Martin Currie flags Australian version of Global Alpha Fund

Scottish fund manager Martin Currie plans to launch an Australian version of its Global Alpha Fund later this year.

The fund will be available to both retail and wholesale investors and will be handled locally by Australian Funds Marketing, said Martin Currie director Michael Thomas.

“The fund will be managed by the investment team in Edinburgh, and it is a product the Australian market has asked for,” he said.

“Our key selling point is that the Global Alpha Fund is run by an independent big boutique manager.”

The management style of the fund is GARP (growth at a reasonable price), with between 30 to 45 global stocks held at any one time. Thomas said the turnover of the fund was about 60 per cent.

“The investment strategy is for our analysts to generate the stocks they would put in a model portfolio,” he said.

“From those selected stocks, the portfolio manager, Alison Hamilton, picks which ones she wants to put in the fund.”

The analysts are picking stocks on the basis of the quality of the equity, its potential price growth and whether it is fair value at the time of purchase.

The analysts also look at the directors’ share dealings in the target stock to determine if there is a change afoot that could affect the share price.

“We are trying to identify winners, so our research will focus on a pinpoint of where the share price is at present and if there is growth in the price about to happen,” Thomas said.

“We are looking for price growth during the next two years, which is roughly how long we keep a stock.”

The investment strategy is not sector specific or geographically specific.

Currently, Martin Currie holds none of the major global stocks, such as Microsoft, General Electric or Exxon Mobil, in the fund. The largest shareholdings in the fund at present are the National Bank of Greece (3 per cent of the portfolio), Unicredito Italiano (3 per cent), Teliasonera and Taiwan Semiconductor (both 2.6 per cent).

“We are not trying to replicate the big fund managers by holding the global top 10 stocks,” he said.

The Global Alpha Fund has outperformed the MSCI Index by 3.9 per cent a year for the three years ending February, this year.

To avoid a fund’s performance being hampered by having too much money to manage, the fund manager does cap some of its offerings.

Currently, Martin Currie’s Asia ex Japan, UK Active and China funds are all closed, and Thomas did not rule out capping the Global Alpha Fund at some point in the future.