we prefer to pray alone.”
TRANSCRIPT
85 T H E G R E AT M I N D S O F I N V E S T I N G T H E G R E AT M I N D S O F I N V E S T I N G 86
OPINIONS FROM OUTSIDERS ARE NOT WELCOME.
“WE LIKE TO DO EVERYTHING
OURSELVES. WHILE OTHERS MAY BE SINGING A CHORUS OF
HOSANNAS, WE PREFER TO PRAY
ALONE.”
Georg von Wyss
Photographed September 4, 2014
Frankfurt, Germany
87 T H E G R E AT M I N D S O F I N V E S T I N G T H E G R E AT M I N D S O F I N V E S T I N G 88
Georg von Wyss owes his career as a value investor
to chance. It was 1992, and he was working as a young
analyst at Bank Vontobel, writing a report about Switzer-
land and the European Union that was “probably not worth
the money the bank paid me for it.” A colleague asked
him to help out by attending a corporate presentation in-
stead. So he borrowed his aunt’s car and drove to the event
in a suburb of Lausanne.
The company in question was Nokia-Maillefer, a sub-
sidiary of the Nokia Group. Skimming through its finan-
cial statements, he noticed that the current assets were
worth more than the company’s entire market value.
He realized instantly that this was one of those rare
bargains he had read about in Benjamin Graham’s book
The Intelligent Investor: “I thought, wow, this is the net-net
situation Graham wrote about—probably one of the last in
Switzerland.” There was something thrilling to von Wyss
about the idea that you could buy valuable assets for next
to nothing, if only you knew what you were doing. All of
a sudden, the future seemed clear. “Value is my thing,” he
decided. “That’s what I want to do from now on.”
Switzerland was not exactly a hotbed of value investing. But
von Wyss had the advantage of an international upbringing.
He had lived in Zurich until the age of seven and then
moved to Michigan, where his father worked in banking.
As a result, von Wyss spent much of his youth in the U.S.
and went to Columbia University, earning an undergraduate
degree in economics and a master’s in English and com-
parative literature. After that, he received an MBA from
Dartmouth, then spent a couple of years as a financial
journalist before realizing that “I would really much rather
be an analyst.”
Georg von Wyss
by Gisela Baur
Thanks to this background, von Wyss is equally com-
fortable in both countries. So he quit his banking job
in Switzerland and headed back to the U.S. to work for
Michael Price, one of America’s most vaunted value investors.
While von Wyss could easily have settled in the States, his
wife agreed to stay there only “for a couple of years on the
condition that we return right after.”
In 1995, they flew home to Zurich, where von Wyss landed
a job at a Swiss bank, Rüd, Blass & Cie. It was there that
he met Thomas Braun, his future business partner. Braun
recalls: “I noticed Georg’s keenness to be an analyst right
away…. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he confronted
me immediately with his deep-value approach.”
Two years later, they founded Braun, von Wyss & Müller
Value Investing with a business partner, Erich Müller. Since
then, the firm has generated strong returns by importing
the disciplined value approach that von Wyss had learned
in America. Their Classic Global Equity Fund, which cur-
rently owns about 30 stocks from around the world, has
averaged 10.4 percent a year since 1997, versus 3.2 percent
a year for the MSCI World Index.
According to von Wyss, one reason for this success is the
elaborate database system their investment team uses
to coordinate the research process. He takes great pride
in the database, which incorporates everything from stan-
dardized spreadsheets to checklists to corporate earnings
estimates. “We are able to work in an extremely structured
way,” he says, and “everyone has easy access to the work
of the others.” The database also includes a watch list of
potential investments, with prices constantly updated.
“We never have to work blind. That’s incredibly reassuring—
especially during a crash.”
Braun and von Wyss make the final decisions on which
stocks make it into the portfolio. “It may sound a bit
corny,” says von Wyss, “but we know that we can rely on
each other.” They sit together in a big room, along with
Müller and their five employees. The goal is to promote
a healthy exchange of information. “It’s important that
we not only profit from each other but can also benefit
from constructive criticism.”
On the other hand, opinions from outsiders are not
welcome. “We like to do everything ourselves,” says von
Wyss. “While others may be singing a chorus of hosannas,
we prefer to pray alone.” Nothing gives him greater plea-
sure than when his team buys an out-of-favor stock and
is subsequently proven right because they were “smarter
or more aggressive or simply did the research a bit better”
than the competition.
Over the years, this small firm has earned an outsized
reputation as one of Europe’s leading practitioners of value
investing. But von Wyss, now 51, is not about to rest on his
laurels. As he sees it, he and Braun are like cyclists in the
Tour de France who are fighting their way up the moun-
tain, not far from the front of the pack. “They know they
are among the best in the world,” he says. “But somewhere
up front, there are still a couple of other cyclists—and
they’ve got to catch up with them.”