Navigating the financial landscape can be a treacherous, yet profitable, endeavor. In order to minimize the pitfalls, many rely upon professional guidance.

At du Pasquier Asset Management we specialize in assisting the high net worth client and the small to mid-size institutional marketplace by providing customized portfolio management processes that derive from our proprietary quantitative investment methodologies.

Wall Street has always suggested that uncovering value requires abandoning prudent, risk averse strategies. We believe that portfolios can succeed through diversification: diversification of risk, diversification of asset classes, diversification of discipline. In fact, we believe that asset allocation plays a more important role in portfolio capital gains potential than does any individual security within that portfolio.

This top down perspective lends historical credence to the notion that market volatility can be diminished by asset balancing and following longer term demographics than by following the influences of daily current events or manic market psychology. We meet and satisfy our client concerns through the collective wisdom of our Investment Policy Committee team representing over a century of Wall Street experience.

The right professional money management organization should be prepared to relieve its clients of the burden and uncertainty of the day-to-day contingencies that might affect net worth security and growth potential. du Pasquier Asset Management offers proficiency in growth, value, and balanced equity investment strategies as well as fixed income stewardship for private clients and institutional and corporate cash management. Each approach can be customized to meet the risk/reward requirements of our clients to insure that portfolio balance is suitable for that need.
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Our Team

Scotty C. George
Chairman
Chief Executive Officer

Mr.  George is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Investment Strategist of du Pasquier Asset Management.  He began his career on Wall Street in the late 1970s.  Mr. George has held various posts including Chairman and Chief Investment Strategist with Corinthian Partners Asset Management LLC; Managing Director with Laidlaw Asset Management, a global investment banking firm headquartered in New York City; Vice President of Asset Management at E. F. Hutton and Paine Webber.  Mr. George is also a frequent contributor to business media including CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN and Business Week; played professional golf and, as a child, appeared on Broadway.  Mr. George graduated from the University of Florida. (Jump to top)

John Eills
Senior Vice President

Mr. Eills was associated with Prudential Securities for 18 years as Senior Vice President and Prudential Securities Portfolio Manager. Previously, he served also with L. F. Rothschild Unterberg Towbin and Company, Cowen and Company, and Eastman Dillon Union Securities and Company. Prior to entering investment practice, Mr. Eills worked in corporation management with the Harshaw Chemical Company, Martin-Marieta Corporation and as Vice President of Polarad Electronics Company. Mr. Eills attended Harvard College and holds an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School. (Jump to top)

Hervé van Caloen

Mr. van Caloen began his career as an international equity analyst at Scudder, Stevens and Clark where he managed the Scudder International Variable Equity Fund. In 1989 he joined Mitchell Hutchins where he launched the Paine Webber Europe Growth Fund. He left in 1992 to become the head of the international team at Provident Capital Management, where he oversaw both its international and emerging market funds. Subsequently, Mr. van Caloen worked as a First Vice President of Schroeder Asset Management, and as a Partner at Simms Capital Management. He is a Belgian citizen and has an MBA from Claremont University. (Jump to top)

Investment Disciplines

Growth Portfolio

The manager specializes in a growth discipline which emphasizes a top-down, fundamental and technical analysis of securities designed to identify equities and/or groups that demonstrate performance derived from superior earnings and revenue growth, or the potential of such future growth. Typically, those sectors the manager emphasizes include emerging market leaders such as technology, communications and biotech.

Investment Process:

The manager relies upon extensive computer modeling to isolate sectors that exhibit strong or rapidly improving relative strength. Historically, the best relative strength candidates emerge as a result of: earnings, earnings acceleration, revenue growth, and a high return on equity. This fundamental, top-down approach assures that equity selection candidates are screened on a consistent basis. Candidates may be highly concentrated in a few groups or sectors, or may be well diversified amongst many names or sectors. Additionally, the selection process may be sensitive to reversals in fundamental conditions and allow for "short" market selections. Typically, the manager will not be net short the market, but could, alternately, be long, long and short, or in cash, depending upon market conditions. Research is divided into daily, monthly, and long term time frames and may result in recommended equities with similar duration. The manager, through the use of proprietary models, continually (daily) gauges the velocity of the overall market to determine which sectors display overall relative strength, and endeavors to quantify, or rank, individual stocks and the categories into which they fit. (Jump to top)

Balanced Portfolio

du Pasquier Asset Management (DPAM) specializes in a balanced investment approach derived from a proprietary asset allocation model using stocks, bonds and cash. Target clients include high net worth retail and mid to small size institutions. Our discipline, which focuses on low risk/low beta asset allocation strategies, reflects both domestic and global market efficiencies. Above all, asset allocation is adjusted to reflect sector and macro momentum indices, including interest rate directional changes, earnings, earnings velocity and currency risk.

Investment Process:

DPAM focuses its discipline around one primary tenet: asset allocation is of greater significance to portfolio accretion than is any individual security within that portfolio. Using computer models and proprietary market research evaluation, DPAM identifies intensity of market volatility and specific sector valuations to create low risk investment scenario models. After the macro levels are established, we structure a top-down investment approach using bonds, cash, and high and mid-cap equities evaluated upon a fundamental and technical review. All stocks selected must fit into carefully screened patterns of earnings growth and price appreciation. DPAM reviews approximately 5000 companies from which we isolate the top performing stocks within each market sector. We invest in approximately 70 stocks when fully invested. Additionally, our sell discipline is extremely rigid. If an equity or bond meets our anticipated price appreciation potential, or if market factors create a change in a securities relative valuation, we control portfolio liability by executing a sell order. Our asset evaluation is similarly reflected in our fixed income portfolio structure. During periods of declining rates, we attempt to maximize income and capital gains potential by identifying the optimal combination of yield and value within maturity scales. During rising interest rate periods, we shorten our maturities to increase liquidity levels for future investment considerations. Historically, we find our bond portfolio serves to buttress our equity returns, and averages between short and intermediate term maturities. (Jump to top)

Value Portfolio

The manager subscribes to the notion that most "Buy low, sell high" philosophies fail to address certain fundamental pitfalls such as earnings-driven current events or volatility-induced valuation spikes. His discipline, rather, focuses on longer-term sustainable earnings and the stock prices that are usually supported by that kind of earning power. This approach tends to obviate these traps and permits the construction of diversified, equally-weighted portfolios that possess below average volatility yet higher returns than an index-only methodology. This long-term performance refutes the conventional wisdom that risk and reward are necessarily positively correlated.

Investment Process:

The manager differentiates between "vertical" and "horizontal" corporate characteristics to explain the uniqueness of his approach. Whereas vertical commonality identifies industry-specific traits, horizontal qualities encompass attributes shared by all businesses that correlate with sustainable earnings and stock performance. These cross sectional variables were originally developed for inside strategic-planning purposes to identify which business strategy had the highest probability of maximizing the shareholder's total return. Subsequently, in the form of algorithms, these inputs were transposed into portfolio management models.

Historically, these models have predicted the direction of earnings and stock prices over time in the large majority of cases by revealing difficult to see inefficiencies that provide many extraordinary profit opportunities. By categorizing and ranking stocks in a matrix on the basis of their being above or below normal earnings and valuation levels, four quadrants are produced: under earners/under valued(I); over earners/overvalued(II); over earners/undervalued(III); and under earners/overvalued(IV).

Since companies migrate toward "normal", quadrant I produces the best buys because under earning/undervalued companies produce faster than average increases in price relative to all other companies, while the opposite occurs in quadrant II (best sells). Earnings will probably rise and the discount from normal value will dissipate in the former, and conversely in the latter. This selection process also benefits overall asset allocation in industries by identifying overweight/underweight probabilities by sector using only the most likely-to-perform equity selections. To enhance performance even further for hedged accounts in trading markets, gains from short sales of quadrant II stocks typically add to above average gains in quadrant I selections. (Jump to top)

Fixed Income Portfolio

du Pasquier Asset Management (DPAM) fixed income managers believe that long term superior total performance is achieved through active portfolio management. DPAM is responsive to fundamental key economic variables such as monetary policy, economic activity, shape of the yield curve, inflation, and the direction and velocity of real interest rates. DPAM's primary objectives for fixed income portfolios is yield and preservation of capital. In the taxable markets, the manager's evaluation of credit worthiness of issues is oriented towards maintaining low risk/high return opportunity. In the tax exempt bond market, DPAM is responsive to Federal and State-specific tax considerations, and can customize portfolios to meet client preferences.

Investment Process:

The manager utilizes a top down approach to the portfolio selection process, focusing on maturity/duration factors, as well as evaluating the landscape for optimum income/yield considerations. Reviewing a broad range of fixed income product, DPAM reviews each client's objectives relative to pockets of opportunity in select sectors (states) and invests in those issues which offer the best relative value and capital appreciation potential. To identify those issues and maturities that depict outstanding total return probability, the manager applies multiple tests of credit quality, screening issuers for ratings, size, and anticipated ratings upgrades or downgrades in individual sectors. The portfolio's duration is adjusted around the manager's selected benchmark index. The manager selects only those issuers that rank highest in terms of maturity/duration and total yield potential. Typically, when fully invested, our portfolio will consist of 10 to 20 issues and the expected turnover ratio is relatively low. (Jump to top)