Practical ethics and funds management

Pioneering the cause for ethical investing following its inception in 1994, it is no surprise that Hunter Hall was the clear front-runner and the first winner of this year’s inaugural Ethical/SRI Money Management/Lonsec Fund Manager of the Year Award. 

Taking out the top spot with the Hunter Hall Global Ethical Trust fund, Lonsec commended the manager for its strength and consistency in the responsible investing sector. 

“The trust holds a number of key attractions and under the leadership of founder and CIO Peter Hall, the firm continues to make a leading contribution to the responsible investment sector in Australia,” Lonsec said. 

Hunter Hall was hailed by Lonsec as a “deep value-style contrarian investment manager with a long heritage of ethical investment in Australian and global equity products”.

The Global Ethical Trust is its benchmark-unaware unhedged global equity product that typically offers greater exposure to smaller companies and developing economies. 

It is the firm’s true commitment and high ethical screening process that makes it a standout winner in this category.

The manager applies a highly stable negative ethical screen that seeks to avoid investment in a range of excluded corporate activities, including companies deriving revenues from the manufacture and sale of weapons, tobacco, gambling and intensive animal farming. 

“Under the leadership of founder and CIO Peter Hall, the firm continues to make a leading contribution to the responsible investment sector in Australia and the Trust has performed comparatively well in 2010,” Lonsec said. 

Michael Walsh, head of strategy and development at Hunter Hall, said the firm has worked hard to raise the bar when it comes to ethical investing.

He said: “When Peter Hall started this firm in 1994, the ethical policy was a personal preference, so it is amazing to think we are now working in an industry dedicated to responsible investing.”

Walsh continued: “Our performance over the last year has been consistent. It is a hard sector in which to make money and the fact that the fund made 8 per cent is creditable.

"We are also very proud of our charitable giving policy which means we donate 5 per cent of pre-tax profits to charity. Last year we donated about $1 million to charity. Our belief is that it is important to be dedicated to the space.” 

Perpetual Investments was also commended for its Ethical/SRI Fund which has also performed consistently well in a volatile market.

The fund invests in a portfolio of quality Australian shares of socially responsible companies and uses the same investment process as its broad Australian equities strategies as well as an additional screening process to determine suitable funds. 

John Sevior, head of equities at Perpetual Investments, attributed the fund manager’s success in this category to its large, stable and experienced team and research policy.

He said: “Socially responsible investment research requires specialist skills and is aimed at evaluating a company’s performance in a range of socially responsible criteria which are, in general, unrelated to a company’s financial performance. 

“The fund has remained true to label by applying Perpetual’s time-tested process which focuses on quality stocks in order to provide downside risk protection, while our extensive internal research enables us to identify stocks at attractive valuations,” he added.