The company

Féchy, VD

History of Funds


The funds offer many benefits to all investors and their protection has been strengthened as economic cycles and regulatory developments have increased.

The history of the funds goes back to the 18th century. The first mutual fund was invented when a Dutch trader brought together several investors for the first time to acquire shares in a fund dubbed "Union is strength". This inventor discovered that a diversification of risk constitutes a safety factor. Subsequently funds have boomed since the start of the 20th century.

In 1949, the first alternative funds (combining financial bets upward but also downward) were created by Alfred Winslow Jones, former journalist of Fortune magazine, and were intended only for professional investors. In 1969, Georges C. Karlweis decided to give particularly wealthy private investors access to this type of high-yielding investment, by creating a new investment vehicle: Fund of Hedge Funds.

By this time Switzerland already had a substantial base of wealthy international clients. The country displayed great interest in the matter and developed a range of new lines of work in the asset management industry, including fund management.

Gérifonds was born in 1970, simultaneously with the implementation of the first Swiss legislation on investment funds. It is thus among the top fund managers in Switzerland and among the first members of the SFAMA (Swiss Funds & Asset Management Association), founded in 1992. The number of fund managers in Switzerland (less than 50 only) has remained stable since 2000s for all types of funds.

It was only at the end of the 1980s that Luxembourg became an important hub of the Fund Industry. Nevertheless, Switzerland has remained a great expert in asset management, in particular through funds. The country’s attractiveness resides in its qualities of precision, financial knowledge in a stable political and economic environment.

Fund management, the Swiss equivalent of the Luxembourg ManCo, remains a profession of experts.