Variety of successful styles

THE two big winners in the latest fund manager awards, UBS Global Asset Management (UBS) and Perpetual Investments, come from very different backgrounds.

UBS is part of the giant Swiss-based UBS AG group, one of the top 10 banks in the world, while Perpetual is a home-grown success story.

Both groups have experienced rapid growth over the past decade, though they still rank as mid-sized fund managers (measured by Australian assets under management).

UBS has been in operation in Australia since 1985 and has $13.8 billion under management.

UBS considers its global knowledge and expertise to be its greatest strength. Worldwide, the group manages $795 billion in assets and has 3,200 employees.

Money Management – ASSIRT said the win was a highpoint of UBS’s time in Australia.

“Until last year the group had not been named in any category in the awards, but since then has been garnering more acclaim, including a five-star rating from ASSIRT in Australian equities,” it said.

UBS’s Australian share fund has returned 15.4 per cent per annum over the past five years, compared with a benchmark return (the S&P/ASX300 Accumulation Index) of 10.9 per cent per annum.

Perpetual has been managing funds since the 1960s and currently has $19.5 billion under management for more than 130,000 investors.

It focuses purely on the domestic market, and has a strategic alliance with the US-based Fidelity group to provide international investment opportunities to its clients.

Perpetual’s flagship fund is the Industrial Share Fund, which first opened in 1966 and has returned 18.1 per cent per year over the past 20 years.

Perpetual is known as a ‘value’ manager. It seeks to invest in companies whose share price has fallen below ‘fair value’, based on the company’s fundamentals and market conditions.