The Pictet-High Dividend Selection fund builds on an investment concept that has enjoyed considerable success in Japan since its launch in the East Asian country in 2005, the bank said in a statement.

The team managing the fund consists of four investment managers, led by Hans Peter Portner, head of the sector and theme fund group at Pictet Asset Management, the institutional investment division of Pictet.

The fund provides access to listed companies that operate in public infrastructure service businesses worldwide.

“Owing to high barriers of entry, firms operating in the public infrastructure service business are able to achieve stable returns and use them to pay out solid and sustainable dividends,” said Portner.

“Given that such companies frequently operate in a regional or local context, this asset class shows little correlation with global equities or other categories, providing greater portfolio diversification,” he said.

“Infrastructure stocks outperformed both world equity markets and other asset classes, partly owing to their above-average dividend payouts, while maintaining a very attractive risk/return profile," Portner added.

Pictet Funds said the current high spread of dividend yields over bond yields offers a timely opportunity to invest in high-yielding equities. In the past, a high spread has proven to be a good entry point in the strategy, as it typically precedes a period of attractive relative performance of global high yield infrastructure stocks compared to the overall equity market, the bank added.

For the time being, the fund is available in Austria, Finland, the UK, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; it will be registered in other European countries during 2010.