Adriano B Lucatelli

Life

Adriano Lucatelli was born on 23 February 1966 in Uster near Zurich, Switzerland. His father’s family originated from Apulia in Southern Italy, and worked primarily in agriculture and the textile industry. His mother’s family comes from Central Switzerland. His great-grandfather was the entrepreneur and pioneer in electricity Zeno Durrer, and his great uncle was Ludwig von Moos, a member of the Swiss federal government (the Swiss Federal Council).

Education and career

Lucatelli studied international affairs and economics at the University of Nevada, Reno (BA) and at the London School of Economics (MSc). In 1995 he obtained a PhD from the University of Zurich with a dissertation on global financial market regulation. Parallel to his career he has also completed an MBA program at the University of Rochester (N.Y.), and an advanced management program at the Wharton School.

He is a co-founder and CEO of Descartes Finance AG, a Swiss robo-advisor, and Chairman of Additiv AG, a Swiss banking and insurance software provider.

Since 2012 he has also lectured at the University of Zurich on the political economy of international finance.

He started his career in 1994 at Credit Suisse, where he held various managerial positions in Zurich and London. From 2002 to 2009 Lucatelli was managing director and member of the management committee at UBS Switzerland in Lugano and Zurich. He then co-founded Swiss financial services group Reuss Private Group, and between 2009 and 2013 headed securities dealer and investment firm Reuss Private AG as its CEO.

Publications and commentaries

In the course of his career Lucatelli has published various articles in newspapers and journals, and has authored the books Finance and World Order (1997), Off-Target Corporate Governance (2013), and The Fine Art of Efficient Investing (2015).

He also writes guest commentaries for publication in the German online magazine stern.de, the Swiss finance portal finews.ch, the Swiss business portal moneycab.com and the ETF-platform 10x10.ch. In terms of Klout score, Lucatelli has been one of the five most influential Swiss economists on social media from 2015 to 2017.

Investment expertise

Lucatelli is a well-known financial expert. Before the dotcom crash in July 2000 he warned that the majority of the new internet firms would disappear, and in August 2011, at the peak of the euro crisis, he recommended that investors progressively get back into equities and steer clear of overpriced gold. He repeated his buy recommendation in March 2014, arguing that the markets were in a longer-term secular bull rally set to last for several years.

Added to this Lucatelli, in collaboration with Ernst Fehr, was the first to calculate the Market Adjusted Performance Indicator (MAPI) for listed Swiss companies. The indicator shows that good management systematically creates value for shareholders, reflected in the fact that shares of these companies outperform the broad Swiss Performance Index (SPI), in some cases by a considerable margin. The MAPI measures the performance of a company’s management using a relative performance indicator designed to capture management performance as holistically as possible by covering both short-term success and long-term impact. To do this, a listed company’s total shareholder return (TSR) is compared with the TSR of a customised, relevant peer group. This way external market shocks, for which the management should be neither rewarded nor penalised, can be excluded. The difference between the TSR of the company and that of its peer group provides insights into the actual performance of the CEO and top management. This makes management performance transparent.

Awards & Recognition

In 2011 he earned the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada. The same year he was nominated by Ernst & Young Switzerland for the Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Extraprofessional activities

Outside work, since 2009 Lucatelli has served as chairman of the readers’ commission of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper, and he funds two scholarships giving financial support to students at the University of Nevada.

Lucatelli is a life member of the Cantonal Art Museum in Lugano, an honorary member of Pi Sigma Alpha (the National Political Science Honor Society), and a member of the Athenaeum Club in London.

Quotes

"If finance can't improve the lives of people, we have no use for it."

"Visions also have to be solidly financed."

"What is wrong economically can't be right politically."