Greg has worked in financial services-related media for more than 30 years. He is a former economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and assistant editor and business editor for the Australian Financial Review. Greg has founded many magazines, newsletters and conferences in the funds management industry. Titles he has launched include: Super Review, Investor Daily, IFA, Investor Weekly, Investor Supermarket, SMSF Magazine, the Blue Book, Investment Magazine, I&T News, Professional Planner, Top1000Funds.com, IO&C News, Investor Strategy News and New Investor.
Boutique fund manager Alphinity has struck a partnership with the CSIRO to develop a new framework to assess responsible artificial intelligence practices and ESG considerations.
The collapse of a built-in bull market has put more pressure on asset managers according to a new report, which will need to make “transformational changes” to enjoy the profitability and growth of years past.
Pinnacle Investment Management has acquired the third-party marketing business Winston Capital Partners, primarily so it can control distribution for one of its affiliates, Coolabah Capital Investments.
Coolabah, a $7 billion fixed income credit manager, has had a run of success in the past couple of years, with Pinnacle recently increasing its minority shareholding to 32 per cent by acquiring the interest held by the Bennett family office.
Andrew Fairweather
For Winston, founded by Sydney-based Stephen Robertson and Perth-based Andrew Fairweather in December 2012, Coolabah was its major funds management client, and the firm held a long-term distribution contract.
Pinnacle, on the other hand, does not act as a third-party distributor but provides distribution and other services to its affiliates, all of which it has minority shareholdings in.
The deal, for an unspecified amount, tidies up this arrangement, with the two partners and two out of the three Winston staff agreeing to new roles within Pinnacle.
Cameron Harris
Cameron Harris, the third staff member, is to form his own third-party marketing business and will have the other two important Winston managers as his inaugural clients. The mutual arrangements look like a rare win, win, win.
The other managers, for whom Harris has worked since the start of their contracts, are Monash Investors, an absolute return Australian equities manager, and Epsilon Direct Lending, a private credit manager.
Cameron Harris, who spent 15 years at Macquarie prior to joining Winston, said last week (September 8) that he loved working with both Monash and Epsilon whose main target markets for capital raising were the wholesale areas of financial advisers, HNWs, family offices and small institutions. Epsilon is slightly more institutionally focused.
With their backgrounds in the wealth management sector, Robertson and Fairweather, who had worked together at J.P. Morgan in the 1990s, set their business apart from many other third-party marketers through this wholesale focus. Institutional is becoming increasingly difficult for managers from a business perspective. The rapid consolidation resulting in fewer, bigger, funds, and increasing regulatory push resulting in a bias towards index-style returns, mean smaller active and alternatives managers are deserting the big super funds as sources of capital.
They are simply too hard to deal with. As one experienced marketer said recently of the big funds: “It takes you six months to get a meeting and another six months for them to say ‘no’.”
Robertson said that he and Fairweather had also enjoyed working with the Winston managers and was pleased that they would remain in good hands after the arrangements had been completed.
“Pinnacle do what we have done on steroids,” he said. “They have the resources, broader distribution and a balance sheet.” Robertson had also worked with Andrew Chambers, Pinnacle’s executive director in charge of institutional and international business, and a significant shareholder, when they were at J.P. Morgan.
The two other Winston staff to join Pinnacle are James Archer, a business development manager, and Jessica Brent, operations manager.
Greg has worked in financial services-related media for more than 30 years. He is a former economics writer for the Sydney Morning Herald and assistant editor and business editor for the Australian Financial Review. Greg has founded many magazines, newsletters and conferences in the funds management industry. Titles he has launched include: Super Review, Investor Daily, IFA, Investor Weekly, Investor Supermarket, SMSF Magazine, the Blue Book, Investment Magazine, I&T News, Professional Planner, Top1000Funds.com, IO&C News, Investor Strategy News and New Investor.
Industry super fund owned IFM Investors and ISPT are exploring a merger at the request of their shareholders amidst a challenging outlook for commercial property.
Having poached a number of high-profile portfolio managers, and with backing from family offices and high net worth investors, new boutique Blackwattle is trying to correct the “inadequacies” of the Australian funds management industry.
The NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) has topped up its hedge fund exposure, handing US$100 million to trans-Atlantic global macro-strategy specialist Episteme Capital.