QS Investors takes battle to Platinum, Magellan
New York-based QS Investors is aiming to capture a slice of Australian investors’ increasing appetite for international equities, according to the asset manager’s president and head of equity strategy, John Norman.
Norman, who is currently visiting Australia, said the Legg Mason affiliate believes it can position itself as a third alternative to the more established international equities managers, Platinum International and Magellan, and said he had seen a very receptive response to the strategy from Australian advisers.
When it comes to the global equities managers in Australia, Norman said the players such as Platinum and Magellan have been very successful and become “quite large”. But QS Investors, with its smaller size, does allow it to be a “little more nimble”.
“We’ve identified that there’s a lot of opportunities here for QS Investors to grow our business, especially as Australian investors are increasingly realising that it’s good to diversify out of Australia and take advantage of all the opportunities all around the world,” he said.
While QS Investors has some long-standing institutional clients in Australia, Norman said he is increasingly spending time on the retail side of the business, where the manager believes there is a “tremendous number of opportunities”.
“We have been dealing directly with financial advisers, and really on the financial adviser and consultant side, we have found consistent support for increasing the allocation to international equities, because I think people realise that there’s so many opportunities, not only in Australia, but outside of Australia,” he said.
“No one country has all the good ideas.”
Norman said that from the clients he has been talking to, having the opportunities to access great technology companies in the US, or great industrial companies in Europe, or the positive green shoots coming out of the Japanese economy, is too compelling a value proposition to pass up.
“I think what we’ve heard from the market is that flows have been going into international equities and investors really do want to diversify. So, we’ve found a very receptive audience,” Norman said.
Norman also emphasised that when it comes to the Australian market, investors not only want a good manager with good insights into the market, but they also want them at a reasonable fixed cost, which QS Investors is able to provide.
“It’s hard to consistently outperform. So, if you’re able to do that and you’re able to offer that at a reasonable price, I think that’s compelling to investors.”
The QS Investors Global Equity Trust, which carries a four-Crown Fund Rating from FE Analytics, employs a rigorous quantitative stock selection process to rank the attractiveness of stocks based on factors such as cash flow, earnings growth, expectations, value and technical factors.
The fund aims to earn an after-fee return in excess of the MSCI World ex Australia Index, net dividends reinvested, in Australian dollars over rolling three-year periods.
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