EQT launches small fund
THE investment management division of the Melbourne-based Equity Trustees group, EQT Fund Management, has launched a small companies fund targeted specifically at retail investors.
The new fund, the EQT Small Companies Fund, will invest exclusively in Australian companies outside the S&P/ASX 100, with the aim of outperforming the ASX Small Ordinaries index by greater than four per cent over a rolling three to five-year period.
EQT has outsourced the investment management functions of the fund to SG Hiscock and Company, a boutique fund management group set up last year by six former National Asset Management managers.
The fund, which has been running internally with seed funding from Equity Trustees since June last year, returned 30.61 per cent in the six months to the end of December 2001, 21 per cent more than the ASX Small Ordinaries Index.
EQT Funds Management general manager and chief investment officer Harvey Kalman says the new fund, the 10th to be launched by EQT in just over two years, will be distributed through Equity Trustees’ internal client base, as well as through independent financial advisers and master trust and wrap platforms.
The fund will be offered to retail investors with a minimum initial investment of $5,000.
EQT Funds Management, set up as the specialist investment management arm of the 114-year-old Equity Trustees group in January 2000, is currently managing a total of some $600 million.
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