Equity Trustees profits from new partnerships

Equity TrusteesFunds Management is sometimes seen as a manager of a number of boutique fund managers, however, the relationships go a lot deeper.

And Equity Trustees has a much longer history in funds management than the current model it has developed.

The company’s funds management general manager Harvey Kalman says the trustee company has been running funds since the late 1960s, but began providing a raft of services to fund managers in January 2000.

“It took two years to prove the concept, but by then we were providing distribution for PIMCO and complete back-office services, as well as distribution for SG Hiscock.”

Equity Trustees continued to manage some funds in-house, such as mortgages, but by working in partnership with these managers, its product range expanded dramatically.

“For this partnership we only targeted boutique managers and global players who didn’t want to set up back-office operations in Australia,” Kalman says.

“The result is we have eight strategic relationships with fund managers and about $4 billion of funds under management and administration.”

The relationships now include BNP Paribas (acting as responsible entity),K2 Asset Management(again acting as RE), Grange (sales and marketing support), La Salle Asset Management (sales and distribution) and AXA Alternative Advisers (acting as a trustee for the New York-based manager).

Inflows into the Equity Trustee funds are growing, Kalman says, partly due to the strong performance. For the year ending December 2003, the Equity Trustees small caps fund had a return of 57.12 per cent. The absolute return fund returned 26.28 per cent for the year, while the balanced fund achieved 11.14 per cent.