The Swiss group which won the overall category for best External Asset Management firm talks to this news service about what it has accomplished and what's next in store.

This news service recently spoke to Cedric Dingens, who is head of investment solutions and alternative investments at Notz Stucki Group, the asset management firm. The firm won the overall award for external asset manager at this news service’s recent EAM awards programme in Switzerland. Here, Dingens describes his firm, its capabilities and future direction. 

Founded in 1964, the Notz Stucki Group is now one of the largest fully independent asset management groups in Switzerland and in Europe. 

International and sophisticated, our clients are high net worth individuals, family offices, pension funds, wealth management companies or corporations, who have in common the same requirement for superior absolute returns and bespoke services.

100 per cent owned by our management, we are fiercely independent and free from any external pressure that would hinder our impartiality. We invest alongside our clients, thus ensuring that our interests are fully aligned. Notz Stucki & Cie SA is regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) as an authorised asset manager of collective investments.

With more than 110 employees, the Notz Stucki Group manages SFr10 billion in assets (as of the end of 2020) through three highly complementary business activities:

-- Private wealth management: discretionary and advisory management; 
-- Asset management: Notz Stucki funds and investment solutions; and 
-- Manco: fund engineering/white label and services dedicated to funds

For over 55 years, we have developed a unique expertise in selecting the best fund managers worldwide and combining them to build robust and top-performing multi-manager portfolios. Direct stock- and bond-picking activities started in the 1980s and have been gradually structured in UCITS funds. Today, the family of investment products includes multi-manager funds (both in traditional and hedge funds) and single traditional funds (in fixed-income, convertible bonds and equities).

By starting to invest in hedge funds at the end of the 1960s and creating one of the very first fund of hedge funds in 1974, we laid the foundation for the selection of alternative funds and for the management of multi-manager funds. From the end of the 1970s, we realised the huge potential of Asia by launching funds investing in long-only and long/short equity managers based in this high-growth region. With the addition of relative value and arbitrage strategies in the 1990s, the full coverage of the hedge fund industry gives a unique edge for building efficient portfolios.

In 1998, we launched a SICAV with a single sub-fund dedicated to bonds: Diversified Growth Company. DGC quickly diversified to cover several asset classes. It now has 15 sub-funds offering a wide range of strategies, managed both internally and in partnership with external managers. In 2019, the assets under management of our UCITS funds exceeded SFr1 billion, a symbolic milestone which is the best proof of the growing importance of this activity for our group.

We are thus basing our development on two complementary engines, with long-only strategies completing our historical alternative management and multi-manager fund activities, with the common objective of generating alpha. This diversity is an undeniable asset in the current environment and allows us to respond effectively to the different needs of investors. 

This allows us to offer a wide range of high-performance investment solutions to our high net worth private clients, as well as to professional investors and retail clients. The funds comply with European standards and can be distributed to a wide audience in all EU countries. This gives us great potential for growth, particularly through the efforts of our new Investment Solutions and Institutional Investors department. As a result, our UCITS funds are now available on several distribution platforms in Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy. Sales of our funds outside the group are growing, and already 20 per cent of the total assets of our alternative and traditional funds are held by third parties.

More recently, the acceleration of innovation in terms of investment solutions has enabled the firm to show good performances in 2020, which was particularly challenging in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The asset management team has launched no less than four equity thematic actively managed certificates during the last eight months in the following areas: medical technology, digitalisation, cleaner energy and quality recovery. Our alternative investment funds have outperformed markets, both in absolute and relative value terms, as well as competitors, by a wide margin.

More than just figures and financial results, 2020 has shown the resilience of the firm in terms of operational set-up and investment flexibility. It has stressed the quality of the people working in the group and reinforced our culture for the future.

Our clients now also have the privilege of using a digital solution showing all the relevant information of their portfolios. This new client service is particularly innovative in the independent wealth management industry. We have also adapted our investment process to the new reality of responsible investments and the ESG framework. Having the right tools to identify the companies who are implementing the necessary changes to adapt to sustainable goals/matters is the prerequisite for outperforming and staying in line with today’s requirements. Every day in our business, we are people-centred and we have applied these values since 2017, with all our employees, through our philanthropic initiative NS Impact.

In summary, we have been able to evolve and adapt to the changing market and regulatory environments over several decades, while maintaining a very high quality of service. We have been a pioneer in finding new investment solutions such as investing with external talented active managers or creating one of the first Luxembourg SICAVs at the end of the 1960s. At the same time, the partners of the firm have shown a capacity to reinvent the business model, for example by transferring all the NS funds from offshore to onshore jurisdictions and becoming a real asset manager from an operational and resource standpoint in 2010.

The “family culture” is very strong and the company has always been respectful of supporting people working in the firm. We are at the peak in terms of number of people working in the group today and we are optimistic about future developments for the company. We intend to continue playing an active role in the consolidation of the Swiss independent management industry, either by acquiring existing companies or by attracting management teams that wish to join an independent and thriving group.