM’s Sustainable Fund Manager, George Crowdy will cover:
• The evolution in sustainable investing over the past three years
• The positive outcomes when investing in global sustainable equities
• The outlook for sustainable investing

Workshop Objective:
•To gain an insight into the evolving market environment and the impact on global sustainable equities over the past three years.
• To understand RLAM’s global sustainable equity investment approach and the current outlook for 2023.

Company Profile: Royal London Asset Management (RLAM) is one of the UK’s leading investment companies, having built a strong reputation as an innovative manager, investing across all major asset classes. RLAM manages over $177.1 billion of assets as of 31st December 2022, split between equities, fixed interest, multi asset investing, property and cash, with a market leading capability in sustainable investing. Products include funds and segregated accounts investing in government bonds, investment grade, high yield and unrated credit, equity income and equity growth across global developed markets, as well as UK property and cash and short-term money market instruments.

The outlook for EM debt markets looks more positive. This is supported by higher starting yields, a Fed that is probably near the end of its hiking cycle and a US growth outlook that remains firm. The diversification of EM and the higher quality of investment grade EM can provide resilience against a US downturn. However, with market volatility and increasing credit dislocation, it is a market not easily navigated. 

Vanguard’s active EM strategy is centred on capitalising on such dislocation. The focus on bottom-up security selection and relative value, with less reliance on macro views has led to a cumulative alpha of 33% net of fees and 4% annualised over the last 7 years, while keeping the strategy beta close to 1. We aim for diversified alpha generation across the market cycle to be a long-term strategic fixed income holding with consistent results.

Workshop Objective:
-How to capitalise on market dislocation without the need for leveraged beta
-    Avoid concentrated and correlated positions
-    Understand the merits of our bottom-up approach to security selection in managing active credit 

Company Profile: Vanguard is a different kind of investment company. It was founded in the United States in 1975 on a simple but revolutionary idea: that an investment company should manage its funds solely in the interests of its clients. This is a philosophy that has helped millions of people around the world to achieve their goals with cost-efficient investments. It's what we stand for: value to investors. Since establishing the first indexed mutual fund in the U.S. in 1976, The Vanguard Group Inc., has grown into one of the world’s largest and most respected investment management companies for both its active strategies and passive offering. Globally, Vanguard manages USD 7.5 trillion on behalf of 30 million investors worldwide (Source: Vanguard, as at 28 February 2023).