RankiaPro Funds Meeting in Paris: Insights from Fund Managers
2 MAR, 2026
The latest edition of the RankiaPro Funds Meetings took place on Wednesday, February 18th, at the prestigious Hotel Plaza Athenée . The event brought together top investment professionals to discuss market trends, investment strategies, and economic outlooks for the coming months.
During the session, attendees had the opportunity to engage with distinguished speakers, including:
- Ronald Richter, Regional Director, Investment Strategy - Europe from Bitwise.
- Will James, Portfolio Manager from Guinness Global Investors.
- David Montoya, CFA, Client Portfolio Manager from La Française (Cigogne Management).
- Kamal Chancari, Senior Portfolio Manager from Palatine 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.
Ronald Richter, Regional Director, Investment Strategy - Europe from Bitwise.
Bitwise is a global specialist asset manager focused on digital assets, with more than USD 15 billion in client assets across its platform. Since 2017, the firm has managed a range of delta-one, index and active strategies across ETPs, ETFs, separately managed accounts, private funds, staking and hedge fund strategies in the U.S. and Europe.+1
In Europe, Bitwise offers physically backed crypto Exchange Traded Products (ETPs). Key solutions include the Bitwise Core Bitcoin ETP (BTC1), designed to provide exposure to Bitcoin with a current total expense ratio (TER) of 0.05%*, the Bitwise MSCI Digital Assets Select 20 ETP (DA20), which seeks to track an index representing approximately 90% of digital asset market capitalization, and a range of Staking ETPs that incorporate staking mechanisms within their structure.
The European ETP suite is domiciled in Germany, with digital assets held in cold storage custody with regulated custodians.
Will James, Portfolio manager from Guinness Global Investors.
After a strong 2025, the opportunity in European equities is to benefit from fiscal re-awakening while avoiding, if possible, the noise created by global geopolitics. However, for a truly long-term approach to Europe, the Guinness European Equity Income Fund goes deeper, aiming to harness the compounding power of high-quality European businesses by focusing on fundamentals. It takes a high-conviction, total-return approach to equity income investing across the market cap spectrum. Its quality and valuation discipline allows a focus on the factors that matter for dividends: companies with persistent high returns and sound financials while not overpaying. It forms part of proven equity income franchise from Guinness Global Investors and applies its distinctive equal-weight portfolio methodology which adds structural risk management.
Portfolio Manager Will James brings over 20 years’ experience to search for capital and dividend growth with the key tenets of quality, value, dividend growth, and conviction.
David Montoya, CFA, Client Portfolio Manager from La Française.
Cigogne Management is a specialized alternative asset manager based in Luxembourg, integrated within the Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale ecosystem. With over 20 years of experience, the firm manages approximately €2 billion in assets, focusing on delivering absolute performance through arbitrage strategies with low correlation to traditional asset classes.
Key Strategies and Solutions
The manager leverages the infrastructure of CIC CIB to identify opportunities across several specialized areas:
- Stork Fund Dynamic Multi-Strategies: The flagship multi-strategy fund with a track record of over 18 years, targeting a return of ESTR + 3-5%.
- Cigogne UCITS Credit Opportunities: A UCITS-compliant solution focused on credit arbitrage, aiming for ESTR + 2-3% with volatility controlled below 3%.
- Diversified Expertise: Specialized coverage in merger arbitrage (M&A), convertible bonds, sovereign fixed income, and securitizations such as ABS/MBS and CLOs.
Cigogne distinguishes itself through a quality-driven approach—prioritizing Senior tranches and Investment Grade assets—and dynamic risk management enabling the strategy to seize market opportunities within a rigorously controlled and disciplined risk framework.
Kamal Chancari, Senior Portfolio Manager from Palatine Asset Management.
Palatine Asset Management, the premium boutique of Groupe BPCE, presents its Palatine Amérique fund, a pioneering solution classified as Art. 8 (SFDR). Managed by Kamal Chancari, the strategy utilizes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for the scientific processing of data within the U.S. large-cap equity market.
The investment process, named Finaipro, analyzes more than 2,500 financial, macroeconomic, and behavioral variables for each security. This technology makes it possible to eliminate human psychological biases and optimize stock selection through a scientific bottom-up approach.
The resulting portfolio is optimized and composed of approximately 50 stocks. The strategy aims to capture the innovation potential of the United States — which already represents more than 70% of the MSCI World — by combining the computational power of deep learning with expert supervision to generate robust long-term performance.
