Barclays Global Investors Australiais the first cab off the rank forMorningstar’snew qualitative rating process, and was graded with an overall score of four, meaning it has a business and management strength rating in the top 22.5 per cent of all fund managers.
Morningstar says in its report that the fund manager has turned around its business after several years of losses to record a modest profit for 2002. Its favourable rating was achieved despite an acknowledgement by Morningstar of Barclays’ global parent being “rumoured for sale, thus creating an element of ownership uncertainty”.
Barclays’ previous poor performance is linked to its absorption of BZW Investment Management in 1996, according to Morningstar. However, the research house says the fund manager has since contained costs.
While Barclays is tagged by Morningstar as an institutional player, it continues to stay in touch with the retail market by offering its funds through master trust and wrap account providers, which accounted for 7 per cent of Barclays’ funds under management at the end of last year.
Its preference to remain in the institutional market was exemplified by it spinning off most of the retail funds from BZW to Advance Funds Management in 1999. This is viewed by Morningstar as positive in the area of strategic planning, where the company was described by Morningstar as currently strong.
Other significant areas of review were stability and profitability, where Barclays was said to be average and with a positive outlook; parent support and strategy, where the group was average with a neutral outlook, due mainly to the rumours of sale; while its management team was assessed to be strong with a positive outlook, where stability was described by the research house to be a strong feature of the management team.
