Perpetual Investment’s two year association with US fund manager Fidelity has resulted in international funds under management passing the $2 billion mark at the end of last month.
Perpetual Investment’s two year association with US fund manager Fidelity has resulted in international funds under management passing the $2 billion mark at the end of last month.
The alliance between Perpetual and Fidelity has been in operation since mid 1998, prior to this Fidelity was the international manager for Perpetual.
Chief executive Rodney Green says at that time the two agreed to deepen their relationship and focus on increasing this part of the collective business.
Since then international funds under management have increased six fold from the figure of $330 million.
Green says much of this is due to the increasing awareness of the need to look overseas and at other markets.
“People have seen the benefits of diversification and the gains in international shares and there is a section of investors who wish to invest directly into those markets but find it hard to do so,” Green says.
“The basic thrust of our alliance says it is hard to be successful in investing from only one place in the world. Most are happy to go through some form of unit trust as they have less ability to keep up with changes.”
While he was not willing to announce targets for this part of the group Green says Perpetual is aiming to retain its top three position in market share position.
“One of the influences on inflows is market share position and we are looking at staying in the top three,” Green says.
“Our outlook on global investments is bullish, our investment plans are good with strong, consistent performance and this had lead to less volatile figures than some other managers.”
The news of the new figure comes after the group announced a $40 million net profit with a fully franked return of 65 cents last week. At the same time the group’s total funds under management grew from $6.9 billion to $11.6 billion.
Green says the growth in international funds under management was an important part of this increase and would continue to be part of further increases.
“This has been a strong feature in growth over the last 12 months alone and we see the best way to increase funds under management is through inflows and not launching more new products.”
