Pictet Alternative Investments, the Geneva–based fund of funds unit of Pictet Group, a Swiss $447 billion asset manager founded in 1805, has managed to avoid several investment disasters that pummeled the fund-of-funds industry. Pictet’s self-proclaimed conservative investment process kept the firm away from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and Greenwich, Connecticut–based hedge fund Amaranth Advisors’ $6 billion bad bet on natural gas prices. Pictet Alternative Investments was not able to outmaneuver the 2008 financial crisis, however…