Vontobel Global Equity C USD

Analyst Report
Morningstar's Take
|27/09/2023

by Natalia Wolfstetter
Vontobel Holding AG has announced that CEO Zeno Staub will step down at the firm’s next annual general meeting in April 2024. Staub has spent 22 years at the firm and has been its CEO for the past 12 years. He intends to become more actively involved in Swiss politics upon his resignation and is expected to stand for election as an ordinary member of the firm’s board at the 2025 annual general meeting after a one-year cooling-off period.

The firm is planning to identify a successor by the end of 2023 and is considering both internal and external candidates.

The announcement of Staub’s upcoming resignation comes four months after the firm announced that he had relinquished his leadership role at Vontobel Investments. He handed over the management of the firm’s asset-management arm to Christel Rendu de Lint as of Jan. 13, 2023. De Lint joined Vontobel in the role of deputy head of investments in May 2021 and brought a wealth of industry experience. Vontobel indicated after her appointment that she was hired as part of a succession plan for Staub, thus keeping Vontobel’s investment arm in experienced hands.

The long notice period leaves room for Vontobel to find a capable successor and ensure a smooth transition, in our view. We also don’t think there’s an immediate impact on the firm’s culture or operations. As a result, we reaffirm the Average Parent Pillar rating for Vontobel and will evaluate the firm’s new leadership once a successor has been announced.
 
The team running Vontobel Global Equity is experienced and uses a distinctive approach, but that hasn’t translated into a durable edge in the competitive quality growth investing space. The strategy’s People rating is downgraded to Average from Above Average. The Process Pillar rating is maintained at Above Average.

Matthew Benkendorf took the reins of this group after the departure of longtime manager Rajiv Jain in 2016. He has kept the strategy essentially intact while introducing a more collegial and inclusive approach, including a revised incentive structure, the appointment of a director of research to coordinate analysts' work, and the promotion of several long-standing members to portfolio manager, including Ramiz Chelat on this strategy. The team of 20 portfolio managers and analysts was expanded with seven hires from 2016 to 2019. Chelat, who joined the firm in 2007, was named a comanager on the team’s emerging-markets strategy in October 2021, replacing Brian Bandsma. Most other roles and responsibilities within the team remained unchanged, but Chelat’s workload has substantially increased as he retains significant research responsibilities alongside his portfolio management duties.

The team runs strategies across different geographies (U.S., global, emerging markets, Asia ex Japan, Europe). It remains stable, sizable, and experienced, but this hasn’t translated into superior results in the competitive quality growth investing space. The team has proved more successful in some of its strategies, such as international (ex U.S.) equity, but inconsistent execution across its charges coupled with some concerns around workload leads to a People rating downgrade to Average from Above Average.

The managers build a fairly concentrated and highly differentiated portfolio based on the team’s bottom-up fundamental research of a list of promising candidate companies, looking for businesses with durable competitive advantages, decent growth prospects, and stable earnings profiles that can withstand periods of economic stress. The team's predilection for steady growers with a dominant market position results in a portfolio heavily invested in companies with narrow or wide Morningstar Economic Moat Ratings. As such, the strategy should continue to offer resilience and a lower-volatility profile than its peers and index. For example, it held up better than the MSCI ACWI Growth Index during the tumultuous fourth quarter of 2018 and in 2022. It is worth noting that the strategy’s quality tilt is meaningful, whereas growth and especially momentum tend to be less significant drivers. As a result, investors should expect this offering to lag in growth-oriented rallies, as evidenced by the significant underperformance in year-to-date 2023, as the underweighting in technology and lack of exposure to strong performers such as Nvidia held back returns. Overall, results since 2016 have been muted as superior downside protection has not compensated for the lower upside capture and stock-selection mishaps.
 
Morningstar Medalist Rating™Our conviction has eroded.
To find out how Morningstar rates a fund click here.
Morningstar Pillars
PeopleAverage
ParentAverage
ProcessAbove Average
 
Morningstar Medalist RatingMorningstar assigns the Medalist Rating to funds that are qualitatively and quantitatively assessed through manager research and algorithmic processes. The assessment turns on three key “pillars” – People, Process, and Parent – that yield an estimate of how well a fund will perform before fees but after adjusting for risk.
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