Equities

Our philosophy is based on a core approach of looking at how companies are valued compared to their intrinsic value – either in terms of assets or the present value of future cash flows. We believe companies are either misunderstood or mispriced and only through strong fundamental research can opportunities be identified. These portfolios tend to exhibit modest tilts towards both growth and value.

Our developed equity investment teams include regional specialists who cover the global equity markets. Drawing on a range of internal and external research inputs and using a disciplined portfolio construction process, we build global, EAFE, European and Japanese equity portfolios to meet our clients’ needs.

We also manage Sharia-compliant portfolios.

Although Japanese equity is part of the developed equity team, the market has distinct characteristics not found elsewhere. We take a bottom-up approach. We aim to find companies which benefit from favourable secular forces, reinforced by macroeconomic/cyclical trends. As part of our research, we draw on the local resources of our Tokyo-based equity investment team.

Our Japanese equity style is active and systematic. We aim to outperform throughout the economic cycle and believe that neither growth nor value are investment approaches that will outperform consistently.

Our Zurich-based team seeks to create value with a disciplined, bottom-up approach to actively managing Swiss equities. Being neither growth nor value investors allows us to find opportunities across the market and throughout the economic cycle. The team looks for companies with strong business franchises and attractive cash flow return on investment.

We use a proprietary tool, based on a customised version of Credit Suisse HOLT ValueSearch, modelling future cash flows, profitability and growth of capital. This tool helps us to identify companies which trade below their intrinsic value.

Pictet Asset Management is a global pioneer and leader in the emerging markets asset class. Our clients include some of the world's largest pensions funds.

Emerging markets are prone to exaggerated cycles of rise and fall. Market inefficiencies abound. We seek to identitfy mispricings by ranking companies in each industry by 'Replacement Value' of installed capacity. We believe that only an active and disciplined investment style can consistently identify and profit from the mispricings prevalent in emerging markets.

Our highly experienced and integrated team uses a value-based, research driven bottom-up method to investing in global emerging markets. We search the universe for undervalued shares in each industry and, subject to certain qualitative tests, buy them.

The backbone of Pictet Asset Management's emerging market process is our long-established proprietary database which we screen for the most attractive investment candidates according to our distinctive methodology of adjusted capacity replacement cost. 

In 2009 Pictet Asset Management won a Financial News Award for Excellence in the category Emerging Markets Manager of the Year (across both equity and debt).

Our emerging Europe investment team is part of our overall emerging market resource. We employ a similar investment approach drawing on our proprietary emerging markets database.

In this region, however, factors such as corporate governance, management, economic instability and institutional reform need to be given greater prominence in reaching investment decisions. We have invested in the markets of the former Soviet bloc since shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989.

Our Asia ex-Japan investment team is part of our Global Emerging Market resource. We employ a similar investment approach and draw extensively on the proprietary emerging markets database.

However, for this region, which forms about half the global emerging universe, we combine our bottom-up process with an asset allocation framework based on surplus economic liquidity, risk & sentiment, and valuation. We have a strong track record going back over more than a decade.

With an investment universe of over ten thousand companies, smaller companies provide excellent underesearched investment opportunities.

We have built our skills in smaller companies investment since 1986 with a bottom-up approach. We believe that success in the small cap market requires experience, discipline and a commitment to rigorous fundamental research.

Our style is based on our proprietary G4 research framework (G4: emerging growth and established growth, defensive growth and cyclical growth). We purchase value stocks (which tend to fall within our Cyclical or Defensive Growth categories) if a catalyst for the realisation of value can be identified. For true growth stocks (Emerging or Established Growth) we look for positive change in operating performance relative to valuation as the catalyst.