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.”