Boutique Australian equities manager Hyperion Asset Management’s entry into the wholesale arena has been strengthened with the news it has been awarded a $230 million mandate from the coal industry superannuation fund Auscoal.
The manager has bucked the recent trend of wholesale product providers moving into the retail space by offering the services it has honed in the retail market to institutional investors.
“In 2002 we decided that the SMA [separately managed accounts] market, which we’d done quite well at, was probably not going to take us where we needed to go, and that’s why we started an institutional strategy. We thought that perhaps the institutions were ready for benchmark insensitive managers, and we set about structuring our business accordingly,” Hyperion institutional business director Tim Samway explained.
The Auscoal mandate is the second significant wholesale win Hyperion has achieved following the $160 million mandate it received from Health Super back in 2004 through asset consultant Watson Wyatt.
Samway said the boutique manager expected to have more new business awarded to it over the next six-week period.
In keeping with its boutique structure, Hyperion has already set a cap that its funds under management will not exceed.
“The institutional cap in today’s dollars is $2 billion. We’ve left $500 million there for the retail side of the business. The retail side of the business is in our view the mezzanine products out to financial planners, but it could also be SMA products as well,” Samway said.
