New Pictet fund targets agricultural sector
| 19 May 2009 |
Geneva and London, May 19, 2009 - Pictet Funds (PF), the fund distribution company of the Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie, is launching the PF(LUX)-Agriculture fund on 29 May 2009. The new fund will be managed by Gertjan van der Geer, Senior Investment Manager at Pictet Asset Management. |
| Pictet’s Agriculture fund is the most recent addition to Pictet’s distinctive range of thematic products, which includes the following: Water, Timber, Clean Energy, Security, Biotech, Digital Communication, Generics and Premium Brands. The PF(LUX)-Agriculture provides access to quoted companies that are expected to play a vital role in helping to supply food for a global population that is predicted by grow by nearly 40 percent between 2005 and 2050 according to a December 2007 World Bank estimate. The fund will not make investments in soft commodities. |
 Portfolio manager Gertjan van der Geer comments, “Pictet is a recognized leader in thematic investing and has a proven track record in environmental fund management. Though investors have long been drawn to agricultural commodities, agriculture as a whole, from the production and conditioning to the transportation of agricultural products, has long been ignored as an area for strategic investment.”“Building on Pictet’s environmental franchise, the fund will invest in an industry that enjoys stable long term growth determinants in form of higher yield and efficiency requirements.” Van der Geer continues, “Nearly 70 per cent of agricultural production gets lost from the farm to the table. Reducing this inefficiency will be crucial in meeting the demands of a growing population and expanding middle class (1). We believe that in order to deal with the scale of the challenge, the agricultural sector will have to invest in new technologies, processes and farming inputs.” |
The PF(LUX)-Agriculture fund’s investment process is geared towards resource efficiency, since stocks will be selected principally in terms of their agricultural exposure, favouring those companies that cause less stress on resources. Only the most efficient and sustainable inputs will be favoured. The new Agriculture fund will be included in Pictet’s recently launched PF(LUX)-Megatrend Selection, which comprises a equally weighted portfolio of Pictet’s theme funds. Each of these investment themes identified by Pictet offers the opportunity to benefit from persistent, secular megatrends based on changes in structural factors (such as demographics, lifestyle, regulation, and the environment). Such megatrends have the potential for long-term growth, irrespective of short-term or speculative fluctuation. The PF(LUX)-Agriculture fund is available to institutional, private banking and retail investors in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France Germany, Greece, Italy, Liechtenstein, Holland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. (1) According to McKinsey, about 1.1 billion people will join middle class income groups in China and India alone between 2005 and 2025. |
