International Women’s Day 2023: Facts, Figures and Insights about Women at Quoniam

As Head of Fixed Income Portfolio Management, I lead an amazing team, manage client portfolios in fixed income and take care of our external image in this area – including client meetings.

Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business

I have been interested in financial markets since I was a student, so I specialised in this area at an early stage of my studies – with a particular focus on quant. The emphasis is on “since my studies”: During my school years, mathematics was not my thing at all. At university, I realised how useful mathematics can be when it has a real benefit – for example, quantifying social justice or forecasting unemployment figures.

I started my career at ERSTE Group as an analyst. In 2005, I moved into the fixed income specialisation and stayed with it. After 18 years, I still find this area very exciting. After working as a portfolio manager at Talanx, I joined Quoniam in 2016. I have been Head of Fixed Income Portfolio Management here for over a year now.

1. You’re always up to date with what’s going on in the world politically, economically and socially – otherwise you can’t do the job at all.
2. The job has a purpose. I don’t just invest money on behalf of our clients to increase capital in the abstract; my work finances pension schemes, for example, or enables companies to achieve their operational activities or strategic goals. Financing sustainable transformation is also playing an increasingly important role.
3. Empathy matters. The finance industry has a reputation for being “cold” and numbers-driven. I feel differently. We are in constant personal exchange with our clients and with each other in the team and the firm. We may be quants, but we still put people first!

As a portfolio manager, I am responsible for the global equity strategies MinRisk, Core and Core Plus together with my colleagues. I also oversee the Investments division’s innovation framework and deal with ESG issues.

Diploma in Economics from the Universidad Católica Argentina, Buenos Aires, with an exchange year at the TU Darmstadt, where I wrote my thesis in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom

I have always been passionate about financial markets, numbers and investments. I started my career at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers before working at Invesco in quant research and portfolio management. I joined Quoniam in 2004 in portfolio management. Quoniam has accompanied me through different stages of my life: from the early years of my professional career, when Quoniam was still small and had a start-up character, to starting a family until today. Back then, I was the first woman in the Investments division, and today about a quarter of my colleagues in the division are women, which makes me very happy.

I enjoy that the industry is super open and international and that I get to work with technological innovation. At Quoniam we have the opportunity to put our analytical and communication skills into practice, whether it is programming new tools to analyse portfolios, contributing to the development of our models, communicating with clients or working in a team. Everyone has a responsibility and the topics are diverse – from macroeconomic developments and corporate news to politics, the environment and society. In the investment world, everything comes together, you have to keep an eye on it all and make decisions based on the latest developments.

I also have many smart colleagues with whom I can constantly bounce ideas off and improve and learn in a friendly, informal atmosphere. Moreover, I appreciate the fact that my job is family friendly. Of course, the role is quite demanding, but at the same time I am independent and flexible in how I allocate my resources.

I am 50% Research Analyst Fixed Income at Quoniam and 50% doctoral candidate at TU Darmstadt, where I am doing my doctorate on Fixed Income Factor Investing in relation to sustainability and emerging markets.

• Bachelor: Economics & Business Administration with a focus on Finance, Goethe University Frankfurt
• Master: Finance & Capital Markets, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

I had always wanted to work in asset management. During my studies, I found the subject of investments the most exciting. I learnt a lot about my current specialty, fixed income, at university and eventually realized that I found it more exciting than equities because it was more complex and less researched.

After an internship at Union Investment in portfolio management, I heard about Quoniam through contacts. Shortly afterwards, I started there as a working student in research before becoming a doctoral candidate. Now I’m doing my doctorate at TU Darmstadt while working at Quoniam. The motivation for this was born at Quoniam. There are several colleagues here who have completed their doctorates – so there is a lot of positive competition and great role models who made me realise that I also wanted to do a doctorate.

The steep learning curve and the constant personal development, especially in dynamic times. I also love the cognitive diversity of my colleagues. They all have very different backgrounds and experiences and come from different industries, fields of study and areas of research. This complements each other perfectly and makes us stronger together. We are constantly learning from each other and creating value for our stakeholders.