Jana takes first step into retail market

Jana Investment Advisers has made its initial entry into the retail market with the launch of two multi-manager, long/short investment products.

The two funds cover both the domestic and international equity asset classes and will be available exclusively through the MLC MasterKey Custom platform from May 2006.

Jana managing director Ken Marshman said his firm decided to launch these products because it had recognised the alternative investment strategies employed for its institutional clients since 1996 had not, to date, been readily available to retail investors.

The Jana Australian Share Long Short Trust and the Jana Global Share Long Short Trust will each use three managers to implement the alternative strategies with the purpose of providing a boost to the alpha returns of retail investors.

Acadian Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors are underlying managers on both trusts, with Perpetual Funds Management making up the triumvirate on the local equities offering and Goldman Sachs Asset Management doing the same for the international shares offering.

“Each manager is common in the sense that each one uses a quantitative approach to investing in equities… and each has the ability to invest both long and to invest short. Typically the net exposure, that’s adding the longs and the shorts together, is the market exposure so there will be full market exposure with these products,” Marshman explained.

“Each of the three managers in each product we’ve had extensive research on over the last decade and most of them we’ve been invested with for very long periods of time in one form or the other,” he added.

Marshman said long/short strategies are compelling because they offer a means of increasing return without a commensurate increase in risk by almost doubling the range of stocks investors can purchase.

He also feels this investment approach can protect a portfolio’s value in not only in rising markets but falling ones as well.

The two new funds are being targeted toward the superannuation market as well as high-net-worth investors.

Chief investment officer for MLC Michael Clancy believes the two trusts represent a unique opportunity for retail investors.

“The real value that is in this for investors is that Jana is a firm that has a tremendous reputation in the institutional world and is highly regarded by Australia’s most primo institutional investors. Its whole history is around doing great manager and investment research and that’s what they are putting into these products,” he said.