CQS New City Equity will be a launching a new portfolio for Raphael Pitoun, who joined the group in the second half of 2018.
The CQS New City Global Equity fund will invest in developed market stocks with a market cap of no less than $3bn. It will focus on the US, Europe and Japan.
Pitoun joined CQS in September 2018 from Seilern Investment Management, where he was chief investment officer and portfolio manager on the Seilern Stryx World Growth. He has close to 20 years’ experience in equity investing.
The fund will be based around a concentrated portfolio of long-term holdings. Pitoun and the investment team will undertake rigorous fundamental analysis of the market to identify exceptional companies, typically offering high quality products and services with sustainable business models, a good history of innovation and excellent internal organisation.
“There is clear evidence that the bulk of stock markets’ performance is delivered by only a handful of listed equities,” Pitoun said. “By focusing selectively on these exceptional companies, with strong but comparatively predictable returns, we believe we are well positioned to deliver consistent outperformance over the cycle.”
Performance of fund vs sector and index under Pitoun
Source: FE Analytics
Pitoun was manager of the Seilern Stryx World Growth fund between July 2014 and May 2018. During his time on the fund, its 101.79 per cent total return was the seventh highest of the 240 funds in the IA Global sector.
CQS New City Equity is the long only open-ended equities investment business of CQS, which is a multi-strategy asset manager founded in 1999.