Damien Antoine Buchet

Principal Europe seeks to deliver competitive performance tailored to the client’s desired outcomes for risk, return, and income potential. The firm’s strategies include equities, fixed income, real estate, asset allocation and listed infrastructure.

AXA-IM Paris is an active, long-term manager which utilizes a quantitative investment approach that analyzes fundamental data culled through in-house and external research. They employ growth strategies based on bottom-up stock selection. The firm’s analysts work closely with portfolio managers to perform proprietary quantitative risk management. The investment teams tend to be small and are specialized by investment type, sector, region and product type.

Principal AM has divided their investment management operations into several unique boutiques. The equities boutiques render advice primarily for equity securities. They utilize internally generated fundamental research that focuses on bottom-up stock selection within a sophisticated comparative framework. The fixed income boutique renders advice primarily for debt securities. Their currency boutiques render advice for active and passive currency. Applying a fundamental-discretionary, macroeconomic theme-based investment approach to portfolio management, the strategies include absolute return as well as base currency hedging strategies.

Finisterre Capital is an active, opportunistic manager which aims to achieve uncorrelated absolute returns by investing globally in emerging markets. They employ an investment process based primarily on fundamental macroeconomic and political analysis and depending on the client may also include bottom-up fundamental credit analysis. The process is designed to identify improving/deteriorating external credit spreads, appreciating and depreciating currencies and rising and falling yields in the fixed income markets and to a limited extent equity markets. Their trading style consists of the application of an active and non-benchmarked investment approach to emerging market financial markets. This means that the firm consistently seeks to identify high conviction long and short positions. Positions are selected using a top-down macro process as well as bottom-up analysis but there is frequent tactical trading which is consistent with these longer term fundamental themes. Overall capital preservation is emphasized in the construction and embedded risk of the portfolios.