The fund, according to senior vice president, Jonathan Abraham, achieved a net return of 11.6 per cent for the last 12 months to February’s end, with a volatility of just 3.4 per cent.
Its strategy involves investing in global private companies across both equity and debt, and provides investors with a broad diversification across geographies, financing stages and investment types. According to Abraham, it does this while using Partners Group’s relative value investment approach to systematically overweight those segments and investment types that offer attractive value at a given point in time, and it’s a strategy that has not changed in the last 12 months.
The private equity firm, whose personnel has grown to over 1200 in the last year, sets itself apart from public equity by allowing investors broader access to information and management through more in-depth due diligence.
As well, employees’ interests are aligned with interests of investors through significant equity ownership by management, and it provides operational, active value-creation initiatives without the pressures of quarterly earnings targets of public markets.
Abraham also said the firm invests over a long-term time horizon, which allows the private equity managers to sell portfolio assets in more favourable exit environments.
Runner up, the P/E Global FX Alpha Fund, employs a highly differentiated approach in that it solely focuses on currency markets and is responsive to changing market environments over time. It’s this strategy that has allowed the fund a successful track record since 2003.
Similarly, the Winton Global Alpha fund is unique in that it seeks to identify trends and patterns in financial markets using an approach founded in science rather than financial theory.
