Fund to focus on dividends

ING Investment Management (INGIM) has launched the ING Global High Dividend Fund, which it claims is Australia’s first to select stocks on the basis of their dividend yields.

The fund will initially be available only to institutional investors in Australia, with plans to provide retail investor access within the next few months.

The group is in discussions to make the fund available to wholesale and retail investors through platforms and wraps.

Managed by ING’s investment team in The Hague, the fund invests in between 90 and 120 stocks with a history of dividend growth, and with a dividend yield of more than 3 per cent.

Head of Special Equity Products for INGIM Europe, Jorik van den Bos, said the fund offers Australian investors a “sophisticated global equity strategy that leverages the importance of dividends… It offers investors competitive returns with lower downside risk and lower absolute risk compared to most global equity strategies.”

Van den Bos said statistical analysis of long-term equity performance shows that dividends account for the majority of the market’s overall returns.

Launched in 2000, the fund has outperformed its benchmark, the MSCI World (Total Return) Index (in Australian dollars), by more than 15 per cent per annum, according to Van den Bos.

The Australian launch follows the New York Stock Exchange listing in March this year of the US vehicle, the ING Global Equity Dividend and Premium Opportunity Fund,

The fund has raised nearly US$2 billion from investors, Van den Bos said, making it “one of the largest ever unleveraged closed-end funds launched in the US market”.

INGIM Australia chief executive officer, Grant Bailey, said the group had been engaging the local market for six months to ensure the Global High Dividend strategy was something for which clients had an appetite.