Following a year of strong performance, UBS Clarion Global Property Securities Fund has been crowned the winner of the 2012 Money Management/Lonsec Fund Manager of the Year award for the global property securities category.
Although UBS Global Asset Management became the responsible entity for the fund on 1 March 2012, the portfolio has continued to be managed by a team of professionals based in Philadelphia and sub-managed by CBRE Clarion Securities since its inception in October 2005.
Lonsec stated that despite the changes, the manager delivered 1 per cent excess returns over 2011 after fees, and subsequently outperformed all other funds in the global property securities peer group.
CBRE Securities portfolio manager Steve Carroll said that over 2011 the fund maintained considerable exposure to the US real estate investment trust (REIT) market which, on the back of continued improvement in the capital market environment and recovering commercial property fundamentals, had propelled the sector positively.
“Companies are continuing to have tremendous access to capital, both equity and debt, through the public and private markets and are now finding a greater volume of investment opportunities, particularly on the acquisitions front,” he said.
“While we acknowledge that today’s macro-environment introduces a level of variability with regards to the outlook for both economic growth and the equity markets, we believe that global listed property stocks are well positioned and should provide investors with healthy returns in 2012,” he said.
Carroll said the manager had a very deep investment team centred by seven senior global portfolio managers. Its competitive advantage was based on the team’s experience of covering companies through multiple cycles and understanding what truly drives these stocks over the long-term.
“Our investment process is very much rooted in a deep understanding of real estate, and having the capability as a part of the largest global real estate services firm to identify information in the market that is not readily available to other investors, which helps us identify where those mispricing opportunities exist,” he said.
“We are fortunate to have 35 fully dedicated investment professionals located in our Philadelphia headquarters as well as in our offices in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney, who are responsible for executing our investment strategy.”
With its sole real estate focus, second place finalist EQT SGH LaSalle Global Listed Property Securities undertakes a top-down market research, bottom-up company analysis and quantitative assessment of relative value to construct its portfolios.
“We believe that long-term performance of real estate securities will be driven by the performance of their underlying assets and the ability of management to create value,” LaSalle associate Kentaro Takao said.
The manager has over 60 employees worldwide fully dedicated to the global real estate securities program, and Takao said that this organisational structure – combined with the team’s understanding of real estate – provided the fund with a competitive advantage.
“If you have a global real estate securities fund, you have to have a sound global platform to manage the fund,” he said.
Rounding out the top three in the peer group was the Vanguard International Property Securities Index, which Vanguard head of product management and development Robyn Laidlaw said provided investors with a low-cost way to secure returns from global property securities.
She said the strategy of tracking the index was undertaken by either holding all of the benchmark securities, or a representative sample of those securities. She added that it was this low-cost, disciplined and risk-controlled approach that set the fund apart in the sector.
