ANTICIPATING THE UNPREDICTABLE

Wealth Creation and Management experts, Kamil Stender and Guy van der Walt from Helvetia Wealth speak to Niamh MacSweeney about their product offerings and what attractive investment opportunities are out there waiting to be exploited.

Chairman and co-founder of Helvetia Wealth, Ottmar Ruoff has more than 30 years of private banking experience. A former Deputy Global Head of Deutsche Bank, in 2001 he founded Swan Wealth, a bank that targeted the wealthiest families in Europe. Within three years of building up Swan Wealth, Ruoff successfully sold the business to Deutsche Bank. Kamil Stender, appreciating the opportunities for such a business, approached Ruoff and suggested they evolve the business model, while rolling the same service offering out to a much wider audience. This was the beginning of Helvetia Wealth, a business that has grown considerably, from seed to success, in only two years.

Kamil Stender, Chief executive and co-founder explains, “we thought the best location to do such business would be Switzerland, so we both moved to Zurich and founded Helvetia Wealth. In two years we have grown and now have 30 employees worldwide and offices in Zurich, Liechtenstein, London, Cape Town and soon to open in Dublin.”

Client Control

As asset managers, Helvetia Wealth will open a bank account for clients with any one of the big banks in Switzerland. “The client has ownership of their bank account; we have a limited power of attorney, which means that Helvetia Wealth are only able to execute transactions on behalf of the client,” explains Stender. With this bank account the client is able to trade in any listed security, on any exchange, anywhere in the world. According to Stender the client is able to access the 'whole wide universe' of investment products by working with the team of analysts and investment advisors employed at Helvetia Wealth. “There are about 8500 asset managers in Switzerland and about 400 private banks, so there are a lot of products and we try to find the best ones and advise our clients on that,” Stender says.

Off-Shore Investments

Helvetia Wealth is fully licensed in Switzerland as asset managers and under their Liechtenstein licence they are authorised to operate in any EU member state, which includes Ireland. Stender maintains that because the clients’ assets are held in their own bank account, this is further reassurance. Stender reassures clients not to be wary of investing off-shore. “If you are speaking to an Irish client who is Irish domicile and Irish tax resident, legally he is obligated to report his worldwide capital gains and income. We provide full tax reporting for the clients so that when they get to the end of the tax year we can provide a statement from their bank account, which will show all the capital gains and all the income that has been generated. They can take that to their local tax authority and pay the required tax,” reassures Stender. When dealing with large sums of money and investment opportunities, understandably investors need to feel that they can approach the company looking after their investments. “Therefore, if Helvetia Wealth is going to service the Irish market it is imperative that we have local representation in Ireland,” Stender says.

Local Representation

The Celtic Tiger has not gone unnoticed by the team at Helvetia Wealth. “I understand that Ireland is in the top four per capita of the most wealthiest countries in the world, so there is certainly a great amount of wealth being generated in Ireland. Our research indicates that with new wealth comes a greater demand for wealth management services,” Stender says. He also warns that although there is a huge amount of wealth, 71% of Irish wealth is still in property but that the returns on property are not as high as they used to be. He argues that investors are now looking to invest in new opportunities and that because Helvetia Wealth has a strong network with the leading institutions they are in a position to bring unique product offerings.

“Although there is a huge amount of liquidity, the choice of banking and banking services in Ireland is relatively limited and the range of investment products is small. We feel that if we can bring an interesting product mix that offers capital guarantee, which still has upside participation, we will be able to win a lot of those assets away from more traditional banks and financial service providers,” he says.

Investment Returns

For those looking for a good return on their investment the advice from Stender is simple. “The first basic question you must ask is what is your risk profile. Once you understand your risk portfolio, clients usually say the first thing I want you to do is not lose me any money and the second thing I want you to do is make me money. They want the security, and then they want the downside protection, while still having upside participation,” he says.

He also highlights the mini correction which was witnessed in February and says that with interest rates on the rise his market view is that we could be in for a more prolonged correction as we head towards the end of the year. In order to deal with this anticipated correction Stender says, we are building risk protection to our client portfolio. “We are looking at investment strategies that allow clients to have the opportunity to participate further for any upside gains that are still out there, while at the same time looking towards ‘battleship’ type defensive strategies for client portfolios, which will mean any downside movements will be protected against.”

Product Offering

Guy van der Walt, Managing Director of Helvetia Wealth says there are various options available to clients wishing to invest. “Irish Entrepreneur readers will have seen earlier this month, we have nearly completed a new IPO product, which offers positive returns under any market conditions. The performance of the 100% Capital Guaranteed EMTN is linked to equities, bonds and commodities and the note has a four year maturity. The note (B3 - Best of 3) is an institutional quality investment that allows you diversification across three main asset classes without any risk to your capital. It has been cleverly structured to generate maximum returns and allows you to take the guesswork out,” van der Walt says. Relatively new entrants into this market space, Helvetia Wealth are looking to build up trust and a reputation. In order to do this van der Walt insists that the client never loses control of their investment because they can log on at any time and view the current status of their account and see what instruments they have and how they are performing. “It’s this client control that is one of our strongest unique selling points, combined with the fact that our clients are so important to us,” he says.

Predicting Volatile Markets

According to van der Walt the analysts at Helvetia Wealth are extremely perceptive when forecasting which way the markets are moving. In October last year they predicted that 2007 would be a volatile year and that China would perform well. “As of July 2006 to date our China fund is up 58%. We are seeing markets such as Vietnam and Bangladesh as being good in the future. We consider ourselves to have a ‘speedboat’ agility in which we move and operate. Yes we do move at an institutional level, however we have the ability to move with the market. If we don’t like the market place we will do as we have done before; we will reduce our weighting or we will close our position. If we drop more than 15% we will exit and move the client's position back into cash into their account. We will move back in when we are happy or into another successful instrument,” van der Walt explains.

Forward Vision

Timing is crucial because predicting positive investment opportunities and executing a defensive strategy when markets turn volatile is not always easy. However Helvetia Wealth insist they are at the forefront, creating very interesting and profitable offerings for the market space and they plan to continue to support the Irish market with exciting investment opportunities in the future.

Contact: Guy van der Walt, Managing Director, Helvetia Wealth
T: +41 4456 72230
E: g.vanderwalt@helvetia-wealth.ch
W: www.helvetia-wealth.ch