HEAD-TO-HEAD: Morgan Stanley IM versus Pictet AM

123456

Management review

“Both funds benefit from having been run by the same managers for more than a decade,” said McDermott.

Morgan Stanley Global Brands is run by a ten-strong team headed by William Lock, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1994. Previously, he worked at Credit Suisse First Boston’s Corporate Finance Group and was a management consultant with Arthur D. Little.

“There is an open and flat structure to the investment team, who are all London-based,” said McDermott.

“Each member is assigned two or three sectors to cover, and they will approach their stock analysis in their own individual way, while conscious of the key characteristics that the fund as a whole requires,” he said.

Turning to Pictet, Caroline Reyl has managed the fund since its launch in 2005, having joined Pictet Asset Management three years earlier.

Reyl began her career in 1994 at Lehman Brothers’ corporate finance division where she worked as an analyst in New York and London for three years. In 1997, she became a fund manager at GLG Partners, at the time part of Lehman Brothers, where she managed two long-only European funds and helped select long-short investments, according to McDermott.

Reyl was joined on the fund in 2006 by Laurent Belloni, who is another longstanding Pictet employee. He began his career at Pictet & Cie’s Financial Research Department in 2001 as an equity buy-side analyst for consumer staples and consumer goods.

123456