Pengana unveiled
Theformer listed property team at Principal Global Investors (PGI) has unveiled its new boutique property securities funds management company — Pengana Capital — and confirmed it has seeded capital from founding director of Centrestone Wealth Management, Malcolm Turnbull.
Pengana will be run by former Principal head of listed property trusts Stuart Stuckey, along with former Principal property analysts Ern Koh and Mark Thorpe-Apps, who all left the group two weeks ago.
“We’re in the final administration component of the launch. We have a licence but are finalising the outsourcing of some of our business operations,” Stuckey says.
He will not reveal how much Turnbull has seeded to the group, but does reveal the team itself has invested funds in the start-up.
“The money in the firm will be our own money, along with some money from Malcolm and some other private investors,” he says.
Stuckey says Pengana will focus mainly on investing in Australian listed securities but will also have an exposure to international listed property, the majority of which will be in the US, Asia and Europe.
“Our focus in the early days will be on real estate, but if the market accepts our business model then we’ll consider bringing in other teams to focus on other asset classes, but that’s in the future. At the moment, it’s important that we focus on the immediate work ahead of us,” he says.
Stuckey says that Russel Pillemer, another founding director ofCentrestone, has also been appointed as a non-executive director.
As for PGI, at present it has no other staff covering the listed property sector following the exodus of Stuckey’s team on May 2, but does have staff covering the area of direct property.
PGI direct and listed property operations were the only parts of theBT Funds Management(BTFM) group not to merge with Westpac when Principal in the US sold BT to them in August last year.
BT is monitoring the $500 million portfolio it has with PGI and is likely to make a decision on the future management of the assets over the next few weeks. However, it denied suggestions at this stage that it planned to bring the investment in-house.
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