Select looks to an alternative Aspect

Australian boutique fund managerSelect Asset Managementhas announced a joint venture with European hedge fund manager Aspect Capital to increase its absolute return focused product offering.

The deal will see Select offer Aspect’s products to the Australian market, create a series of joint Select Aspect funds by the end of this year, and use Aspect products for asset allocation within its Select Diversified Portfolios.

As part of the agreement and relationship between the two companies, Aspect will take an equity position in Select alongside Gottex Group, though Gottex will remain the largest shareholder.

An Aspect director, Michael Adam, will join the Select board of directors, and Aspect' s marketing manager, Melanie Caffrey, will now head up Select’s local sales and marketing effort.

Select chief investment officer Dominic McCormick says the deal with Aspect made sense from an investment point of view and fit well with the direction the company is heading.

McCormick says Select is also very confident in Aspect’s management ability due to a close relationship with the group.

Behind the deal, according to McCormick, was a Select commitment to delivering absolute return investment products to Australian financial planners and investors.

“The relationship with Aspect secures our access to proven quantitative trading strategies and allows us to provide the Australian market with best of breed hedge fund solutions in every category,” he says.

McCormick says the Select Aspect funds will sit alongside the four regulated vehicles already offered by Select, two diversified portfolios and two Select Gottex products, to offer a good complement of alternative products.

Aspect managing director Anthony Todd says the deal will allow the manager to serve its current institutional clients better and reach Australian investors directly through local regulated management schemes.

According to McCormick, Select is not looking to make a whole range of similar partnerships with different groups, as it would only look at those groups that made sense from an investment perspective.

Select was established last year as a result of a joint venture between an Australian-based team and the Swiss-based Gottex Group.