Vontobel Emerging Markets Eq 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 Emerging Markets 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 Brian Bandsma and Jin Zhang on this fund. The team of 20 portfolio managers and analysts has been expanded with seven hires in 2016-19.

The strategy’s performance since 2016 has been underwhelming, however, especially given the style tailwind over much of that period. This has prompted some soul-searching, as a result of which Bandsma was replaced as a comanager by Ramiz Chelat effective Oct. 1, 2021. The team hopes to improve downside performance by adding a comanager with a differentiated skillset and personality. Most other roles and responsibilities within the team remain unchanged, and the overall experience and stability of the outfit are reassuring. We note, however, that Chelat’s workload has substantially increased as he retains significant research responsibilities and continues on the global equities strategy, where he has been a comanager for the past seven years alongside Benkendorf.

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 that has not been enough to stand out. Inconsistent execution across its charges coupled with some concerns around workload lead 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. This translates into a growth bias and higher valuations relative to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and broader Morningstar Category. 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 a lower-volatility profile than its peers and index, but 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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