Souls helps to lift parent’s profits
A 132 per cent increase in funds under management to $543 million by boutique Soul Funds Management helped its majority owner, Washington H Soul Pattinson and Company (WHSP), to a record $421.4 million net profit for 2004-05.
Souls, which is 63 per cent owned by WHSP, is planning an “expansion of staff and systems” for the 2005-06 financial year, according to a statement issued by the group today.
Souls, which started life in 1997 as Veritas Asset Management, partnered up with Soul Pattinson in 2003.
Over the past year, recognition of the group’s capability, particularly in small caps, has grown. Frank Villante, the former head of small caps at BT, is one of the boutique’s senior portfolio managers.
The group was a runner up in the Rising Star category of this year’s Money Management Fund Manager of the Year Awards.
It has also been appointed to manage 40 per cent of a small caps fund launched by Advance Asset Management last December.
It’s parent, WHSP’s net profit after tax for 2004-05 was almost three times the $155.9 million reported for the previous financial year.
Coal operations were the main contributor to the profit increase in 2004-05, assisted by solid gains from investments and merchant banking.
The company declared a fully franked final dividend of 15 cents per share for the year ended July 31, 2005, up three cents from the previous year.
There was also an additional fully-franked special dividend of five cents per share.
Recommended for you
In this week’s episode of Relative Return Insider, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver joins the show to dissect the ongoing government economic reform roundtable and reflect on the wish lists of industry stakeholders – and whether there is hope for meaningful reform.
In this week’s episode of Relative Return Insider, hosts Maja Garaca Djurdjevic and Keith Ford take a look at the Reserve Bank’s latest rate cut call, the factors influencing the unanimous decision, and what economists expect from the rest of the year.
In this episode of Relative Return Insider, host Keith Ford is joined by Accountants Daily journalist Imogen Wilson to take a look at why there has been such broad support for a more comprehensive tax reform discussion at the Treasurer’s economic roundtable.
In this week’s episode of Relative Return Insider, AMP chief economist Shane Oliver joins the show to discuss Australia’s stagnating productivity ahead of the government’s economic reform roundtable, and how picking all the “low-hanging fruit” for reform in the ’90s helped kick off a surge that has since stalled out.
