EXCLUSIVE: Pictet Asset Management Adds To UK Sales Teams

Tom Burroughes

21 May 2012

Pictet Asset Management, part of Swiss private bank Pictet, has boosted its sales presence in the UK to develop business links with firms such as discretionary wealth advisors, this publication can exclusively report.

Arabella Martin, who joined this month from Goldman Sachs Asset Management, will cover discretionary fund managers based in London. Antonia Perrott joined earlier in 2012 and covers the South West region of the UK; Tim Edmans, formerly of Towry, the UK wealth advisory firm, will be covering the Midlands region of the UK.

“That gives us a full complement of of sales people with every region covered. We want to be able to support independent financial advisors at a regional level and discretionary managers at a headquarters and branch level,” Paul Gaston, who heads the Pictet Asset Management team and covers the South East and London region of the country, told this publication last week.

Other members of the team are Wend Appleton, head of strategic partners; Paul Bowen, (Northern England, Scotland & Northern Ireland; Emma Stenzel, (London & East England), and Cheryl Stubbs, (sales support). There are 237 employees at Pictet Asset Management in the UK.

Thematic

Pictet has a specialism in operating a suite of “thematic” funds that hold securities fitting with broad global trends, cutting across traditional ways of holding equities and bonds by geography, market capitalisation or place of listing.

Gaston was upbeat about the growth potential and success of such funds in the UK market, particularly as investors are seeking added value in the current economic environment.

“We are increasingly on the radar of the major discretionary advisors, he said, citing such names as Brewin Dolphin and Brooks Macdonald. “The way the market is changing, both due to the RDR and other reasons, means that discretionary managers want to add value,” he said, arguing that thematic funds can add such value.

“Thematic investing isn’t new in parts of Europe, such as Switzerland,” he added. In the past, the UK market was very inward-looking but this is also changing, Gaston said.