FE’s second run of quantitative Crown Ratings has found that this time it was Macquarie Investment Management which has topped the table of the most effective fund managers with the highest number (eight) of its funds, based on the last three years, rated with five crowns.
It was closely followed by Perpetual Investment Management which once again proved to be the manager with the high level of consistency embedded into its investment process as the firm has once again seen seven of its funds earning five crowns.
Macquarie Investment Management’s division director, Scot Thompson, said: “Our investment approach is long-term and is guided by both our conviction-based and systematic methodology, which has positioned our funds well over time.”
The Macquarie funds that received a five-crown rating were: Macquarie Active Plus Equities, Macquarie Australian Equities, Macquarie Australian Shares, Macquarie Australian Small Companies, Macquarie Balanced Growth, Macquarie Life Australian Enhanced Equities, Macquarie Life Growth and Macquarie Small Companies.
Commenting on the outcome, Thompson also said that Macquarie’s solutions and products on offer were determined by the clients’ requirements and supported by the team with deep knowledge and experience.
Morningstar Investment Management also continued to display strong durability in its investment strategy as the firm again saw six of its funds awarded with the highest five-crown rating.
Asked about the key pillars of the funds’ durability, Morningstar’s chief investment officer, Asia-Pacific, Andrew Lill said it was the firm’s consistent investment strategy, deployed globally, combined with a great deal of alignment between teams and clients in terms of objectives and performance goals.
He reiterated that the Morningstar’s investment philosophy remained to be driven by the long-term valuation approach when it came to thinking about asset classes and portfolio management.
“Being a long-term investor, allocating to assets that have attractive valuations, and that we tend to be quite contrarian, meaning we buy stocks in companies and stock markets when they tend to be out favour,” he said.
The other top performing fund managers included IOOF Investments, Challenger and AMP Capital which all saw five of their funds granted five crowns.
However, both Challenger and AMP Capital managed to grow the number of their respective funds that were worthy of being awarded the highest rating.
Global co-head of asset management, infrastructure, AMP Capital, Michael Cummings, commenting on the Diversified Infrastructure Trust (ADIT) and Core Infrastructure funds, two of the five firm’s top-rated funds, said the outcome reflected the funds’ investment approach which targeted mid-market infrastructure assets where returns were strong.
“The performance has been underpinned by AMP Capital’s deep and global capability in both the sourcing and then actively managing the assets, across transport, energy, health and communications infrastructure sectors,” he said.
“Our funds provide investors with options to access our global platform of unlisted infrastructure investments. For example, ADIT, established in 1995, is one of the longest-running infrastructure funds in the world, and invests in a diversified portfolio of quality infrastructure assets in Australia and New Zealand and our Core Infrastructure Fund provides investors access to listed and unlisted infrastructure assets worldwide.”
