Former HSBC head rears new boutique

A NEW Melbourne-based boutique Australian equities manager claims to have achieved a 47 per cent return with its inaugural fund.

Bellwether Partners, founded by former HSBC Securities Australia executive managing director Bruce Bell, has an investment team of five led by former Deutsche Asset Management head of quantitative investments Colin Papcun.

The first product, the Bellwether Australian Shares Fund, is a wholesale product using a concentrated, high conviction investment approach drawing predominantly from the S&P/ASX 200. The fund achieved 46.88 per cent return for the 12 months ending September this year.

Bell said the resulting portfolio is derived from both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

The fund, for the year ending September, has outperformed the S&P/ASX 300 by 15.15 per cent.

“When compared to the returns posted in the Intech Australian Shares Interim survey, the fund has outperformed its peers and ranked number one for the month, quarter and year to September 30, 2005, for gross performance,” he said.

Bellwether is not included in the Intech manager survey yet.

“The result has validated months of work spent developing the emerging boutique’s investment process,” Bell said.

The fund will invest in no more than 30 stocks, mainly from the ASX 200, which are selected through a quantitative and qualitative investment approach.