RankiaPro Funds Meeting in Geneva: Insights from Fund Managers
1 APR, 2026
The latest edition of the RankiaPro Funds Meetings took place on Thursday, March 26th, at the prestigious Ritz Carlton in Geneva. The event brought together top investment professionals to discuss market trends, investment strategies, and economic outlooks for the coming months.
- Patricia Tomás Investment Specialist from Alken Asset Management.
- Joffrey Czurda, Managing Director - CEO from Cigogne Management
- Justin Warton, Portfolio Manager from ECP Asset Management.
- Ronny Ruohomaa, Director, International Business Development from EVLI
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.
Patricia Tomás Investment Specialist from Alken Asset Management.
Alken Fund Absolute Return Europe is a Luxembourg-domiciled UCITS long/short equity strategy managed by Nicolas Walewski and Marc Festa, launched in February 2011. The fund seeks capital growth and positive absolute return through flexible long and short exposures to European equities, using transferable securities, derivatives and index futures. With €143m in AUM, the strategy operates with an average net equity exposure of approximately 45% and an average gross exposure around 110%, actively adjusting positioning to reflect market conditions. Since inception, the fund has delivered +107.3% cumulative return, with a 5Y annualised Sharpe Ratio of 1.1 and Sortino of 1.0. The portfolio is concentrated in Industrials (24.4%) and Communication Services (11.3%), with France (26.1%) and the UK (14.2%) as the leading country exposures. The fund reduced net exposure in September 2025 to reflect a more conservative market view.
Joffrey Czurda, Managing Director - CEO from Cigogne Management
Cigogne Management, the alternative management company of Groupe La Française, leverages over two decades of experience in arbitrage strategies to deliver consistent absolute performance across all market conditions. The firm provides a comprehensive range of solutions tailored to meet diverse client needs, including Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), UCITS Thematic funds, and structured products. Supported by CIC CIB, the shared expertise allows Cigogne Management to greatly benefit from the group's subsidiary specialized in market operations and proprietary investments.
The presentation highlights two primary solutions: the Stork Fund Dynamic Multi-Strategies, an alternative fund of funds with dynamic allocation targeting a yield of €STER + 3 to 5% using decorrelated and niche arbitrage strategies; and the Cigogne UCITS - Credit Opportunities, a multi-strategy alternative funds (SFDR Article 8) aiming for a yield of €STER + 2 to 3% with controlled volatility. Overall, Cigogne's approach prioritizes dynamic allocation, diversification, a strong quality bias, and an opportunistic approach to capitalize on market volatility.
Justin Warton, Portfolio Manager from ECP Asset Management.
ECP Asset Management, founded in 2012 by Dr. Manny Pohl and Jared Pohl with offices in Sydney and London, is a global quality-growth equity manager with approximately 200 years of combined industry experience across its team. The ECP Global Growth Fund UCITS, launched in March 2023, is a global all-cap, high-conviction, long-only strategy benchmarked against the MSCI World Index, targeting outperformance of 2–4% annually over five years. The fund typically holds 30 stocks with a mid-cap bias, focusing on businesses exhibiting sustained high returns on equity, above-system revenue growth, and low leverage. As of February 2026, top holdings included AppLovin (6.6%), Block Inc (6.2%) and Copart (4.8%), with a significant allocation to Information Technology (29.3%) and Financials (18.3%). The underlying strategy (gross, USD) delivered +47.7% in 2023 and +27.6% in 2024, though 2025 saw underperformance of -16.6% relative to benchmark amid a challenging environment for quality growth stocks.
Ronny Ruohomaa, Director, International Business Development from 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.
Helping professionals in making better investment decisions
This last edition of the 'Funds Meetings' in Geneva 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!
