Swiss Ownership Trends – Expanded Analysis of Institutional Investment

Ipreo – in cooperation with the Swiss IR club – analysed the ownership of the constituents of the combined free float of Swiss listed securities in the Swiss Performance Index (“SPI”) for institutional ownership trends and themes. At of February 2016, there were 230 constituents in the SPI.

Ipreo specifically analysed institutional changes by sector, market capitalisation, region, turnover and investment style to uncover the types of institutions that are most active within the SPI. Sectors have been looked at on both price performance and institutional activity to understand the correlation between the two. Additionally, trading venues were analysed against the major indices to look at trading transparency over the period.

Key Point of the Analysis are listed here:

  • Norges Bank remains the largest holder in Swiss equities, with Healthcare also continuing to be their preferred sector followed by Financials.

  • Second largest holder UBS, bought across most sectors with the exception of Consumer Services and Technology.

  • A number of sovereign wealth funds feature in the top buyers namely Singapore’s Temasek, Norges and Qatar Investment Authority. Consumer services and Financials were the main beneficiaries of this activity.

  • Once again, Franklin Resources features twice in the top ten sellers. Templeton Global Advisors continues to lead the sellers, now only holding positions in the Healthcare, Financials and Industrials. The Industrials sector is again the only one to have benefitted from increases from Templeton and the firm is the only institution amongst the top sellers to have bought Industrials.

  • Top buyer Credit Suisse, increased its exposure to all sectors except Consumer Services and Utilities, they are the third largest holder of Swiss equities.

  • North American investors are the largest holders in all macro sectors bar Energy and Utilities, where Domestic demand is highest.

  • Domestic investors are in the minority in Large and Mega cap companies. North American investment continues to have a preference towards Large and Mega cap stocks.

  • Western European investors were the largest buyers adding $1.4bn which was entirely offset by sales from North American investors of $4.7bn. All other regions posted minor changes over the period.

For more information, see the details of the study here.