New research house Evergreen Ratings, a subsidiary of investment consultancy Evergreen Consultants, will look at the closed-ended, wholesale, illiquid and listed investment vehicles offered to Australian investors and offer research around property syndicate, private equity, venture capital and hedge funds.
According to Evergreen Ratings founder and director, Angela Ashton, there was a clear gap in the market in rating these types of investment vehicles, with a growing demand from financial planners and their clients for a ‘whole of portfolio’ service.
The business model would assume that fund managers would pay a fee to have their investment vehicles and products rated, with the reports made available to financial advisers.
“Evergreen Consultants, being a consulting group, has traditionally focussed on managed accounts and liquid investments, and a considered analysis of the ‘non-traditional’ products often sits outside the scope of our standard client work,” Ashton said.
“However, we are strongly of the view that there is a place for these products across investment portfolios and we think it is important to offer a ‘whole of portfolio’ service.
“They are often far more complex than many ‘standard’ managed funds, therefore requiring significant resources and skill sets to assess them properly. We believe this is one of the key reason other ratings houses have not analysed these types of products consistently.”
Evergreen Ratings would be backed by consultants, Daniel Liptak and Mark Wist, who both had over 25 years experience across investment banking, funds management, asset allocation, property and investment for local and overseas companies.
Prior to this, Liptak worked at Deloitte and Zenith Investment Partners, where he started alternative research, while Wist spent his entire career in property, having spent many years researching and rating property funds at both PIR and Atchison Consultants.
The research house would also aim to develop a stand-alone ESG assessment framework since many advisers’ clients want their investments to dovetail with their personal beliefs, Ashton said.
