Money pours into tech funds
A swag of fund managers have unleashed technology based funds in recent weeks in the wake of Colonial’s hugely successful offering.
A swag of fund managers have unleashed technology based funds in recent weeks in the wake of Colonial’s hugely successful offering.
AMP and BT have both launched funds this month, while several other managers including ANZ, Schroders, Zurich and Platinum are waiting in the wings preparing for imminent launch.
The barrage of funds will crowd into the market which has been trail-blazed by Colonial’s Global Technologies & Communications fund. About $100 million has poured into Colonial’s offering since it opened four months ago, making it one of the most successful debutants in local funds management history.
At the end of January the fund had more than $140 million under management, in-cluding strong performance gains generated by the fund, according to Colonial chief executive officer Chris Cuffe.
Reflecting the widespread popularity of these stocks the AMP Global Technology Fund is a mirror of the Henderson Global Technology Fund, which has been run by AMP subsidiary, Henderson Investment, in the UK since 1984 and has $6.8 billion under management.
Henderson Investment technology investment director Brian Ashford-Russell says exact expected inflows are hard to measure but should follow overseas trends.
"It is the leading fund of its type in the UK which currently sees $20 million a day in funds inflow. A similar thing occurs in Canada and we expect the same trend to occur here," Ashford-Russell says.
"At the same time, since the fund is a mirror of the UK fund, we expect to also see the same returns."
Since its launch the UK fund has had an average return of 34 per cent, leading the field in specific sector funds in the UK and USA according to Ashford-Russell.
BT Funds Management’s (BTFM) product will take a wider exposure to the tech-nology sector and will consider companies which fall under the areas of telecom-munications, IT and media enterprises (TIME).
BTFM retail group head Rob Coombe says expected inflows should be between $50 million to $100 million within the next six months with much of that coming from the retail sector.
Launched at the same time as the fund was a new index, the MSCI-BT TIME In-dex, which was formulated using twelve global indices to create a composite repre-sentation of the sector.
Coombe says the new index was preferable to the currently used NASDAQ index.
“The NASDAQ is US centric and as yet not fully new economy focussed with some biotech and medical stocks, which sit outside the TIME index,” Coombe says.
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Jason Spits
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