Rankia Funds Meeting makes its debut in Zurich: Strategic Insights for 2026
1 APR, 2026
The first edition of the Rankia Funds Meeting Zurich brought together top-tier investment experts to discuss the current economic landscape and share innovative investment strategies. Held at The Baur au Lac, March 25th, the exclusive event featured insights from distinguished professionals, including:
- Michael Sun, Client Portfolio Manager - Quantitative Strategies from Eastspring Investments
- Ronny Ruohomaa, Director – International Business Development at EVLI
- Andrew Ye, Investment Strategist from Global X ETFs
- Victor Higgons, Co Fund Manager from Indépendance AM
The morning began with a networking breakfast, allowing fund selectors and buyers to exchange insights on key market challenges and opportunities. Each speaker then presented their firm's investment approach, fund strategies, and market perspectives, providing attendees with valuable takeaways on portfolio positioning and asset allocation in the current economic climate.
Michael Sun, Client Portfolio Manager - Quantitative Strategies from Eastspring Investments
Eastspring Investments, a Prudential plc company with over USD 159bn AUM and more than 20 investment professionals in its Quantitative Strategies team, offers systematic equity strategies designed to capture uncorrelated Asian alpha. The firm's investment philosophy rests on three pillars: exploiting persistent market inefficiencies driven by investor behaviour, acknowledging that return drivers differ across geographies and industries, and committing to ongoing research innovation. The investment process follows four steps — Create, Combine, Calibrate, and Construct — employing a proprietary multi-factor alpha model comprising seven factor families including Quality, Value, Sentiment, Momentum, and Low Idiosyncratic Volatility. Two flagship strategies are highlighted. The core equity strategy (with a tracking error target of 2–3%), the Asian Multi‑Factor Equity Strategy (inception June 2019), has delivered +2.7% annualised gross alpha over the past five years relative to the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan Index, with an information ratio of 0.8.
The defensive equity strategy, the Asian Low Volatility Equity Strategy (inception October 2016), has achieved a Sharpe ratio of 0.59, compared with 0.13 for the broader market, while limiting maximum drawdown to ‑20.6%, versus ‑35.8% for the benchmark, over the same five‑year period. The defensive characteristics of the strategy have been particularly evident in the recent market environment, delivering +4.2% annualised gross alpha over five years relative to the broad Asian equity market amid heightened and unprecedented volatility.
Ronny Ruohomaa, Director – International Business Development at EVLI
Evli Nordic High Yield is a UCITS fund domiciled in Finland that invests in rated and unrated Nordic high yield corporate bonds, fully hedged to EUR. The strategy targets 100–200 bps of excess yield over Pan-European HY, exploiting a structural premium that Nordic issuers offer for comparable credit risk. The fund's differentiated approach avoids oil drilling exposure and maintains balanced geographic diversification across Nordic countries, in contrast to peers that concentrate in single markets. The portfolio holds approximately 100 issuers with a conservative bias toward steady cash-flow businesses, resulting in a fund-level net leverage of 3.8x EV/EBITDA — below the Pan-Euro HY index average of 4.6x. As of March 2026, the EUR-hedged YTM stands at 6.69%, modified duration at 0.76, and 66% of holdings are unrated, capturing an extra yield premium unavailable to passive strategies. The fund carries no performance fee and is managed by Evli Fund Management Company Ltd, supervised by the Finnish FSA.
Andrew Ye, Investment Strategist from Global X ETFs
Global X ETFs, a subsidiary of Mirae Asset with $8.7bn in European AUM, presented a thematic infrastructure investment case built around powerful structural tailwinds. The core thesis is that global infrastructure investment needs could reach $106 trillion through 2040, driven by ageing assets, climate change, shifting demographics, digital transformation, and the AI-driven data centre buildout. The presentation covers three distinct ETFs: BRIJ LN (European Infrastructure Development, $510m AUM, TER 0.47%), PAVE LN (U.S. Infrastructure Development, $616m AUM, TER 0.47%), and VPN LN (Data Center REITs & Digital Infrastructure, $183m AUM, TER 0.50%). Each product targets pure-play companies via passive index replication. Particularly notable is the AI-driven data centre opportunity, with hyperscaler CapEx exceeding $400bn in 2025 and global data centre power demand forecast to grow 4.3x by 2035. All funds are UCITS-compliant and domiciled in Ireland.
Victor Higgons, Co Fund Manager from Indépendance AM
Indépendance AM is an independent French asset manager specialising exclusively in listed European SMEs and mid-caps for over 30 years, with approximately €2.2bn in total AUM. The firm applies a single, stable "Quality Value" methodology across all its UCITS funds, targeting companies combining profitable growth — measured through high ROCE, growing turnover and strong operating margins — with low valuation multiples. Three main UCITS funds are presented: France Small & Mid (+13.0% annualised since 1993, outperforming in 25 of 32 years), Europe Small (+17.7% annualised since end-2018, outperforming in 6 of 7 years with +47.8% in 2025 alone), and the recently launched Europe Mid (+33.5% since October 2024 inception versus benchmark's +20.3%). All portfolios maintain a significant valuation discount versus their respective benchmarks (P/E discounts ranging from -23% to -35%), with ROCE around 18-19% versus benchmark levels near 7-10%
Helping professionals in making better investment decisions
This first edition of the 'Funds Meetings' in Zurich was part of our Funds Meetings events, which offer a unique opportunity to meet directly with the managers while fostering networking. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to our sponsors for making this event possible, and to all the professional attendees who joined us during an enriching event where we could share insights and perspectives on the investment markets. Looking forward to the next edition!
