Rankia Funds Meeting Monaco: Strategic Insights for 2026
20 MAY, 2026
By Sofía Vargas from RankiaPro Europe
On 12 May 2026, the Riviera Marriott Hotel La Porte de Monaco hosted the latest edition of the RankiaPro Funds Meeting, bringing together four asset managers, ECP Asset Management, Bitwise Asset Management, Fair Oaks Capital and Alken Asset Management, to present their investment convictions to an audience of professional investors, fund selectors and private bankers.
- Jared Pohl Portoflio Manager from ECP Asset Management
- Stéphanie Laurent Senior Associate from Bitwise Asset Management
- Miguel Fuentenebro Partner at Fair Oaks Capital
- Patricia Tomás Investment Specialist from Alken Asset Management.
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.
ECP Asset Management — Contrarian Conviction on the De-Rating of Quality Growth
Jared Pohl, Portfolio Manager from ECP Asset Management, presented a deliberately contrarian thesis at Monaco: the aggressive sell-off in high quality growth equities over recent months represents one of the most attractive entry points the style has offered in years. Drawing on long-run historical data, portfolio manager Jared Pohl argued that value's current dominance over quality is a cyclical phenomenon with a clear precedent for mean reversion, and that once a quality growth recovery begins, history suggests it tends to last considerably longer than the drawdown that preceded it. The firm's investment philosophy is anchored on identifying companies in the growth phase of their lifecycle that combine high returns on capital, above-system revenue growth and clean balance sheets, concentrating the portfolio in business models with durable competitive advantages such as network effects, unregulated monopolies and deeply embedded enterprise software.
The ECP Global Growth Fund UCITS, which targets outperformance of the MSCI World Index over a rolling five-year period with a mid-cap bias, currently holds high-conviction positions in names such as AppLovin, Adyen, Wise, FICO and Hemnet , each selected through a rigorous five-stage research process that includes proprietary modelling and Investment Committee approval. Pohl was candid about recent performance headwinds, noting that all sub-categories within the quality segment have been under simultaneous pressure, while earnings across the portfolio have held up with minimal downgrades. The team's view is that the de-rating has been sentiment-driven rather than fundamental, and that the portfolio's low sensitivity to rising input costs and a potential consumer slowdown provides additional resilience. For investors with a medium-term horizon, ECP's message was clear: the contrarian moment in quality growth may already be at hand.
Bitwise — Regulated Access to the Crypto Asset Class Through a Specialist ETP Suite
Stépahnie Laurent, Senior Associate from Bitwise Asset Management, shared the company's proposition at Monaco, which was straightforward: for professional investors seeking exposure to digital assets, Bitwise offers a comprehensive range of Exchange Traded Products designed to fit different strategic needs, from simple directional exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum, to diversified index solutions and yield-generating staking products. The breadth of the range reflects the firm's conviction that crypto is no longer a monolithic asset class, but a multi-layered investment universe that demands the same product sophistication as any other.
The Bitwise ETP suite spans single-asset physical products on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP, a diversified vehicle tracking the MSCI Global Digital Assets Select Top 20 Capped Index, and an expanding family of staking ETPs, including Ethereum, Solana, NEAR, Hyperliquid, Avalanche, Celestia and Aptos, that allow investors to capture on-chain staking rewards within a regulated wrapper. A notable addition to the range is the Bitwise Diaman Bitcoin & Gold ETP, which blends the two assets into a single product for investors seeking a macro hedge with a digital component. All products are listed across the major European exchanges and available in multiple currencies, with the Physical Bitcoin ETP (BTCE) remaining the flagship vehicle by assets under management since its launch in 2020.
Fair Oaks Capital — Floating-Rate Structured Credit as the Yield Solution of the Cycle
Miguel Fuentenebro, Partner at Fair Oaks Capital, presented a compelling income alternative at a moment when traditional credit markets are offering diminishing returns. The firm's core argument is straightforward: Collateralised Loan Obligations continue to offer a persistent and significant spread premium over comparably rated corporate bonds, both investment grade and high yield, while delivering structural protections that unsecured alternatives simply cannot replicate. With IG corporate spreads at historically tight levels, high yield facing duration risk and private credit grappling with liquidity queues, Fair Oaks positioned CLO mezzanine debt as the most attractive point in the fixed income landscape for investors seeking floating-rate income with daily liquidity.
The firm presented two UCITS funds designed to serve different risk-return needs within an institutional credit allocation. The Fair Oaks Dynamic Credit Fund (FODC), an investment-grade-weighted vehicle with a gross yield to maturity of 6.6% and near-zero interest-rate duration, offers a conservative entry point into the CLO capital structure with a track record extending back to 2016. The newer Fair Oaks CLO Mezzanine Opportunities Fund (FOCMO), targeting BB and B tranches with a gross YTM of 9.6%, is positioned as a liquid alternative to private credit, competitive at the yield level, but without lock-ups and with daily NAV. Central to the firm's pitch is a structural resilience argument: CLO debt has historically defaulted at a fraction of the rate of equivalently rated corporate bonds, and the asset class's built-in mechanisms, subordination, overcollateralisation tests and cash diversion, are designed to protect debtholders automatically as credit quality deteriorates, independent of manager discretion.
Alken Asset Management — High-Conviction European Equity at a Structural Inflection Point
Patricia Tomás, Investement Specialits at Alken Asset Management, presented their equity strategies against a macro backdrop defined by three converging forces: Middle East geopolitical risk, an accelerating AI investment cycle, and a striking valuation divergence between European and American equities. The firm's central argument was clear: while the US market trades at a 12-month forward P/E of 21.4x, above its 90th historical percentile, Europe sits at a far more attractive 15.1x, with domestically oriented European companies already outperforming their US-exposed peers in terms of 2025 EPS revisions. A structural CAPEX supercycle, driven by the EU Recovery and Resilience Fund, a five-year increase in EU military spending and the German infrastructure fund, is creating tailwinds particularly for Utilities and Telecom, the sectors with the highest capital expenditure intensity, while Alken's portfolios are most heavily concentrated in Industrials and Communication Services.
The firm presented two UCITS equity strategies built on the same high-conviction, bottom-up philosophy: the Alken Fund European Opportunities (all-cap) and the Alken Fund Small Cap Europe. The former ranks top quartile against its peer group across all timeframes, the latter top decile. Both carry portfolios cheaper than their benchmarks on key metrics — European Opportunities trades at 12.2x P/E versus 14.3x for the MSCI Europe — while delivering a materially superior long-term earnings growth profile, representing a compelling risk-reward setup in today's European equity landscape.
Helping professionals in making better investment decisions
This last edition of the 'Funds Meetings' in Monaco 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!
