TOBAM expands Anti-Benchmark® equity offering to Switzerland and World ex-Switzerland investment universes

New strategies backed by major Swiss institutional investor

TOBAM is proud to announce the launch of its Anti-Benchmark® Switzerland Equity Strategy. The fund was launched in August 2019 with CHF75million in seed investment by a Swiss pension fund.

The new strategy applies the Anti-Benchmark approach to the Swiss equity market, offering investors with an innovative solution that maximizes diversification and mitigates concentration risk embedded in cap-weighted benchmarks.

Passive investment in Swiss equities is heavily biased towards few stocks: Nestle (22.6%), Novartis (14.5%) and Roche (14.2%) – making up 51% of the SPI index*. TOBAM’s Anti-Benchmark strategy represents a unique approach for investors looking for a core exposure to the Swiss market while avoiding structural biases.

TOBAM’s patented Maximum Diversification® approach is designed to offer a neutral allocation to all the effective independent risk factors available to each market and aims to deliver the equity risk premium to investors.

Applied to the Swiss market, such a strategy would enable investors to grasp the opportunities present within the Swiss equity universe by offering a well-diversified exposure. A diversified portfolio is typically expected to outperform the market cap-weighted index with less risk over a full market cycle.

The Paris-based asset manager has also launched an Anti-Benchmark® World ex-Switzerland strategy in October, seeded by a Swiss institutional investor for CHF90 million.
These two strategies complement TOBAM’s extensive list of equity strategies, which include the firm’s flagship funds AB ACWI Equity, AB Emerging Markets Equity and the AB Euro Equity, amongst others.

Christophe Roehri, Deputy CEO of TOBAM, said: “We see great potential for our strategy in the Swiss equity market. The equity landscape is dominated by a handful of major holdings, which makes for a highly concentrated market. That makes our Anti-Benchmark approach particularly appealing for investors looking to explore the untapped opportunity and diversity of the Swiss economy”.

Joe Kiwan, Product Specialist, Swiss Market Representative of TOBAM said: “TOBAM is proud to continue serving sophisticated Swiss investors, Swiss pension funds were among our first clients over 10 years ago. We now have an equity offering which is compelling for Swiss pensions: Switzerland and World ex-Switzerland is a typical split in their equity asset allocation.”