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Do you share our interest in value-based management? Do you enjoy working with the latest technologies and approaches to quantitative analysis of business drivers? If so, then our team may be just right for you.

Obermatt offers you the opportunity to learn and work with the most modern methods and analytical techniques. Our open and collegial team environment welcomes your expertise and creative thinking.

We strive to provide an inter-cultural environment which supports flexible working styles, particularly when family or philanthropic responsibilities are dominant. In return, we expect loyalty, flexibility and an active contribution to the team.

Obermatt is currently seeking:

• Currently there are no positions available at Obermatt

If you are interested in pursuing a career with Obermatt, send us an email with your complete CV to office@obermatt.com. We look forward to receiving your application.

Obermatt sponsors academic work in the area of indexing operating performance and indexing investment performance. We discuss topics with applicants but are also actively seeking contributions in the following areas:

• Developing quality criteria and a testing concept for peer groups of indexing operating performance.

For indexing operating performance, peer groups are selected that have high similarity in the business model and the business cycle of the indexed company under observation. The thesis develops a quality test for the peer groups that takes into account that the similarity of the cycle is more important than the distribution of the variable. Operating variables such as Sales and EBIT and market variable such as total shareholder return are used for assessing de degree of correlation. Other factors that are important in the peer group definition are similarity of products and competitors. This semantical aspect should also be part of the quality test.

• Empirical testing of peer groups for indexing operating performance.

Once a quality test for peer groups for indexing operating performance is established, the quality test should be executed and verified with real Obermatt peer groups.The peer groups to be tested are those for Obermatt customers where peers are manually selected and those of the public Bonus Index (SPI, DAX, FTSE100, etc.) where peers are selected using the Obermatt search algorithm.There are a total of about 400 peer groups to be tested. After testing, the result should be assessed and verified with expert opinions on the peer groups.

• Identifying and quantifying of distorting and diluting factors when using financial research databases like Thomson Reuters for indexing operating performance.

For indexing operating performance, profit and sales growth data of peer companies are used from commercial databases such as Thomson Reuters. The data typically includes non-operating effects such as mergers & acquisitions, restructuring and amortization. The theses should name the relevant distorting effects and establish processes and methods to identify and eliminate these effects. These processes are then applied to a SMI/SPI Obermatt Bonus Index data set to quantify the effect and calculate the difference to an untreated data set.

• Transparency in executive compensation and behavioral economics

The last twenty years have seen a steady increase in transparency in executive compensation. This was primarily driven by the desire to stop or even reverse the increase in executive compensation. Instead, the result has been just the opposite. There is ample reason to believe that experiences from behavioral economics such as the endowment effect and the character of CEOs as Veblen goods could explain this phenomena. The thesis should explore the application of experiments in behavioral economics on transparency in executive compensation. Support is provided by Hermann Stern and behavioral finance researchers at the Department of Economics at the University of Zürich.

• Incentive effects of indexed performance measurement and bonus plans

Bengt Holmstrom has argued that due to an information deficit between principle and agent, the only way to assess performance of the agent is to use relative or indexed performance measurement. While theoretically consistent, the question of behavioral effects on performance remains open. This thesis evaluates the incentive effects of indexed performance measurement by desk research in behavioral economics and by interviews with companies using indexed performance measurement. Contacts for such companies are provided by Obermatt.

• Exploring avenues of creating an Ethics Index along the lines of the Obermatt Bonus Index

The Zürich based financial research firm Obermatt proposes to use a so called Bonus Index to reward managers for the financial performance of their companies. The Obermatt Bonus Index bridges the information gap between executives, boards and shareholders as identified by Bengt Holmstrom in his doctoral theses in 1970. However, it only measures strategic and operating performance and not normative performance. This thesis explores the avenues of indexing normative or ethical performance of companies based on Peter Ulrich’s concept of integrated business ethics.