By Kate Kachor
BarclaysGlobal Investors (BGI) is the winner of this year’s Money Management/ IMCA Fund Manager of the Year Award, capping off a stellar 12 months.
The group has also taken out the Australian Shares (Broad Cap) category for its BGI Alpha fund, adding to its hedge funds (Multi-Strategy) win of 2006.
BGI’s win caps off an impressive 12 months for the group, despite experiencing slow performance alongside its industry competitors in the last quarter of 2006.
“It hasn’t been spectacular across the board, but I think it has been solid. I think the second half of 2006 was the more challenging half of the year compared to the first half for many of our strategies, but not just for BGI but, I think, for a lot of other managers out there as well,” BGI chief executive officer Morry Waked said.
“The second half of last year wasn’t as good as the first one. With the exception of a couple of strategies, all our active funds outperformed the benchmark for the past 12 months. And while some of our funds didn’t perform as well as what we would have liked, they still outperformed — relative to competitors, I think our performance has been really good,” Waked said.
He added that of the group’s 42 funds in the Australian market, 41 have outperformed since inception.
Runners up for the overall award were BlackRock Investment Management and AXA/AllianceBernstein Australia.
As with last year’s awards, the Investment Management Consultants Association (IMCA) Australia judged the awards.
However, judging criteria changed slightly this year, with the process not involving a quantitative (performance) filter.
The panel decided not to explicitly take past performance into account to rank or filter managers in the assessment exercise, although performance data for periods to the end of December 2006 were circulated for reference purposes.
IMCA also added a number of additional categories to reflect current portfolio construction practices. While last year there were 12 categories — 10 sectors, Rising Star and a Fund Manager of the Year — this year the awards feature the additional categories of global property, Asia and international small caps.
On the international markets front, winners in the Money Management/IMCA Fund Manager of the Year Awards 2007 were: AllianceBernstein Australia, which took out the award for International Shares (Broad Cap); Lazard Asset Management, which took home the International Shares (Small Cap), Aberdeen Asset Management, which won the Emerging Markets crown and Platinum Asset Management, which won the Asia category.
In terms of domestic offerings, Barclay Global Investors took out the Australian Shares (Broad Cap) category, while Adam Smith Asset Management took out the Australian Shares (Small Cap) award. Pimco won the Fixed Interest (Diversified) category.
Principal Global Investors took home the Property Securities (Australia) award, while LaSalle Investment Management won the Property Securities (Global) category.
Other winners were BlackRock Investment Management in the Credit category, and Bridgewater Associates in the Hedge Funds (Multi-Strategy) class, while the Rising Star award went to Greencape Capital.
