Six of the best for Skandia

Skandia will add six new funds to its investment menus on all products, except corporate superannuation, in response to market trends identified during the firm’s most recent sector reviews.

The six new funds are the MIR Absolute Return Fund, Macquarie Walter Scott Global Equity Fund, PM Capital Absolute Performance Fund, Macquarie International Infrastructure Securities Fund, PIMCO Global Commodity Real Return Fund, and the APN Property for Income Fund No. 2.

Skandia said the six funds have been added to the investment house’s products to satisfy three market trends that have recently emerged. They are intended to increase the opportunity for investors to use benchmark unaware managers in an effort to improve returns during falling markets, satisfy investors’ rising demand for yield, and allow investors to take advantage of the growth in commodity prices.

The MIR fund, Macquarie Walter Scott fund and the PM Capital fund have each been launched to improve the selection of benchmark unaware managers on offer for Skandia clients.

“These funds offer differing processes to traditional benchmark constrained funds. We believe the need for these types of strategies will increase in the future as investors begin to seek absolute returns to manage their downside risk or generally seek returns above and beyond that of the market,” Skandia investment research manager Jody Fitzgerald said.

Apart from being unconstrained by the benchmark, each of these three funds has a unique characteristic in its investment process that will present investors with distinctive investment opportunities.

The MIR Absolute Return Fund is a value style long/short Australian equity fund. It is distinctive as it combines both quantitative and qualitative techniques in its approach to stock selection.

“We use an equal accommodation of quantitative and qualitative disciplines. We think the marriage of these strange bedfellows avoids some of the [stock selection] pitfalls,” MIR Investment Management managing director Michael Triguboff said.

Macquarie has teamed up with Edinburgh-based fund manager Walter Scott & Partners to offer a long only global equities fund. The fund is part of Macquarie’s Professional Series launched earlier this year.

“Walter Scott tend to consider their style as one not just with a growth bias but a wealth generating compound bias,” Macquarie Bank division director, financial services group, Peter Shepherd said.

The PM Capital fund has been chosen to fulfil a long bias, long/short global equities mandate. Skandia said the distinctive factor of this product is its focus on after tax returns.

“Why do we focus on tax? Purely and simply [because] our investment managers are Australian and they are invested in the fund, so it comes naturally to us. Secondly, we think a lot of the other international equity mangers who are managing money from outside of Australia do not have a focus on this point,” PM Capital associate director Chris Donohoe said.

The six new funds will be available to investors from October 31 onwards.