UBS and Larum to go international

UBS Global Asset Managementwill aim to increase its international equities funds under management following yesterday’s announcement that Colin Woods will now head up its Australian operations with existing head John Larum relocating to London to manage the group’s global investment committee.

Larum, who moves to the UK in September after a transition period, recently revealed UBS’s plans to place a cap on its institutional inflows - instead opting to utilise its remaining capacity for higher fee retail managed funds. However Woods indicated today that as a global manager the group also plans to leverage off its international capabilities in the domestic market.

“To date we’ve been successful at running the domestic business and now the challenge for us is to take our global strengths and capabilities and apply them to the domestic market,” former executive director business development and new CEO Woods says.

“If an investor likes the risk management and process of our Australian Share Fund then there’s no reason why they won’t like our international funds as they’re all run on the same integrated platform.”

Responsibility for the platform to which Woods refers now resides with Larum alongside chairman designate of UBS Global Asset Management’s Global Investment Committee, Tom Madsen, who also relocated to the UK from Australia.

According to Woods, UBS’s global investment committee is made up of heads of equities, fixed interest, asset allocation and so on and its charter is to ensure consistent clear guidelines for the investment professionals in the organization.

Wood’s previous responsibilities will now be split among an expanded team.

“What we’ve done over the past six months is to expand the business development and managed funds team and chip off part of my responsibilities,” he says.

Part of this ‘chipping away’ includes the recent appointment of ex-Frontier Investmentconsultant, Piers Bolger, into the role of director, managed fund research and investments. In the role Bolger is responsible for liaising with the various research houses - a task formerly performed by Woods.

“With the restructure almost three and a half years ago that saw Tom [Madsen] move to head up our global equities capabilities, one of our key strengths is that we are a global integrated manager,” Woods says.

At present UBS has one overseas share fund, which has a nominal amount of around $200 million in funds under management.