Finalists remain true to label
This year’s finalists in theMoney Management/Assirt Fund Manager of the Year Australian equities category all have one thing in common — they all stuck to their knitting.
The past three years for the Australian equities market could best be described as tumultuous. The end of the tech boom and an increasingly destabilised political scene, all contributed to unpredicatable markets.
However, this year’s finalists say the main challenge has been to remain true to label.
“The past three years have been a challenging time for any equities manager, but we have still come through these periods very well,” says Investors Mutual Limited managing director Anton Tagliaferro, the winner of the Australian equities award.
He says the secret to its Australian equities performance has been sticking to its value style which focuses on active bottom-up stock selection, identifying ‘undervalued’ opportunities with sustainable earnings streams and good management.
However, Tagliaferro says it hasn’t been easy.
“At the time there was a lot of pressure from our clients as to why our performance wasn’t any good, but we were true to label and stuck to our style,” he says.
He says unlike some of its competitors, its investment team of six only focuses on Australian equities, not socially responsible investing and some of the other areas of growth in equities products.
Tyndall chief executive officer Michael Good also says its value approach has served its Australian equities investments well.
“It has been a stock pickers market,” he says.
However, Good says its stock selection and quality of people are probably the reason they are a finalist in this category. He says there are eight analysts that review the stocks who are initially focused on liquidity, value and quality criteria at the stock level.
“Our process is a very defined process. It looks at all companies, so we can compare expected returns across the market,” he says.
Tyndall sticks to researching the top 150 companies in the marketplace and does not endeavour to research smaller companies.
According to UBS Global Asset Management (Australia) head of Australian equities Paul Fiani, the manager’s disciplined rigorous process and its team approach has ensured its position in the finalist list.
He says being style neutral in its investment approach, UBS tries to outperform in all market conditions.
“Therefore, I think it is a tougher ask for us to do this than value or growth [managers],” Fiani says.
UBS Global Asset Management considers the whole investment universe to identify the cheaper stocks.
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