Best Fund Provider Thematic Equity
Pictet Asset Management
Best Fund Provider – Thematic Equity
Audrey Wong
vice president, Pictet Asset Management
“For the fourth consecutive year, Pictet Asset Management is very honoured to be recognised as the Best Provider in Thematic Equity. Competition has intensified, as thematic strategies are addressing investors’ demand. Our key to success has been our longstanding purist approach, our discipline in managing investment capacity, and our consistent track record that has earned the trust of investors.
With a comprehensive range of thematic offerings and foresight into megatrends around us, we aim to build lasting partnership with private bank clients by exceeding their expectation for investment performance and service.
In recent years, investors have been increasingly aware of the need to protect and preserve the environment. As a pioneer in thematic investing, we take it upon ourselves to bring more than just a climate change strategy to our clients.
Five years ago, we launched Pictet-Global Environmental Opportunities, a strategy investing in companies that provide products and services to reverse environmental damage with a scientific approach. The strategy creates a positive impact in nine ecological dimensions with full accountability. With over 30% return YTD (as of end of November 2019), it is a proven strategy that addresses environmental risk and delivers superior return.
For us, tomorrow started yesterday.”
Winners rationale
While a slump in equity demand in 2019 spilt over into thematic equity, Asian investors — and the private banks that advise them — continued to seek out thematic strategies that were attentive to long-term structural trends disrupting and reshaping business and society.
Pictet Asset Management — a firm whose pedigree in the thematic equities area is beyond question — is never far from the top of the list on account of its focus and track record, having supplied the private wealth industry with some of its most seminal such products to date.
A mainstay solutions provider to the vast majority of private banks in the region, Pictet Asset Management in 2019 could lay claim to having five of the 20 largest thematic strategies globally — all of which available to Asian investors — and to being the largest asset manager by AUM in thematic equity, with a 10% market share (international cross-border and European domestic) as of June 2019, according to Broadridge Global Market Intelligence.
Pictet-SmartCity, launched in 2018, gathered in excess of US$1 billion in AUM within a year (as of August 2019) while its renowned Pictet-Robotics fund sat above the US$5 billion mark with a 24% year-to-date return (as of 30 September 2019; I share class, net of fees, base currency). Pictet-Robotics, as with a few other strategies were also under tight capacity in 2019.
Furthermore, 11 of Pictet Asset Management’s 14 thematic funds ranked in the top quartile of their respective peer categories and Pictet-Security, distributed through 18 of Asia’s Top 20 private banks by AUM, ranked first out of 51 Global Themes funds over 120 months according to Citywire Selector.
But where Pictet Asset Management truly excelled was in its steadfast commitment to pushing quality over size — and it succeeded in this mission by ensuring that its resourcing, processes, and research were industry-beating. Its 39-strong team dedicated to thematic equity investing was supported by six thematic product specialists, while each thematic strategy was overseen by at least two investment managers, applying a strict four-step investment process across all such strategies.
Pictet Asset Management is Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Thematic Equity for 2020.
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