Twelve Francs and Twenty-Seven Cents

Born in the land of chocolate and fine watches when Rock’n’roll first topped the music charts, I became a (Swiss) banker, starting out in Lausanne, then Wall Street, and after that the City. In early 2008, after 20 years as a Swiss equity broker, I realised my lifelong dream of launching my own investment fund: the Swiss Equity Discovery Fund (sedf). But when the Global Financial Crisis hit later that year, the fund went under the minimum size threshold and I had to learn a new word: resilience. I made it through the debacle and ran the fund for almost 14 years, until 2021, just months before Putin’s Russia marched into Ukraine. By that point, the share price had almost quadrupled from its lows. In this book I will take you on a pilgrimage and share with you my lessons learned about what is more an art than a science. If you decide to embark on your own independent investor’s journey, “Twelve francs and twenty-seven cents” (the book’s title and its price) is good value for money.